The Darkest Day

by Håkan Nesser

  When he tentatively put this to the therapist, the answer from this extremely gentle and extremely bearded man of about sixty was that Mrs Grundt had lost a son and it was going to take time.

  Leif Grundt felt like answering that, always assuming the son was lost, he was his son as well. But he knew this was not the sort of thing one said.

  Tomorrow evening, Ebba would come home, and it struck him that he was feeling uncomfortably ambivalent about this. As if it placed an instant demand on him and Kristoffer. The demand that they keep Ebba in a good mood. Or keep her going, or however you wanted to see it. For a while now he had had a line ringing in his head: Sometimes I get so bloody tired of you, Ebba, can’t you understand that? And he knew that if these words actually slipped out of his mouth at some point, nothing could ever be mended again. It would be the final nail in their marital coffin. The final nail in the Grundt family.

  Though maybe, he thought, his fingers half-heartedly massaging the rigid steering wheel, maybe it was already past saving.

  Some families can withstand a catastrophe, he had read somewhere, while others just can’t.

  And all the indications were that the Hermansson-Grundt family came into the latter category. It had taken eleven months – a year ago everything had radiated well-being and harmony, at least by any normal measure and his own modest appreciation of these things. A senior consultant wife, a Co-op manager, a student at Uppsala and a reasonably promising upper-secondary pupil. Today, the student was missing, very probably dead, the senior consultant was on her way into her own darkness, and as for him, he was incapable of getting out of his own car.

  That was how it was. That was what they were reduced to.

  And Kristoffer?

  He dared not think about Kristoffer, not really. It was clear the boy had started smoking and was keeping pretty undesirable company, and the level of effort he was putting in at school left plenty to be desired. No doubt he was drinking beer and other things from time to time; Leif knew about it and Kristoffer knew that he knew, but they both preferred to pretend this wasn’t the case. Or at any rate not to comment on it. Things were bad enough already; no more problems on the agenda, please. He still managed to give the boy a hug and some words of encouragement sometimes, and hoped that would be enough in the long run. They had a sort of gentleman’s agreement, which basically consisted of not talking about anything unpleasant and pretending life was normal.

  And in this new normal, it was raining. Leif could see the drops bouncing off the bonnet and condensing into a thin haze, which in turn instantly dissolved into nothing. The engine still had not cooled. Why am I sitting here? he thought. In my forty-third year, I am sitting in my own car on my own drive, staring at the rain. As down-in-the-mouth as a captive lobster. So why? Why am I sitting here? And what – what have lobsters got to do with it? But of course, he realized, it was those frozen ones from Argentina that he’d had to chuck out after the complaints from those pesky women at . . . wait, he was losing the thread again. What had he been thinking about?

  Oh, yes. Kristoffer. He was goggling at the TV again, that boy, the bluish gleam from his window was unmistakable. Apart from putting away a bit of food now and then, and going outside for a crafty smoke, that was pretty much the only thing he did when he was at home.

  What he got up to when he wasn’t at home, most of the weekend for example, was something Leif Grundt preferred not to think too much about.

  And it was as if their eyes never really met. Not like they used to. Though that was just the way of these things, he supposed. Avoiding seeing each other. Everything had its price.

  Soon, I’m not going to have the strength to keep finding the strength, thought Leif Grundt, opening the car door and climbing out into the rain. Bloody hell.

  He dashed the few steps to the front door and let himself into the darkened hall. He took off his coat and hung it up without putting the light on and then went into the kitchen. He put on the light over the sink and saw that Kristoffer had left the butter, cheese and tube of fish roe out of the fridge, and that the dishwasher must be full, because there was an unwashed pasta saucepan and colander in the sink.

  It took him fifteen minutes to get everything cleared up, and then he went in to see his son. As expected, he found him lying there watching a film, but at least it was Swedish. One of the actors said ‘Go to hell, you fucking whore,’ just as Leif Grundt opened the door. Well that’s something, anyway, he thought, wondering at the same time why it should be reassuring that the film was Swedish.

