Open Grave: A Mystery

by Kjell Eriksson

  In the hole he would plant a magnolia, which stood in a garbage bag against the wall. Alongside were three sacks of compost. As ground cover he would use wintergreen, an unimaginative choice perhaps, but a safe bet, hardy and invasive as it was. And he appreciated its blue flowers. The magnolia was a Wada’s Memory, one of the best white-blooming varieties. It would all be complemented with a few Himalayan windflowers and, as a companion to the magnolia, the witch alder from the neighbor. He would also dig down a few yellow stars-of-Bethlehem. Spring dominance with an element of sparkling autumn fire, that was the intention.

  What a joy it was just to be able to look at his work, and actually be able to touch it. A bus driver had every reason to be proud of his job, his trips, but purely physically there wasn’t much to show afterward. A teacher might feel satisfaction when her pupils understood what she was talking about, but there was nothing tangible that testified to her exertions.

  A landscaper on the other hand could return to his workplace five, ten, or fifty years later and see that the result of his work was there, a stair, a wall, a horse chestnut, or whatever it was, and many times more magnificent than the design. A stone worn by feet, rain, and wind became lovelier with the years, a striped maple’s full beauty did not appear until after a couple of decades.

  Whether the magnolia would be alive in fifty years was uncertain, but it would bloom splendidly every spring in any event as long as he himself was alive and certainly many years after.

  He thought he heard pounding from the professor’s house. A window opened and he saw the elderly woman, whom he assumed was domestic help, hook it fast. She must have a lot to do now, he thought, and let his eyes sweep across the façade with all its windows, eighteen in all and those on only the back side of the house.

  His mother had written about how laborious it was to clean all the windows in the house, even if there were several who helped out. Three times a year the ritual had to be gone through. Now it was probably less often, he assumed. They looked gray and shabby.

  The thoughts of his mother and thereby the Ohler clan made him uneasy. With a little effort he got on his feet, he was getting more and more stiff. He stared at the massive house, tried to imagine his mother there. In her diaries she had laconically yet vividly described the routines, her coworkers, and the gentry. There was also an element of sensationalism when she described the intrigues and gossip that always arose in a big household. But Karsten did not think that was strange, she had been young and inexperienced.

  The notes from the first few months were filled with wonder at the life in Carl von Ohler’s home. She described the toilets as if they were marvels and the number of exclamation points when she told how many sheets, crystal glasses, and table settings there were in the house testified to her excitement.

  But soon the exclamation points in the diaries would have a different connotation.

  Karsten Heller was seized by a desire to see the house from inside. He wanted to walk on the stairs where his mother had walked, see the gigantic bookcases in the library that she so solemnly described, and take a look in the kitchen. But that was impossible. He would never be let in, whatever pretext he resorted to.

  He could in principle force his way in, or sneak in. He smiled to himself. Break in but without intention to steal. What could that be classified as? Breaking and entering perhaps?

  The woman in the window reminded him of his mother’s fate and also made him aware of the continuity. Even today women served at Ohler’s, exactly like sixty or seventy years ago, and he wondered how many had come and gone over the years. How many there were who had had experiences similar to his mother.

  He had not followed the political squabbling about domestic services and maid’s deduction very closely, but after finding his mother’s diaries the debate had a different connotation for him. The books were a unique testimony by a woman in the most subordinate position you can imagine and the feeling that he was the one who had to make the text known was growing ever stronger. It would be a contrasting image to the national Nobel Prize frenzy and bombastic tributes. He readily admitted that there was a large measure of desire for revenge in this wish to expose the Ohler family.

  He was returned to reality by a signal from his cell phone. It was Roffe from the nursery he usually used who reported that two flats of wintergreen were now ready for pick up. Would twenty-eight plants be enough? He cast a glance across the surface. Since he made the order he had expanded the flower bed by a couple of square meters. Sure, he thought, I’ll spread them out, they’ll quickly grow together.

  It fell into place: the magnolia, perennials, and then the witch alder. He picked up an Ingrid Marie apple and chewed meditatively. He decided to wait for twilight before he went to work.

  Twenty

  Ann Lindell was on a stroll through her old investigations, that was how she experienced it. She had never seen such a dull period before. The crooks really had taken a fall vacation. She could pick a little absentmindedly at what was now on her desk, including a number of cases that were very well-seasoned. Fortunately the folders were not starting to smell like old cheese; instead they were drying out, shrinking, and sinking deeper and deeper into a dusty forgetfulness. But she had a three-year-old rape in English Park that she could not let go of, even if she realized that the prospects for success were not particularly good.

  On the other hand she had a knifing at a bar in the center of town. She ought to do something about that. It looked like a dispute in criminal circles, as the local newspaper called it. The chances of solving the case were moderately good. There was presumably someone out there who would profit from the perpetrator going away for a few years. Perhaps she ought to dig a little more? There was a tip about a Ludwig Ohrman, who should be questioned. She stared at his list of credits. Not a nice guy, she could see that.

