The Viper

by Hakan Ostlundh

Not that she’d had a lot of boyfriends. Her relationships were few and short-lived, and she was usually the one who broke them off. So she couldn’t exactly complain. She wanted to be seduced. Always. Every time. Why did the guys she met always think they had free access to her body just because she had given in once? That she would want to make love to someone who wasn’t ready to conquer her again each time he stepped through the door? Was that asking too much? Anyway, those were her conditions.

  She felt the impulse to crawl back into bed and touch herself, but decided that she didn’t have time. She climbed into the shower instead.

  Mother had called and told her that Father was coming home. That was a week ago. More or less. Of course she had wanted Elin to come down. Elin had been noncommittal. Said that it depended on how her studies were going, and Mother had of course pointed out that she could bring her books with her and study down there. Because it would so nice if …

  As if she could find enough peace and quiet in that house to read so much as two lines. But she didn’t say that. They were going to speak later. And Mother called and pressured her and Elin had given in and promised to come, but then she had called to say that she couldn’t come after all, but hadn’t been able to get hold of her and couldn’t get herself to just leave a message on the answering machine.

  “It would be so nice to sit down at the same table all together. We haven’t done that in so long.”

  How could she say something like that? Did she mean one single word of what she said?

  Elin turned up the cold water and raised her face into the shower stream, felt how her skin got covered in goosebumps. The shampoo smelled of apple.

  All together. Yes, it had been a long time since they had all sat down together at the same table. It was true. Maybe the only thing that was true. Ten years ago. And they would never be all together again. Did she realize what she was saying? Didn’t she hear her own words? Never again would they ever be able to sit down, all together, at the same table. Elin pulled her fingers through her hair and down over her face as if she wanted to claw away the thoughts, then let the cool water run over her.

  It felt good to have water that wet you right down to the skin, enveloped you, didn’t just bounce off you like the hard water on Gotland.

  Was it Mother’s eternal duty to always try to make things better? Whatever the cost? Sure her intentions may have been good, but when your good intentions made you blind, what was the point?

  Elin had been shocked when she heard that her father was coming home. Actually on his way. She wondered what her mother was thinking. She had wanted to ask, but hadn’t had the courage, had tried to be as sensitive as possible, listen to every pause, every breath, but hadn’t been able to detect anything that revealed what Mother was really feeling.

  When Father first began spending more and more time away in Tokyo, Elin had taken the opportunity to get a room in Visby, like so many other kids her age who commuted to the high school there. Father hadn’t said anything. She wasn’t sure that he’d even been told.

  Then, once she’d turned eighteen, there was nothing to stop her. She moved to Stockholm. Worked for a year in a café in the center of town, an awful place to work with a constant turnover of stressed customers you never saw twice, an obnoxious and sometimes downright mean boss who scared away his employees. When Elin quit after a year, none of the people working with her had been there for as long as she had. She went to Thailand on vacation, took a bus to Cambodia and saw Angkor Vat, had sex on a beach and got blisters, came home and enrolled at Stockholm University. She studied French for two semesters. She couldn’t say that she regretted it, she spoke French fluently now, but it had still sort of been a waste of time and definitely a result of cowardice. She hadn’t dared to make a serious start and now that she had finally chosen a five-year degree program it meant that she was no longer eligible for financial aid covering the full five years. She had heard that you could get a special dispensation, but she wasn’t sure. People said so many things. Oh, well … She was just six weeks into her psychology degree and her financial aid wouldn’t run out for another five years almost. She could survive one semester without financial aid one way or the other. There was no reason to get worked up about it.

  Her father would most likely give her money, but he was the last person she wanted to ask. The last person on earth.

  She turned off the water. She had been standing in the shower far too long. Her skin was so tight that you could almost hear it crackling. She put cream on, wrapped herself in a towel, and removed the wineglass that was still standing on the coffee table from last night. A dried film of red wine remained underneath.

  She and Molly had drunk a couple of glasses of wine at El Mundo yesterday, before Molly was going off to meet her boyfriend. Elin had become friends with Molly after only a few weeks in French class. Molly was her closest friend in Stockholm and they met a few times a week, although it was a little less often now that Molly had a boyfriend. Or else the evenings became shorter, like yesterday, and Elin had to round things off by herself in front of the TV.

  She tossed a change of clothes, some underwear, her vanity bag, and two psychology books into her black leather shoulder bag from Prada. Her father had brought it from Tokyo as a belated birthday present about a year ago. It was the third time she had used it.

  Each time she boarded the ferry or the plane it was as if she shed her skin. She put on the clothes that her parents expected her to be wearing, wore purses and jewelry she never used otherwise. And started speaking in a Gotland dialect again.

  She was going to stay two days max.

  She put the opened Bag-in-Box wine into a plastic shopping bag, and then left.

  * * *

  THE YOUNG MAN who opened the door had short blond hair and light-blue eyes. He was tall, broad shouldered, and the skin on his lightly tanned face was almost unnaturally perfect. Beautiful, thought Sara Oskarsson. It wasn’t often she thought that about a man. Good looking, attractive, sure, but seldom beautiful. At the same time there was a certain heaviness about him. As if he had been out partying or maybe had just slept badly.

