The Viper

by Hakan Ostlundh

  “He’s a consultant. He … helps companies make more money, you might say. In a nutshell.” Helps companies make more money, thought Fredrik, that sounds like something a father might say to his child.

  “Did he have a lot of clients?”

  “He only had one in Japan, but he’s got others in Sweden and Germany.”

  “Was it always the same one in Japan?”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “Because that was quite an extended period if I’ve understood correctly?” said Fredrik.

  “Ten years, if you count from the very beginning. But it’s only the past two or three years that he’s more or less been living there. It’s become more and more intensive you might say.”

  Rickard Traneus looked tired. That was understandable. He had a jaundiced pallor beneath his eyes, and the eyes themselves seemed veiled.

  “What sort of work do you do, or maybe you’re studying?” asked Fredrik.

  “No, not right now. I work part-time at an accounting firm.”

  “I see, where?”

  “In Visby,” Rickard Traneus answered and put his right hand on the chair’s black backrest in what looked like a pretty uncomfortable position.

  “What is it you do there, more precisely?” asked Fredrik.

  “Accounting, ordinary bookkeeping. Not the greatest job in the world, stray hours here and there whenever they need me, but it usually ends up at around seventy percent for the most part. I studied economics up in Stockholm for a while, but I took a leave of absence after three semesters.”

  “Was that at Stockholm University?” asked Fredrik.

  “That’s right. My father went to the Stockholm School of Economics.”

  Fredrik nodded. He didn’t want to plague Rickard with a follow-up question about why he had chosen Stockholm University instead. He was pretty sure of the answer.

  Rickard Traneus sat with his back to the kitchen counter. It was thoroughly wiped off, spotlessly clean. On the left stood a shiny metal espresso machine and partially hidden behind Rickard a battery of olive oil, rapeseed oil, balsamic vinegar, oyster sauce, sherry, and other handy ingredients for the mildly ambitious home cook.

  A part-time accounting assistant could hardly earn enough money for designer furniture, expensive kitchen appliances, and clothes that … well, Fredrik didn’t know for sure, but they certainly didn’t look cheap. He probably got help from his father, or in some other way. Either with cash, or else the chair and table were something that the parents had tired of and the son had taken over. But the kitchen and what he had caught a glimpse of in the other rooms, looked far too thought through to be the result of hand-me-down furniture.

  “You have no idea where your father might be?” Fredrik asked.

  Rickard Traneus let go of the backrest and laid his hand in his lap together with the other one. He didn’t answer.

  “If you were to guess,” Fredrik proposed. “He has to have gone somewhere. Where do you think he’d go?”

  Rickard’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly.

  “Are you taking Karl-Johan’s angle now?” he asked.

  “We’re just trying to make progress. It’s important that we get in touch with your father. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  Rickard looked down at his lap, then at Fredrik.

  “I know that Elin has said a few things about our father. Things that she’ll have to answer for herself. They’re her interpretations.”

  “How do you mean?” said Fredrik, even though he knew very well what Rickard Traneus meant.

  He could feel how Rickard held back a grimace.

  “I have never seen my father hit my mother,” he said.

  After a short pause he added:

  “And nor has Elin. She’s just gotten it into her head that he did. My father isn’t like that. He didn’t hit her. Much less murder her.”

  The last bit came with added emphasis and it sounded like he believed what he said.

  “The answers aren’t self-evident, of course, but it’s very hard for us to find out exactly what happened unless we get hold of your father,” said Fredrik.

  Rickard looked at him without batting an eyelid.

  “I can’t help you. I would if I could, but I have no idea where he is.”

  “But if your father had nothing to do with the murders, why do you think he’s run off?”

  To that, Rickard Traneus had no answer.

  35.

  Fredrik entered the café and immediately spotted Ove, who was sitting alone at a table right next to the glass wall with a crumpled up ice-cream wrapper in front of him. He sat down opposite him with a plain cup of coffee. Ove, who had been sitting hunched over the table with his head drilled down between his shoulders, straightened up slightly.

