The Ice Beneath Her

by Camilla Grebe

  “Fine,” I say.

  Doris Day nods guardedly and fixes her hair with one hand.

  “Then we’ll arrange a pawn ticket for you. I’ll need some information.” She takes out a form and puts it in front of me. Puts a check in front of some of the boxes. “You should fill in your information here and here and here. And I need your ID.”

  I give it to her and think, No, I’m not ashamed to be here. It’s not my fault I ended up in this fucking mess, and I’m not ashamed I’m finally doing something to get myself out of it. Suddenly it feels important to highlight this fact—I have nothing to be ashamed of.

  “Great, then I can pay my bills. I can get my phone turned back on. And my cable too, of course. And the rent, I almost forgot that. What if they’d evicted me? That would have been awful.”

  Doris Day doesn’t answer, just nods, her head bowed. She’s heard it all, I guess. The woman on the couch is blushing, looking like she wants to run away with her plastic bag.

  “Goodbye,” I say to her. “Hope you get a lot for that.” She squeezes the bag in her lap without answering me.

  HANNE

  Gunilla drives me to Skeppargatan. It’s already dark, though it’s only four o’clock in the afternoon, and it’s treacherously slippery. She parks on Kaptensgatan, shuts off the engine, and turns to me. Her blond hair shines like a halo around her head under the glow of the streetlight.

  “You want me to come with you?”

  I consider it. “Yes, please. If you don’t mind. He’s not usually home at this time, but you never know…”

  “Of course. Let’s go get Frida.”

  We walk the short distance to the door.

  Strange. It’s only been a few days since I left, but the building already feels altered in some way. Darker, less hospitable, as if it doesn’t really want to be my home anymore. As if it’s terminated our contract and kicked me out. Though the opposite is the case, I think. I’m the one who’s leaving Skeppargatan.

  I punch in the code, and the door opens with a muffled hum.

  As we ride the elevator up, I root around for the keys in my bag, feel my fingers shaking as I finally grab hold of them, and when Gunilla opens the elevator door I drop them on the floor. She picks them up and puts her hand tentatively on my cheek, as if wondering if I have a fever.

  “Oh sweetie. You’re shaking.”

  “It’s just—”

  She nods quickly, grabs my arm, and leads me to the apartment. Takes the keys and unlocks the door. Frida immediately rushes out, jumping around my legs. I squat down. Bury my face in her black coat and let the tears flow. Frida licks my face and whimpers slightly.

  All this unconditional canine love, I think. What did I do to deserve it? And why does human love always require us to submit and adapt? Why can’t we just love each other without needing to own each other?

  We go into the hall and turn on the light. It looks exactly the same. My clothes and shoes are hanging neatly on hooks in the hall. The mail lies in a small pile on the bureau under the mirror. Gunilla goes to it, rifling slowly through the stack and taking out a few pieces, which I suppose are for me.

  I look into the kitchen. My little yellow Post-it notes are still hanging on the kitchen cabinets. Fluttering gently in the draft from the window.

  Reminders.

  The sound of the clock ticking in the kitchen is annoyingly loud, penetrating my ears. I turn around and go into the living room. Run my eyes over the bookshelves. Think a few seconds, then grab Halvorsen’s memoirs about his move to Greenland at the beginning of the last century and a collection of essays about the Inuit that my father gave me when I started at the university. Then I look at all the objects: masks and statues and the rest. But the only thing I feel is disgust, a kind of nausea almost, when I think about why we got them. I can’t bring myself to take even one of them to Gunilla’s.

  “Don’t you have enough books? Shouldn’t you bring some clothes instead?” Gunilla asks.

  I shake my head. “I need to buy new ones anyway.”

  We fall silent, and the sound of the kitchen clock creeps into my head once more. Bouncing between my temples and drilling small, distinct painful holes into my consciousness. Suddenly I feel the whole room start to warp, as if it’s swinging, and I feel nauseous. Take a few steps forward to Gunilla and grasp her hand.

