She feels like bombarding him with questions, forcing him to answer them. But she knows she has to take it gently, and not risk the fragile rapport fostered by the incident out on the pavement.
‘It’s OK,’ she says. ‘I understand. But you’ll have to tell me more before I can forgive you. Your name, for instance.’
He nods his head, the movement making the frozen peas rattle.
‘My name is Isak Welin. At least that’s the name on my driving licence. I grew up in a village seventy kilometres outside Luleå. Dark and cold in winter, midges in the summer, all that.’
He’s trying to elicit a smile from her, evidently used to being able to rely on his charm.
‘Dad worked at sea and was away a lot, months at a stretch sometimes. When I was ten he moved out for good. I went to visit him a few times, but that happened less and less. We lost touch in the end, and I can’t really say I was sorry.’ He shrugs. ‘Last winter Mum got ill. Kidney trouble, there was talk of a transplant. The hospital tested me to see if I could be a donor, but it turned out that I wasn’t compatible. Mum and I weren’t even related. You can imagine what a shock that was.’
Veronica felt her breathing grow shallower.
‘Mum was in a bad way, so I didn’t want to make her explain. I searched through her flat, though. Looked in old photograph albums, and discovered that there were no pictures of me as a baby. I’d never been bothered about stuff like that before, but as I went on looking I realised there was no trace of me before I was six, seven years old. No christening pictures, no baby clothes, nothing like that. And I could remember those things I’ve already talked about . . .’ He gestures towards her. ‘A big garden, much bigger than we had at home. A treehouse, a hollow tree. A missing boy. And that name.’
‘Billy,’ she murmurs, unable to stop herself.
He nods slowly, then puts the bag of peas down on the table.
‘In the end I had to ask Mum, but she got so upset that the nurses had to give her a sedative. So I decided to wait until she was better. The prognosis looked good. Then, in the middle of a dialysis session this spring her blood pressure crashed. They called me but I didn’t get there in time.’ He looks away, his eyes look moist. ‘I tried to find Dad, but he’d moved away a few years ago and no one knew where. Probably went off to sea again. So I tried looking on the Internet. Mostly about adoption, that sort of thing. When I looked up the year I was born, “disappearance” and the name “Billy”, all the articles about your little brother came up. It might sound like a cliché, but it was like a door suddenly opening. A door I never even knew existed.’
Her heart is in her throat, making it hard to breathe. ‘So you carried on looking?’
‘Yes, I went down to Reftinge. At first I just drove around to see if I recognised anything.’
‘And did you?’
‘I think so. But to be honest, I’m not really sure. How much do you remember from when you were five or six?’
A lot, she thinks, but decides against saying so. Her mum’s face appears in her mind. The time before Billy, when she was still Mum’s little mouse.
‘Obviously I drove past Backagården, but I didn’t dare go up to the house,’ he continues. ‘I didn’t have anything definite to go on, after all. So I tried to find out more, hung around the pub and the pizza joints. Someone mentioned an old alcoholic who some people thought had been involved in Billy’s disappearance. So I went to the old folks’ home to investigate. I told the staff I was the old man’s nephew.’
‘And?’ She holds her breath. Her pulse is thudding in her temples.
He shakes his head. ‘I’d never seen him before. Well, I don’t think I had. The weird thing is that the old guy reacted like we knew each other.’
He sits up, smiles and tilts his head in a way that feels very familiar.
She goes out into the hall, takes the photofit picture from the drawer where she’d put it and hands it to him.
‘This is supposed to be what Billy would look like as an adult,’ she says. ‘But it could just as easily be you. You’ve seen this picture before, haven’t you?’
He doesn’t answer, but she knows he has. She knows he drew the same conclusion as she did, but that he isn’t ready to say so out loud. Not yet, anyway.
‘Then what happened?’ she says when he doesn’t go on.
‘Er, well, I tried to find out how I could get in touch with your family. I saw your dad from a distance in the village, but I didn’t dare go up to him. What could I say? And your brother’s in the police, so contacting him didn’t feel like a good option.’
‘Why not?’
He hesitates. ‘I’ve had a few dealings with the police in the past, stupid things I did when I was younger. I was worried your brother would find out about that if he started to look into my background. So the only one left . . .’
‘Was me.’
‘Exactly. You weren’t easy to find. I asked a woman in the library, said I was an old friend of yours. By that time I’d been there several times, so they recognised me. People tend to like me, older women in particular. That’s probably my secret superpower.’
He smiles that wry little smile again, and this time she can’t help joining in.
‘The woman in the library knew your dad. She told me you lived in Stockholm and didn’t go home very often. And that you’d changed your name. I found a picture of you in an old school yearbook, then it was just a matter of looking up all the Veronica Lindhs in the Stockholm area in the phonebook. There are five of you in total, you were the second one I checked. And a therapist was exactly what I needed. I couldn’t help thinking it was fate. As soon as I made eye contact with you I could tell there was some sort of connection between us. You feel that too, don’t you?’
