The Stranglers Honeymoon

by Håkan Nesser

  The waiter arrived with her new glass and she broke off her train of thought. Just like cutting off a piece of thread that was too long. Paid, and waited until he had gone away. Then emptied the glass into her half-drunk cup of coffee, as she had seen her mother do, and as she remembered her father doing, and tasted the brew. Added a spoonful of sugar, stirred it and tried again. Much better, it almost tasted good, and warmed her up inside. She had never smoked – apart from a few giggly puffs at less than elegant dances when she was in class five or six – but now she suddenly fancied a cigarette to suck at as she sat in this gloomy cafe as the rain poured down outside.

  But instead that voice came back to her. The thought of that voice. It burst into her head like a sour-tasting belch – Benjamin Kerran’s cry from the bathroom just before she slammed the door and raced down the stairs.

  Monica!

  Was it possible? Wasn’t it just her imagination? A hallucinatory cry from beyond the grave?

  Or could it be that she really had heard him? That he really had shouted from that warm clinker floor in the bathroom with a pair of scissors stuck ten centimetres into his gut, his cock hanging helplessly like a piece of rag and his trousers crumpled around his ankles?

  That he hadn’t died?

  That he was still alive, despite everything?

  Then, at least: that he was still alive then, at the moment when she left him and rushed out into the night like a terrified madwoman, her brains crushed like a crust of ice by the heavy boot of reality?

  Where do all these words come from? she wondered. The heavy boot of reality? Something she had read, presumably. Lonely girls read more books than anybody else in the world, a woman teacher had told a gathering of parents when she was in class four. She wondered what pedagogical value such a disclosure could have; but of course there was little point in wondering about that just now, in sitting there and trying to trace the dodgy origins of her dodgy thoughts . . . It was more important to sharpen them, to focus them and introduce a modicum of clarity. Decide what to do next. Was she drunk? Intoxicated already after no more than one-and-a-half glasses? It wasn’t impossible. She hadn’t had much to eat these last three days, next to nothing in fact, and alcohol had a greater effect on people if they had an empty stomach, even she knew that. Even Monica Kammerle knew that – but there was something else she didn’t know, and that was in fact the most important thing in the world for her to know just now.

  Was he dead?

  Had Benjamin Kerran really died up there in the bathroom? Had she finished him off by stabbing him with a pair of scissors, or had she only wounded him?

  Oh hell, she thought, emptying her cup. Bloody hell, I simply don’t know. I’m such a damned useless idiot that I don’t even know if I’ve killed him or not! Idiot, Monica Kammerle, you are just a poor little idiot, and you’ll soon be as mad as your mother and the pair of you will end up in the loony bin. It’s only a matter of time before the pair of you are lying there under yellow blankets, keeping each other company amid the faint smell of fading carnations and badly washed bodies . . .

  Almost as a confirmation of this last thought, two men at another table burst out laughing.

  A crude, wheezing belly laugh as if from an old horror film, accompanied by curses, a thumping of fists on the table and stamping on the floor. She leaned forward and looked at them through an apology of a trellis which should have been covered by some climbing plant or other, but wasn’t and never would be. Saw how one of the men dug into his right ear with the handle of a teaspoon while the other was convulsed by a coughing attack, which brought the fun and games to a full stop.

  She checked her watch and stood up. Five minutes past one. Time to go home, no doubt about that. This wasn’t a place for young girls to while away the night at, Duisart’s, definitely not.

  Time to find out how things were in the real world.

  To snuggle down into bed in Moerckstraat and make plans, in fact.

  I’m a pain, she thought when she was out in the alley again. My thoughts keep nagging away at me. I’m drunk. Some people go downhill rapidly. I’m a drunken murderess, even though I’m only sixteen.

  And I feel sick – holy shit!

  The night air and walking through the cold rain sobered her up, and by the time she returned to Moerckstraat, fear had once again begun to swirl around inside her.

  Her mother was sitting in front of the television, where a different blue-coloured crime series was now trundling along with the sound on low. It was half past one. There was a smell of something unpleasant oozing out from the kitchen, but no doubt it was just the slop bucket.

  ‘What are you watching?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said her mother.

  ‘Shouldn’t you go to bed now?’

  ‘I’ve only just woken up,’ said her mother.

  ‘I see. Well, I’m going to bed now.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Good night.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  She went to the bathroom. Brushed her teeth. She smelled of sweat, but who the hell cared? Looked for a moment or two at the bottles of tablets, but desisted from checking.

  What was the point?

  When I’m dead I’ll see Dad again, she thought.

  9

  After darkness cometh light, after strength cometh weakness.

  She had read this somewhere or other, so perhaps it wasn’t surprising that a few days passed after her risky outing to the cafe on Sunday before she plucked up courage to go out again.