  “I went down and questioned Rickard Traneus,” said Fredrik.

  “M-hm,” said Ove.

  “If it wasn’t Arvid Traneus who killed his wife and cousin, how come he’s disappeared?”

  Ove stared at him.

  “What?”

  “Well, I mean if Arvid Traneus isn’t the one who…”

  “I heard what you said, but it’s just doesn’t compute. There’s no answer to that question. It just doesn’t make sense any other way. Arvid Traneus killed them and then made a run for it. How else can you explain it?”

  When Fredrik couldn’t answer Ove continued:

  “But I have actually come up with another alternative. He may have committed suicide.”

  The light from the afternoon sky lit up the left half of Ove’s face where the stubble that had been shaven in the morning had started to creep out again.

  Fredrik rested his chin against his fist.

  “Well, I agree that’s not a totally unheard-of scenario, but in this particular case … I have a hard time seeing Arvid Traneus as the type to take his own life. Besides which, if he has, wouldn’t we have found him somewhere in the house or nearby?”

  “Maybe he ran off first,” said Ove, “took the ferry and gave up halfway.”

  “Jumped overboard you mean?” said Fredrik.

  Ove nodded.

  “The night ferry. It’s dark, stiff wind on deck, nobody would see him.”

  “No,” said Fredrik, “this guy wouldn’t give up. He’d do anything to avoid losing, as he sees it, live like a monk in some Japanese mountain monastery for the rest of his life, anything.”

  “A monk?” said Ove.

  “Okay, that might not be Arvid Traneus’s first choice. But if it came to that.”

  Fredrik didn’t want to believe the suicide theory, but he had to admit that it wasn’t completely unlikely, either. Arvid Traneus had killed his wife, the mother of his children, possibly by mistake, definitely without premeditation. What was left? Turn his back on everything just in order to survive? Never to be able to return. On the other hand, he hadn’t been home for a long time. Maybe he already had another life that was easy to just keep on living?

  Fredrik fended off the notion that Arvid Traneus might have climbed over the railing of a windswept ferry and disappeared forever in the waves with a faint splash that couldn’t even be heard above the sound of the engines. That would somehow turn all their efforts over the past few days into meaningless gestures. There would be a conclusion to the tragic story, but the only contribution Fredrik and his colleagues would have made to the case would be mopping up and filing a report.

  “If he has jumped into the sea, we’ll have to hope that he floats ashore,” he said.

  “Or else we won’t get any further than this,” said Ove.

  * * *

  ONLY ONCE HE was on his way out to the parking lot did Fredrik realize that his car was still at the shop. By then it was too late to get a ride, Gustav had already left.

  He emerged from McDonald’s, not really sated and with a depressing greasy aftertaste in his mouth. He had the wine cellar book and two of Kristina Traneus’s diaries in a plastic shopping bag that he carried in his right hand.

>   The sky was deep blue above the ring wall and the medieval town was strangely silent. He never really got used to the stillness that reigned during the long winter months, even during what should have been rush hour. It felt like a public holiday. There were only a few scattered people on the street, almost everybody seemed to be somewhere else, at home celebrating while the streets lay empty. He liked it, but he couldn’t get used to it. He walked slowly over to the bus station and stood at the number 10 bus stop.

  Standing around the number 41’s glass bus shelter was a cluster of teenage boys with big, baggy down jackets and identical caps. They spat continuously on the ground around them.

  The bus was almost completely full. Fredrik took out the cellar book from his bag and tried to read, but the reading lights were broken or switched off, and the glow from the strip lighting in the aisle was too dim for him to be able to make out Arvid Traneus’s handwriting. He put the book away and looked out at the fading twilight, but soon there was nothing more to see. The view became pitch black, except for a few short stretches with streetlamps that swept past at irregular intervals.