  The realization that there were two police officers standing outside the door seemed to perk Ricky Traneus up a little, but only a little.

  And we don’t exactly have very uplifting news to tell him, thought Sara.

  Göran had already introduced himself, gestured at Sara and introduced her, too. Sara nodded and said hello. She tried to concentrate. That ought to have been easy, given their reason for being there, but she was still feeling a little off-kilter. She still hadn’t had a chance to land properly after her vacation, had too many things on her mind: Douglas from Vancouver who had really given her life a spin just when she’d started seeing a guy in Visby; not a relationship yet, but sort of the awkward beginnings of one. What was the point of even thinking about a guy from Canada who certainly had no plans of moving to an island in the middle of the Baltic? And she for her part had no plans on emigrating.

  It was just a few nights, a holiday adventure. Couldn’t she just be her usual rational, single-minded self and draw a line through it? Stow it away like a pleasant little memory? Where Douglas himself was concerned, she had pretty much done that. But there was more to it … consequences … and the fact that she didn’t know if it was the Canadian or the guy from Visby who was the father. Not that that really made any difference. Her mind was already made up, all she had to do was pick up the receiver and make the call. She couldn’t understand why she hadn’t done that. Were there already some treacherous hormones defying her mind’s authority?

  She had lost control. Behaved … irresponsibly? Could you say that? She bore no responsibility toward anyone but herself. She had let go, let herself go. Become intoxicated, literally, but also in a broader sense she had given into reckless abandon, followed her feelings; no, gone chasing after them, been just as fast as them, no distance, no consideration. It had been amazing.

  Dangerous? S
tupid even. The anxiety gnawed away at her. Was it really worth it?

  And now she was right in the middle of investigating a double murder, had to inform someone of the death of a loved one, and her thoughts were just flapping around inside her head.

  Sara, for Christ’s sake, she thought.

  The beautiful young man uttered something in response to a question from Göran and let them in. Sara spotted something that looked like a Christmas decoration when she passed through the hall, but considering that it was only October, she assumed that it was meant to be ironic.

  Ricky Traneus stopped irresolutely in front of the doorway leading into the kitchen.

  “Could we sit down?” asked Göran.

  “Sure, sure,” said Ricky Traneus and let them go in first.

  The house was about three miles from the house where Ricky grew up. He rented it from the farm’s owner who lived a stone’s throw away in the new main farmhouse. Although “new,” in this case, meant that it was about a hundred years old.

  The house Ricky was renting was easily two hundred years old, but his furniture and possessions were anything but nineteenth century. They sat down on black Ant chairs around a black superelipse table. In the middle of the table stood a tall, red glass vase, and hanging on the wall was a painting of three blurred figures sitting around a set dinner table.

  “I’m afraid we have some bad news,” said Sara. “It’s about your mother, Kristina Traneus.”

  Ricky Traneus’s eyes widened a little.

  “She was found dead in her home, this morning.”

  Ricky sat there silently, didn’t move. He stared straight at Sara without showing the slightest indication of having taken in what she just said.

  “I’m very sorry to have to bring you such upsetting news,” she said.

  “Dead?” he said.

  “Yes, I’m sorry. That’s right. She’s dead.”

  She saw how Ricky Traneus’s eyes suddenly glistened over. He raised his hand to his face and bowed his head.

  “My God, it can’t be true,” he said softly.

  Sara waited before saying anything more.

  “Why?” said Ricky and looked up. “How? She’s healthy, not even fifty years old. Or has there been an accident?”

  “Your mother didn’t die of natural causes,” Göran took over.

  He was sitting there pitched slightly forward over the table with his hands loosely clasped and his forearms resting against the metal edge of the table.

  Ricky stiffened.

  “We have reason to believe that she’s been murdered,” Göran continued. “We don’t know yet exactly what happened, but we’re doing everything we can to find out.”

  Ricky let his hand drop from his face. He wasn’t able to get a word out, just shook his head.

  “Another person has been found dead in the house. A man. We haven’t been able to identify him yet, but there is, as you may understand, at least a theoretical possibility that it could be your father, Arvid Traneus.”

  “No, no, no!”

  Ricky Traneus stood up suddenly and took a few steps away from the table.

  “No, no!” he repeated, ran his hands roughly through his hair and drew in a few deep, heavy breaths.

  Sara and Göran also stood up, but did it slowly and quietly so as not to add to his distress.

  “But that’s not something we know for sure yet,” Göran emphasized.

  Sara walked over to Ricky.

  “Wouldn’t you like to sit down again?” she said and touched him gently as if to turn him back toward the table.

  “Yeah, yes,” he said softly without moving.

  He hid his face once again with his hands and whimpered a word that Sara didn’t quite make out. Was it daddy?

  “Come and sit down,” she said, took a firmer hold of Ricky Traneus’s arm, and led him back to the chair. “I understand that this is a lot to take in all at once.”

  She asked the usual questions, if there was anyone who could come and be with him, so he wouldn’t have to be alone. Said that they could stay there until then.

  “My sister is on her way,” said Ricky.

