The Stone Cutter

by Camilla Lackberg

  'But Asta, I don't understand. Why are you doing this?'

  His voice was whiny like a little boy's, and she didn't even feel like answering him. He stood there in the doorway wringing his hands as he watched her remove one item of clothing after another from the drawers and wardrobes. She didn't intend to come back, so it was best that she take everything all at once.

  'Where are you going to go? You have nowhere to go!'

  Now he was begging her, but the extraordinary nature of the situation only made her shudder. She tried not to think of all the years she'd wasted; fortunately she was cast in a pragmatic mould. What was done was done. But she didn't intend to waste even one more day of her life.

  Acutely aware that the situation was about to slip out of his grasp, Arne now attempted a more tried and true method. He thought he could gain control by raising his voice.

  'Asta, you have to stop all this nonsense! Unpack your clothes at once!'

  For an instant she did stop packing, but only long enough to give him a look that summed up forty years of oppression. She gathered all her wrath, all her hatred, and tossed it back at him. To her satisfaction she saw him recoil and then shrink before her gaze. When he spoke again it was in a quiet, pitiful voice. The voice of a man who realized that he'd for ever lost control.

  'I didn't mean… I mean, of course I shouldn't have spoken to the girl that way, I realize that now. But she lacked all respect, and when she behaved so stubbornly towards me I could hear the voice of God telling me that I was compelled to intervene, and -'

  Asta cut him off. 'Arne Antonsson. God has never spoken to you. He never will. You're too stupid and deaf for that. As for all that nonsense I've listened to for forty years about how you never had a chance to become a pastor because your father drank up all the money - you should know that it wasn't money that was lacking. Your mother kept a tight grip on the pursestrings and didn't let your father drink up more than was necessary. But she told me before she died that she had no intention of throwing their money away by sending you to seminary school. She may have been an unkind woman, but she had a clear head, and she could see that you weren't suited to be a pastor.'

  Arne gasped for breath and stared at her as he slowly turned more and more pale. For a moment she thought he was having a heart attack, and felt herself softening inside against her will. But then she turned on her heel and marched out of the house. She slowly let the air seep out between her lips. She took no pleasure in destroying him, but in the end he'd given her no choice.

  * * *

  GÖTEBORG 1954

  She didn't understand how she could keep doing so many things wrong. Once again she had ended up here in the cellar, and the dark seemed to make the wound on her bottom hurt that much more. It was the buckle on the belt that had torn open the wound. Mother only used the end with the buckle when she had been really bad. If only she could understand what was so terrible about taking a tiny little biscuit. They had looked so good, and the cook had made so many that nobody would notice if one was missing. But sometimes she wondered whether her mother sensed it when she was about to stuff something good in her mouth. Mother would come sneaking up behind her without a sound, just as her hand was going to close around something delicious. Then all she could do was steel herself and hope that Mother was having a good day so that it would be one of the milder punishments.

  At first she had tried to give Father a beseeching look, but he always looked away. He would pick up his newspaper and go out to sit on the veranda while Mother dispensed whatever punishment she'd chosen. She no longer even tried to get any help from him.

  She was shivering from the cold. Little rustling sounds became magnified in her mind as she pictured gigantic rats and enormous spiders, and she could hear them getting closer. It was so hard to keep track of time. She didn't know how long she'd been sitting down here in the dark, but judging by the growling in her stomach it must have been hours. She was nearly always hungry, which was why Mother kept reprimanding her so harshly. There seemed to be something inside her that constantly longed for food, cakes and candy, something that screamed to be filled with sweets. Right now she tasted instead the rough, dry, acrid substance that Mother always made her eat. A spoonful that was forced down her throat when the blows stopped and it was time for her to sit in the cellar. Mother said that what she was feeding her was Humility. Mother also said that she was punishing her for her own good. That a girl couldn't allow herself to get fat, because then no man would look at her and she would have to spend her whole life alone.

  Actually she didn't understand what would be so terrible about that. Mother never seemed to look at Father with any joy in her eyes, and none of the men who kept swaggering round Mother's slim figure, giving her compliments and fawning over her, seemed to give her any great satisfaction. No, she would rather be alone than live in the icy cold that prevailed between her parents. Maybe that was why food and sweets tempted her so much. Maybe that was how she could acquire a thick protective padding over her skin that was so sensitive, both to Mother's constant reproaches and to the beatings. Even at such a young age she had known that she could never live up to her mother's expectations. Mother had made that quite clear. Even so, she had really tried. She had done everything that Mother said, trying especially hard to starve off the fat that kept collecting under her skin. But nothing seemed to help.

  But she had begun to learn who was actually to blame for everything. Mother had explained that it was Father who demanded so much of them, and that was why Mother had to be so strict with her. At first it had sounded a bit strange. Father never raised his voice and seemed entirely too weak to make any demands on Mother, but the more often the claim was repeated, the more it began to sound like the truth.

