Berit nodded. Lindell picked up the baby.
“You can stay longer if you want,” Berit said.
“I can’t,” Lindell said.
Erik’s warmth and his tiny movements inside the snowsuit made her determined to leave Berit and the whole case behind. It wasn’t her investigation. She was on maternity leave and in a few days her parents would be coming up from Ödeshög.
“Yes, you can,” Berit said, and Lindell marveled at her metamorphosis. “I don’t know what made you come here, but whatever it was it must have been important.”
“I don’t know,” Lindell said. “It was pretty dumb and unprofessional, actually.”
Berit made a gesture as if to say it didn’t matter, unprofessional or not, she was here now.
“I’ll stay a little longer if I can have something to drink. I’m so thirsty.”
While Berit went to get a bottle of Christmas mead, Lindell laid Erik down again, unzipping his snowsuit and pushing his pacifier back in. He slept. She turned to the aquarium. It was certainly enormous. She followed the movement of the fish with fascination.
“They have their own territories,” Berit said when she came back. “John was so proud of that. He had created an African lake in miniature.”
“Did he ever visit Africa?”
“No, how would we have been able to afford that? We dreamed of it, or rather, John was in charge of the dream department; I made sure everything kept working.”
Berit looked away from the fish tank.
“He got to dream,” she said, “and he pulled Justus with him. Do you know how it is to be poor?” she asked and looked at Lindell. “It’s living on the margins, but still wanting to enjoy things. We spent everything on Justus. We wanted him to have nice clothes. John bought a computer this fall. Sometimes we bought good food for a special occasion. You can’t feel poor all the time.”
The words fell like gray stones from her mouth. There was no pride in her voice, simply a factual statement that the Jonsson family had tried to create a sphere where they felt real, part of something bigger and more attractive.
“We sometimes played with the idea that we were rich, not outrageously rich, but that we would be able to fly somewhere sometimes, take a plane and see something new. I would like to go to Portugal. I don’t know why Portugal exactly, but a long time ago I heard some music from there and it expressed what I felt inside.”
She looked around the room as if to size up what she and John had built up over the years. Lindell followed her gaze.
“I think your home is nice,” she said.
“Thanks,” Berit said flatly.
Lindell stepped out into the wintry landscape an hour later, that familiar sense of weakness in her body. The only sounds were from cars driving by on Vaksalagatan and the hum of a streetlamp. People were inside their homes, boiling hams and wrapping presents. She thought about calling Haver but realized it was too late now. How would he take the fact that she had just blundered into his investigation? What would his wife say about the fact that she had called?
She decided to wait until tomorrow before contacting Haver. Deep inside her mind she was harboring a thought that maybe they could see each other. They had hardly twenty-four hours before her parents came into town. See each other, she snorted. It’s his embrace you want. If all you want to do is see him you can walk into his office whenever you want. No, you want him in your home, at the kitchen table as a very intimate friend, one who could give you a hug and maybe a kiss. That’s how deprived you are of human closeness.
She wasn’t looking forward to her parents’ visit. In fact, she feared it. Right now she couldn’t handle her mother’s attentions. Her dad would sit quietly in front of the TV, and that was fine, but her mother’s well-intentioned expressions of concern about Ann’s future would drive her insane. And this time she wouldn’t be able to get away, not like her increasingly rare visits to her childhood home.
On top of it all, her mother had started to talk about moving to Uppsala. The house in Ödeshög was becoming too much for them, she said. The ideal scenario according to her mother would be a little apartment close to Ann and Erik.
Had talking to Lennart and Berit been the right thing to do? Lindell stopped in the snow. She didn’t know if it was to rest her arms—it was hard work pushing the stroller over the unplowed sidewalk—or because she was struck by the unprofessional nature of her actions, but it didn’t matter which. She simply stood there. Snow fell all around her in generous, beautiful, and somehow reassuring proportions.
