by Karen Swan
‘Say it,’ she demanded, feeling her own anger rise as he let the silence simply swallow up all these unspoken words and carry them off into the night – just like he had the night of the party. He was going to let it go. Let her go. He knew what coursed between them; she could see it in his eyes, in the way his muscles were tensing – but he wouldn’t act on it. He wouldn’t let himself get caught again, he wouldn’t be hurt.
He took a step back but she stepped into him, pushing his chest, goading him. She wouldn’t let him turn her away this time. ‘Say it! What do you need from me?’
Another moment contracted and tightened as if on a ratchet. ‘More than I can have.’
‘Which is what?’ Her body was right up against his now, defiance in her eyes. He was a master of keeping people at arm’s length – physically and emotionally. But she was in his face, in his space.
And then in his arms. He grabbed her coat and kissed her hard on the mouth, the bone-numbing cold dropping away as she felt only the heat in his lips. His stubble felt rough against her skin but she didn’t care as she kissed him back. She didn’t care about anything else at all. It was utterly unlike any kiss she had ever known and she would have lost herself in him, had he let her. But in the next moment, he pushed her away again.
‘There’s your answer. That’s what I need – more than you can give,’ he said, his breath coming heavily, his eyes glittering angrily as though all this was her fault, as though she’d taken something from him, something more than a kiss. He turned away and strode back into the house.
But Bo was on his heels and she let the door close behind her with a slam.
He turned in surprise to find her already throwing off her jacket and pulling her jumper and T-shirt over her head in one swift movement. ‘More than I can give?’ She met his gaze, refusing to let him run again. ‘I think I’ll be the judge of that.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
‘. . . He was left-handed, like me. Pretty much same height. Forensically, the wounds would have been inflicted similarly by us both in terms of angle and direction.’ Anders’ voice was flat as he spoke.
It still didn’t feel real. Bo closed her eyes, feeling his heart thumping in his chest below her ear. ‘Why was he there? Was it a burglary?’
There was a slight pause. ‘He had helped her with a box she was carrying.’
‘A box?’
She felt, as much as heard, the sharp intake of breath, as though he had a sudden stitch. ‘A speaker I had ordered. It was bigger than I had realized and I had told Ing I would collect it at the weekend. But we were having friends round for dinner beforehand and she thought it would be fun if we had it for that, so she went to get it herself. As a surprise.’ Bo heard the quaver in his voice, that sliding-doors decision that had changed everything. If she had just waited . . .
‘A neighbour saw them walking down the street together; he was carrying the box for her. They were talking, Ing was smiling. He assumed they were friends – or perhaps more.’
‘Which was why he wasn’t seen as a suspect, just a victim,’ Bo murmured.
‘I don’t know the rest for sure, no one does, but I assume he made a pass at her once they got to the apartment; that she turned him down and he . . . he snapped.’ A heavy silence reverberated, filled with so much pain and anger, she could feel the heat in him rising. ‘She was already down when I walked in. There was blood . . . everywhere. On her. On him. And he was –’ His voice was diamond-hard. ‘He was cleaning himself up when I walked in, getting ready to leave. And – I don’t remember much after that. He tried to get past me and we fought. We fell over Inger lying on the floor –’ His voice cleaved. ‘And for just a moment, my eyes met hers, both of us lying there, in the blood. But she didn’t see me, she had already gone. And that was when I felt something in me break. He couldn’t match my rage then, my pain; I just killed him.’
‘You avenged her,’ Bo said quietly.
His eyes met hers momentarily and she saw in them the bottomless sorrow that he managed to hide day-to-day, his terse manner like a mirror reflecting away the curious gazes of strangers.
She had pushed herself up to sitting again, not caring that the duvet slipped off her shoulders, leaving her bare. They were beyond the physical now. Last night had seen to that, the passion between them swinging wildly between raging sorrow, despair and anger, to something calmer and more tender; something approaching peace. ‘What happened to get you out again?’ she asked, gently stroking his chest.
