The Darkest Day

by Håkan Nesser

  ‘Rundström,’ said Rosemarie. ‘He moved to Gotland some years back. But why didn’t he let us know? That’s what makes me uneasy, Karl-Erik. Surely Robert wouldn’t just . . . ?’

  ‘Because he feels ashamed,’ her husband said firmly, as if that settled it. ‘As I said. And he hasn’t got any particularly acceptable reason for staying away. What would he say to us?’

  ‘So why did he bother coming at all, then? And his car’s still parked here – completely covered in snow.’

  ‘He doesn’t need the car,’ Karl-Erik explained patiently. ‘My guess is that he’ll come and get it this afternoon, when he knows everyone else has gone home. I just don’t understand why you have to make such a mountain out of this molehill, I really don’t, Rosemarie. Robert doesn’t deserve your attention.’

  Kristoffer came into the kitchen and politely wished them a good morning. Karl-Erik broke off and seemed to be in two minds about whether the bad boy was an appropriate topic for fourteen-year-old ears. He apparently decided he was, for he went on.

  ‘So you explain to me, Rosemarie, what it is you think has happened to our prodigal son?’

  Kristoffer sat down at the table. Rosemarie looked at Ebba for some sort of continuing support, but could not really tell if it was being offered or not. And Ebba was Karl-Erik’s daughter, after all, she reminded herself. She shouldn’t forget that in her eagerness.

  ‘All I want,’ she said finally, ‘is for you to ring the police station – and the hospital – to check.’

  ‘So you think they wouldn’t tell us if he’d ended up at one of those?’

  ‘Not if he—’

  ‘Even Robert must have some form of ID on him,’ Karl-Erik ploughed on. ‘And if he hasn’t, well, it’s pretty likely they’d recognize him anyway, don’t you think?’

  Rosemarie said nothing. Ebba cleared her throat and stepped in to mediate.

  ‘I suggest you leave it a bit longer. It’s not as if you want the police to go straight out and start looking for him, is it, Mummy? In that case it would be sure to be in the paper tomorrow. And you don’t want them coming out here to interrogate us; that wouldn’t be very nice either, would it?’

  The telephone rang. Rosemarie took the opportunity of going into the bedroom to answer.

  ‘Where’s Henrik?’ asked Ebba.

  Kristoffer shrugged and poured some fruit yogurt into a bowl. ‘Don’t know.’

  Ebba looked at the clock. ‘We ought to leave in an hour’s time. Do you know whether Dad’s in the shower?’

  ‘I think he is,’ said Kristoffer.

  Karl-Erik folded up his newspaper and regarded his nephew for a moment. He seemed to be considering giving him some piece of advice or other – a nugget of worldly wisdom – to take back up to Sundsvall, but evidently failed to find the right one amongst the many thousand conceivable alternatives, and got up from the table instead. He went to the window, pushed back the curtain and peered out at the thermometer.

  ‘Minus twelve,’ he reported. ‘Well, let’s hope you’ve topped up the anti-freeze, anyway.’

  ‘Of course we did, Dad,’ said Ebba. ‘Though I’m not so sure about Robert’s snow heap.’

  ‘A decent blanket of snow actually provides good insulation,’ said Karl-Erik Hermansson. ‘I thought you would know that.’

  ‘And so I do, Daddy dear,’ said Ebba.

  Rosemarie returned just as Leif Grundt put in an appearance, fresh from the shower and wide awake. ‘Good morning Christian folk,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but a new day has dawned.’

  ‘Yes, we know,’ said Ebba. ‘Who was on the phone, Mum? You look a bit worried.’

  ‘No, I’m fine,’ said Rosemarie with a fleeting smile. ‘It was only Jakob. They’re not coming in for breakfast, some meeting’s come up in Stockholm and he’s got to get back. The coffee’s over here, Leif. Shall I pour you a cup?’

  ‘Thank you, fair Mother-in-law,’ said Leif Grundt. ‘Yes, probably best to tuck in now, so we can keep going. Now that we’re heading north again. Has our leading TV personality turned up, then?’

