The Gingerbread House

by Carin Gerhardsen

  The information about the photographs depressed him. It was bad enough delivering the news of a death, but when there were children involved he had a hard time holding back his tears. Ingrid Olsson came out of the living room, supported by the nurse.

  ‘I guess we’ll be leaving now,’ said Margit Olofsson to the two police officers. ‘I’ll make sure that Ingrid has a roof over her head.’

  ‘That’s considerate of you. We’re sorry about this, but unfortunately there’s nothing we can do about it,’ said Sjöberg. ‘We’ll be in touch with both of you.’

  He managed to conceal a slight shudder, but now his mouth felt even drier than before.

  ‘Just one last question,’ he said, directing it at Ingrid Olsson. ‘Hans Vannerberg, in his mid-forties, does that sound familiar?’

  ‘No, not at all,’ she answered.

  ‘Think about it,’ said Sjöberg. ‘Bye now.’

  ‘How did she seem?’ asked Sandén when the two women were out of the door.

  ‘She gave a somewhat cool impression. Surprisingly uninterested. But she’s in shock, of course.’

  ‘She didn’t appear to be quite the classic nice old lady. She looked sharp somehow. Poor nurse, getting her around her neck. Do you suppose she’s taking the old lady home with her?’

  ‘Presumably,’ answered Sjöberg. ‘She seemed to be the caretaker type. Now let’s go out and check whether they’ve found anything of interest in the garden.’

  A young police assistant, Petra Westman, approached them as they came out on to the porch.

  ‘We’ve found a number of footprints,’ she said before they could ask. ‘It’s perfect weather for that sort of thing, so we have some really good impressions.’

  ‘Male or female?’ asked Sandén.

  ‘I think we have two different pairs of shoes,’ Westman replied. ‘Both of them seem to be men’s.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘No, not yet.’

  She vanished among the shadows again and Sjöberg looked sorrowfully at Sandén.

  ‘You’ll have to hold down the fort here while I go to the station and check up on this Vannerberg. He’s probably been reported missing. Then I guess I’ll have to contact his family,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Gather the forces for a review at eleven o’clock tomorrow.’

  He leaned down to remove the blue shoe protectors and put them in his jacket pocket. Then he hurried, crouching before the wind, towards the car on the street.

  * * *

  On his way back to the station he played ‘Brothers in Arms’ by Dire Straits and phoned Åsa. It was already eleven o’clock, but he assumed she would still be up, enjoying the calm after the usual stormy bedtime for five children.

  ‘Hi, how are things?’

  ‘Fine. They’re all asleep and I’m sitting here reading. How’s it going?’

  ‘I’ve looked at the corpse and now I’m on my way back to the station to find out who he was. Then I have to contact his family. It appears that he had children.’

  ‘Oh boy, poor you. And poor them. And the old lady?’

  ‘A little absent. In shock, presumably. She had never seen him before and didn’t recognize his name either.’

  ‘Strange. But she probably had some connection anyway, maybe without even knowing it.’

  ‘I’m not so sure.’

  ‘Yes, but otherwise he could just as well have been murdered out in the woods!’

  ‘The house was empty for several weeks while the old woman was in the hospital. Someone knew that and lured the guy there to murder him. He was an estate agent.’

  ‘But do you really murder someone in a strange person’s house, just because it’s standing empty?’

  Åsa’s viewpoint was always worth taking seriously, but Sjöberg was doubtful in this case. Despite everything, this was the reality: the great majority of murders were simply violent acts, without any complicated psychology, advance planning or underlying symbolism.

  ‘Go to bed now,’ he said lovingly. ‘I don’t know if I’ll be home at all tonight. See you.’

  ‘Bye now, dear, I’ll be thinking of you,’ Åsa concluded, and he thanked his lucky stars for this marvellous, positive life partner he was blessed with.

  This thought brought him back to Hans Vannerberg and he hoped he had no wife and that the children in his wallet were only nieces and nephews.