  Once, just once, her mother went to the corner shop and bought in a few necessities, but Monica stayed put. She in her room, her mother in hers, full stop. Time passed, and yet again seemed not to affect them. When her mother summoned up all the pathetic sense of duty she was capable of and asked why her daughter wasn’t at school, Monica said she had the flu, and that was accepted as a sufficient explanation.

  She read, then hid what she had been reading. Wrote, and threw away what she had written. It was not until Wednesday evening that she could summon up sufficient strength and energy to dare to venture as far as the library in Ruidsenallé.

  She had a plan. It was simple, and she had been considering it ever since it came to her during one of her sleepless nights.

  If Benjamin Kerran had been found dead in his bathroom nearly a week ago – she had concluded – there must be something about it in the newspapers. It would be implausible for there not to be.

  And so all she needed to do was to check. She asked for copies of Neuwe Blatt and Telegraaf for the last six days, sat down at an empty table and started leafing through them. Calmly and methodically, leaving nothing to chance. Page by page, newspaper by newspaper. No hurry. It took twenty minutes.

  Not a word.

  Not a single word about a man stabbed with a pair of scissors in a flat near the university. No death notice. Nothing.

  Ergo? she asked herself as she gazed out of the aquarium-like windows at the square, and listened to the blood pounding in her temples. What does this mean? What has actually happened?

  The answer was obvious. Or rather, the alternatives were obvious.

  Either he had survived. The scissors had not damaged any vital organ. He had simply fainted as a result of the pain, come round again and pulled out the scissors. Driven to the hospital and had his wound dressed. Or managed it himself.

  Or – the other alternative – he was simply lying dead on his bathroom floor, just as she had left him, waiting to be discovered.

  It would soon be a whole week. Was that plausible? Was it possible? How soon does a body start to smell? When would the neighbours begin to suspect foul play? His colleagues at work?

  She slid the pile of newspapers to one side and allowed her thoughts to wander between the two possibilities. Trying to weigh them up and working out which one was the more likely.

  If he had survived, if he was still alive, she thought – trying to ignore the cold and remarkably slow shudder working its
way up along her spine – shouldn’t he have been in touch? Shouldn’t she have known by now?

  She took a few deep breaths and tried to think clearly. Surely it was extremely odd that he hadn’t made some sort of counter-move? He couldn’t possibly have failed to see that she had tried to kill him. Even if he hadn’t registered what happened during the critical moments, the scissors must surely have indicated what had happened. They couldn’t have landed there of their own accord. She – that crafty sixteen-year-old Monica Kammerle – had tried to finish him off, there was no mistaking that.

  Attempted murder. She wondered how long a sentence such a charge would involve.

  A few years? That was for sure. But of course, not as many as it would have been if she had succeeded in her attempt.

  Self-defence, of course. And perhaps it was classified as manslaughter. Attempted manslaughter? That didn’t sound so bad. And surely one had a right to defend oneself against unwanted sexual advances? Surely she would be able to plead attempted rape and self-defence?

  She gave a start when she realized that she was beginning to lose sight of the basic facts. She had had sex with him several times of her own free will, and there was not really much point in sitting there speculating about the possible consequences of that.

  Besides, he’s dead! she suddenly decided, gritting her teeth. He can’t possibly be still alive without getting in touch somehow or other! Impossible. He’s lying up there in his bathroom, rotting away: old buildings made of stone are solidly constructed, and it can take months before the stench starts to become noticeable. Weeks in any case. Art Nouveau, wasn’t that what he’d said?

  But then, it wasn’t the stench from the corpse that was the crucial point, she realized. His employers and workmates must start wondering what was going on – in local government, she seemed to recall he had said – and sooner or later they would begin to suspect foul play. In fact, they had probably already started to do so: colleagues and close friends . . . relatives as well, assuming he had any he was in regular touch with, she didn’t know . . . They must surely catch on to the fact that something odd must have happened – not everybody was as isolated as a certain mother and a certain daughter in a poky little flat in Moerckstraat.

  She stood up and carried the newspapers back to the issuing counter. Dead, she told herself once again. I have murdered Benjamin Kerran. It’s only a matter of time before his body is found, and the whole of Maardam will be able to read about it.

  But just as she was about to thank the well-upholstered librarian for her help, once again that shout echoed inside her head.

  Monica!

  She felt herself shaking, and hurried out through the entrance hall. I’m a sick rose, she thought. A sick, sick rose.

  Thy dark secret love does my life destroy.

  It was not until an afternoon four days later that she left her flat the next time. Four days. As heavy as lead and as empty as a vacuum.

  She had only come as far as the corner of Falckstraat and Zwille when she bumped into her English teacher, fröken Kluivert; and a few minutes later she saw a group of classmates crossing over Grote Torg. Girls with their arms around each other’s shoulders, laughing away somewhat artificially. It was Saturday, a free day.