  ‘Mum says hi,’ he said.

  ‘OK,’ said Kristoffer.

  ‘She’s coming home tomorrow evening.’

  ‘Don’t know if I’ll be in when she gets here,’ said Kristoffer.

  ‘I see,’ said Leif Grundt. ‘Well, I think I’ll hit the hay. What time do you start tomorrow?’

  ‘I can lie in. Don’t start until ten.’

  ‘Shall I wake you when I go?’

  ‘No need. I can get myself up.’

  ‘All right. See you sometime tomorrow evening, then?’

  ‘I expect so,’ said Kristoffer Grundt.

  I wish you a good night’s sleep, my beloved son, thought Leif Grundt. May you, at least, be delivered from evil.

  But he didn’t say it. He just yawned and left the room.

  He must have dozed off at some stage in the last third of the film, because he woke to the music that accompanied the final shot of a burning house, as the credits rolled. It seemed a bit stupid to run the credits against a background like that, thought Kristoffer, because you could hardly read some of the names. But then, it had been a pretty stupid film all round. Typical Swedish B-movie.

  And maybe that – the fact that you couldn’t really make out all the names of those actors and cameramen and assistant directors and sound technicians – was why he carried on lying there, and tried to do so. Something he certainly didn’t usually waste any of his concentration on. Name after name after name . . . imagine it taking that bloody many of them to make such a useless film, thought Kristoffer. He hadn’t ever realized before. That it took so many people. Film editors and casting teams and continuity girls and costume people . . . As he lay there, staring lazily at all those unknown individuals, those otherwise anonymous underlings of the film world, a name that he recognized suddenly popped up.

  Rimborg. Olle Rimborg.

  Hang on, thought Kristoffer. Where have I seen that before? Or heard it?

  Before he had time to look and see what function this Olle Rimborg had fulfilled in the strange world of film, the name had rolled off the screen. Rimborg?

  He dug out the remote control from under the pillow and switched off the TV. Wished he had a fresh film to watch, but he hadn’t got any in. Just old rubbish he’d watched until he was sick of it. It was only quarter to eleven, just the right time for a decent film to fall asleep to, if he’d had one.

  Rimborg?

  He got out of bed. Decided to have one last smoke out of the window, and then he supposed he might as well try to go to sleep anyway. It was Friday tomorrow. Double PE first thing, but he planned on skipping that. OK, he’d had an official warning after the mid-term review that he was likely to fail the subject, but two hours in a crappy indoor swimming pool were no way to start a Friday. Not according to Kristoffer’s worldview.

  His current worldview, perhaps one should add. He was well aware that, for the time being, he was not really living the way he wanted to live. That he was going through a phase, as the counsellor had tried to explain to his form teacher, Mr Stahke, after that mid-term review. How the hell could anyone be called Stahke?

  He leant out into the November gale and got his cigarette to light. Luckily, the balcony upstairs was just above his window, so at least his cig didn’t get wet.

  Olle Rimborg?

  It was after two drags he got the first lead (there, see, the beneficial effects of nicotine on the ability to think). It was something to do with Granny
. Something she said . . . but when? At the funeral? Yes of course, that was it. They’d been standing there outside the church – and as it happened, that was the only time he’d seen her all year, so it wasn’t very hard to work out – and she’d been babbling on about somebody called Rimborg.

  And then she said that he came back.

  He came back. Who the heck was he? Admittedly Granny hadn’t really been all there at Robert’s funeral, but she’d really gone on about that Olle Rimborg, and about someone who came back during the night. Someone else, who wasn’t Olle Rimborg. She’d been really insistent, Granny, so there must be something in it, he assumed. In spite of her being gaga.