  She'd begun to hate Father. If only he stopped being so malicious and unreasonable, Mother would be nice and the beatings would stop and everything would be better. Then she would be able to stop eating, and become just as thin and beautiful as Mother, and Father would be proud of them both. Instead he made Mother sneak up to her room in tears in the evenings and in a whisper describe the various ways he tormented her. On those occasions she always said how painful it was for her to be the one who meted out the punishments. She called her darling, just like when she was small, and promised that things would be different. A person did what she had to do, said Mother and then gave her a hug, which was so unusual and unexpected that at first she sat as stiff as a stick, unable to respond to the embrace. Gradually she began to long for those occasions when her Mother put her thin arms round her neck and she felt her cheeks wet with tears against her own. Then she felt needed.

  As she sat there in the dark she felt her hatred towards Father swelling like a huge monster inside her. In the daytime, up in the light, she had to hide this hatred of him behind smiles and curtseys, pretending everything was fine. But down here in the dark she could allow the monster out, letting it grow in peace and quiet. She actually got on well with the monster. It had turned into an old, dear friend, the only friend she had.

  'You can come up now.'

  The voice from upstairs was clear and cold. She opened herself up and drew the monster inside. There it would have to stay until she ended up in the cellar again. Then it could come out and resume growing again.

  * * *

  Patrik received the call just as he was supposed to escort Kaj to the interrogation room. He listened in silence and then went to get Martin. As he was about to knock on his door he remembered that Annika had said that Martin had gone to Fjällbacka, and he cursed to himself when he realized that he would have to take along Gösta instead. He didn't even consider Ernst. The mere thought of him made the rage rise up in his throat. If the guy knew what was good for him he would stay as far away from Patrik as humanly possible.

  But he was in luck. Just as he was heading with heavy steps towards Gösta's office, he heard Martin's voice out in the reception and hurried out to find him.

  'There you are. D
amn, this is great. I thought you wouldn't get back in time. You have to come with me at once.'

  'What happened?' said Martin, following Patrik, who hurried out the main entrance after giving a hasty wave to Annika behind the glass.

  'A young man has hanged himself. He left a note that mentions Kaj.'

  'Oh, shit.'

  Patrik got behind the wheel of the police car and put on the blue light. Martin felt like an old lady as he automatically reached out for the handle above the door on the passenger side, but with Patrik in the driver's seat it was a matter of sheer survival instinct.

  A mere fifteen minutes later they pulled up in front of the Ryden family's house in the part of Fjällbacka that for some reason was called 'The Swamp'. An ambulance was parked in front of the low brick house, and the EMTs were doing their best to lift a gurney out of the back. A little man with thinning hair in his forties was running back and forth on the driveway and seemed to be in a state of shock. As Patrik and Martin parked and climbed out of the car, one of the ambulance guys went over to the man, wrapped a yellow blanket round his shoulders, and seemed to be trying to talk him into sitting down. The man finally obeyed. With the blanket wrapped tight around him he sank down on a low kerb that marked the border between the driveway and the flower bed.

  They had met the ambulance personnel before and didn't bother introducing themselves. Instead they simply greeted each other with a nod.

  'So what happened?' asked Patrik.

  'The stepfather came home and found his son in the garage. He hanged himself.' One of the EMTs nodded towards the garage door, which somebody had pulled down so that nothing inside could be seen from the street.

  Patrik looked over at the little man sitting a few yards away. What that man had just seen was something no one should ever have to see. He was shivering now, as if from the cold, and Patrik recognized it as a sign of shock. But that was something for the EMTs to handle.

  'Can we go inside?'

  'Yes, we thought we'd just check with you before we lifted him down. He's been hanging there a couple of hours, so there was no reason to hurry. We're the ones who pulled down the garage door, by the way. It seemed unnecessary to let him hang there in public view.'

  Patrik patted him on the shoulder. 'Quite right, good thinking. In case there's any connection with our ongoing homicide investigation, I've called the techs in too. So it was good that you didn't cut him down. They should be here any minute, and they'll no doubt want as few people as possible stomping around in there. I suggest that Martin and I go in and that you wait out here for the time being. Do you have the situation under control?' He nodded in the direction of the stepfather.

  'Johnny will take care of him. He's in shock. But I'm sure you can talk to him in a little while. He told us that he found a note in the boy's room. He didn't bring anything out, so it's probably still up there.'

  'Good,' said Patrik and headed slowly towards the garage door. He grimaced, steeling himself as he bent down to take hold of the handle and raise the door.

  The sight was just as horrible as he'd expected. He could hear Martin gasp behind him.

  For a moment it felt to Patrik as if the boy was staring right at them, and he had to stop himself from turning and running away. A choking sound behind him made him realize that he should have warned Martin how they needed to proceed in such cases. But now it was too late. He turned round in time to see Martin running out of the garage and over to a bush where he emptied his stomach.

  He heard another vehicle pull up next to the police car and the ambulance and assumed it was the tech team arriving. He tried to move carefully so as not to draw the wrath of the team. Above all he didn't want to disturb any evidence if all was not as it seemed. But nothing he saw contradicted his assessment of suicide. A thick rope hung from a hook in the ceiling. The noose was around the boy's neck and a chair had been kicked over and lay on the floor. It looked like a kitchen chair brought from inside the house. The chair had a cushion upholstered in a lingonberry pattern, and its bright cheerfulness offered a sharp contrast to the macabre scene.