  The bus pulled over in the impenetrable darkness and let off solitary passengers. Sometimes a car was waiting with the lights on to pick up the person who’d gotten off. There was something pleasant about the scene that was repeated along all the small roads that the bus trundled its way onto. A secure feeling, maybe even of something greater. Of belonging?

  It had been a long time since he’d sat on this bus. He couldn’t remember if he had ever taken it so late in the evening, after dark. He almost started to feel sorry for the ones who got off with no one waiting for them. It was as if they stepped right out into a void.

  When he got off himself just south of Hemse, there was only one passenger left.

  He stood there waiting outside the shuttered school while the bus rumbled off. The damp night air smelled of wood fires and manure. He had barely a mile to walk, two streetlamps, and then the night took over. But he realized that it wouldn’t be a good idea. If he walked the other direction he could cut across the fields along the tractor path. There at least he wouldn’t get run over. Worse came to worst, he could always light his way with the glow from his cell phone.

  36.

  They had eaten lunch. Spaghetti with homemade tomato sauce, grated parmesan, and a few basil leaves from the pots around the back. Was this really the first cooked meal she had eaten since … since she had come to Gotland? It felt that way, but she had to be mistaken. Many days had passed, a week maybe. Yes, a whole week. They couldn’t very well have lived on coffee and sandwiches the whole time.

  Elin scraped what was left into the garbage and put the dishes in the dishwasher. It was almost 2:30 p.m. She opened the larder and tested the Bag-in-Box. It felt light in her hand. She shook it. Empty. Had she taken the last of it?

  She dropped down on her haunches and started rummaging among the liquor bottles at the bottom of the larder, selected a few that she took out.

  “Would you like a drink?” she hollered.

  “What?” she heard Ricky shout back from his room.

  He had gotten up as soon as they’d finished eating, walked off with a bit of a vacant stare, and left her with the dishes.

  “You heard what I said.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  He sounded a little hesitant, as if she was forcing it on him. Hypocrite, she thought. He had gone into work one day but come back, said that he couldn’t handle it. She had said to him that he ought to just take sick leave, but as far as she could tell he hadn’t been to see a doctor.

  So, if neither of them was working, what difference did it make, she thought and took out two glasses.

  She had spoken to Molly. Once. It had disappointed her. In the midst of all the solicitude, Molly had seemed put out, as if she would have preferred to just hang up and get as far away as possible from Elin’s murdered mother, grief and blood, and police questioning. Molly hadn’t called back.

  Ricky snuck into the kitchen, almost without a sound. He stopped and watched her work at the kitchen counter.

  “There you go,” she said and held out one of the glasses.

  “Thanks,” he replied taking it.

  He studied the slices of lime that were floating among the pieces of ice in the golden-brown liquid.

  “Did we have all this here?”

  “Yeah, isn’t that weird,” said Elin. “I can’t remember that we did any shopping, can’t even remember eating anything. Can you?”

  “No,” he said.

  Elin took a sip of the drink and shook her head.

  “I have to go back, but I can’t make up my mind. And nobody’s been in touch from Åhlbergs, either.”

  Ricky didn’t answer. He sipped at his drink.

  “Tastes good,” he said.

  “M-hm, Markus taught me how to make this.”

  “Markus?”

  Ricky took a bigger sip from his glass.

  “This guy I was together with for a while.”

  “Oh, yeah? You never said anything about him before,” he said and the corner of his mouth curled into a teasing little smile.

  “There’s not so much to say. It didn’t last long.”

  Ricky’s smile drew out into something else, more difficult to interpret.

  “Yeah, sounds familiar…”

  * * *

  FATHER HAD LAID the sea chart out across the big walnut desk. The chart of Gotland always lay on top and sometimes it was the only one, unless they were sailing over to the mainland. Father had poured himself a glass of some brownish alcohol that he had set down dangerously close to the edge of the table on a round cork coaster. Looking back, Ricky guessed that it must have been whiskey, considering the design of the glass. On the floor, clustered around the legs of the desk, stood dark, tall bottles of wine that were coming along on the boat trip.

