The Viper

by Hakan Ostlundh

  She sat on the top step of the basement stairs. Her shoulders ached and her right hand hurt like it was cramping up. Wasn’t it a little swollen compared to the left one?

  How could what just a few short hours ago had felt like a deliverance now feel like the end of everything? “Who am I?” she had asked herself accusingly, because she hadn’t seized the moment to change her life, because she hadn’t made better use of the opportunity that fate had presented her with.

  But who was she now?

  She had been so strong when she’d raised the ax to deliver the blow. She had earned the right to do it. She was driven by something that was bigger than she was. She was strong. She would save herself. There was no doubt.

  Now it was all over, gone. She tried to cling to the notion that she had been justified somehow. He had earned his death. Day by day, year by year, he had gradually tightened something inside her to the breaking point. Now it had snapped. She wanted to think that way, but it wasn’t easy. She wanted to think that it was him, not her.

  When Anders came they had first moved around each other like two caged animals without being able to say anything intelligible. They had circled, paced, reached for each other, but in the crushing gravity of the situation there was no place for tenderness.

  After over an hour, Anders had told her to go into the bedroom and shut the door. She hadn’t been able to, wanted to know, had clung on to him. Then all of a sudden Anders had broken free, taken her into the bedroom.

  It’s better that you not know anything, he had said. Then he had shut the door. You stay here, he had said.

  She had sat there on the edge of the bed, heard him go up and down the stairs and then out to the garage, not much more than that. And yet she had been on tenterhooks and had listened. She hadn’t wanted to, but couldn’t do otherwise.

  She had sat there on the edge of the bed where Arvid had taken her just a few hours before. Where he had beaten her. The same hand that had touched her between her legs and struck her in the face, right on her cheekbone. He had hit her with the back of his hand. It had probably hurt, because he delivered the next blow with a closed fist. It had connected with her temple and was harder, as if the pain in his hand was also her fault, as if it had been added to the thing that was already driving him.

  He had taken her hard and suddenly, more as if out of some kind of compulsion than desire. The intercourse had been just as irrational as the beating that followed. She hadn’t felt the slightest shiver run through her body. Everything was gone. Once upon a time, she had lusted after him beyond all else. She had been prepared to go to any lengths to get him, just to be able to touch his body again, just one more time. Weak-kneed, dizzy, and distraught, ready to do anything. And now there was nothing left, not so much as a distant echo. Just thinking about it felt foreign to her.

  She had no idea how much time had passed when Anders pulled open the door. She looked at him, stared at him with big, questioning eyes. It’s better that you not know anything, he had said again. He was going to drive off and he wouldn’t return again today. It would be best for them not to see each other for a while, not to have any contact whatsoever.

  But there was one thing left to do. She had to clean up. He had taken care of the worst of it, but she had to go down there and really scrub. The whole room had to be scoured with the most powerful cleaner there was. Every inch. She mustn’t use the cleaning materials that the cleaning lady used. When she was done she should burn the brush, the rag, everything she had used. Stick it in the furnace, turn up the shunt overnight.

  We’ll get through this, he had said.

  She didn’t believe him. They would come looking for Arvid. They would find him.

  No, he had said, you have to trust me.

  They would find them out, find out how things were between her and Anders.

  Let them find out how things are between us, he had said. We’re going to get through this.

  63.

  Sara felt that she was starting to become hoarse. She had been standing there shouting into the lighthouse for a long while, the whole time with the wind whipping the right side of her face. She couldn’t lose her voice now. This just couldn’t fail because her voice gave out, right when she was finally getting somewhere.

  Fredrik was standing to the side of the doorway, leaning against the lighthouse. He was frozen stiff. He had taken out his notepad and his aching fingers were struggling to write down what Rickard Traneus was answering to Sara’s questions. It was logical, but also completely bizarre. This must have been the strangest interrogation she had ever done.

