The Viper

by Hakan Ostlundh

  “What was it that you sensed was amiss, as you put it?” asked Gustav.

  “He was so busy all of a sudden, always had things to do, didn’t answer the phone, and when you asked him where he was going or where he’d been, you never got a straight answer. It was like when he was a little boy and had gone and done something stupid. I recognized it. At first I just thought that he’d met someone new, you know, after Inger, and that he just didn’t want to talk about it. You can understand that, if you’re getting involved with someone new, and you’re not sure yet where it’s going.”

  Rune paused and breathed almost like he was a little short of breath, as if it had been physically strenuous to talk about.

  “Then there was one day when he was over at my house; there was something in his eyes, an anxious look that I hadn’t seen in a long time and the thought suddenly struck me like a bolt from the blue: What if it’s Kristina? And the words just slipped out, before I had a chance to stop myself. ‘You’re not seeing Kristina are you?’ He sat there silently for a long moment without looking at me. ‘No,’ he said then. That’s it, just ‘no.’ I couldn’t be more certain, short of him coming right out and admitting it.”

  “But he never did?” asked Gustav.

  “No. If he’d done that, I probably would’ve told him what I thought, I don’t care how grown up and middle aged he was, but I had asked him and he’d answered no. So what could I do?”

  He panted softly again.

  “I realized that it would end badly, one way or the other, but that it would end up like this…”

  He looked at Gustav and Fredrik with big, lost eyes. Gustav met his gaze and felt how he went completely cold. There was a pleading look in those eyes that he couldn’t face. He could only do his best to solve the case, but he understood that it wouldn’t make a lot of difference. Not to Rune Traneus.

  “You probably can’t really understand this. But you see, Anders had a brother who died exactly thirty years ago. He died out there on the farm. He used to work for my brother sometimes in the afternoons. They said it was an accident. A horse accident. But it was my brother who had the answer. You don’t let an inexperienced sixteen-year-old get onto a horse that’s … It was said that my brother had a way with horses, but that wasn’t true. Our father was a good horse breeder. He had a way with animals, with horses especially, but not my brother. His animals were tense and skittish. My son had to pay for my brother’s mistreatment of animals with his life.”

  Rune Traneus clenched his right fist at the same time as his left hand pressed against his stomach.

  “My brother and his offspring have taken away everything from us. It wasn’t enough with Johan and Kristina, they had to take Anders, too. And now he’s gone, Arvid. The question is whether you’ll ever catch him? He’s a devil, but he’s a damn smart devil.”

  “Kristina? How do you mean that they took Kristina away from you?” asked Gustav without revealing that they had recently touched upon the same topic with Inger Traneus.

  “Kristina,” snorted Rune. “It was as if Arvid just had to do it. He saw how much she meant to Anders. But I’ll tell you this much…”

  He pointed a crooked forefinger at Gustav.

  “If Arvid hadn’t have married her, Anders would’ve been able to put the whole thing behind him in a completely different way, that I’m sure of. But he just had to do that, too. You might well ask why? I mean, why he even wanted to get married at all. He treated women just like his father treated horses. What does a man like that get married for?”

  It wasn’t a rhetorical question. He looked at Gustav as if he expected an answer. It hung there in the air.

  “Can you tell us what happened?” asked Gustav.

  Rune Traneus looked pained. He’d had enough.

  “Yeah, I reckon I can, more or less,” he said.

  27.

  “Be gentle,” she whispered through the hair that had fallen in front of her face and meant it in two ways, literally, but also hinting that there was another power at play, an alternative to being gentle that was both tempting and frightening and it was that power she was playing with when she gave her whisper a slightly syncopated quality akin to a gasp.

  Arvid wasn’t gentle. He turned her around and bent her over the couch that lay overturned on its side, with the back facing upward. It smelled of basement and mildew and the fabric felt damp through the sheer dress that she still had on, even if it was unbuttoned and hiked up around her hips.

  He penetrated her from behind, purposefully and with surprising suddenness. He took a firm grip around her hair, not enough to make it hurt, but so that it drew taut, leaving no doubt about who was in charge. He got her to bend her spine backward, cupped an ample warm hand over her right breast, let go of her hair with the other, and let it slide in between her legs. He continued to fuck her from behind with long, hard thrusts. Hot waves shot through her body. Her skin was like an electrical field and no matter where he touched her, she was on the verge of coming. She had never experienced anything like it. It was as if Arvid was taking her virginity all over again down in that basement, there in the very back, in the room full of furniture and old junk.

  It smelled of dampness, earth, and dank basement air and her body rocked and slammed against the rough fabric of the couch. She felt the dust and tiny pebbles beneath her bare feet, felt his cock sliding into her, and how his body smacked against her buttocks underneath the hiked-up dress. She squeezed the backrest with her right hand, actually wanted to grab hold of him, but had to content herself with the couch, felt that she had to hold on, tight.

  Arvid was rampant, dangerous in that sense like nobody else she knew. He was strong. He didn’t care. He was brazen. You could tell as soon as you saw him what he wanted, and he wasn’t afraid to show it. He dared to fuck her in the basement while the party was in full swing out in the garden and someone could come looking for them at any moment, or come down there to fetch some cold beer or whatever.