  Outside the window the summer evening started to turn blue. The powerful reading lamp above the desk shut out the rest of the world, created a space where there was only room for two.

  Ricky sat down on a chair next to him, or in father’s lap when he was really small. Father showed him how to use a course plotter and divider and let Rickard measure out the distance from Klintehamn to the island. When he was old enough to understand, his father explained how if you had two out of the three variables—time, distance, and speed—you could always work out the third.

  Those were important props and rituals, but the most important one of all was when his father ran his forefinger across the sea chart until it stopped on the island and they could start talking about all the treacherous challenges they would have to face to make it out there. He remembered Father’s breath, a little sharp from the brown alcohol, and how his own silky, blond strands of hair got caught in Father’s stubble.

  Then of course it came to an end. Both the sitting with the charts the night before they set off, as well as the sailing trips themselves ceased. He couldn’t say when that had happened or even why. Had he become too old for it, too much of a teenager, and thought that it was all a little childish? Or was it when Father had started going off to Japan? Maybe he wasn’t home anymore during sailing season?

  Somehow he disappeared, not just in time and space, but also inside himself. He came home and took care of things, organized, purchased, procured, handed out presents. For brief moments he could be exuberant, full of plans, tell stories with a glint in his eye, his entire being sort of bubbling with energy. Then you could reach him, then the feeling from the desk and the sea charts was there again. But it was fleeting and even if you could reach him, you could never reach up to him. He was forever beyond reach. Then he disappeared into his assignment and was swallowed up by Japan.

  * * *

  THE PLASTIC SHOPPING bag with the black cellar book and Kristina Traneus’s diaries had lain there untouched for a few days. When Fredrik took them out and sat down with them up in the living room, his memory from the wine cellar came rushi
ng over him.

  He knew he shouldn’t keep going back there, stirring it up, rekindling the emotions, but he couldn’t help himself. At the same time, he knew that it was a waste of energy to keep mulling over what it meant. It wasn’t going to lead anywhere anyway.

  He lay Kristina Traneus’s dairies aside, opened the cellar book and felt how decades of dampness and dust rose up from the paper. He flipped through Bourdeauxs, Bourgognes, Alsace wines, Italian red wines from Piedmont and white from Alto Adige. Many of the wines he recognized from his examination of the cellar. Arvid Traneus had kept meticulous records. When he removed a bottle he noted it down, sometimes even the occasion for which it had been selected, such as for example his son’s birthday. Fredrik found more birthdays in the column all the way over to the right, but not the daughter’s twentieth birthday. Did that mean she didn’t come to Gotland to celebrate it? Or maybe that Arvid Traneus wasn’t back in Sweden then? Kristina Traneus’s fortieth birthday, she was born in the middle of summer, the second of July, was celebrated quietly with a single bottle of Beaujoulais. Or else perhaps they threw a bigger party with cheaper wines that never passed through the cellar and therefore were never entered into the book?

  What was he really expecting to get out of this? If he was really honest about it, wasn’t he sitting there perusing Arvid Traneus’s cellar book mostly for the sake of his own enjoyment? To afford himself the opportunity of drooling a little over wines he would otherwise not even get within spitting distance of? Like yet another armchair traveler.

  Yet he turned a few more pages and let his eyes wander down the entries. He stopped at four bottles of Riesling that had been taken out at the start of July, just a few days after Mrs. Traneus’s birthday, but this one was an even earlier year, the seventh of July 1994. “Adventure” was jotted down next to the date. That was certainly an annotation that tickled the imagination. Fredrik flipped back and forth through the book a little at random and soon found more bottles that had been brought up for the “Adventure.” All the notes were made in the summer, most of them in July, occasionally at the beginning of August. “Adventure,” each time just that same singular noun. What sort of an adventure was that?