  Kristoffer Grundt took a deep drag on his cigarette. What else had she said? Not that it mattered, but since he hadn’t got a film to watch, since he hadn’t got anything to do besides having a crafty smoke out of the window on a forlorn and rainy November evening, he might as well exert his mental machinery a bit . . . Yes, exactly! Now he had it! Olle Rimborg was a receptionist at the hotel in Kymlinge. That was it – at least if Granny was to be believed – and he was the one who had said someone came back, and there was something important about it all. Granny had tried to explain it to him, but she’d been so confused that he hadn’t really bothered to listen to her, it had all been a bit embarrassing, poor Granny.

  And then . . . then the name crops up on his television screen two or three months later, isn’t that odd? As if it had been lying there waiting for him. Olle Rimborg didn’t only have the one job, evidently, he was a receptionist but also did some kind of film work, it was as if . . .

  The next drag was a bit too deep and made his head spin, and then all of a sudden he had Henrik with him again.

  Hi, brother, said Henrik.

  Hi yourself, said Kristoffer.

  It’s bad for you, smoking.

  Thanks. I know.

  How are you?

  Fine thanks.

  Are you sure?

  Mm . . .

  Henrik was settling in, and went quiet for a while.

  OK, little brother, he said at last. I don’t give a damn about your lifestyle. Maybe it’s just a phase, like you say. But I’d quite like you to show a bit of interest in this Olle Rimborg.

  You what? asked Kristoffer.

  Check it out, said Henrik. Can’t do any harm.

  Why?

  You know there are some things I can’t tell you, we’ve talked about this before.

  Yeah, I know, but—

  No buts. If you want something useful to do instead of smoking and drinking beer and messing about at school, you can check on Olle Rimborg. You’ve already worked out who he is, right?

  Sure, but— began Kristoffer.

  Right then, that’s settled, concluded Henrik. Stub out that damn cigarette now, you need to pull your socks up a bit, brother.

  Kristoffer Grundt sighed and took one last drag. Chucked the butt out into the rain; the lawn mowing was over for this year and his dad wouldn’t find it. He closed the window and crawled into bed.

  Go and have a wash and clean your teeth while you’re at it, Henrik added. Just because Linda Granberg’s moved to Norway it doesn’t mean you need to go around smelling like a skunk, right?

  Kristoffer sighed again, kicked off the quilt and got back on his feet. Brothers, he thought.

  33

  Gunnar Barbarotti woke up, and didn’t know where he was.

  He felt a warm hand on his stomach. It wasn’t his.

  The hand, that is. It was a woman’s hand. For a fraction of a second, all the women he had ever woken up with in the course of his forty-six-year life flashed through his morning-fuddled mind. It stopped at the right one.

  Marianne.

  Quite right. The route to Marianne was not particularly long. Apart from his ex-wife he had only ever made love to a dozen women at most; half of them only once or twice, almost all of them over twenty years ago. His student years in Lund.

  But now here he was, lying beside Marianne. Just so. She was still asleep, breathing in through her nose with a little snuffle, and he wondered how on earth such a beautiful woman could fall for an oaf like him.

  Though he supposed this too was all part of the feminine mystique, of course. Thank goodness.

  Malmö. He looked cautiously around the room and realized they were at Hotel Baltzar in Malmö. A big corner room on the fourth floor. Those student years were no more than ten kilometres away, when he came to think of it. That was where he was, and now he had established that, the rest of the jigsaw fell swiftly into place.

  It was morning. It was Saturday. It was mid-November. They had arrived last night and would be staying until Sunday. For a wedding.

  Not their own, that would have been a bit quick off the mark. It was still less than four months since they had met, those magical weeks on Thasos, and rushing was the last thing they needed to do. On the contrary, let’s suck each other like a couple of delicious sweets, she had said, and then we’ll see. Gunnar Barbarotti had certainly not objected, though he found it a bit difficult to imagine himself as a delicious sweet, but what the hell. And there was no denying that their taste for sweets had intensified considerably in the course of the autumn. They had met at least ten times, he had introduced Marianne to Sara, and he had met Marianne’s children – a boy of fourteen and a girl of twelve – on two occasions. There had been no friction to speak of. O great God, he had thought just the other day, I concede I hadn’t asked for her, but I’m almost ready to dish out ten existence points for you having sent her my way.