  The hairs on her arms stood up. She had goose bumps all over her body. Her nipples stood straight out in his cupped, squeezing hand. It was so powerful that it scared her. Were these feelings normal, or was something wrong? Was something happening inside her body that was completely twisted? Was she dying perhaps? It was as if she was being immersed into a scalding hot bath at the same time that she was floating, no, soaring, in the cool refreshing night air, way above the treetops, high up above, out among the stars.

  And when she came it was if she had never come before. She fell completely limp across the back of the couch. Arvid continued to move inside her but she barely noticed, only had a slight sensation of her body being rocked back and forth, right up until his grip tightened around her hips and he came, too.

  She turned her head to the side and looked up toward the grimy basement windows. Out in the lush garden she recognized Anders’s pant leg slowly passing by. She closed her eyes, ashamed, embarrassed, and with a feeling of having been used. And she wanted more. She couldn’t help it. Anders whom she’d come with; she had wondered a little why he wanted to bring her along to his uncle’s party, but why not?

  She had arrived together with her boyfriend—wonderful, handsome, caring Anders. It was a perfect love story: dreamy, romantic, and Anders was attentive and tender.

  And now she lay half naked on a stinking couch down in the basement together with Anders’s cousin. Fucked. Taken in a manner in which she hadn’t even fantasized about. How had this happened? She didn’t know. Getting fucked she could understand, that was the simple part. The last part. But how had she gone from being with Anders in the garden, to being down in this dingy room in the basement? She didn’t know. She didn’t have the slightest idea.

  But she wanted more. That much she knew.

  28.

  The chromed, circular clothing racks were stuffed full of hangers. So tightly packed that you could barely get one out. Elin had already grabbed some socks and underwear. Now she took three T-shirts; one w
hite, one black, and one lime green, the latter because there was a stupid voice droning on somewhere in the back of her head: “Take something with a bit of color, take something with a bit of color.” She took one slightly thicker, long-sleeved cotton shirt that was meant to look like it was made out of wool. Black. She didn’t care how it looked. There was little room for considerations like that. This was all about finding something that worked. Right size, right function.

  The H&M on Öster lay virtually next door to the police station. She took out her cell phone to see what time it was. She didn’t have to meet the detective for another twenty minutes. There was plenty of time.

  She laid the clothes on the counter next to the cash register and pulled the money out of her front pocket. The clothes were cheap. Even for a student who was trying to get by on financial aid and part-time jobs, and proudly refused any help from Daddy. If it hadn’t been for that, she would have sold the Prada bag that she never used anyway. But she couldn’t do that. It didn’t work that way.

  Once she had paid, she moved on to the sports store and bought a fleece sweater on sale. It was almost the same as the one she was wearing, but in her own size. One hundred and ninety-nine crowns.

  She had left Ricky’s car in the parking lot outside the Coop Forum department store. It was going to move, so they said, and it was going to be turned into a shopping mall instead. Was that true? Were the citizens of Visby finally going to blessed with a proper shopping mall?

  She started the car and cut right across the empty parking spaces toward the exit.

  And he sure as hell doesn’t like you. He forgot you long ago. Screw God!

  Jesus, hell, it didn’t mean anything, she just wanted to play the same music her friends played, a little punk nostalgia that didn’t mean shit, not to her or to the others at Vibble who hadn’t even been born back in the day. And why did he have to come barging into her room like a fucking maniac, almost destroy her CD player, and chuck her record out the window. He who wasn’t even religious. Not that she had ever noticed anyway.

  She had seen the record glinting out in the field for several weeks afterward, until the farmer who leased the land came and plowed over it, or a magpie took it, or whatever it was that happened. She stopped and waited for an opening in the traffic and felt so tired and sad all of a sudden. As if her heart had just fallen out of her chest. What was going to happen to everything? She wanted to stay at Ricky’s place until the funeral, but it could take time, the woman at Åhlbergs had said. How long could she wait? She would fall behind with her course work. But would she even be able to study if she went back?

  Mother, who she’d seen so little of.

  What would the casket look like? The flowers? Who would come? Were they supposed to serve food? Coffee?

  Then she thought about the farm, the land, and the money. She felt ashamed, but couldn’t help it. What would happen to all that? Even if Father had … done it, then it was still his, right? How about Mother’s estate? And whoever it belonged to, someone had to look after it. Father couldn’t do it if he was locked up in prison, or had run off to Japan and was never coming back.

  Ricky of course. He had always been puttering around over there, like some kind of house brownie. Doing chores and fixing things. Cutting the grass and helping Mother change the tires on the car. Which was totally ridiculous. You only had to take one look at his place to see that it wasn’t him. Besides which, they could afford to hire someone to do all that. What did he think he could hold together with all his tinkering?

  It made her depressed to think about it. He really needed to get away from here, he far more than she. Away from the farm, from Gotland, from everything. This wasn’t his world. He’d be so much better off somewhere else.