  She seems concerned. A deep wrinkle has appeared between her eyebrows, and she squeezes my hand.

  “Toiletries? Is there anything you need?”

  I shake my head. “Nothing,” I say. “I don’t need anything from here.”

  —

  When we get back to Gunilla’s apartment, she boils tea for me while she packs. She’s going on a twenty-four-hour cruise with her new lover. The man who makes her feel young again.

  Horny. In a way her former husband hadn’t done in years.

  Frida lies on a blanket on the sofa, sleeping. Happily oblivious to human problems. Gunilla is singing softly; I can’t make out what, but it’s cozy. It reminds me of something long ago—a time I’ve forgotten, or perhaps buried because it’s too painful to think about.

  Imagine being that insanely happy again. In love and horny and passionate, even though you’re close to retirement and your children are grown. Going on a cruise, eating good food, and having sex with someone you actually want to make love to. Because of lust, rather than habit or loyalty or maybe just submission.

  Was it ever like that for Owe and me? Back when we were both young?

  Though actually, only I was young when we met. Nineteen. He was almost thirty, had already been married once, and was finished with his residency. You can’t escape the fact that I went from one parent to another, from one kind of submission to another.

  But surely we had passion?

  I’m trying to remember. But as usual when I think back on my relationship with Owe, there’s so much missing, so many holes in the brittle fabric of my memory that I can’t really evoke how things felt. Maybe because of everything that’s come between it: the shame in Owe’s face when he looks at my notes on the kitchen doors, the weak but still perceptible smell of boiled cabbage around his body, the ugly cardigan that he insists on wearing, even when we have dinner parties. And his way of silencing guests with his haughty drivel about philosophy or the theater—even when he doesn’t really know what he’s talking about.

  “Will you be okay?” Gunilla says, as she sets her weekend bag down in the hall and puts on her fur jacket.

  “Absolutely.”

  “And you’ll call if you need me?”

  I go out into the hall and give her a long hug. Breathe in the scent of her perfume and rest my cheek for a second on the coat’s soft lapel.

  “Have a wonderful time,” I say, and hope it sounds like I truly mean it.

  She lets go of me, a little hesitantly. Raises her hand in a small wave, smiles faintly, takes the bag in her hand, and leaves.

  —

  I pour water into a glass and take my medicine, one yellow and two white pills. Think: Here I am, living on borrowed time. In Gunilla’s kitchen, far from Owe on the other side of the city.

  Life is strange, and doesn’t become any less so as you get older. But you get used to strangeness, learn to accept it. The trick is to reconcile yourself to the fact that life never turns out like you expect it to.

  It’s nine-twenty in the evening, and the storm beats against the kitchen window and whistles around the building. But inside it’s warm and cozy. Floral pillows, colorful curtains with ruffles—everything Gunilla’s husband loathed—crowded into the room. Jörn was a builder, though he fancied himself something of an architect. Their home was all in white and various shades of gray, as minimalistic and asexual as a medical laboratory. And every one of Gunilla’s attempts to lighten up their strict home with colorful pillows or hand-painted porcelain was ruthlessly rejected.

  I look out through the black window, wonder how Gunilla is doing out on the Baltic Sea in this storm
.

  Owe has texted me three times today. The first time he apologized for his behavior yesterday outside Gunilla’s apartment. Explained that he loves me, that Frida’s being well cared for, and that they both miss me. The second message was more urgent. He’d discovered that Frida was gone and wrote that I “at least could have warned” him. I could sense his frustration at losing control of me between the lines of the short message, like a dull, menacing undertone in a piece of music.

  The third message arrived an hour ago and was filled with a barely suppressed fury:

  Suggest we meet at 21:00 at KB to discuss our options. I assume you’ll be there. Owe

  I can almost see him at the bar, a glass of Chablis in hand. Furious that I haven’t shown up, his gray hair sticking up on end.