  The police station was at the end of Östgötagatan by the Hammarby canal, a large, modern office building with a glass façade. At this time of night it was mostly silent and deserted with few lights on inside the transparent walls. He slid his pass card through the reader by the main entrance and entered his code: ‘POOP’, inspired by his four-year-old’s current primary interest. Every time he entered the code it made him feel happy, though he hoped that no one was peeking over his shoulder.

  His footsteps on the marble floor in the reception area echoed desolately. Lotten, the receptionist, had gone home hours ago to her equally dog-crazy partner and their Afghans. Sjöberg could not keep from smiling at the thought that Lotten’s and Micke the caretaker’s dogs actually sent Christmas cards to each other, and birthday cards too. He wondered whether it was dog years or human years that were being celebrated, and decided to ask one of them when he had an opportunity.

  He took the stairs up to the second floor in four big bounds and unlocked his door, which six hours ago he thought he had locked for the night. He threw his jacket over one of the visitor chairs before he sat down at his desk. Then he phoned the duty desk at the National Bureau of Investigation, but changed his mind before the call could be connected. Instead, he started looking for Vannerberg in the phone book and found him with no difficulty. He looked up the address in the street register and found to his surprise that it was not far from the crime scene. He decided to call Sandén, who answered almost immediately.

  ‘Hi, Jens. How’s it going?’

  ‘No new discoveries so far. The technicians are working away. Hansson thinks he was beaten to death with a kitchen chair, and the discovery site appears to be the scene of the crime, just as we thought.’

  ‘Listen, the local police who were first on the scene, they don’t happen to still be there, do they?’

  ‘No, they left while you were talking with Ingrid Olsson.’

  ‘Maybe they know the victim. I have to check on that to be on the safe side. He may have been reported missing to them.’

  He got their names and called the local station where they worked. He got a response immediately; one of them was still filing his report. Sjöberg stated his business.

  ‘Yes, the wife was in here this afternoon and reported him missing since yesterday evening, but we haven’t had time to do anything about it. It was already five o’clock when she arrived.’

  ‘So why didn’t you tell us that? That you already had a missing person with a description like the dead man?’

  ‘Didn’t think of it. There didn’t seem to be anything dodgy about him.’

  ‘About who, do you mean?’ Sjöberg asked, irritated.

  ‘About the man who disappeared, of course. He seemed completely normal, not dodgy in any way. And the wife too.’

  ‘But the corpse was dodgy, you mean?’ Sjöberg hissed.

  ‘Well, I guess it’s a bit shifty getting murdered like that, in the old lady’s house and all …’

  Sjöberg gave up and asked him to fax over the report immediately. He collected himself and thanked the officer for his help anyway, hung up and went to the copy room to stand and wait by the fax machine. Finally the damned fax arrived and he read it immediately. The date of birth matched, and he had a wife and three children. He worked as an estate agent and, according to his wife, had disappeared about six o’clock the previous evening to do a home visit to a seller in the neighbourhood. He said he would walk there and be back about an hour later, but he never returned.

  Sjöberg looked at the clock and saw that it was past midnight. He considered whether now was a good t
ime to visit the family. The wife would surely be beside herself with worry, but he decided to wait until the morning. If the family was sleeping, they could continue doing so. He was in dire need of a few hours of sleep himself, before tackling this difficult task.

  * * *

  He is standing on a lawn wet with dew, looking down at his bare feet. He is looking down although he feels he ought to look up, but something holds him back. His head feels so heavy that he is barely able to raise it. He gathers all his courage and all his strength to turn his face upwards, but still he dares not open his eyes. He lets the back of his head rest against his neck for a while. Finally, he opens his eyes.

  There she stands again in the window, the beautiful woman with the dazzling red hair like sunlight around her head. She takes a few dance steps and her eyes meet his with a look of surprise. He raises his arms towards her but loses his balance and falls backwards.

  Conny Sjöberg sat up in bed with a jolt. He pressed his palms hard against his eyes and felt the sweat running down his back. His whole body was shaking, but he was not crying. He was breathing fast through his nose, but without letting out any sound. He could hardly open his mouth – it was completely dry – and he was shivering. He rocked back and forth a few times with his face in his hands before he pulled himself together and went out to the bathroom.