“I’m certainly not sophisticated,” she said quietly to herself. “Not like detectives on TV, the ones who listen to opera, know Greek mythology, and know if a wine is right for fish or a white meat. I just am. A normal gal who happened to become a police officer, the way other people become chefs, gardeners, or bus drivers. I want there to be justice, and I want it so much I forget to live my life.”
None of my colleagues are sophisticated either, she thought. Some of them don’t even know what that word means. They just work. What do they talk about? Definitely not about different years of wines from a fantastic vineyard in some unknown part of the world. At most they compare box wines from the state liquor store.
Sammy Nilsson had subscribed for many years to Illustrated Science magazine and regularly—with childish enthusiasm—volunteered small anecdotes from new developments in astronomy, or medical research, delivering these pop-science facts with the authority of a Nobel Prize winner. Fredriksson would fill in with wonderful facts such as the one that the mountain egret spends the winter in Alunda, or explain why wolves don’t cross railway tracks. This is our version of educated culture, she thought.
Ottosson often appeared absentminded and a little lost. Most likely he would have preferred to be out at his cabin, chopping wood and working in his vegetable garden. Berglund was a reassuring uncle, with a large store of knowledge about the human race and the ability to win people’s trust.
Fredriksson was the nature lover who found it hard to keep up with the increasing tempo and the stress of everyday life. He could also offer up evidence of hostility to foreigners, not in conscious harangues about the superiority of the white race—nothing like that—more like an expression of confusion about the state of things, uncomprehending in the face of the rootless kids with immigrant backgrounds that figured more and more often in their cases. Sammy could become furious when Fredriksson made some sweeping generalization, short arguments that always ended with Fredriksson saying, “That wasn’t what I meant, you know that.”
That’s why we’re good, Lindell thought and pushed the stroller a few more meters. If we were cultured in that lofty way, our jobs would suffer. Maybe that kind of police officer existed in other districts, but in Uppsala, the seat of higher learning, the police were regular people.
Sammy could understand teenagers, not because he was deep—most of the time he wasn’t even particularly methodical or sharp-witted—but because he represented something the kids on the street had been looking for. No flakiness, no meaningless social chatter, just the real thing. They could have used him, and a dozen others like him, full-time on the beat in Gottsunda, Uppsala’s most populated suburb, where the powers that be had taken the inspired step of shutting down the local police branch. “I guess it’s a natural development to increase police visibility by turning us out onto the street,” one colleague had commented at the morning meeting. If only they could place Sammy there, all the vandalism, graffiti, theft, fear, and threats to personal security would fall off drastically.
Lindell smiled. She knew that this self-satisfied argumentation was motivated by a desire to justify her current independent police venture. She tried to convince herself that her colleagues would have done the same thing in her stead.
But of course that wasn’t true. Her independent investigating was not consistent with good ethics. Ottosson would be deeply concerned about her actions and most of her colleagues would shake their he
ads. But what should she have done? Lennart wanted to talk to her, and her alone, and wasn’t it therefore her duty as a citizen to talk to him? And once she had talked to Lennart, what was the difference in talking with Berit?
Lindell didn’t know what she thought about Berit. It was possible that she was concealing something behind the surprised expression in her beautiful but harrowed face. Information she would keep from the police, however intimate the girl talk became. Her priority was to protect her son, then John’s memory, two sides of the same coin. Did she know where John had stashed the poker winnings? Had she had an affair with another man? Was there jealousy as well as money at the root of the murderer’s motive? Lindell had trouble imagining Berit cooperating in the murder, or even that a rejected lover lay behind the murder. Lindell believed in Berit’s fidelity. She wanted to believe in it and she toyed with the idea that they would have occasion to chat again in the future. Berit seemed wise, had a direct way of talking and probably also a good sense of humor.
Lindell folded up the stroller and lifted it into the trunk of the car. Erik woke up when she strapped him into the car seat. He looked at her with his big eyes, and she stroked him gently on the cheek.
