The Darkest Day

by Håkan Nesser

A Jenny? No, none that he had heard of.

  The cousin was called Berit, and Henrik had stayed with her for the first two weeks of term, before he found the room in Karlsrogatan. They had met only once since Henrik moved out, but her impression was that he was an extremely conscientious and pleasant young man.

  Jenny? No, she didn’t know anything about any girls.

  The study adviser was called Gertzén, and knew that Henrik was registered at, and studying in, his faculty. He knew no more than that, but there were a lot of students to keep track of, and it could be difficult, especially at the beginning, to have an opinion on each and every one.

  Jenny? Inspector Barbarotti didn’t even bother to ask the question.

  It was 8.30 by the time he retired to Hotel Hörnan in its attractive position beside the frozen Fyris River, which still had a small patch of open water to which the ducks were flocking. He could see them from his window, and a little further to the north he could glimpse the multi-screen cinema and the Norrland student club, where Henrik had apparently taken his first faltering steps in student life. Where he had sung in the choir, and where he had potentially also . . . no, Barbarotti was tired of speculating. He looked back to the ducks down in the black water and wondered whether he felt more dejected, or less, than he had done this morning, travelling up on the train to this grove of Academe.

  Hard to decide. Henrik’s room had not yielded much, anyway. No letters. No notes. Not even an address book; he belonged to the young and rational generation, which entered all its important data into its mobile phones or computers. He had not got into the computer – a PC that looked very new and flashy – and the mobile was presumably in the same place as its owner.

  That was to say, location unknown. There had not been anything compromising in the room at all. No erotic literature on the shelves (not even a porn mag) to offer a clue to the occupant’s sexual preferences. It had all been neat and tidy, just as he had expected. He felt he ought to be getting to know Henrik Grundt a bit by now. Always the same impression: well-behaved, quiet and careful. The idea of his potential homosexuality had, up to now, only found nourishment in a young female student’s very private and extremely vague observations; the fact that Gunnar Barbarotti could not really let the thought of it go was presumably first and foremost because there was not much else to which said thought could be attached.

  He closed the heavy curtains and switched on his mobile, which had been off during his last interview of the day, with study advisor Gertzén. It was still in his hand when there was a bleep to announce that he had voicemail messages to retrieve.

  Well one, at any rate. It was from Sorrysen. He said Henrik Grundt’s mobile phone records had come in that afternoon, and there were a few things of interest. If Barbarotti happened to hear this before nine, he could ring him at home.

  He checked the time. It was five to.

  ‘Don’t say a word, I know. Henrik called the same number as Robert, exactly twenty-four hours later?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Sorrysen. ‘No, Henrik didn’t ring anyone on either the Monday or the Tuesday. And he only received one call – from his grandparents when the Grundts were on their way down from Sundsvall. But there was some SMS traffic that might be of interest.’

  ‘I’m all ears,’ said Gunnar Barbarotti.

  ‘Nothing that bears directly on him running away, mind. The last one he received came at 22.35 on the Tuesday evening; the last he sent was ten minutes later. Same number. Apart from that, he had a total of seven text messages over the four days, even on Christmas Eve, but didn’t answer any of them. The texts have been deleted, unfortunately, they’re only stored for seventy-two hours max, but still.’

  ‘I see,’ said Gunnar Barbarotti, suddenly feeling something cold and disquieting turn a page inside him. It wasn’t hard to paint the picture behind the information Sorrysen had just delivered. And a pretty dark one it was.

  ‘From the same number?’

  ‘Five of them.’

  ‘And is it the same one as—’

  ‘Yes. If we just look at the past week, that is from the seventeenth of December up to and including the twenty-fourth, the same number sent twenty-two texts and Henrik answered fourteen times.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘What’s your own view?’

  It was so rare for Sorrysen to go in for this sort of dramatic tension that he didn’t know what to think.

  ‘Pay-as-you-go cards can’t be traced?’ he said automatically.

