Guiltless

by Sten, Viveca

  Then he just couldn’t do it anymore.

  CHAPTER 55

  Margit and Nora were standing by the old shipyard, which was now a leisure complex housed in a building the size of a barn. Fläskberget lay in front of them, along with the inlet where Nora and her family sunbathed and swam in the summer.

  Margit kept looking around, as if she could make Thomas appear through sheer willpower.

  “Do you see anything?” she asked Nora for the third time.

  “Nothing,” Nora gasped. She had a cramp from running and was finding it hard to speak.

  The darkness was thick, visibility poor. Fear brought tears to her eyes. Where the hell was Thomas? Why didn’t he materialize and laugh away their anxiety?

  A glance at Margit’s serious face made her focus. Something was moving out there in the bay. Or was it just her imagination?

  She could see the lights of the Waxholm ferry, on its way to Sandhamn through the ice channel. It was moving unusually slowly, and then it stopped.

  Something must have happened out there.

  A floodlight was switched on, and its powerful beam swept across the water. Nora could just make out some kind of bundle on the ice, not far from the edge.

  “Margit.” She touched the other woman’s shoulder. “Look over there, in the light.”

  Margit stiffened, then broke into a run.

  “Be careful!” Nora shouted as she took off after her.

  Something was being lowered from the ferry, probably a lifeboat. The floodlight was now focused on the bundle, which was still motionless. The open water was worryingly close, and the waves from the ship’s maneuvers were making the ice bob up and down.

  Margit was moving too fast. Nora stumbled and fell, but got up again as quickly as she could. The distance between them was now around thirty feet.

  It could be Thomas lying out there.

  Adrenaline gave her the strength to keep going, even though the wind was slicing right through her and the whirling snow struck her face like a hail of tiny arrows as she ran.

  She was worn out by the time she got there. The crew was already dragging the person closer to the shore, where the ice was thicker. They turned him over.

  Thomas lay motionless before them.

  It was as if he had been covered with ice from head to toe. He was gray, his cheeks horribly sunken, his blond hair dark with water. Nora couldn’t tell if he was alive. She was so winded she couldn’t utter a word; she pressed her hands against her ribs and tried to pull herself together.

  She realized that Margit was talking agitatedly into her cell phone. Nora caught word helicopter through the howling wind.

  Thomas was so still.

  “Is he alive?” she whispered at last. It was as if the cold swallowed up the words before they came out, but Margit seemed to have understood her question. She looked at Nora and nodded.

  Nora dropped to her knees and took his hand. He was wearing only one glove, and she rubbed his bare fingers between her hands in an attempt to transfer a little warmth. They were so cold, so lifeless, that she could only just hold them.

  Gently she blew on them, hoping to breathe life into the frozen flesh. In the beam of the floodlight she could see that the nails were unnaturally blue.

  “The helicopter will be here in a few minutes,” Margit said. “We have to get him to the hospital right away. But he’s alive, that’s the main thing.”

  She gave Nora a shaky smile. “They’ll get him thawed out quick, you’ll see. Everything will be OK.”

  Sandhamn 1962

  The woman in the doorway had short hair that curled around her face. She hadn’t taken off her coat, simply undone the top buttons. She looked good, even though she was in her forties. Her hair was still blond, but not quite as fair as he remembered.

  She was visibly shocked at the sight of his emaciated body, the skin stretched taut over his skull, the yellowish tinge—all evidence of his sickness and his decline.

  “My grandfather died when he was the same age as I am now,” Thorwald said quietly. “Although that wasn’t cancer; he had tuberculosis.”

  His visitor nodded and came forward. Thorwald pointed to a chair; she hesitated briefly, then sat down.

  They hadn’t spoken to each other since they were children—except on one occasion, when he returned to Sandhamn after his father’s death. That was when Thorwald learned that Kristina was the sole heir to his parents’ estate. There was nothing for him, nothing at all.