  My cellphone buzzes, and I pick it up. Feel only exhaustion when I read his message:

  Do not expect ANY support from me. I have put up with you for the LAST time. Your behavior is INEXCUSABLE. You’re on your own now.

  I look down at the kitchen table, which is covered with papers. I browse aimlessly through the reports about Calderón’s murder. Looking once more at the severed head and its taped-open eyes. Reading my own words:

  The head has been deliberately placed so it is visible from the entrance door, the eyelids taped open. Probably so potential visitors will be forced to meet the victim’s gaze. Possible reasons for this are…

  Somewhere deep in my mind a thought is forming, so vague it almost slips away. I reach for the technician’s report from Jesper Orre’s house and search through it. My eyes stop on the list of objects found on the floor of the hall, and there it is: two broken matchsticks found next to the dead woman’s head.

  I reach for my cellphone and call Peter’s number. He answers almost immediately, as if he were waiting for my call out there in the storm.

  “Hanne?” he says.

  “I found something.”

  “Found something?”

  “Yes, in the technician’s report from Orre’s house.”

  Pause. I hear music in the background.

  “Ah, okay. Shall we take a look at it tomorrow morning? I’m on my way home.”

  “I think it’s important.”

  Another pause. “Where are you?”

  —

  Fifteen minutes later, the doorbell rings. Peter has snow in his hair and on his hook nose, and I have the impulse to lean forward and brush him off. I stop myself at the last moment. “Come in.”

  He stomps off his shoes and hangs his jacket on the hook next to mine. Glances around the bright hall. His thin cheeks are red with cold, and drops of water glisten in his blond eyebrows.

  “Nice apartment. Yours?”

  I shake my head. “No. I’m staying with a friend right now.”

  I lead the way into the kitchen and gesture toward one of the chairs. “Sit down. Would you like a cup of tea?”

  He shakes his head. “No, thanks. I’m good.”

  I sit down next to him and flip through the technical report from Orre’s home. “That neighbor,” I say. “Did she touch the victim?”

  Peter looks confused. “The old lady? The one who found her?”

  “Yes.”

  Peter runs his hand through his hair and looks up at the ceiling.

  “Yeah. She did. If I remember correctly, she said she checked to see if she was really dead. As if there could be any doubt about that.”

  “So she touched the head?”

  “She could have, yes.”

  “Did she move it?”

  He meets my eyes again. His green eyes are bloodshot, as if he’s been crying or maybe partied too hard. I lean toward the latter option.

  “Did she move it? No, I don’t think so. She might have touched it.”

  “Then something may have been…dislodged at the crime scene.”

  “Absolutely. The way she trudged around.”

  “Because it says here…” I slide my finger along the text, looking for the passage that caught my interest, and continue: “It says here that two broken matchsticks were found on the floor next to the head.”

  Peter leans forward. Reading the report.

  “Yeah. Two matches, a one-krona coin, a cigarette lighter, and a Chanel lip gloss. Probably things that the victim had in her pockets and that fell on the floor while they fought.”

  “What if the matches didn’t end up there by chance,” I say.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What if the killer had put them in the victim’s eyes, to hold them open.”

  Peter examines the technical sketch.

  “The matches were found here,” I say, pointing to the sketch. “Adjacent to the head. If the killer placed them in the victim’s eyes, they may have fallen out and onto the floor when the neighbor moved the head.”

  Peter sighs and puts his forehead against his hand.

  “So what you’re saying is that the perp might have wanted to keep this victim’s eyes open, like in the Calderón case?”

  “Exactly.”

  “So the person who came through the door would have to meet the victim’s gaze.”

  “That’s the other thing I’ve been thinking about. What if it’s the opposite?”

  “The opposite?”

  “Yes, what if it’s the victim who’s being forced to see?”

  “But the victim is dead.”

  “Well, of course. But think symbolically. The perpetrator murders and mutilates the victim. But that’s not enough. After the murder, he tapes or braces the victim’s eyes open so that he or she will have to watch them leave. The ultimate humiliation. I take your life, and then I leave, as if nothing has happened. And I force you to watch me do it.”