  ‘Leif,’ said Ebba with a warning edge to her voice.

  Rosemarie gave a deep sigh and went out of the room. Kristoffer put two slices of bread in the toaster and thought about what a talent his father had for saying the wrong thing. The question was whether he did it on purpose or not; in either case, it was rather wonderful.

  ‘Thanks for a delicious breakfast, Daddy dear,’ said Ebba. ‘I’ll go up and start packing, and tell Henrik to get a move on. Can I help you with anything before we go, Dad?’

  This was presumably an invitation to consult a medically trained daughter about any aches and pains, old or new, even Karl-Erik realized that, but he merely shook his head and folded his arms on his chest.

  The only symptom he was aware of was the vague whooshing in his head that had started after yesterday morning’s click, assuming it wasn’t the radiators, and he had no intention of discussing that with anyone. Particularly not with people who might possibly be in possession of some unpalatable explanation.

  ‘I’ve never felt better in my life, sweetie,’ he said, thrusting out his chest. ‘And I slept like a baby.’

  15

  Kristoffer was lying on his bed in the WUR again.

  It was half past eleven and they were over an hour late leaving.

  ‘Go and wait in your room, Kristoffer,’ his mother had instructed. ‘I’ll come up and see you in a while, but we grownups need to talk this through first.’

  This meant Henrik. After a good deal of confusion and numerous questions and witness statements – from all of those present in the Hermansson’s detached house in Allvädersgatan, Kymlinge: Mum, Dad, Granny Rosemarie, Granddad Karl-Erik and Kristoffer himself – it had gradually emerged that Henrik really wasn’t there. Nobody seemed to have bumped into him all morning; each of them thought he had had breakfast with someone else, thought they had heard someone say they’d met him on the stairs, heard him in the bathroom, spoken to him – but once all the information had been methodically sifted through under the competent leadership of Ebba, all these suppositions proved to be incorrect.

  No one had seen Henrik all morning, that was the fact of the matter.

  A hint of suspicion had come into Kristoffer’s mind almost straight away, so he had had plenty of time to decide on the line he would take. It wasn’t particularly difficult.

  ‘No Mum, I haven’t seen him either. He was already up when I woke up.’

  There hadn’t even been any need to lie, in fact. Henrik had been up when he woke up. Kristoffer had not seen him all morning.

  Keeping quiet about a little piece of information that nobody expressly asked for? No, he couldn’t really be blamed for that. Not yet, at any rate.

  Though, in ten to fifteen minutes’ time, positions would doubtless shift a fair bit. Things would come into sharper focus.

  His mum would come upstairs and instigate a more thorough cross-examination. This was the trial he was now bracing himself for.

  Are you aware of anything that could explain where Henrik has got to? She would want to know that, for example, and then he would be obliged to come out with a pure lie. Cross a boundary. The very boundary that had been under discussion on Sunday, when he was the one in the naughty corner.

  Not that it really bothered him. Not much, anyway, he realized as he examined the situation a little more closely. Protecting Henrik – the new, promiscuous Henrik – was nonnegotiable. That was the deal they had made. It was Henrik in a hole this time, not Kristoffer, and it was hard not to feel a certain satisfaction about this simple but unusual state of affairs.

  And Henrik would take the whole rap himself when he showed up, of course. It would never come out that his younger brother had concealed information. Kristoffer would get off scot-free; he was not running the slightest risk in lying to his mother. On the contrary, it was his duty to keep to the agreement he and Henrik had made.


  Brothers in arms.

  But it certainly showed an unusual lack of finesse, he couldn’t help but observe. He found this surprising. Henrik had clearly slipped out for his secret assignation some time during the night and then . . . well, Kristoffer didn’t really want to think in any detail about what he might have got up to, but then, when all the nameless stuff was over, he and the other person, whoever it was, had presumably crashed out – and overslept! How monumentally stupid, thought Kristoffer. And what kind of whopper would he tell when he got back?