He looks at her, and those blue eyes go right through her. The throbbing in her temples spreads through her whole body. She doesn’t reply, just gets up, goes into the kitchen and takes the bottle of whisky out of the cupboard. She pours a generous measure and downs it in one. Then she takes the bottle and another glass back into the living room with her.
Chapter 54
S
he wakes up when the doorbell rings, with that unsettling feeling of having been dreaming something important echoing through her head. Something about hide-and-seek, about wind giants with red eyes at night, staring out over fields of maize. The scent of roses. Even though she tries to hold on to it, the dream turns into fine sand running out of her head, leaving a bitter taste in her mouth.
The doorbell rings again. She rolls groggily out of bed, pulls on her dressing-gown and stumbles into the hall. The bottle and glasses are still in the living room, all empty. Beside them are two pizza boxes and some dirty cutlery. There’s a blanket bundled up in the corner of the sofa, with a bloodstained bandage on top of it.
How much did she tell Isak yesterday? Most of it, she thinks, and already regrets it. She should have taken things more slowly, not let herself be drawn. But his story left her severely shaken. And the whisky didn’t exactly help.
The doorbell rings again, making her headache even worse. She gets to the door and opens it a crack. Ruud is standing outside.
‘W-what are you doing here?’ she manages to say.
‘I just wanted to check that you were OK.’
He gestures towards the door and she opens it and lets him into the hall. The sound of the doorbell is still ringing in her head, unwilling to let go.
‘I spoke to Lars a short while ago. He’s spent the night sobering up in a police cell, and is now full of remorse. He said something about a row outside your building yesterday evening. He thought he’d hurt someone.’
She bites her lip. Damn! She should have called Ruud as soon as she got into her flat yesterday.
‘I’m fine.’ She tries to think of a way of explaining what happened without mentioning Isak. The bell in her head is ringing louder and louder, drowning out her thoughts. It turns into an alarm.
‘G
ood. That’s the most important thing.’
She nods, and is about to invite him into the living room when she sees the bathroom door open. And suddenly she realises what it is that she’d forgotten. What that persistent ringing was trying to warn her about. It has nothing to do with her dream.
‘Oh – good morning!’ Isak says as he steps into the hall in front of them. He’s just showered, his hair is wet and he’s got one of her towels tied round his waist. Ruud stares at Isak, then at her. She looks away and closes her eyes.
*
A short while later she’s sitting on the sofa. The headache has turned into nausea, and she keeps having to put her head between her knees to stop herself throwing up across the floor. Ruud has gone, followed shortly afterwards by Isak. Both of them without saying a great deal.
She should never have let Isak stay the night, it was a stupid decision that she can barely even remember taking. Perhaps she should contact Ruud. Tell him what’s going on, tell him the whole story. That she’s increasingly convinced that Isak is her brother who’s been missing for the past twenty years. But what proof does she actually have to back that up?
If Isak is Billy, with the stress very definitely on the if, then what really happened back in the summer of 1983?
They talked about Isak’s adoptive father a lot the previous evening, she remembers that now. He could have been Tommy Rooth. His age is about right, and the fact that they both went to sea. Isak has seen the old picture of Rooth online, but says his dad had a bushy beard and long hair, and was a bit overweight. He can’t really see any similarities, even if he can’t categorically rule out the possibility that it could be him. Either way, Månsson’s question remains unanswered: Where was Billy while Rooth was in custody, and who was looking after him?
Sören the grocer was the last person to see Rooth’s car. Was the fact that he set off for the south intended to mislead everyone, along with the postcard from Rotterdam? A way to get the police to look for him abroad when he had actually headed one and a half thousand kilometres north instead? Abandoning his wife and children to raise Billy with another woman under an assumed name, or leaving the boy with someone he trusted. Which still leaves the eternal question, the one you always end up having to try to answer, no matter how you rationalise and analyse everything:
Why?
*
Isak shows up again that evening. He stands in the doorway looking rather forlorn.
‘Sorry,’ he says. He holds out a fairly expensive bottle of wine. ‘I didn’t mean to mess things up for you.’
‘It’s not your fault.’ She lets him in and he brushes past her into the hall. He smells good, and he moves in a way she finds appealing. Softly, like a cat, full of self-confidence. The swelling on his lip has had time to go down a bit, making his smile more symmetrical.
He opens the wine in the kitchen and pours two large glasses.
‘Your job . . .’ he begins, but she shakes her head.
‘Never mind that now.’ She’s surprised at how easy it is to say that. She feels strangely happy, almost excited. Not in a sexual way, she tells herself, but because something big is happening. Something life-changing, and not just for her. The doubt she felt earlier is gone, it vanished the moment she saw the intense look in his eyes.
‘So what do we do now?’ he says.
She’s spent the whole day thinking about that, and has even had time to do a bit of research.
‘There are tests you can have done, even as a private individual. We’d each have to send in a blood sample, then the lab would compare them and see if we’re related. It’s no more complicated than that.’
He nods, but doesn’t look entirely convinced. ‘I’ve looked into that before. It takes time, doesn’t it? The lab’s in America, isn’t it?’
‘Around a month.’