  That dream again, that constantly recurring dream. He gulped down two glasses of water before he dared look at himself in the mirror. His body was still shaking, but his breathing was starting to calm down now. The same meaningless dream, over and over. He did not understand why it bothered him so much.

  What was new this time, however, was that the woman had a familiar face.

  Diary of a Murderer, November 2006, Tuesday

  Never have I felt so exhilarated, so full of energy and the desire to live as today, the day I committed a murder for the first time. Even I can hear how absurd that sounds, like something out of a comedy, but this is no laughing matter, the whole thing is really very tragic. Tragic like my shabby life, bounded by loneliness and humiliation, and tragic like my miserable childhood, full of violence, rejection and terror. Those children, they took everything from me: my self-esteem, my joy in living, my dreams of the future and my self-respect. They also took something from me that everyone else seems to have for life: an album of sunny childhood memories you can dream back to or refer to when you talk with other people. True, I don’t have anyone to talk to now and never have had, but I don’t have any happy childhood memories either. Not a single light in my life-long darkness. When you’re six years old, a time span of six years is actually a lifetime. Just as much a lifetime as a time span of forty-four years when you’re forty-four.

  I can put words to it. I can formulate the thought that it was the children who took everything away from me, but I can’t do anything about it. I just let it happen, let it overshadow the rest of my life, and became a victim of people’s cruelty. I’ve viewed myself as a victim and lived my life like one. Silent, afraid and alone. But now that’s over. I don’t feel like a happier person in any way; on the contrary, I feel a kind of gluttony in my own unhappiness and that’s what exhilarates me.

  I had still not decided what I would do when I stepped out into the light of the kitchen lamp. I didn’t intend to hurt him, all I wanted was understanding – some sort of acknowledgement – and an apology. And there he stood, good-looking, prosperous and beloved, with a slightly surprised but friendly smile on his lips.

  ‘Oh, excuse me,’ he said apologetically. ‘I rang the doorbell several times and threw sticks at the window. I thought maybe you didn’t hear so well and since we’d decided on this time –’

  ‘No problem,’ I interrupted. I decided to exploit the mental advantage his little estate agent transgression had given me to adopt a haughty, somewhat patronizing tone.

  Despite his apologetic attitude and the awkward situation, he stood there with head held high and obviously undisturbed self-confidence. His charming smile and the roguish gleam in his eye gave him a commanding presence. It wasn’t possible to think badly of such a person. But it was possible to hate him.

  It was enough to travel thirty-seven years back in time and think about the little child lying face down on the asphalt, with a scraped, stinging face in a dirty pool of water. Arms and legs extended like someone being crucified, held fast by other little kids who, sometimes laughing, sometimes struggling with grim faces, obediently carried out the task you had assigned from your clear position as uncrowned king. And there you sat on the small of my back, your legs straddling the sniffling child’s back as if on a horse, and jubilantly cut strand after strand of hair with blunt little scissors. Blood and tears – nothing disturbed your undisguised joy.

  It’s not hard to hate a person who in one miserable year managed to destroy a person’s life: mine. It’s easy to hate you as you stand there, eager to be rid of me and – so you thought – my house, to return to your beautiful wife and children, and God forbid that they ever have to experience the horrors you subjected me to on a daily basis. Fate willed that evil incarnate – you, Hans – would grow up to be a happy and harmonious, beloved person, with the capacity to love, while I, the victim of evil, only became an insignificant bug, crawling around unnoticed in the dirt and with the capacity only for dark, destructive hatred.

  He extended his hand and I took it without revealing my distaste.

  ‘Well, a little guided tour perhaps?’ he said politely, but still authoritatively.

  ‘No, I thought we should sit down and talk a little first,’ I answered, indicating a chair at the kitchen table with one hand.