‘A box of letters was found by the new tenants of our apartment. Ing had hidden them under a loose floorboard; they were only discovered when the new tenants decided to do some building works and replace the floors.’
‘What kind of letters?’
‘Similar to the messages you’ve been getting – they should be together, she was a whore . . .’ He flashed a look at her. ‘Plus photos of her walking back to the apartment, at lunch with her colleagues . . .’ A spasm of pain crossed his face again. ‘If she’d just told me . . .’
But she hadn’t wanted to worry him. He had been treated as a perpetrator and not a victim, his loss and the horror of what he found as he walked through his own front door a private hell he alone had to endure because a forensic coincidence and a well-intentioned secret cast him as guilty until proven innocent. She tried not to think about the terror Inger must have felt when she’d realized this friendly, helpful stranger was, in fact, Him.
He blinked up at her, one arm bent behind his head, his sabre-flash eyes now still pools, a Viking in repose. Her heart ached for his loss, her body yearned for his touch. She bent down to kiss him again, his lips so sweetly soft compared to the rest of him. He was muscle, sinew and bone, but in a different way to Zac. Zac worked out in order to climb in order to take photos to impress fans. Climbing was incidental to Anders, it simply got him to the top of the mountain and lifted him up to the view. He wasn’t trying to live a life that was about looking good, but about feeling good. He didn’t need an audience for validation. He actively didn’t want eyes on him ever again, and who could blame him? He just wanted to be free – from iron bars, from bloodied memories, from pain.
He reached up as the kiss became longer, deeper, and he pulled her down to him, flesh on flesh, heart to heart, everything starting up again. She was a hunger he couldn’t sate; he was a thirst she couldn’t quench. And now that they had begun trying, she didn’t know how they were ever supposed to stop.
They walked to the grocery store. It was all of four hundred yards from his house and they needed bread and wine and cheese. That was all. They could go that long, surely, without touching, without kissing, without needing to feel the other’s skin beside their own and then they would be back in the house again, behind closed doors, and they wouldn’t have to pretend to be something they weren’t. Separate.
They pushed open the door, the small bell tinkling overhead as they walked in.
‘Hei-hei,’ the black-haired man behind the counter said, looking up and nodding as he saw Anders; a flicker of recognition passing over his face as he saw Bo too.
‘Hei, Stale, how’s it going?’ Anders said in English, lightly skimming his hand over her backside whilst they were still obscured by the aisles, for the shelves came up to his shoulder height and up to her eyeline. ‘How’s it going?’
‘Good. We got more Haandbryggeriet in if you want it.’
‘Always. You know me.’
‘What’s that?’ she whispered.
‘My favourite beer.’
‘Haandbryggeriet,’ she murmured, trying to commit the word to memory.
They wandered down an aisle together, trying to hide from the shopkeeper’s sight.
‘Cheese?’ she asked him, picking up a wrapped slab of cheese and trying to find any kind of identifying characteristics in English. Was it a cheddar?
‘Butter,’ Anders murmured, amusement in his voice as he came up behind her, his hands skimming her curves again and sending b
utterflies to take wing in her stomach again. ‘Cheese is ost.’
‘Ost,’ she echoed, seeing how his eyes fell to her lips as she said it.
Anders glanced back at Stale to see if he was watching. He was. Anders cleared his throat and moved off. ‘So did you catch the game last night? Was it good?’
‘So-so,’ Stale shrugged. ‘Where were you?’
‘Alesund. Running errands,’ he shrugged, making no mention at all – either by word or action – of the behaviour he had endured there: the reckless judgements of a club full of strangers that carelessly overlooked that he had been both cleared of one murder and justified in the other. The stigma would stick, no matter what he did now. He was famous for being a killer. Not a pardoned one.