  There was a lot going through Rickard Traneus’s head. She didn’t want to steer him too much and risk him getting annoyed and refusing to speak. While she asked her questions, she was also wondering in the back of her head how all this was going to end. They had to get him to come out, or else go in there and fetch him. Would he come out of his own volition once he’d said what he had to say? Would he resist? Was he armed?

  “Did you go in to them? Did you go into the house or did you stay there at the entrance and listen?” she yelled gruffly.

  Her vocal cords felt dry and rigid.

  “They killed him,” Rickard Traneus said softly from the upper floor.

  They could barely hear him, but rather than ask him to speak louder, she leaned further in through the doorway. Fredrik gave her a wary look when she put her foot on the threshold. She gave him a dismissive wave.

  “I understand,” she said.

  Somewhere she had already sensed what was coming and would really have preferred not to hear it. She wished that he didn’t have to go through it. No one should have to suffer at their own hand like that. What sort of a future was there for Rickard Traneus? What would he do once he had served out his sentence? There was no punishment in the world that could atone for such a crime. Not in the eyes of the world, but above all not in his own eyes. He would always have to carry it around with him. He didn’t think it was his own fault, but he would still have to carry it around.

  “You went in to them, didn’t you, Rickard?”

  64.

  He held the heavy blade tightly in his right hand. He felt the steel edges press through the glove’s thick leather. He listened and he understood.

  When the last piece fell into place there was nothing that could stop him. He became consumed with one single thought. That man had to die. That man who walked around in Father’s house as if he’d already taken his place. He had never heard anything so sickening, never met anyone so despicable. That man wasn’t a human being. He was an animal. A snake.

  There was no deliberation. Once he had understood, everything happened in a split second. The fury engulfed him like a storm surge of fire.

  He bolted from the spot where he had been hiding, rushed through the house with the steel blade raised in his right hand. He spotted him at once. He looked ridiculously ordinary. A man like any other. But when he met his gaze, there was no doubt. It was terrified and full of guilt, but above it was a look of absolute certainty. Anders Traneus knew that this was the end, that this was his punishment and that there was no escape.

  Rickard roared at him, released a sound that expressed as much pain as it did rage. He raised the blade above his head, aimed his blow. The room was spinning around him, disappeared into a blur, but Anders remained clearly in focus in the middle of his field of vision. He was longing to drive that steel right through his throat, bury it into the chest that he glimpsed through the opening in his shirt, and extinguish his life.

  And he hacked. Rickard brought down his blade.

  Then all of a sudden she was there, her arms outstretched, not to protect herself, but to protect him, like a shield.

  “Rickard! No!”

  Her words cut into him, screamed inside him. But it was too late. The blade fell. Quick, heavy, and hard. Left a deep cut in her chest.

  He stared at the red gash, saw how her limbs buckled and she sat down on the edge of th
e couch and slipped on down to the floor.

  Beside himself, he turned toward Anders. He shoved the table out of the way, forced him into a corner of the room. Anders backed away, cravenly begging, knocking over furniture in his way.

  The first blow cut through the tendons and veins of his arms, just beneath his hands that were raised toward him in a pleading gesture, or possibly just for protection. He stared in amazement at what he had brought about, blood that was pumping from the lacerated arms, hands that dangled limply when there were no longer any muscles or tendons to control them. But he didn’t stop. He was burning inside, boiling with rage, hate, and despair. But it was more than emotions that drove him. He was beyond feelings. It was a searing primordial power that made him swing that keen, heavy blade that he was holding in his hand. A power that would annihilate and restore, that would put everything back in its place and make the world whole again.

  The second blow hit him right across the bridge of his nose. The bone was crushed when the steel broke through and forced his bloody eyes out of his skull. With all his might he brought his arm down a third time, slicing the blade into his chest, cutting through bone and cartilage with little resistance. During the half second it took him to swing his arm back over his right shoulder he caught a glimpse of his heart through the blood-soaked cleft in his chest, beating hard and strenuously a few final times in its as-yet-undamaged grayish-blue sack.