  Oh, for fuck’s sake, she thought and shot out when there was finally an opening, he was only a few years older than she was. He needed to get his act together. Not just needed to, had to. He was the man in the house now.

  She couldn’t help but smile a little, despite all the hellishness.

  Thursday, November 2

  Karolinska University Hospital, Solna

  On the E4 highway, just visible in the gap between the psychiatric department and the reddish-brown, increasingly sparse foliage, the northbound traffic crawled along at an almost depressingly slow speed. Sara was happy that she didn’t need to sit in one of those cars.

  “I had an abortion a week ago,” she said without turning away from the window.

  She felt that the words echoed in the austere hospital room. She hadn’t intended to say anything, definitely hadn’t intended to say anything to Fredrik. She was just as surprised that those words had slipped out of her as Fredrik might have been, assuming he could understand what she said, or even hear her for that matter.

  She had revealed her secret to a colleague without really understanding how it had happened. She had intended to tell him about the investigation, about their work together, how Fredrik had ended up here. That was the plan.

  The advantage, of course, was that this particular colleague couldn’t pass her secret on.

  Then it struck her, that she really couldn’t be sure about that. Right now he could barely say a word, but what if he got better? What if he were to just blurt it out, like a parrot, in front of anyone. Maybe he had no control at all over what he said.

  Sara felt how she began to sink down, how a gloom took hold inside her.

  What difference does it make, she thought to herself then.

  “This murder investigation came at a very bad time for me. I was supposed to … Well, I was planning to…”

  Why the hell was it so difficult. She coughed. Only now did she turn away from the window. Fredrik looked at her. His gaze was unexpectedly intense and she felt that it contained a question. That didn’t make it any easier.

  Fredrik opened his mouth.

  “Oops,” he said.

  Sara stiffened. Was that a comment, or just a random “oops”? She sat there silently waiting for more, but Fredrik lay there silently. She had to continue, she thought, and took a deep breath.

  “I didn’t want to keep the baby. But I couldn’t very well take time off in the middle of a murder investigation, not without a very good excuse. And I wasn’t looking forward to speaking to Göran about it. So I guess I was hoping that the investigation wouldn’t drag on for too long, that Arvid Traneus would get caught in some passport control somewhere and confess to the murders, so that I could book a time for an abortion, preferably on the mainland, as I’m sure you understand. So I said nothing to Göran.”

  She hadn’t wanted anyone to know and she didn’t trust the patient-doctor confidentiality on Gotland. And even if the nurses didn’t break their vow of silence it would have been enough for the wrong person to see her entering or leaving the hospital the same day that she took a day off work, for people to start talking.

  Sara took the few steps up to the ergonomic visitor’s chair clad in vinyl-like orange-brown upholstery.

  “If I was ever going to get pregnant, this wasn’t how I had envisioned it happening. I guess maybe I feel a little ashamed. In fact, I do. Not about getting pregnant. Not even about the fact that I don’t know who the father is. At least not with any great certainty. The whole situation is just so ridiculous. Stupid, clumsy. It’s not like I’m twenty years old.”

  The father could either have been a Canadian from Vancouver, whom she had met on Sardinia during her vacation, or, theoretically anyway, a guy from Gotland whom she didn’t even know whether she was in love with. Not that love or the uncertainty regarding the baby’s paternity had affected her decision. She wasn’t interested in having kids, it was that simple. When she tried to imagine what it would be like to be a mother, the only thing she could think about was all the stuff she would no longer be able to do. Not travel, not socialize with whomever she wanted whenever she felt like it, not be able to just pick up and leave if she got tired of where she was, and of course not go to bed with str
ange men from other continents with no protection except a “safe period.” Instead she would have to show up on time at the daycare, attend PTA meetings, fritter away her not especially generous income on designer jeans for a kid who’s never satisfied and never knows what’s good for him.

  All those were perhaps petty and self-centered arguments, but it was for that very reason … It wasn’t her, it was that simple. The decision hadn’t been difficult.

  And she had just said all that to a colleague with a head injury. Surprisingly enough, it felt pretty good. What Fredrik felt about it she had no idea.

  29.

  “I appreciate your coming in,” said Göran Eide and sat down opposite the young woman. The girl, he thought. She was hardly more than a child.

  “That’s all right. I had to come into town anyway.”

  She looked pale, but seemed strangely full of energy. She had sat down with her back straight and her gaze fixed intently on Göran.

  “The phone call that you contacted me about yesterday, the one that you felt was threatening…”

  “I didn’t feel that it was threatening,” she cut in. “It was threatening. It was a death threat.”

  “But it was your brother who received the call, if I understand correctly?”

  “Yes. But it was still a fucking death threat.”

  Two pink splotches flared up on her white cheeks.

  “Anyway,” said Göran, “the call came from a number registered to a Karl-Johan Traneus. Does that name mean anything to you?”

  “Yes,” she said, “I mean, I think I know who it is at least. I’ve heard the name at some point, but not much more than that.”

  “And who is it?”

  “My second cousin, I guess he’d be? My father’s cousin’s child, Anders’s child.”

  She looked at Göran questioningly. He confirmed with a nod that second cousin was the proper term.