  Vendela had passed away in 1944; her heart had simply given up. Her obese body had put it under considerable strain for a long time, and toward the end, she could hardly move without getting winded. It had been quick, he was told. She had gone to sleep one night and never woken up.

  Gottfrid contracted a severe case of pneumonia four years later. He’d refused to see a doctor, and by the time he was admitted to the hospital it was too late. He died at the age of sixty.

  Before that, however, Gottfrid’s fortunes had taken a turn for the better.

  After the Royal Customs Service layoffs, he’d started to import and export goods himself. After all those years as a customs officer, he knew exactly what was in demand. The business had steadily grown, and by the time of his death, he was a wealthy man.

  They had moved out of the old cottage and into a house in the middle of the village—a white, two-story property with a glassed-in veranda. Gottfrid had also purchased land on the islands of Runmarö and Harö, and the old skiff had been replaced by a stylish new boat.

  But everything went to Kristina.

  When Thorwald returned to Sandhamn with his wife, Anna, and his son, it was all over. The chances of securing his share were nonexistent. He had very little in the way of savings after his years at sea; his health was compromised, and he longed to come back home. But how could he stake his claim against his sister?

  Eventually Kristina agreed to give him their old home, which still had an outside toilet and was in dire need of repair. She kept the rest, and they hadn’t spoken since.

  “I’m dying,” he said.

  She nodded, but didn’t speak. The air in the tiny room grew thick.

  “My son.”

  Thorwald pointed to Bengt, who was sitting on a chair in the corner. He had named him after their great-uncle Olle, whose middle name was Bengt. The boy was fifteen, but looked younger. He was like Thorwald, skinny and shy. His performance in school was nothing to write home about either.

  “I asked you to come here to discuss my son.”

  Kristina nodded again, but still didn’t say a word.

  “You have to help him. I have nothing to leave to him apart from this cottage. Anna’s parents are dead—”

  The sentence was interrupted by a violent coughing fit. Bengt fetched a glass of water and Thorwald drank it, gasping for breath. The boy went back to the corner and sat down. Thorwald went on: “I know Father left a lot of money. Please will you help my son?”

  He looked pleadingly at his sister, then he was overcome by another burst of coughing. He wiped his mouth with a handkerchief, which came away covered in red.

  Kristina lowered her eyes, fingering a loose thread on her jacket.

  “We went over this already,” she said. “I wasn’t the one who decided what should happen. Father’s last wish was that everything should go to me. He no longer regarded you as his son. You abandoned us.”

  Thirty-four years had passed since Thorwald rowed away on that September night.

  The memory of those hours in the earth cellar still tormented him. He couldn’t say how often he had woken in a cold sweat in the small hours, unable to breathe, convinced that he was locked up again. He’d had a paralyzing fear of enclosed spaces ever since.

  And he had never forgiven Gottfrid.

  He didn’t take his eyes off his sister. Back then she had been a pretty little girl with blond curls. Now she was a middle-aged woman with two daughters, Annika and Marianne. Annika was the same age as Bengt, Ma
rianne seven years younger. The hostility between the two sides was so intense that the families had no contact, in spite of the fact that they lived on the same small island.

  “It’s not fair,” Thorwald said seriously. “You know what Father did to me.”

  “You ran away.”

  “I had no choice.”

  “Mother never got over it. She mourned you for the rest of her life.”

  “I had no choice,” he repeated quietly.

  “I had to do everything at home. You disappeared and left me all alone with them.”

  A whining note had crept into her voice, an echo of their childhood whenever Kristina didn’t get her way.

  Thorwald sank back on the pillows, unable to believe what he was hearing. She was angry she’d had to help out more at home. He had feared for his life, and she was complaining about housework.

  “I wouldn’t have survived if I’d stayed. You know that.”

  Her expression was skeptical.

  “You always exaggerate. Father was no worse than anyone else in those days. You’ve forgotten what a difficult child you could be; you were always causing trouble.”