  He took a half step back as he smote for the forth time, and the blade sliced off his throat and the arteries on either side of his neck. His head shot backward in a surprising, grotesque motion and opened up a gaping fissure out of which blood spurted in copious but ever-weakening eruptions.

  The body lay lifeless on the floor in front of him, but still he didn’t stop. He raised his hand and hacked at it a fifth time, a sixth, a seventh …

  65.

  The waves crashed against the rocky west side of the island. The air had become more humid, the clouds thicker and lower in the sky, but still no rain.

  Fredrik thought about the pieces that had fallen into place. Kristina Traneus killed her husband, the lover buried him, and the son took his revenge on the lover and his mother. The latter possibly by mistake. And Leo Ringvall? He must have come to the farm, snooped around, looked in through the window, maybe even caught sight of the lacerated bodies. But he had nothing to do with what happened. Except in as far as he was yet another of a long line of people who wouldn’t weep at Arvid Traneus’s funeral.

  The backup was taking a long time. Fredrik checked his cell phone to make sure that he hadn’t missed a call. An hour and a half had gone by since Sara had contacted them.

  Requisitioning a helicopter from the mainland was one option, but maybe it couldn’t fly across the sea in this weather. It was impossible for Fredrik to judge from where he was. The coast guard in Slite was the more likely alternative. Had his colleagues chosen that route, then they ought to come into view off to the north at any minute.

  The Anita plunged down and shot up in a repeating sequence as the waves grew ever higher. The car tires groaned between the hull and the edge of the jetty. It didn’t look good.

  “Rickard,” shouted Sara, “you can’t stay here. The weather’s taking a real turn for the worse. I don’t know how much longer the boat can stay here.”

  It sounded painful when Sara forced those words through her abused vocal cords.

  “Yeah,” Rickard answered.

  Was that an answer or a question? thought Fredrik. It sounded like a question.

  “Come down so we can leave!” Sara shouted.

  He moved around up there. It was impossible to hear the creaking of the floorboards now, but they could still see the dust fall with each step. Fredrik thought for a moment that he was on his way down.

  “Then what?” he asked.

  “You come out. We’ll take the fishing boat back to Herrvik.”

  “I mean what’s going to happen?”

  Sara was tired and cold, her voice was wrecked. She just wanted to get him out.

  “You’ll have to return with us to Visby,” she said. “Since you’ve confessed to killing Anders and causing your mother’s death, you’ll be charged with murder or voluntary manslaughter…”

  She stopped short and exchanged looks with Fredrik.

  “And negligent homicide,” she answered.

  Peter Klint would probably go for voluntary manslaughter there, too, but just then it seemed like the right thing to say.

  “Is there anything else you’re wondering about?” she asked.

  A long silence, then: “No.”

  “Okay, Rickard. Are you coming down?”

  He didn’t answer. No dust fell. Sara looked at Fredrik questioningly and a little hopelessly. The cold, wet wind grabbed at their clothes. There was a soft whistling sound inside the lighthouse whenever the wind blew through the half-open door and up into the stone tower.

  “Are you coming down?” shouted Sara once again.

  There was no answer, but they saw the dust. And then his feet came into view on the steps.

  Fredrik stayed where he was by the doorjamb so that he could see Rickard. Sara moved to the side and stood out of sight with her gun drawn. Fredrik holstered his.

  Rickard Traneus slowly walked down the steps. He was wearing black pants and a red-and-white windbreaker. His arms hung limply at his sides. When he’d come down far enough that they could make eye contact, he looked Fredrik right in the eye for a few seconds and then abruptly dropped his gaze. He walked straight toward the door and Fredrik backed away a little.

  “Come out the door and stop next to the rock,” said Fredrik and pointed at a round, flat rock that was conveniently sticking out of the ground outside the lighthouse.