Bo watched him, swelling with pride that he was strong enough to keep putting one foot forward, to be the bigger man. She understood now why he had come home, and why his neighbours were so fiercely loyal to and protective of him. She found some ost and joined him over at the wine aisle. ‘Ost,’ she said, showing him her prize.
A small smile hovered on his lips. ‘Very good.’
‘Shall I get the bread?’ she asked, watching him watching her.
‘Can you get the bread?’
‘Depends. What’s the word?’
‘Brod.’
‘Brod,’ she echoed, pushing her lips together in a pout and eliciting a small groan from him. She smiled, taking her time. ‘Then I shall go to get . . . brod.’
Unlike the cheese and butter, there was nothing else masquerading as bread and even without being armed with the correct vocabulary, she picked up a loaf.
They met again at the counter, amusement on their lips, desire in their eyes; they needed to get back to the house and fast.
‘How much?’ Anders asked Stale, rummaging in his pocket for change.
‘Two hundred and eleven kroner,’ Stale replied, holding his hand out as he looked across at Bo.
Anders caught his stare. ‘You know Bo, right?’
‘Yeah, you came in the other day.’
‘I did,’ she nodded.
‘I remember. Annika got you your medicine, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Bo’s a client,’ Anders said. ‘She’s staying up at the farm at the moment.’
‘Oh I wish I’d known that earlier. Did that guy catch up with you in the end?’
Bo felt her smile freeze in place. ‘. . . What guy?’
‘He was in here this morning. A couple of hours ago. He showed me a picture of you and asked where you were staying. I didn’t know you were one of Anders’ clients or I’d have told him. Sorry.’ He put the money in the till and handed Anders back some change.
But Anders didn’t seem to notice. ‘Did he leave a name?’
‘No, I didn’t ask.’
‘Well, what did he look like?’ he demanded.
‘Uh, five eleven, I guess. Medium build. Greyish curly hair. Sort of Italian-looking. Glasses.’
‘How old?’
‘Mid-fifties?’
‘Where’s he staying?’
Stale looked taken aback by the interrogation. ‘I don’t know. He just came in, asked if I’d seen you and knew where you were staying. That was it.’
‘And you told him—?’ Anders pressed.
‘That I’d seen you but I thought you’d gone already.’ Stale looked between them. ‘That’s okay, isn’t it?’
Anders’ face had become rigid with tension; he was back to being the statue she had first met, a man set in concrete, shrouded in pain. ‘If you see him again – you call me. Okay?’
‘Sure.’
‘Immediately.’
‘Okay, man,’ Stale said, looking bewildered.
Bo watched Anders, seeing the way his pupils had dilated, his cheeks flushed. Fight or flight. And he was a proven fighter.
‘And don’t – under any circumstances – tell him that you’ve seen her since, or where she’s staying.’
‘. . . Is everything okay?’ Stale frowned.
‘It’s fine. But just don’t tell him anything.’
‘All right, all right, I won’t.’
Anders looked across at her. ‘Let’s get out of here.’ With a hand on her shoulder, he steered her to the door, looking outside left and right before he opened it, like a tracker scanning for clues.
‘Hey, Anders, your change, man!’ Stale called, holding out a twenty-kroner note.
But Anders didn’t hear and the bell tinkled again as they walked back out into the snow, changed back into the people they had been before, the midnight spell already wearing off.
They stood in his kitchen, the curtains drawn even though it was light – one of the few hours of daylight today would enjoy.
‘It could just be coincidence,’ he said, pacing agitatedly as the kettle boiled.
She watched him, feeling a rock in her stomach at the sight of him. ‘It’s not.’
He glanced at her, their gazes tangling together in a web of pain and misery, before turning away again. They both knew there was an obvious solution, the only solution, one neither of them wanted to face. She watched as he heaped coffee into the pot before losing count, or interest, letting the spoon drop from his hand, granules scattering across the counter.
He dropped his head for a moment, taking a deep breath before he cleared his throat. ‘Then you have to leave here. Get away as soon as possible.’