  I had no plans to sit down myself, but he sat down compliantly on the edge of the chair, with his feet crossed underneath and his hands clasped in front of him on the table. I leaned back against the kitchen counter with my arms crossed and looked at him scornfully as he turned his face up towards me with a friendly, interested expression. Neither he nor I yet had any idea what was about to happen, but I started to feel a certain satisfaction in the situation as it had developed. I was no longer in control of my own actions, there was a higher, stronger power guiding me. Gone was the fear and complaisance – only steely power remained.

  ‘Yes?’ he said, after a few moments of silence.

  ‘Yes?’ I said, like an echo.

  ‘What did you want to talk about?’

  ‘We are going to discuss you and me and our relationship,’ I answered, not recognizing my own voice.

  ‘Relationship?’ he asked, not understanding.

  He looked uncertain now, with his fingertips nervously drumming against each other.

  ‘Don’t you recognize me?’

  Of course he didn’t. It’s not easy to recognize someone you haven’t seen since you were a little kid. Unless this someone had left such deep scars in your psyche that you dream about him at night and devote the greater portion of your waking hours to cursing him and what he did. He shook his head.

  ‘Should I?’

  ‘We’re old childhood friends,’ I answered dryly.

  He lit up and exclaimed in relief, ‘How nice! When –’ but I interrupted him.

  ‘Yes, I’m quite sure you thought it was. You had a lot of fun with me. Do you remember when you were all Indians and I was a cowboy?’

  ‘No –’

  I interrupted him again.

  ‘By the bins? I was huddled in a corner, hiding my head in my hands to keep from going blind when you shot arrows at me. One arrow stuck in my leg – surely you remember that – you tore it out and you were so happy that you got real blood on your arrow.’

  ‘I don’t know …’ he began.

  ‘Sure you do. We played every day. We played that I wanted to go home from preschool, but you wouldn’t let me. Instead you and Ann-Kristin and Lise-Lott and whatever their names were first had to hit me or break something of mine or take my clothes. Once you took my trousers and I had to go home bare-legged in the winter. You
must remember that, you all thought it was so funny.’

  I spat the words out in disgust at the man in front of me. He really looked as if he did not understand. Was it possible that he didn’t remember? Could it really be like that, that these events, of such decisive importance for me, meant nothing to him? For him, they were not even childhood memories. Maybe he didn’t even remember an ordinary going-home-from-preschool episode like that the day after it happened. His puzzled expression made a mockery of my entire failed existence! I was now boiling with rage inside, but I hid it as best I could. I remained standing, outwardly calm, with my arms crossed. I continued my lecture.

  ‘You do remember the spitting contest though? When you all waited for me outside the gate and then spat on me. Everyone at once. “Ready, set, go!” you said, and then you spat on me, twenty children at once. The one who scored the best hit in the face won, and I’m sure you were the winner, you were so good at it.’

  ‘You must be –’

  ‘There now! You’re starting to remember! Do you remember the drowning game in the rain barrel? “We’ll count to three and then let you go.” Down with my head in the barrel, “One, two, three,” and then up. Down again, “One, two, three,” and up. “One, two, three,” – up. Do you know how waterboarding affects people?’

  ‘But that was just for fun,’ he stammered. ‘Just kids’ way of –’

  ‘Kids’ way of what?’ I roared now, and I heard my voice breaking.

  Even though my intention had been only to hold him accountable and, in the best case, demand an apology from him, and even though I have never been violent by nature, I was in a fury now. Blind with rage at the tyrant’s indifference to his actions and the falsetto that revealed my weakness, I aimed a kick against his beautiful face. My foot hit the lower side of his chin and you could hear his jaws slam together with a nasty muffled crack as his head flew back and the chair toppled over. Without thinking, I took hold of the back of the kitchen chair that was closest, raised it over my head and struck. One of the chair legs grazed his forehead, then continued its unmerciful path through his eye down against the cheekbone, which stopped the blow with an unpleasant crunching sound. One more blow with the chair, this one better placed, so that one of the chair legs smacked into the rib cage while the other hit right over the bridge of his nose, which broke with a slight cracking sound. Finally – and this I learned from you, Hans – a well-aimed kick up towards the nose, which, without further resistance, was forced inside.