  She pushed aside his CV and became lost in thoughts about yesterday’s outing to Gräsö. It had left a bad taste in her mouth. She regretted not having said goodbye to Edvard. She had been uncertain whether she could cope with a strained good-bye on the farmyard and instead sneaked off with the thought of calling him later. But that did not seem like a good idea either. She simply could not muster the courage. She was afraid of his judgment. Had he put it all behind him, forgiven her? She was also afraid of her own reaction. She did not want a romantic nostalgia trip back in time to destroy everything she had built up with such effort. Edvard was history. Sure, he still had that magnetic influence over her, she had felt it immediately, but now she had a new life to live. Being thrown back several years was not an alternative.

  “That’s that,” she said, and suspected that this was how an old drug abuser must feel when, despite the yearning, he turned down an invitation for a shot. Shaky, but also pleased with himself.

  Ludwig Ohrman would have to wait, she decided. It would be Savoy, the café where she had solved a number of troublesome knots, both personal and professional, where she would celebrate with one of their special pastries.

  * * *

  It turned out to be a princess pastry. The marzipan made her smile. Perhaps some experience in childhood. Sometimes when she got to go with her father on his rounds with the beverage truck in the areas around Ödeshög and Vadstena they took a break at some pastry shop. Ann realized in retrospect that what she thought was a generous gesture from her father was not as extravagant as it seemed. They were no doubt treated. He had actually delivered soft drinks in the area for twenty years.

  It was unusually peaceful in the café, she was the only customer until an elderly woman laboriously made her way to a table and sat down. After her a teenage girl—a vocational student, Lindell suspected—came with a tray in her hand and set a cup of coffee with a Danish pastry in front of the old woman. There must be at least seventy years between them.

  Lindell recognized the old woman. They had met several times at Savoy. She got more and more decrepit every time, but her mind was razor sharp. She had previously rela
ted that she had worked as a hydrologist, an uncommon profession for a woman when her career started in the 1940s.

  “So now we have a Nobel Prize winner,” the woman said suddenly, pointing with a bony finger at the newspaper spread out in front of her.

  “Yes, that’s nice,” said Lindell.

  The elderly woman took a bite of her Danish. Flakes rained down on the table.

  “Maybe not so nice,” she said. “I knew his father,” she continued after taking another bite. “He operated on me. Age nineteen. He was skillful, very skillful. Surgeon. Burst appendix.”

  Lindell nodded. Now she remembered the woman’s abrupt way of communicating.

  “Good friend of my father. They were in some kind of society during the war. Papa was Scottish. But the son,” said the woman, striking her hand against the newspaper, “was a real piece of shit. Even then.”

  Lindell was a little surprised at her candor and choice of words.

  “How is that?”

  “It’s past the statute of limitations,” said the old woman, hacking her dentures pleasurably into the center of the Danish.

  Lindell’s curiosity was aroused but it was impossible to go further. Two younger women with three children came in and sat down at the only round table in the place, which seemed to have become a gathering place for young mothers in that part of town, a kind of open preschool. A circumstance that Lindell was not particularly amused by.

  “Legally anyway,” the woman said, wiping her mouth meticulously.

  The mothers gave each other an amused look. Lindell suspected that they took the old woman for a senile crone who was talking to herself.

  One of the children was spraying orange juice over the floor.

  “Is it a good idea for him to pour the juice?” Lindell asked.

  “But Willie! You’re not allowed to do that,” said one of the women, and made no sign of cleaning up after little Wilhelm, but instead continued talking with her girlfriend, while the boy tore a roll to pieces over the table.

  Lindell sighed, the old woman likewise. They got up at the same time as if at a given signal and went out together. Lindell was grateful that Linnea Blank, as she now recalled the old woman’s name, did not comment on Wilhelm and his mother.

  “What you said about it being past the statute of limitations made me curious. You do know that I’m a police officer,” said Lindell with a smile.

  The woman arranged her coat. Lindell got an impulse to pick off a couple flakes of Danish that were on the collar.

  “I had a girlfriend,” said Linnea Blank after she had buttoned all the way up. “She went out with Bertram. It was going to come to a sad end. I don’t need to say more than that.”

  “How is that? Did he mistreat her?”

  Linnea looked around. Lindell discovered that her one eye was covered with a gray film. Probably she was blind in that eye.

  “He was good-looking. Came home in a uniform. This was during the war.”

  Lindell tried to imagine Bertram von Ohler as good-looking. It didn’t work.

  “But he was mean,” said Linnea. “Now I have to be off. Goodbye! I’m sure we’ll meet again soon.”

  A few years earlier Linnea Blank had been featured in Upsala Nya Tidning, Lindell remembered. The article told about a long, exciting career, with assignments in Turkey and India. She had been active besides in the peace movement in the 1950s and later in the struggle against apartheid. As an eighty-year-old she had taken part in the hydrological world congress in Nairobi and given a lecture on the subject “Water and Peace.”

  Lindell watched her. The judgment on the “Nobel guy,” as Sammy called Ohler, was hard and relentless. Greta had much the same attitude. Had he abused Linnea’s girlfriend or simply been “mean” in general?

  She got in the car, made a U-turn and took Ringgatan east at high speed. Outside Sverkerskolan she became 2,400 kronor poorer.