Thirty
He knew that in some way John’s death had something to do with him. It could not be mere coincidence that two tormentors had been punished. Justice was being served.
Vincent had only vague memories from his first five, six years of school, during which time he had managed pretty well. The problems had started in middle school. He didn’t know why he had started to feel like an outsider, but it often had physical manifestations. His classmates avoided touching him. He was left out of the boys’ jostling, often gravitating to the girls, but too odd to be accepted fully. After seventh grade his classmates left their childish games behind, the games where boys and girls could play together, in favor of trying out their new gender identities. And then Vincent stood out even more. He was neither cute nor charming, only silent, something the girls often appreciated in contrast to the other boys’ loud and noisy behavior, but in the long run he became more and more isolated.
He had tried to approach Gunilla. They sometimes met on their way to school. They weren’t friends but Vincent felt comfortable with her, she was someone he could talk to. Their paths diverged once they reached school. She increased her stride as soon as they rounded the corner by Tripolis and the iron fence of the school yard appeared.
One recess he finally told her about his father, about how his father beat him. The trigger had been a bruise on his neck, below his left ear. Someone said it was a hickey. Most of the others ignored him, but Gunilla had walked over and looked at him, not with the teasing, taunting attention he usually attracted but with genuine interest. She had placed her fingers carefully on the blue-red mark. A light touch, lasting a second.
That was when he said it.
“My dad hits me.”
She had pulled her hand back and looked at him with frightened eyes. For a moment he thought he saw something else, but then her expression changed.
“Vincent gets spanked!” she had shouted in the corridors before they gathered to file into the classroom. Everyone had looked at him.
“Vincent’s a bad boy!”
“Do you wet your bed?” one of the boys asked.
“Poor Vincent gets spanked on his bottom!”
Gunilla had been smirking, then the teacher had opened the door to the classroom. Vincent recalled they had learned about amoebas that day.
With John it had been different. He was in a different homeroom, but they had a few classes together. It had started in home economics. Neither John nor Vincent said much in this class, and the teachers had to work to get either one to say or try anything. They had been paired one day when the class was learning to bake pound cake. They had followed the instructions uncertainly and mixed the ingredients together. Unfortunately Vincent managed to tip the bowl when they were adding the flour and both boys had watched paralyzed while the gray-white mixture flowed out toward the edge of the table and down onto the floor.
The teacher rushed over and for some reason assumed that John was the one who had caused the accident. Neither boy said anything, least of all Vincent, who assumed he would be beaten for it.
John was assigned to clean it up, Vincent was sent over to work with another group. From that day John had hated Vincent. With his quiet diplomacy he had steered the class to outright bullying. Vincent’s status changed from awkward outsider to outright victim. After that the machine was in full swing. Once he had complained to the teacher, but that only escalated the terrorism. He knew that John was behind it, although they never talked to each other and John was never an active participant in the persecutions.
Now he was dead and Vincent was pleased. Gunilla was not dead, but she had been severely frightened and she wouldn’t be likely to forget him. The fear would stay with her.
The early-morning confusion gave way to a harmonious, dreamlike state. He knew he was on the right track. The phone cord around Vivan’s throat, the terror in her eyes, and that rattling sound had done him good. She had gone quiet so quickly. Her eyes, filled with suspicion and then panic-stricken, had made him laugh. That was the last image she had seen, his laughing, foul-smelling mouth. He had wanted to draw out this laugh. Disappointed, he had kicked her dead body, kicked her in under the bed.
John had been killed by a knife. “Stabbed repeatedly,” the paper had said. Vincent suspected that his eyes would have been as full of terror as Gunilla’s and Vivan’s. Did Vincent have a helper? A quiet avenging force that he was unaware of, or had he been there himself? He was becoming more unsure. He had suffered memory blanks before, especially when he was angry. Maybe he had been there, had stabbed John.