  ‘Wrong,’ said Sorrysen. ‘We’ve got the subscriber’s name.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Gunnar Barbarotti. ‘Out with it then, or do you want me to kiss you first? In which case, it’ll have to wait until the day after tomorrow.’

  It was a stupid comment, but Sorrysen received it as if it were a poor second serve.

  ‘The name is Jens Lindewall. The address is 5 Prästgårdsgatan, in Uppsala, if you happen to be passing.’

  ‘Well I’ll be . . . wait, can you say that again so I can write it down?’

  ‘I’ll text it to you,’ said Sorrysen. ‘Then you’ll have the number, too. Bye then.’

  Well I’ll be damned, Gunnar Barbarotti completed his unfinished response inside his head. Sometimes things do fall into place, one mustn’t forget that.

  The text containing Jens Lindewall’s details arrived a minute later, and it took him another five to decide what to do. In that short space of time he wondered above all whether to ring Eva Backman to talk it over with her just a bit, but he quickly realized that he knew very well what advice his colleague would offer him.

  And almost as quickly, he decided he ought to follow that advice.

  He pulled the curtains back before he rang the number. The sky was that mauve shade you get with snow, and the ducks down on the river looked frozen into the ice.

  He let it ring six times. Then once more, with that unmistakable little drop in tone. Then the voicemail message.

  ‘Hi, you’re through to Jens. I’ve gone to Borneo, leaving this tyrant of a mobile phone in a desk drawer. I’m back on 12 January. I wish everybody a really Happy New Year. If you want to wish me one back, you can do it after the beep. Bye.’

  No thank you, my friend, thought Gunnar Barbarotti furiously, and switched it off. But you bloody well make sure you get yourself back here pronto, or we’ll set the Bornean cops on you, and they’re no laughing matter!

  He pulled the curtains shut for a second time and regretted having promised to remain prayer-less for three more days.

  And as he put out the light, the image of Linda Markovic’s breast reappeared. It’s pitiful, thought Gunnar Barbarotti. My love life is at such a low ebb I’m reduced to dreaming of split-second nipples on student girls I don’t even know.

  And God claims He exists?

  TWO

  JANUARY

  22

  Gunnar Barbarotti did not like flying.

  Charter flights were the worst of all, and domestic flights weren’t far behind. But when the domestic schedules couldn’t cope with their routes, they were almost worse than the charter flights. If you bought a package holiday to Fuerteventura, you could be pretty sure of landing in Fuerteventura eventually. If you took a domestic flight they could turf you out anywhere. Depending on circumstances. Apparently.

  Like now. He had left home hours before dawn cracked, boarded a plane from Gothenburg Landvetter and landed at Stockholm Arlanda fifty minutes late, around nine. He had been re-booked onto a later plane to Sundsvall – because his original one had already flapped off – and finally touched down at Östersund airport on the island of Frösön at quarter past one, because of fog at Midlanda airport between Sundsvall and Härnösand. He had seen it for himself through the cabin window; it was a dazzling winter’s day throughout Sweden, except above this badly placed runway, which the weather gods had swathed in fog as thick as semolina pudding.

  But he had not prayed to Our Lord for a safe landing, so there was no questio
n of any plus or minus points on the existence scale.

  From Östersund he was sent on a two-and-a-half hour coach ride to Sundsvall, and when he got out at the bus station in this metropolis of Medelpad – in the very middle of Sweden, according to local lore – it was exactly 4 p.m. His total delay amounted to four hours and fifty-five minutes.

  But never mind; if nothing else untoward occurred, he still had an hour for his talk with Kristoffer Grundt, after which he would have to take a taxi in order to catch the last flight back down to Stockholm.

  So things had not quite reached the point of throwing up his hands or writing indignantly to the newspapers, and on the other side of the street, outside the 7-Eleven convenience store – just as they had finally arranged, making allowances for all the delays – young Mr Grundt was shifting nervously from one foot to the other in the slushy snow. For the first time in ages, Gunnar Barbarotti had a sense that something might be about to happen in this Sisyphean task, as Eva Backman had started calling the whole wretched business. Not a breakthrough. Not the hope of a prompt and definitive solution, that would be asking too much – but perhaps a small step in something that possibly, eventually and without any pretensions, might be perceived as the right direction.