  He had apparently turned off his mobile. They’d tried to reach him countless times in the last hour, but only got through to his voicemail. It wasn’t like Henrik not to have his mobile on, not like him at all. Kristoffer couldn’t work out what the adults were really thinking; Leif had come up with the idea that Henrik had gone for a ski, a theory he had to modify to a jog to take into account the lack of any suitable skiing equipment in the house, and then abandon altogether in view of the snow conditions.

  Nobody seemed particularly worried so far, but perhaps it was bubbling away beneath the surface. Kristoffer didn’t really feel able to judge the current situation. Though the fact that they had sent him up to the WUR so they could talk things over undisturbed did of course show how seriously they were taking the whole thing. What was more, it was rather weird that there were now two people missing, not just one. Even though Kristoffer hadn’t actually heard any of the adults utter a word about any connection. But perhaps it was just a matter of time; after all, they didn’t yet know what he knew.

  You’re fucking stupid, brother, muttered Kristoffer to himself, realizing the same instant that this was the most disparaging thing he had ever thought about Henrik. The very idea that he would find himself lying to his mother’s face for his elder brother’s sake! He would scarcely have believed it a couple of days ago.

  But he was going to keep a stiff upper lip, and right until the last drop of sweat, let nobody think otherwise. His mind was made up. But that didn’t stop him wondering what in hell’s name Henrik was doing – and having lain there and done that in his green cell for a while, he started to get a distinctly uncomfortable feeling in his stomach.

  A bit scary and a bit – well, sad, he supposed. What’s happening to you, brother Henrik? thought Kristoffer.

  He stared into the wallpaper, but as expected he found no answer written there.

  ‘Kristoffer, we’ve got to get to the bottom of this, I’m sure we’re both agreed on that?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kristoffer.

  ‘Henrik isn’t here and we don’t know where he is.’

  Kristoffer attempted to nod and shake his head at the same time, hoping to appear as accommodating as possible.

  ‘He seems to have gone off very early this morning, or . . . ?’

  Kristoffer did not supply the missing words.

  ‘. . . sometime during the night,’ said Ebba.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Kristoffer. ‘I didn’t notice anything, either last night or first thing this morning. I must have been fast asleep, I’m afraid.’

  His mother tried to penetrate him with her steely blueness, but it seemed to him that he withstood her gaze pretty well. He wasn’t in the dock this time, and that made things easier. Considerably easier.

  ‘He didn’t say anything to you?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘I don’t know, Kristoffer. If he planned to pop out for a few hours, for example?’

  ‘No,’ said Kristoffer. ‘He didn’t say anything like that.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure.’

  ‘But I must say that you—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You don’t seem surprised that he isn’t here.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You don’t seem surprised and that’s a bit odd, I think – I’m trying to work out what it could mean.’

  It was an exaggeratedly insinuating attack and he parried it in the only possible way. ‘Not surprised? I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mum. I’ve got no idea where Henrik’s gone and I’m as surprised as everybody else.’

  She hesitated for a moment, and then yielded. ‘All right, Kristoffer. I believe you. But if you think back, was there really nothing he said – or just hinted – that could explain where he’s got to? The two of you must have chatted about all sorts of things.’

  Kristoffer bit his bottom lip, simulating deep thought for a moment. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, Mum, and I can’t think of anything relevant he said.’

  ‘Do you think Henrik’s been himself these past few days? I mean to say, you’ve scarcely seen each other all autumn. Hasn’t it felt to you as if . . . well, as if something about him has changed?’

  Bingo, Mother dear, thought Kristoffer. If you only knew how changed your golden boy is, you’d start shitting bricks and have a haemorrhage. And just once, continued his train of thought, I wish that, just once, I could say these things out loud instead of only thinking them.

  ‘Mmm, no . . .’ he said. ‘I don’t think so. But he’ll soon be back to explain everything. Maybe he thought we were off around lunchtime so . . . maybe he’s out buying Christmas presents?’

  Ebba appeared to give this suggestion serious consideration before she deemed him in need of another dip in her bath of blue acid. But he didn’t give an inch.