She stared at the ground. ‘I know.’
The sound of the kettle filled their silence and she felt his eyes upon her for a moment before he turned and began rattling in the cupboard for cups. But he didn’t want a coffee and nor did she. He was just trying to do something.
And that was the problem. He had already been through this – the woman he cared about under threat; that time he had been too late to save her, perhaps by only a few minutes, and he had almost lost his life and liberty in trying to do something about it. There were still conditions upon his parole, and affray or assault, anything to bring him in front of a judge again, would see him back behind bars. She couldn’t expose him to that risk. She wouldn’t let him fight this fight. It wasn’t his problem. She wasn’t his problem. Not yet. Not ever.
She cleared her throat, forcing herself to look at him, to say these words. ‘I’ll tell Zac. He’ll know what to do.’
A frown crossed his face – hurt like a whipcrack through his eyes – and then his features hardened beneath the skin, the muscles becoming tight. ‘Yes.’
‘He’s . . . he’s good in a crisis.’ She saw how his fist pulled into pulsing punches as he forced down the emotions rising in him. ‘And he’s been talking about us moving on anyway. He mentioned it last night.’
He frowned. ‘Where?’
‘The Caribbean.’ Somewhere frivolous, photogenic. Far from here.
He was quiet for a long time, his words pushed back into silence again. ‘Then I’d better take you back.’
Lodal, September 1936
First three lambs from the field and now, on her watch, two kids. Signy counted again but there was no disputing it. She even knew which ones had gone – the grey with the black face, and the black with the brown flash. She rang the bell harder, their mothers bleating and crying, but there was no sound of them coming over the rocks, back into sight. It had been forty minutes now since she had rung them back to her, shaking the seed box, seeing how they hungrily gathered back into a tight knot.
But not those two. They had wandered too far – chosen their moment when her back was turned as she picked the berries Brit had wanted; or was it when she’d counted the gyrfalcon chicks on their first flight? Either way, they weren’t coming back. She picked up a rock and threw it in frustration, watching as it bounced off down the slope, making the other goats scatter. She had thought she was ready, she had thought she was prepared – the knife angled in her belt and grazing the herd closer to the seter too, knowing the wolf was tightening the loop, circling ever closer. But he had won by steal
th and cunning. He wouldn’t take on an open fight with her, with a knife. He didn’t need to.
‘Come on!’ she snapped, beginning to stride out, jabbing her walking pole hard into the ground as she headed back for the farm. Looking for them wasn’t an option – not on her own with the rest of the herd to corral.
The others were working in the field as she got back, marching up the grass, arms swinging madly. Kari and Ashi were lugging urns of churned butter between them over to the ground cellar, their backs hunched and arms stretched long as they lumbered across the uneven ground in an ungainly crab walk, both of them grunting with the effort.
‘Two kids gone!’ she cried as she stormed up to them, throwing down the basket of berries and feeling hot tears of frustration springing to her eyes. It felt like failure – her failure – to have lost them.
‘Oh no, you are kidding,’ Brit said, looking up from her stool. She was shoeing the horse, picking out mud from its hoof.
Signy shook her head woefully.
‘You’re sure they’re not lost?’
‘I’m telling you, it’s a wolf, Brit. I’ve heard it.’
Brit suppressed a sigh. They had all been over this. ‘But there’s been no carcasses.’
‘Yes! There was the deer carcass behind the forge,’ Signy argued.
‘That could have been natural causes. There’s been no other sign of attack. And no one else has heard it. How do you know you didn’t dream it?’
‘I know what I heard,’ Signy insisted, looking over at Sofie as she too turned to listen. She was pegging the washed clothes to the line strung up between the cabins, damp dresses, blouses, skirts and knickers fluttering above the path. ‘Haven’t you heard it, Sofie?’ She knew full well she would have done. They had both been awake and outdoors when it had howled.