  That little opening.

  He didn’t know how many working hours had been spent, but he knew that all the sweat and toil had hitherto produced no results. Nothing had emerged to shed light on what had happened to Robert Hermansson and Henrik Grundt, who had had the bad taste and poor judgement to vanish from 4 Allvädersgatan in Kymlinge in the middle of all the Christmas bustle. Three weeks had now passed, and Gunnar Barbarotti and his colleagues were all too aware of the old police rule of thumb that the cases you solve are solved in the first few days after the crime.

  Or not at all.

  And nobody was in any doubt that what lay behind the course of events in Allvädersgatan must be some sort of crime. Neither Barbarotti nor Backman nor Sorrysen. This was the troika that was in charge of the investigation, taking collaborative decisions, giving collective orders and then checking all the empty hooks on the lines they had speculatively cast out – and being called in at regular intervals to Chief Inspector Asunander on the second floor, to account for themselves.

  Asunander’s rheumy eyes had started to yellow and glare more and more since they had passed the year’s end and entered January. Put at its simplest – if one did not mind stooping to broad generalizations – it meant that in a less civilized and less regulated society he would have preferred to throw all three of them to the wolves and replace them with police officers with a bit more gumption and brainpower. Come up with a suggestion yourself then, bigmouth, was Backman’s usual response. Just for bloody once, come up with something constructive, you impotent, deskbound buffoon!

  She did not deliver these tips in open court, but wisely kept them as something to chew on over the beers that two thirds of the troika, from force of habit and congenital disposition, but never more than once or twice a week, would consume in moderation at the Elk on Norra torg, at the end of a hard working day. That leopard won’t change his spots, was Barbarotti’s usual riposte. Or lay a golden egg. That fellow’s got a wasteland between his ears, and his internal landscape is as sterile as . . . well, as a wasteland.

  And that would make Backman laugh.

  And after all, their efforts had not been entirely without result. Not really as unfruitful as the chief desk inspector’s inner domains. There were some dead ends that had taken them a little further than the rest.

  The mobile phone jungle, for a start. Here they had already found their way to Jens Lindewall, with whom they had admittedly not yet been able to establish contact, he having opted to spend Christmas and New Year in another jungle – in the Sabah province of Borneo – but tomorrow morning he and his plane would drop in at Arlanda, and even if no one else was going to greet him with a bouquet, Gunnar Barbarotti certainly intended to do so. Though without the foliage, just with a few well-chosen questions.

  Unless his plane from Midlanda this evening decided to carry him off in the wrong direction, of course. He had learnt not to count his chickens.

  In the other disappearance case, too, they had fought their way a bit further through the thicket before they had to stop. The fact that Robert Hermansson had used his mobile to call someone at 01.51 the night he disappeared had been revealed to them almost immediately via the operators’ lists, though of course it was a curse that he had called someone on pay-as-you-go. But all was not lost. The recipient of the call had been traced to Kymlinge, so it was not a matter of some old flame at the far end of the country, as Barbarotti had feared. Robert had actually rung a person who, at least on the night in question, had been in Kymlinge, and naturally they had also pounced on this pay-as-you-go number and investigated it a little more closely. The pickings were thin, unfortunately. Apart from the Robert call, the phone number in question had been used only four times in December, all of them between the fifth and the fifteenth, all of them outgoing calls.

  Once to Robert Hermansson in Stockholm, twice to a pizzeria in Kymlinge, once to a women’s hairdresser’s in Kymlinge. The troika had spoken to both the pizzeria and the hair salon: at the former, their guess was that it was someone ordering pizza; at the latter, their guess was that it was someone making a hair appointment. The combined clientele of these two public institutions was estimated to be between 1,200 and 1,800. Eva Backman devoted quite a long time to working out what size the combined clientele must actually be, mathematically and in terms of probability, and over a Thursday beer she had rather surprisingly (at least for Gunnar Barbarotti, who had only achieved an averagely competent grade in school maths in his time) presented the fairly precise figure of 433.