  “Really?” said Sara in surprise, as if logic had been turned on its head.

  “We were going to meet up tonight. The whole family that is. It was Mother who…”

  Ricky looked at his watch.

  “She’s on her way over now, Elin that is. I’m supposed to pick her up at the bus station.”

  Sara nodded.

  “Do you think you can manage that?”

  “Sure. Yes, I think so. It’ll be good to see her.”

  13.

  “A birthmark,” said Eva Karlén who was down on all fours shining a flashlight underneath the gray velvet sofa, “that sounds good.”

  The memory of the two lacerated bodies was not something you could shake off easily, but the horrific sight had nonetheless had time to subside a little during the drive into Visby. But now the room threw itself over them once again. The bodies were covered, but the blood spatter on the furniture and walls screamed out its message even louder now that the bodies were hidden. Blood had spurted right out over the couch, hitting the wall behind it way up near the ceiling. The traces of blood were dark red where they were thickest, but almost pink further out toward the edges where they were just scattered dots on the light wallpaper.

  “Just above the knee,” Gustav specified.

  “Right,” said Eva and switched off the flashlight.

  She sat up and looked at them.

  “Göran and Sara are informing the son about his mother,” she said and gestured at the covered female body.

  She got up slowly as she continued:

  “I’ve called in for a medical examiner. I hope she doesn’t take too long getting here. It’s starting to get a little ripe in here.”

  The smell was striking, but bearable. Like opening a refrigerator where something had gone past its use-by date.

  “If this had been an ordinary October, we could have just turned down the heating, but it’s eighteen degrees out,” said Eva.

  About a year ago, when Eva and Fredrik’s passionate but short-lived fling had come to an end, he had found it literally painful to even be in the same room with her. Every morning when he stepped in through the front entrance to the police station he shuddered at the prospect of meeting up with her at a crime scene, at a run-through of the forensic details of a case, or just in the coffee room, which inevitably happened at least a few times a week. And each time he felt that same heavy doleful feeling inside, a strange mixture of longing and self-reproach.

  Ninni and he had gone to see a family therapist a few times. Out of all the rehashing, there were a few words that had become etched in his mind, something the therapist had said: “There are always going to be other women, other men, temptations. Abstaining from them is part of what it means to be in a relationship.”

  That was right. At least it sounded right. Or proper. At the same time it sounded pretty harsh, demanding, like something a priest might have said. But it had stuck and he thought about it a lot. Especially when he and Eva Karlén ended up in the same room together.

  After a few months the discomfort had disappeared and he had slowly started to realize that it might actually be good for them to work together. It left no room for fantasies, no chance that you could carry around a dream that wasn’t real, that would otherwise have slowly but surely chafed a hole in his marriage. It was what it was. He was back with Ninni. Of course, she wasn’t exactly pleased about his proximity to Eva Karlén, but that was something she had to live with as long as they chose to stay on the island. What Eva thought about the whole thing, he had no idea, since they never spoke about such matters anymore. For a while it seemed as if she and her husband had managed to patch things up between them, but it was apparently just temporary, if the rumors were true. Fredrik hadn’t tried to find out any more.

  Of course it wasn’t completely without its complications. The
re were days when those impassioned spring months seemed like ancient history, but there were also days when it felt like yesterday. And those days were not good days.

  “Okay, birthmark above the right knee, guess we might as well have a look-see,” said Eva and pulled out a pair of scissors with angled blades from her bag.

  “We were given this, too. It’s Anders Traneus from five years ago, but it’s supposed to be a good likeness,” said Gustav and held up the photo Sofia Traneus had removed from her photo album.

  Eva looked at the photo without touching it.

  “I doubt it’ll be of much help, but I guess we shouldn’t leave any stone unturned,” she said and walked up to the body in the corner.

  She folded back a piece of the thin, white plastic sheet exposing the man’s face. Gustav and Fredrik took a step forward. They were inclined to agree with her.

  “I actually think I’ve never seen anything like this before, not in real life or in a photo,” said Eva. “The blow across the eyes and the root of the nose has impacted so hard and deep that the eyes have been ripped out of their sockets. Then there’s a deep gash in the middle of the skull, one across the neck, a superficial one across the chin, another to the side of the head that’s sliced off part of the scalp and one ear. That’s it lying over there.”

  Fredrik looked at what he had taken for a blood-drenched fold in the carpet, but saw now that it was a big slab of skin partially covered in hair with an ear attached to it that was still connected at the neck.

  Eva reached out her hand for the photo, looked at it again and compared it carefully to the tattered and sunken tissue that had once been a human face.

  “You can’t even make out the hair color. He’s got no distinctive features to go on. Not bad-looking, but a little ordinary, so to speak.”

  She handed back the photo.

  “At best all you can say is that there’s nothing in the photo to suggest that this isn’t the same person lying here.”

  She covered the head, and instead pulled away the sheet to expose the legs and retrieved the pair of scissors that she’d put in her pocket. She worked quickly but meticulously and soon the right pant leg was snipped open to the middle of the thigh. Eva reached for the flashlight and shined it at the knee. In the middle of the circle of light you could make out a faint reddish-brown birthmark.