As usual he stopped on Nybro bridge and stared down into the river. Even though it was bitterly cold and in the middle of December, there was a sliver of open water in the middle. Vincent Hahn rested his eyes there for a moment before continuing over the bridge. Again the feeling that he was wandering in a foreign land came over him, a land where no one knew him, where the buildings had been erected by unknown hands, and where even the language had become foreign to him. He became more alert to the people around him, trying to read something in their eyes, but they looked away quickly, or never met his gaze.
He raised his hand and walked straight across the street without paying any attention to the fact that the road was slippery and the cars had trouble braking on the icy surface. Someone shouted at him, words he didn’t understand. He could see that they were angry at him. He took out the knife he had picked up at Vivan’s apartment. A few teenagers shouted something, turned around, and ran.
Vincent repeated the maneuver, stepping straight out into the road. A car had to slam on the brakes, skidded to the side, and almost crashed into a parked taxi. The taxi driver got out and shouted at him. Vincent waved back with his knife.
He walked toward St. Erik’s torg, where people were selling things from stands. An older couple were selling Christmas ornaments. He stopped and looked at all their colorful wares. There were few customers and the couple looked at him expectantly.
“I don’t have a real home,” he said.
“It doesn’t cost anything to have a look,” said the woman.
The man, who was wearing an enormous fur hat, pulled off a leather glove, picked up a bag of homemade candy, and held it out to him.
“I have no money,” Vincent said.
“Take it, you look like you need a sweet,” said the woman. “It’s our house blend.”
The man nodded. The hand holding the bag shook slightly. Vincent looked at it, at how the blue-black veins made a pattern on the broad back of the hand. The nails were thick, curved, and yellowed.
“He’s had a stroke,” the woman said. “He can’t talk.”
Vincent took the bag without saying anything.
“This is the most beautiful present anyone’s ever given me,” he
said finally.
The woman nodded. She had green-blue eyes, with a faint grayish cast over the cornea. Apart from a few liver spots on her cheek her skin was smooth and youthful. Vincent thought she had probably laughed a lot in her life.
A younger couple came over, looking through the collection of wreaths.
“They have wonderful candy,” Vincent said.
The young woman glanced at him and smiled.
“We’ll take one of these,” she said, holding up a lingonberry wreath.
Vincent left the booth and wandered on aimlessly, with a hole inside that was only growing bigger. He had felt it many times before. It was a black hole, indescribably dark and deep, from which thoughts both emerged and were drowned. He felt as if he were caught in a maelstrom and was being sucked down into himself.
He tried to say something and heard an echo in his head. The dizziness came and went. He had another piece of candy and stopped outside a shop window where a tabloid headline promised tips for a better sex life. People walked in and out, relaxed, carrying colorful packages, looking at him briefly, smiling.
Where should he go? His legs could hardly hold him anymore. The candy had given him some energy, but wherever he went there were new challenges. The sidewalk was becoming more crowded. He kept bumping into people and their packages repeatedly, pushed hither and thither.
When he had decided to head to the east side again he was stopped by a man wearing a Santa outfit who tried to interest him in a sleigh ride through the old town. Two hundred and ninety kronor for an hour. Vincent accepted a flyer and walked on. The dizziness was getting worse. He leaned against a wall and anxiety charged over him like a battalion on horseback. He took cover, put his arm over his face, and cried out into the wind.
The police came an hour later. The owner of an art gallery had alerted them. He had observed Vincent for a while before he called, had watched the snow falling around him. It was a striking image, or composition, the dark-clad man, a cap pulled down over his forehead, crouched against the wall as if he was afraid that the people walking by with their Christmas purchases would hit him, the gently falling snow—all this created an image of tangible authenticity. It was happening here and now. The gallery owner stood there in the warmth, with the miniatures on the wall, people came and went, Christmas greetings were exchanged.
The princess of Burundi Page 23