  ‘How the hell did you get to that?’ the over-critical Barbarotti insensitively asked.

  ‘Don’t worry your little head about that,’ was Eva Einstein’s riposte. ‘Robert Hermansson rang one of 433 women in Kymlinge. She’s potentially linked to that damn hairdresser’s.’

  Einstein-Backman then spent two days drawing up a list of everyone who had had an appointment at Maggie’s Hairdresser’s between 5 and 23 December (not that they had the names of them all, but plenty they did), which came to the pleasingly low total of 362, and just as she was finishing that task, the proprietress of that fashionable establishment called to say that they had been obliged to turn away just as many. Backman-Numbskull swore to herself, applied a dose of extremely restrained rounding, and once again arrived fairly exactly at the figure 433.

  ‘You see?’

  ‘I see, o master,’ Gunnar Barbarotti admitted, but at the same time he had felt mental exhaustion come creeping over him again, like a consumptive fog.

  But still, he had to admit, it had been an unusually long and hopeful dead end.

  But the fact that Kristoffer Grundt had rung him the previous evening and said he had something important to tell him – something he claimed to have been keeping quiet until now – had to be considered the most interesting feature of the investigation to date.

  Didn’t Backman agree?

  Hell yes, was Backman’s view. You bet.

  ‘I’ve only got an hour, can we go into this place, and I’ll record whatever you’ve got to tell me?’

  Kristoffer Grundt nodded.

  The boy had a Coke, while he went for a double espresso. Just as well to be wide awake, in case some bit of shit didn’t come out on the tape. It seemed to be that sort of day. They found a corner behind a stone-dead jukebox and an artificial fig tree, and sat down.

  ‘Well?’ began Gunnar Barbarotti, pressing record. ‘What was it you wanted to say?’

  ‘I’d prefer it if you didn’t tell Mum and Dad about this,’ said Kristoffer.

  ‘I can’t guarantee anything,’ said Barbarotti. ‘But I promise to keep it quiet if possible.

  ‘You don’t know . . . Has anything happened?’

  ‘What do you mean?’
/>   ‘You don’t know any more about where Henrik’s gone?’

  Kristoffer Grundt was in torment, that much was clear. He had presumably been so for some time, Barbarotti thought. The boy couldn’t keep his eyes still, his hands moved restlessly between his glass, the Coke bottle and the table edge – yes, something was weighing on him and presumably had been for far too long. He had dark rings under his eyes, too, although he was only fourteen, and his complexion was the colour of a dirty sheet.

  Though probably most people in this country look like that at this godforsaken time of year, when you came to think of it.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘We still don’t know anything about what’s happened to your brother. Now tell me what it is you’ve been keeping quiet about.’

  The boy shot him a shy glance.

  ‘Well, the thing is . . .’ He was groping for the words. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t say anything sooner, but I’d promised him . . .’

  ‘Henrik?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You promised him something? OK, go on. What did you promise?’

  ‘I promised Henrik not to tell. But now . . . well, now I realize that maybe . . .’

  He stopped. Gunnar Barbarotti decided to help him onto the right track. ‘You’re not bound by that promise any longer, Kristoffer,’ he said in as kindly a way as he could. ‘If Henrik could, he would release you from it. We’ve got to do everything we can to get him back, I’m sure you think the same?’

  ‘Do you . . . do you think he’s alive?’

  There was a faint ray of hope in his voice, very faint. He’s making the same judgement as I am, thought Gunnar Barbarotti. He isn’t stupid.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Neither you nor I can know that. But we can hope and we can do our best to find out what has happened. Can’t we?’

  Kristoffer Grundt nodded. ‘Well, the thing is, that he – that he went out that night. I mean he planned to go out.’

  ‘Right, I see,’ said Barbarotti. ‘Go on.’

  ‘That’s it, really. He told me he was going out that night to meet somebody, and he asked me to keep quiet about it.’