  Our Lord had replied that if people only had the sense to ask for things they really needed, it would be simpler to keep them supplied – and Gunnar Barbarotti had defended himself by saying he had imagined it was the extant god’s responsibility to equip the human race with precisely such sense.

  On this point, Our Lord had asked to get back to him once He had the right answer.

  But now there was to be a wedding. Marianne’s sister Clara, a twenty-eight-year-old art director – Gunnar wasn’t entirely sure he knew what that involved – had finally found her prince, a Danish architect called Palle. Marianne herself worked as a midwife – a profession with much more obvious content. She was twelve years older than her sister the bride (there were no fewer than four sisters and three brothers in the family, most of them half-siblings), and Gunnar Barbarotti had initially been alarmed at the thought of attending a youthful wedding party and meeting 138 people of whom he knew precisely one. But turning down the invitation seemed even worse, and with proceedings now extended to a whole weekend in Malmö – private accommodation at a hotel, just him and Marianne – it had all appeared in a much less threatening light.

  ‘Of course you’ve got to go, you old goat,’ Sara had exhorted him. ‘You need to see the good side of life sometimes, too.’

  My dearest daughter, thought Gunnar Barbarotti, and gave a happy yawn. If only you knew.

  The ceremony was held in Sankt Petri church, the bride and the bridegroom both said yes, and the party afterwards was in the church’s own function room just a minute’s walk away. (And only three or four back to Hotel Baltzar, a fact that Marianne had not forgotten to point out.)

  The wedding breakfast turned out to be a long one. They took their places just after six, and five hours later they were still sitting there. Gunnar Barbarotti had counted twenty-four speeches and performances, and according to the toastmaster – a well-fleshed young man in a light-blue dinner jacket who did not begrudge himself the pleasure of adding his own running commentary – there were at least half a dozen more before the dancing and whiskies and soda could start.

  But that was fine, Inspector Barbarotti was doing all right, he had to admit. He had found himself seated in a lively and unsophisticated corner of the large venue, a corner where drinking and noisy talk and laughter were the order of the evening – and he had Marianne in his sight and almost within hearing distance, diagonally across a beautiful table centrepie
ce of yellow leaves, heather and rowan berries. Sitting to his right was his official table partner, a cousin of the bridegroom’s, who was from a little village in Jylland and spoke an impenetrable Danish that become no easier to understand, even after seven glasses of wine. On his left side, he had a dentist from Uddevalla, a girlfriend of the bride’s and gifted with a singing voice that brought him out in goosebumps when she performed her own composition, a love song to the young couple. Entirely a cappella and verging on the erotic; quite possibly some of the goosebumps resulted from the fact that he made sure to have eye contact with Marianne throughout the performance.

  As expected, there was a lot of chat about his profession. A real live detective inspector was a real someone in any setting, and particularly at a wedding party. Before they got to the ice cream, all the most spectacular criminal cases in Sweden, from the murder of Olof Palme to the present day, had been discussed, in no particular order. Catrine da Costa. Fadime Şahindal. Åmsele and Knutby. Thomas Quick. An increasingly tipsy EU secretary sitting beside Marianne insisted more and more doggedly as the evening went on that he had met the Hörby murderer on a cycle tour of Österlen in the mid-nineties. And that his name was most definitely not Olsson. The woman sitting beside him – they evidently knew each other a little already – gradually tired of his line of talk and suggested he go out for a dip in the nearby canal to sober up a little. To underline how seriously she meant it, this being between the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth speech, she promptly drank up his dessert wine, which had just been served – to the great amusement of those sitting around them.