He pulls a face. ‘That’s a long time to wait.’
She ought to say that so much time has already passed that one more month isn’t the end of the world. But she agrees with him. She doesn’t want to wait that long either. Not after everything that’s happened in the past few days. To be honest, she doesn’t give a damn about her job, about Ruud and his Civic Centre. She can even manage without feeding her grief addiction now. But she needs to know the truth about Billy. Now, soon. Before her head explodes.
‘There’s another option,’ she says.
‘What?’
She pauses. She can still change her mind before it’s too late, but the hope in his eyes encourages her to go on.
‘We can drive down to Reftinge tomorrow, together. Talk to Dad, look round the house, look through Billy’s . . . look through your room,’ she corrects, ‘and see if that helps you remember what really happened.’
Chapter 55
S
he changes her mind any number of times before morning. She even considers calling Mattias, but she already knows what he’d say, and that he’d be angry. So she calls Krister Månsson. As she guessed, he’s an early riser. He’s already been out with the dog and had time to read half the paper. She can picture him sitting at his little kitchen table.
‘Veronica, good to hear from you.’
She tells him what Isak has said, and about the trip they’re planning. She keeps expecting Månsson to interrupt her, ask questions, advise her against it. Perhaps she’s actually hoping he will. But he just listens.
‘Do you think I should put the trip off? Is this a really bad idea?’
‘What do you think? What’s your gut feeling?’
‘That Isak is Billy.’ She says this without any hesitation. ‘That he can help us solve it all.’
‘Hmm.’ The line is silent for several seconds. ‘In that case . . .’ Månsson clears his throat. ‘In that case you don’t really have any choice, Veronica. You have to take this trip, for your own sake as well as Billy’s. I wish I’d dared to trust my gut feeling when it came to that key. I should have put surveillance on Rooth, found out where he went. Who he met. Maybe things would have turned out differently then.’
‘OK,’ she says, for some reason unwilling to hang up just yet. She likes the sound of his voice.
‘I’ve started trying to trace Rooth’s family, by the way. I’ve called a couple of former colleagues. Maybe Nilla Rooth met Tommy sometime later, or at least heard from him. I was thinking that someone might have seen if he had a boy with him.’
It strikes her how different he sounds now compared to the first half hour of their meeting.
‘Do you think you might come up with anything?’ she wonders.
She thinks about Mattias, and the fact that he’s already examined every line of inquiry, and has presumably looked into Rooth’s family. But she doesn’t want to dampen Månsson’s enthusiasm.
‘I don’t know, but it’s got to be worth a try,’ he says.
Another silence, and she realises it’s time to say goodbye. Månsson seems to have reached the same conclusion.
‘Can you give me a call after the two of you have been to Backagården?’
‘Of course.’
‘One last thing before you set off.’
‘Oh?’
‘In the autumn of 1983 the farmers around Reftinge kept postponing their ploughing. No one wanted to be the person who found the remains of a little boy caught in their machinery. There was nothing to suggest that Rooth had buried Billy in a field. But people don’t always act rationally.’ He moves the receiver closer to his mouth. ‘They won’t be happy about you digging about in the past. There are still several important pieces of the puzzle missing, and there could well be people still living in Reftinge who don’t want the truth to come out. You need to be careful, Veronica.’
She promises that she will be, then hangs up. She can’t help smiling to herself. She isn’t alone, after all, she’s got Månsson by her side, and that feels strangely reassuring.
When Isak shows up at her door an hour later with a military kitbag over his shoulder and looks at her
with those blue eyes, the last of her doubts vanish. Månsson is right. She has to make this journey.
*
‘Do you know how your parents met?’ she asks once they’ve made it out onto the motorway and are heading south. ‘Did they have any wedding photographs, anything like that?’
He shakes his head. ‘There weren’t actually any pictures of them together in the albums I found. Just pictures of me as an older child. A few of them had Mum in them, but never Dad. He was always behind the camera. I have the impression that Mum got rid of any pictures of him when he took off. That she didn’t want to be reminded of him. Unless he was intentionally avoiding having his picture taken.’
They fall silent and she concentrates on driving.
‘What about your dad?’ Isak asks after while. ‘What’s he like?’
‘Dad’s a good person,’ she says. ‘You’ll like him.’
‘Were they happy, him and your mum? Before . . . ?’
‘I think so. Well . . .’ She tries to think. ‘Dad was happiest when he was with Mum.’
‘She was beautiful, wasn’t she?’
‘Yeess . . .’ She draws the answer out, hoping to avoid the question she suspects is coming, but of course it comes anyway.
‘What about your mum? What made her happy?’
She says nothing for a while, and tries to summon up her mum’s face. Searches for occasions when she was smiling, when she looked really happy. She pictures her in different places. At home, in church, at her desk, out in the garden.
Isak seems to think she’s avoiding the question and moves on to the next one.
‘Were you close, you and your mum?’
Dangerous territory, but she can’t not answer. ‘We were when I was little.’
‘But not later on?’
‘Not exactly. Mum liked to have things done in a particular way. She got upset very easily.’
End of Summer Page 25