  The sense of injustice overwhelmed Thorwald, just as it had on so many occasions in their childhood. He had asked to see his sister in a final attempt at reconciliation. In spite of his bitterness, he had hoped it would be possible to bridge the distance between them. Not for his own sake—it was too late—but for the boy’s.

  He lay awake at night worrying about what would become of his son. How Anna would manage to provide for them both when he was gone. Every time Thorwald passed the big house where Kristina lived with her family, he spat on the ground. But Sandhamn was his home, and he had nowhere else to go.

  “Kristina,” he said, his voice hoarse with the effort. “You have so much; won’t you help Bengt and Anna?”

  His strength was failing; his hands shook as they rested on the covers. In his peripheral vision he could see Bengt watching him anxiously. The boy shouldn’t be listening to this, but he wanted to spend what little time was left with his son.

  Kristina stood up and began to button her coat. Her face was still beautiful, but her expression was stony.

  “I can’t go against Father’s last wish, whatever I might think.”

  Thorwald knew that Kristina had left the church, but she certainly hadn’t abandoned her religious beliefs. He made one final attempt.

  “What do you think God would say about the way you’re treating your own brother?”

  She sighed, as if she regretted ever having set foot in Thorwald’s sickroom, and intended to bury the memory as soon as she left.

  “God has nothing to do with this. I feel sorry for you and your family, but it’s not my fault. You brought this upon yourself. You destroyed Mother and Father’s lives when you ran away.”

  The hatred that welled up almost choked him. It had followed him through the years, kept him company on the travels that took him far away from Sandhamn. He had stayed away for twenty years, until his father was dead and buried, by which time it was too late to see Vendela and Karolina again.

  He gazed at his sister and saw Gottfrid’s features in her face. They spoke with the same tongue, the same conviction of their own righteousness. For a moment it was as if Gottfrid was standing there before him, utterly merciless.

  “You will not escape, Kristina. You and your family will not escape.” He sat up and shook his fist at her. “God will punish you, do you hear me?”

  She spun on her heel and stalked out.

  Thorwald’s breathing was labored. He had humiliated himself, and all for nothing.

  “Dad?” Bengt was beside him. “Do you want some more water?”

  He shook his head. He was finished.

  He met his son’s gaze, and in his eyes he saw the same helpless rage and hatred with which he himself had lived for so many years.

  “God will punish her,” he whispered. “He will give us redress. She and her family will suffer for this.”

  He dropped back against the pillows, his voice barely audible.

  “One day they will pay for this.”

  CHAPTER 56

  Sunday, March 4, 2007

  The candles were burning brightly. Nora had already switched off all the lights and locked the front door; all she had to do now was blow out the candles and go to bed. It was already well after midnight.

  Instead she sat down on the sofa, her eyes fixed on the hypnotic flames.

  The minutes before the helicopter arrived had been the longest in her life. She counted the seconds until, at long last, it swept in across the shore and slowly came down with a deafening racket. When it landed in a cloud of swirling snow, she wept with relief.

  The sight of Thomas’s unconscious body had left her rigid with fear, despairing over her own powerlessness. It was even worse when she realized she couldn’t go with him to the hospital, because she couldn’t leave the children alone.

  She had tried to stammer out an explanation to Margit, but Margit had already assumed she was the one who would be accompanying Thomas. She assured Nora that everything was under control; the paramedics had all the necessary equipment in order to take care of Thomas until he arrived at Karolinska Hospital, where his body temperature would slowly be brought back to normal.

  When Nora finally got home she had hugged the boys tight and sobbed, even though she realized she was scaring them. She just couldn’t do anything else. Eventually she calmed down enough to explain what had happened. Then she called Pernilla, who was at home waiting for Thomas. He had told Nora the previous day that he was having dinner with Pernilla on Saturday evening, and she had heard the longing in his voice.