  She survived both incidents, just about, but made up her mind to postpone what she planned to do next until that evening, when it would be dark. She had realized that daylight, and the pale September sunshine, were not a combination likely to assist her in achieving her aims.

  Not that anybody would have been especially interested, put two and two together and wondered why she had been off school for over a week. Certainly not.

  But she had no desire to meet anybody. The bottom line was that it was her interests at stake, nobody else’s. She didn’t want to talk to anybody, or to look anybody else in the eye. These people had nothing to do with her, had never had any importance, and even less now. Everything was as it always had been, she thought, but her life had acquired a sort of significance that it hadn’t had before. A sort of transparency.

  When she got back home she found her mother on the telephone. For a moment she thought it might have been Benjamin, and her heart felt as if it had just been kicked by a horse. Then she heard that it was in fact her aunt Barbara, and it was just the routine check, the call that came every third or fourth week, like clockwork, and which contained about as much empathy and sisterly love as there was blood in an ice crystal – to use an expression her father used occasionally. An expression based on deeply felt emotions.

  Her mother kept a stiff upper lip to the best of her ability, and the call was terminated after less than a minute.

  ‘Have you met that Benjamin again lately?’ – the words slipped out of Monica’s mouth before she could stop them. She hadn’t planned to say that, but it seemed that her words had suddenly acquired an uncontrollable will of their own. She knew after all that her mother hadn’t set foot outside the door for a week.

  ‘Benjamin?’ said her mother, as if she had already forgotten who that was. ‘No, I don’t think there would be much point.’

  ‘Has he been in touch at all lately?’

  That was also a pretty pointless question. She had barely been more than ten metres away from her mother recently.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay, I was just asking.’

  ‘I see.’

  Monica went back to her room. Lay down on her bed and prepared to wait for the arrival of dusk. Stared up at the ceiling. Thought for a moment about Pastor Gassel, but pushed any such thoughts to one side as she had already done several times before. She had never really managed to believe wholly in him, and to do so now was a step too far. Much too far. She took out her Blake instead, and picked out a poem at random.

  Cruelty has a Human Heart

  And Jealousy a Human Face

  Terror, the Human Form Divine

  And Secrecy, the Human Dress

  She read those lines over and over again until she was sure that she knew them off by heart. Then lay down with her eyes closed and repeated them over and over again, until she fell asleep under her blanket.

  There was no Benjamin Kerran in the Maardam section of the telephone directory. Nobody by the name of Kerran at all, in fact.

  An ex-directory number, then; but if things had been different, she could have asked her mother, of course.

  There was nothing in her mother’s room either, in fact: she took the opportunity of making a search while her mother was in the bath with a glass of wine. Nothing in the address book. No number scribbled down on a scrap of paper or in the margin of a newspaper, places her mother liked to use for noting down important things.

  So she would have to drop the idea of phoning him. There was nothing she could do about it, she thought. Never mind – perhaps she wouldn’t have dared to anyway, when the chips were down.

  And directory enquiries had no current number for anybody called Kerran, no subscriber by that name . . . And no, of course it was not possible to supply information about so-called ex-directory numbers: why did she think people took the trouble of keeping their private lives private?

  Monica sighed. Back to plan A, then. Another little visit to see if it was possible to find out anything.

  If there was a light in one of his windows, perhaps.

  Or in the chink under the door.

  Or if the mailbox down in the entrance hall seemed to be chock-full. There ought to be several indications to look for and interpret, without her needing to go so far as to press her nose against the keyhole and sniff for the smell of rotting flesh. Even if she couldn’t be certain, surely there would be a pointer or two.

  A clear pointer, and with a bit of luck, certainty. Plan A it would have to be.

  She left Moerckstraat at about nine. She noticed to her surprise that the evening was quite warm. Fifteen degrees or thereabouts. As far as she could recall it hadn’t rained all day, and the wind that had died away to become no more than a mild
whisper was distinctly friendly as it wafted in from the south, despite the fact that it was almost October. She took the route past the canals and Keymer Plejn: it was a bit of a detour, but she felt that the walk would do her good. She also decided to skirt round the cemetery rather than cut through it, and when she turned into the right alley and could see the dreary old university building in the background, it was already turned half past nine.

  She stopped on the pavement opposite, just in front of the steps down to some sort of zoological shop. She gazed up at the dark façade on the other side of the street. Five storeys, just as she had remembered it – the bottom floor some way above ground level so that nosy parkers peeping in through the windows were not a problem.

  But Benjamin Kerran didn’t live on the bottom floor, and she suddenly realized that she wasn’t sure if it was on the third or fourth.