  Twenty-one

  There was life and activity at the Ohler house. Even laughter. When Liisa Lehtonen let out her cackle for the first time Agnes did a double take. It had been a long time. Now she was compelled to leave the kitchen and peek through the chink of the door to the hall.

  Hanging wallpaper was clearly a pleasurable job. For the Finnish woman anyway. Birgitta von Ohler was obviously of a different opinion. From the kitchen Agnes could hear her muttering, which sometime rose to more loud-voiced objections. But Birgitta had to accept the consequences. She was the one who had taken the initiative for the renovations. She had managed to convince Bertram with the argument that in any event the first impression of the house should be light.

  “Now it feels like stepping into a crypt,” she had maintained.

  Expressed a little insensitively, thought Agnes, but she silently agreed with her. The old wallpaper must have been hanging for thirty-five years and even when it was new it had not made anyone happy. The pattern was dark leaves of some vague sort, perhaps grapevines, against an even darker background.

  Now the hall would be lightened up with a light cream-colored paper with elements of barely visible, light-blue lines. Agnes thought the sight of the heaps of plastic-covered widths and all the working material was almost indecent, a feeling that was hard to explain. Perhaps it was because it had been so long since anything new had been brought into the house. Everything had settled into a quiet rut where she and the professor had become increasingly worn in increasingly worn surroundings. For that reason she perceived Liisa’s loud laughter as almost improper, like laughing out loud in a hospital ward of dying patients.

  Couldn’t they have waited until Bertram died? was Agnes’s next blasphemous thought while she sliced leeks. She suspected that it was Birgitta who would take over the house when the professor was gone. She had hinted at something along those lines, and even said that Agnes could go on living in the house as long as she wanted, “no matter what happened.” The only thing that could happen was that the old man would drop down and die. Or perhaps it would happen in the opposite order, she’d go first and then the professor?

  She sighed heavily, even though she was content cooking for more than just the professor and herself, neither of them particularly interested in food any longer.

  As far as she knew he was in the study. He would spend the day answering letters, he said in the morning. But not that many letters had arrived, she thought, that it would take the whole day to write responses. But it’s all the same, he kept calm and she could catch her breath a little.

  Birgitta’s voice from the hall sounded more and more whiny. Agnes thought it was due to fatigue, she had looked out of sorts already that morning, but Liisa had hinted that Birgitta was simply upset that she did not get to accompany her boss to Baltimore, which he had more or less promised her. That would have to be as it was. Birgitta liked leek au gratin and that she would get.

  She let go of the thoughts about the family, let the knife work over the cutting board and sliced up the last leek, then greased a casserole dish and noted at the same time that the oven had reached 175 degrees. The leek au gratin was only one of the dishes for lunch. Birgitta had bought mackerel, which Agnes would grill. With that boiled potatoes and a cold sauce with a touch of curry flavoring. A green salad would complement the whole thing.

  As she leaned over to put in the casserole she saw the reflection of her face flutter like a shadow in the oven window, and happened to think about Greta. Her sister had called earlier that morning and told about the policewoman’s visit and said that she thought Ann Lindell seemed pleasant. Based on the little she had seen, Agnes was prepared to agree.

  Greta had reported that Viola was getting steadily worse. She mostly slept and during her waking moments she did not say much. Edvard tried to feed her, but she mostly refused. He had only gotten a little porridge into her.

  Agnes understood that it was a matter of days, perhaps hours, before Viola would be gone for good. This pained her. Viola had always been a fixed point, someone to hold on to. During the wo
rst time, after Anna came back, Agnes had secretly gone over to Viola as often as she could.

  Her father’s fanaticism had taken on an increasingly threatening tone. The sermons in the home were not relieved by the good news from the continent. Not even the end of the war made him dampen his pessimism and Judgment Day prophecies. Then Viola became the rescue for ten-year-old Agnes.

  During all of Agnes’s teenage years their contact continued and was interrupted only by her move to town in 1953. Viola did all she could to dechristianize Agnes, she understood that completely later on. Or in any case Viola wanted to sweep away the fear of God that she loathed so sincerely. God should be a nice fellow, nothing else, was Viola’s opinion. Agnes had been influenced and her father’s authority had gradually been undermined.

  It could not be denied that sometimes she compared her father Aron to the professor. Their capricious moods and will to dominance were common denominators, likewise their vocal resources—in any event, when the professor was younger.

  She had been reconciled with her father. Now Agnes was afraid of neither God nor Bertram von Ohler. He was a piece of meat and bone that staggered around the house, nothing more. The reluctant respect she once felt was completely gone. If anything she felt contempt, sometimes even loathing.

  It was Greta who pointed that out, saying something to the effect that now and then Agnes looked at her employer with hate in her eyes. Agnes had indignantly dismissed it, but of course it was that way, although she had a hard time admitting it even to herself.

  Hate, she thought, standing by the window toward the back side of the house, was that what made Anna leave the island the second time? She was living with Viola and waiting in vain for her parents to restore her to favor, but they barely noticed their daughter. She might just as well have been on the other side of the globe. After a year Anna left and was never heard from again.