  Pernilla promised to go to the hospital right away; she would be in touch as soon as she was allowed to see him.

  Anxiety seized Nora once more. Shouldn’t Pernilla have called by now? What if Thomas was seriously injured?

  Pull yourself together, Nora. He’s in good hands.

  She had watched as the paramedics quickly and efficiently transferred him onto a stretcher and into the helicopter. Within minutes they were on their way to Stockholm. Pernilla was probably just waiting until he was conscious and she had more information.

  Nora was so grateful that Thomas had survived. And it gave her no pleasure to think that she had been right about Bengt Österman. Instead she felt horribly sad about the chain of events that seemed to have begun when Bengt’s father ran away from Sandhamn, leaving Karolina Brand forever.

  According to Nora’s mother, Karolina had never married. She stayed on Sandhamn, where she died from a burst appendix during the last winter of World War II. The shipping lane was full of thick ice floes that slowed down the boat taking her to a waiting ambulance in Stavsnäs. By the time they arrived, it was too late. The official cause of death was peritonitis. Karolina was just thirty years old.

  What had actually happened on that Midsummer’s Eve when Thorwald didn’t show up at the dance? Whatever it was, the consequences were horrific.

  Nora contemplated the half-full wineglass on the table in front of her, then pushed it away. No more wine for a while; enough.

  Tomorrow they were leaving Sandhamn and returning to the mainland, back to the house in Saltsjöbaden. It was time for Adam and Simon to go home. She thought about seeing Henrik again; she wasn’t looking forward to it, but she was no longer afraid to face him.

  They had to sit down and talk about the separation. Assets, custody—all the practical issues must be resolved, whatever they thought of each other. School started on Monday; there was a lot to sort out.

  Joint custody, living with each parent in turn—wasn’t that what most people did? It would do Henrik good to have sole responsibility for his sons for a week at a time, she thought with a faint smile. To be honest she had let him get away with it, but now it was his turn. Time for Henrik to make packed lunches, supervise homework, do the cooking.

  She was actually looking forward to a li
fe in which Henrik did his fair share.

  And if Monica tried her tricks, Nora would deal with them. After all, she was a lawyer. She was done with her mother-in-law’s scare tactics; she had let herself be bullied for far too long.

  It would serve Monica right if she was confronted with a new daughter-in-law; Henrik’s affair with a nurse was unlikely to be at the top of her wish list. She’d always wanted Henrik to marry into a distinguished family—nobility, if possible.

  The thought made Nora smile once more. Everything would be fine; she could do this. She had her sons, she had a good job. And Sandhamn was hers; Henrik couldn’t take that away from her.

  She leaned forward and blew out the candles.

  CHAPTER 57

  “Are you awake?”

  The pleasant voice belonged to a doctor who looked to be about fifty. Her light-brown hair was caught up in a messy bun, and she wore her glasses on a chain around her neck.

  Pernilla blinked. She must have nodded off on the sofa in the waiting room. She felt as if she had been at the hospital for an eternity, but when she looked at the clock on the wall she saw that only a few hours had passed.

  It was almost two in the morning. Margit had kept her company for a while, but eventually accepted Pernilla’s assurances that she’d be fine on her own.

  “Are you awake?” the doctor repeated. “My name is Harriet Ström; I’m the ER duty doctor.”

  Pernilla sat up and ran her hands through her hair; she still felt a little disoriented.

  “How is he?”

  “If you’d like to come with me, we can have a chat. Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  Pernilla nodded and picked up her purse. She followed the doctor down the hall to an alcove housing a coffee machine.

  “Sugar?”

  “Please.”

  They went into a room containing a single desk. The doctor sat down, and Pernilla took the visitor’s chair opposite.

  “So you’re Thomas Andreasson’s wife?”

  Pernilla hesitated, then nodded. “How is he?” she asked again. The coffee cup was warm against her palms, but she still felt cold.