  Patrik heard a familiar voice behind him.

  'Poor devil, he wasn't very old, was he?' Torbjörn Ruud, chief of the technical team from Uddevalla, stepped into the garage and looked up at Sebastian.

  'Fourteen,' said Patrik, and they were silent for a moment, faced with the incomprehensible fact that a boy of fourteen could find life so unbearable that death was the only way out.

  'Is there any reason to believe that it's not a suicide?' asked Torbjörn as he prepared the camera in his hand.

  'No, not really,' said Patrik. 'There's even a note, which I haven't seen yet. Although the note names a person involved in a homicide investigation, so I won't leave anything to chance.'

  The girl?' said Torbjörn, and Patrik nodded.

  'Okay, then in other words we'll treat it as a suspicious death. Ask one of the others to take care of the note, so it's not handled by too many people before we get our mitts on it.'

  'I'll do it right now,' said Patrik, relieved to have an excuse to leave the garage. He went over to Martin, who was self-consciously wiping his mouth with a paper napkin.

  'Pardon me,' he said, gloomily looking at his shoes which had been sprayed by his lunch.

  'It doesn't matter. I've done it myself,' said Patrik. 'But now the techs and then the ambulance guys will have to deal with the body. I'm going to check on that note, and you can go see whether it's possible to talk to the stepfather.'

  Martin nodded and bent down to wipe off his shoes as best he could. Patrik waved to one of the techs from Uddevalla. She brought her bag of equipment and followed without a word.

  The house was uncannily quiet when they went inside. The boy's stepfather had watched them as they went in the front door.

  Patrik looked around.

  'I'd guess it's upstairs,' said the tech. He thought her name was Eva. She was one of the techs who'd done the examination of the Florins' bathroom.

  'Yeah, I don't see anything down here that looks like a boy's room, so you're probably right.'

  They climbed the stairs and Patrik suddenly had a flashback to his own childhood home. The houses all seemed to have been built around the same time, and he knew the style well, with fibre wallpaper on the walls and light pine stairs with a wide banister.

  Eva was right. At the top of the staircase was an open door that led to a room unmistakably that of a teenage boy. The door, the walls and even the ceiling were covered with posters, and it didn't take a genius to discover the common theme. The boy had loved action heroes. Anyone who struck first and asked questions later; they were all there. The men were dominant, of course, but a single woman had been granted a place in the collection - Angelina Jolie, as Lara Croft. Although Patrik suspected that her toughness wasn't the only reason that Sebastian had put her picture up on his wall - she had quite a pair, to be exact. And he couldn't blame the boy.

  A white sheet of paper lying in the middle of the desk brought Patrik back to reality. They went over to take a look at the note. Eva put on a pair of thin gloves and took a plastic bag out of her equipment case. Carefully with her thumb and forefinger holding one corner of the letter, she dropped it into the plastic bag and then handed it to Patrik. Now he could read it without destroying any fingerprints that might be on the paper.

  Patrik glanced through the letter in silence. The words were so filled with pain that he almost lost his balance. But he cleared his throat to maintain his composure, and when he finished reading the note he handed it to Eva. He had no doubt that the letter was genuine.

  Patrik felt overcome with anger and resolve. He couldn't offer Sebastian a Schwarzenegger who would mete out justice while wearing cool sunglasses, but he could definitely offer him the help of Patrik Hedström. He had to hope that would be enough.

  His phone rang and he answered absentmindedly, still absorbed by his rage over the boy's meaningless death. He was mildly surprised to hear Dan's
voice on the phone. Erica's friend usually never rang him directly. Patrik's astonished expression was soon replaced by dismay.

  Since the adrenaline was still pumping through his veins, Niclas thought he might as well take on all the troublesome stuff at once, before his usual flight instinct kicked in. So much of what had gone wrong in his life could be blamed on the fact that he was afraid of conflict and turned weak when strength counted most. He was starting to realize that it was Charlotte he had to thank for the things that were still good in his life.

  When he turned into the driveway at the house he forced himself to sit in the car for a minute and just breathe. He needed to think through what he was going to say to Charlotte. It was essential that he find exactly the right words. Ever since he'd been forced to confess to her that he'd had an affair with Jeanette, he'd felt the chasm between them widening more and more with each minute they were together. The cracks in their relationship had already existed, both before his revelation and before Sara's death, so it wasn't hard for them to grow. Soon it would be too late. The secret that they shared hadn't brought them together; instead it had merely hastened the process that was pushing them apart. That was where he thought they'd have to begin. If they weren't honest about everything starting right now, nothing would be able to save their marriage. And for the first time in ages, maybe ever, he was sure that was what he wanted.

  Hesitantly he got out of the car. Something inside him was still telling him to run, to drive back to the clinic and bury himself in work, to find a new woman to embrace, to return to familiar territory. But he stifled that urge, quickened his steps and walked in the front door.