  ‘What did the pair of you talk about last night?’

  That’s none of your business, Madam prosecutor, ran the formulation in his head. ‘Nothing in particular,’ his mouth said. ‘He told me a bit about Uppsala and so on.’

  ‘Oh yes? What did he tell you about Uppsala then?’

  ‘That it was fun studying there. But really hard work.’

  ‘Did he tell you anything about Jenny?’

  Kristoffer thought about this.

  ‘He mentioned her, I’m pretty sure. But only en pessant.’

  ‘Passant.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Passant. You said pessant.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t matter. Anything else?’

  ‘That we talked about?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We talked a bit about Uncle Robert.’

  ‘Oh really? And what conclusion did you reach?’

  ‘None really,’ said Kristoffer. ‘Except that he seems a bit strange.’

  ‘Did you indeed?’ muttered Ebba. ‘Well, just at the moment, I’m not particularly interested in how you two see my brother. But if you think of anything else about Henrik, then we – Dad and I . . . and Granny and Granddad – don’t want you to keep quiet about it.’

  ‘Why would I keep quiet about it?’ asked Kristoffer with an indignation that felt almost genuine. ‘I want to get away from here, too. If I knew anything, I’d have spat it out straight away, for sure.’

  She paused one last time.

  ‘Good, Kristoffer,’ she said eventually. ‘I’m relying on you.’

  Then she left the room.

  Stupid Henrik, thought Kristoffer once she had closed the door. Where the hell are you?

  He checked the time. It was one minute to twelve.

  By two o’clock, snow was falling again, and in the Hermansson household, they had finished lunch. Smoked sausage and potatoes in white sauce; normally Karl-Erik’s absolute favourite, but today it felt completely out of place. No one had much appetite, and the tense silence hanging over the dining table went with them to the coffee and crullers in the living room. Kristoffer didn’t drink coffee, but he had a Christmas root beer, and while he was drinking it he surreptitiously studied the mute expressions on the adults’ faces: his mother and father; his grandmother and grandfather. He wondered what was going on inside their skulls. A lot, he assumed. Irritation, anxiety. Apprehension, frustration, you name it. All the questions that could be asked had already been asked, and nobody seemed willing to repeat them. All conceivable guesses had been guessed and all speculations speculated on. The
car was packed and ready to go on the drive; there was just that little detail of a missing passenger.

  The thing nobody had really put into words yet, thought Kristoffer, was the fear, of course. The lid still seemed to be on the really blackest fears, and here he was beginning to feel the head start he had on the others rapidly shrinking. Admittedly, he knew what he knew: Henrik had slipped out to a secret assignation sometime during the night – possibly with an unknown lover named Jens (though Kristoffer was increasingly having his doubts about that) – but why on earth he hadn’t come back first thing, or in the course of the morning, was a question that loomed ever larger with each passing minute.

  Henrik had vanished. Robert had vanished. This is the weirdest bloody thing I’ve ever experienced, thought Kristoffer Grundt.

  ‘It’s five past two,’ said Rosemarie Wunderlich Hermansson, as if this announcement might shed light on something. But the only thing it achieved was to make a vein in Karl-Erik’s temple start squirming like a maggot. It had done the same at various points during the day; Kristoffer had had his eye on it and knew it meant that his grandfather was annoyed or upset about something. There was a strange look to one of his eyelids, too. It drooped over his eye and made him look a bit tipsy, thought Kristoffer. He was pretty sure that this wasn’t actually the case.

  As for his dad, both Leif’s eyelids were drooping, and Kristoffer guessed he was falling asleep. He had been unusually quiet for the past half hour; it had been obvious from the look of him that he was nowhere near producing any more convincing theory as to where his splendid – and hitherto almost infallible – son had got to.

  His mother, Ebba, looked resolute, as if she were concentrating in preparation for an operation that promised to be too complicated by far. Or as if she were working away in her head at the new and paradoxical Henrik equation, and couldn’t get so much as a sniff of the solution, though she would normally have solved it long ago.