  Rickard Traneus stepped carefully over the high threshold and did as he’d been instructed. Fredrik moved in behind him and took hold of his left arm at the wrist.

  “I’m going to cuff you and frisk you,” he said to Rickard who just nodded silently.

  Fredrik quickly put the handcuffs on him and as soon as that was done, Sara holstered her gun and came up to them.

  “It was good that you came out,” she said, “so we can leave.”

  Rickard turned his head toward Sara and looked at her, but said nothing. Fredrik ran his hands along Rickard’s legs, back and across his sides and stomach. He found a Swiss army knife in one of the pockets of his windbreaker, which he confiscated.

  “Okay, let’s go,” said Fredrik. “It’ll take about a quarter of an hour to walk down to the boat.”

  Sara and Fredrik walked on either side of Rickard Traneus, Fredrik with a firm grip on his upper arm. Fredrik squinted toward the north as they descended the bluff. He expected to see the coast guard’s blue ship surging forward through the gray sea, but still nothing.

  Rickard Traneus hadn’t said a word since he stepped out of the lighthouse. Fredrik couldn’t help but wonder what he was thinking about. Was he somehow relieved that it was over, or wasn’t it over for him? Was he just as trapped now as he was before, inside his own inferno of guilt and death? Was he peering into the gray, rain-laden storm thinking that there was no place left on this earth for him? Had he ever thought that he could get away? If nobody suspected him, if his father had never been found, what would he have done with his life then?

  “Fredrik!” shouted Sara and pointed over toward the headland where they had come ashore.

  He didn’t have to ask what she was trying to tell him. The Anita was pulling away from the jetty, then turned slowly northward, pitching badly in the powerful waves.

  “He couldn’t stay there,” said Sara.

  “We’ll have to turn around,” said Fredrik.

  Rickard Traneus glanced anxiously back and forth between them and Fredrik explained what had happened.

  “There’s a spot behind those cliffs that’s sheltered from the wind. He can come ashore there.”

  He hoped that he was right, that the wind hadn’t
shifted even more and that they were stuck on the island.

  “We’ll have to head straight back up the way we came,” he said.

  Rickard Traneus turned around obediently and trudged off in the opposite direction. They plodded up the hill again. When they came up onto the bluff, Fredrik began to wonder what was best, to go with the fishing boat or wait for their own transportation.

  “Can you call and find out what’s happened to them?” he shouted to Sara. “If they’re close by then maybe it’s better we go with them.”

  But if they were delayed then maybe the fishing boat was their last chance to get off the island until the storm was over. He wasn’t looking forward to spending a stormy night in the lighthouse, least of all with a double murderer.

  Sara took out her cell phone.

  “I don’t know if I’ll be able to hear anything in this!” she shouted back.

  The wind was blowing even harder now. They had to really lean forward in the gusts. It was impossible to be heard in a normal tone of voice unless you were standing right up against the person you were speaking to.

  “I’ll give it a try, but I may have to go inside the lighthouse.”

  She cupped her hand around the cell phone in order to increase the chances that the duty officer would hear her though the gale.

  Beyond the cliffs, the Anita was rolling violently. The boat seemed like it was on its way back to Herrvik, but Söderman was probably just circling out in order not to get too close to the rocks. Fredrik turned north, squinted into the wind. Didn’t he see something there, way out in the distance? Were those breakers on a reef? No, it had the definite V-shape of a surging ship’s prow plowing through the gray sea, and was heading straight toward the island. It was the coast guard cutter KBV 181 from Slite.

  “They’re coming!” he shouted to Sara. “There they are.”

  Just when Fredrik pointed north, Rickard Traneus suddenly jerked his body unexpectedly. He wrenched free of Fredrik’s grip and started to run, trying to escape Fredrik thought at first, but Rickard Traneus was running straight toward the spot where the cliff plummeted most precipitously down into the raging sea.