  Peter looks doubtful.

  “What’s the difference?” he asks finally.

  “Well, there’s a huge difference. Keeping the eyes open to ensure that the next visitor meets the victim’s gaze is an aggressive act directed at the outside world, or against the visitor. Keeping the eyes open so that the victim is forced to watch the perp leave is an act directed at the victim. The ultimate revenge. For some reason it was important to the killer that the victim watched as he walked away. Think of it as a kind of liberation from the victim.”

  “And what does that mean on a practical level?”

  “It’s likely that the victim and the perpetrator had a close relationship.”

  “What kind of relationship?”

  “I don’t know. A love affair, perhaps.”

  We’re still sitting in Gunilla’s kitchen a few hours later, talking about the case. Peter isn’t completely convinced by my theory. He seems to buy that the matches may have been deliberately placed in the victim’s eyes, but even though I explain it to him over and over again, he doesn’t seem to understand why it’s so important that the victim, rather than anyone else, should be forced to see.

  After a while we start to talk about other things. A tentative conversation about the weather and his colleagues at the police station. About politics and how the town has changed over the past ten years. Cautious questions about our lives—neither of us mentions the strange fact that we’re sitting here, alone, in a kitchen at night. That after so many years we’re actually talking to each other again, for real.

  I allow myself to feel a kind of sadness over what will never be. The life we could have had together.

  At half past ten he says he has to go. He has to be up early to sift through all the tips that have come in as to the identity of the unknown woman. There’s something restless in his gangly body as he gets up, goes out into the hall, and pulls on his jacket. He bends forward, puts on his sneakers, which are too thin for winter.

  He always dressed too lightly, I think, and remember the old black leather jacket he wore, no matter the weather. In the end it was so worn out it literally fell apart. Maybe I should have bought him a warmer jacket, but that’s not something you do, not for your lover. That kind of care is reserved for a husband
.

  “Well,” he says. “See you tomorrow?”

  “Yes, see you then,” I say.

  Then we stand opposite each other in Gunilla’s hall. Actually, much too close for comfort. So close that I catch a whiff of his scent—sweat and cigarette smoke—and see the wrinkles that mark the passage of time on his face, like rings on a tree.

  For a second, I think he wants to kiss me: He leans forward slightly, over me. But then he extends his hand.

  I take it quickly and for a moment it comes back again, that desperate feeling of outrage and sorrow over his betrayal. And anger. Anger that his touch still makes my body remember how it was, back then.

  Then he’s gone. And all I can think is: He shook my hand. What a bizarre way to say goodbye to someone you’ve once been so close to. Couldn’t he just have hugged me, like normal people do?

  He shook my hand.

  EMMA

  ONE MONTH EARLIER

  I’m thinking about the night Mom killed the butterfly.

  From the outset, several things made that evening different from most. First, there was Mom slamming the china in the kitchen. Plates, glasses, and silverware clanging against each other. And then wineglasses. I could definitely tell they were wineglasses. The sound is different from a water glass—a deeper, rounder, and more sinister ring.

  The scent of chicken and fresh herbs spreads through the apartment.

  It all added up to something bad. An ordinary evening was merely monotonous, but an evening with wine and fancy food was completely unpredictable. In the best-case scenario, Dad would fall asleep while Mom watched TV on the sofa, but it was more likely that tense discussions would turn into arguments and then, as a kind of finale, the china would end up crashing against the floor and walls.

  Once the police even knocked on the door because the neighbors had complained. I felt so ashamed I hid under the bed. But the two people who should have been ashamed, Mom and Dad, seemed completely unmoved by the visit. They’d pulled themselves together enough to almost seem sober and in low, remorseful voices swore they’d calm down and be quiet. Yes, they’d had a fight, been a little too loud, but it wouldn’t happen again. And no, they hadn’t been drinking, at least not very much. A couple of glasses of wine, at most.