The Root of Evil

by Håkan Nesser

  The town of Kymlinge does not exist on the map and the Bahco adjustable spanner model number 0872 has never been on sale in France. Other than that, the contents of this book largely accord with the known state of affairs.

  CONTENTS

  ONE

  NOTES FROM MOUSTERLIN

  24 JULY – 1 AUGUST 2007

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  TWO

  NOTES FROM MOUSTERLIN

  1–7 AUGUST 2007

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  THREE

  NOTES FROM MOUSTERLIN

  8–13 AUGUST 2007

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  FOUR

  NOTES FROM MOUSTERLIN

  14–16 AUGUST 2007

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  FIVE

  NOTES FROM MOUSTERLIN

  17–19 AUGUST 2007

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  SIX

  NOTES FROM MOUSTERLIN

  20–27 AUGUST 2007

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  SEVEN

  29–31 AUGUST 2007

  40

  41

  42

  ONE

  NOTES FROM MOUSTERLIN

  29 June 2002

  I am not like other people.

  And I do not want to be. If I ever find a group where I feel I belong, it will only mean that I am getting blunted. That I, too, have been ground down to the bedrock of custom and stupidity. This is just the way it is; nothing can alter these fundamental conditions.

  Perhaps it was a mistake to stay here. Perhaps I should have obeyed my first impulse and said no. But the path of least resistance is compelling and Erik interested me in those first few days; he stands out from the crowd, at any rate. And I had no fixed plans, no strategy for my journey. To go south, the only important thing was to keep heading south.

  But now it is night-time, I feel less certain. There is nothing to keep me here. I can pack my rucksack at any time and move on and this fact, if nothing else, provides insurance for the future. It strikes me that I could actually leave right now, at this very moment; it is two o’clock, and I can hear the monotonous voice of the sea in the darkness, a few hundred metres from the terrace where I am sitting to write this. I realize it will soon be high tide; I could go down to the beach and start walking east, nothing could be simpler.

  But a level of inertia, combined with the fatigue and alcohol in my veins, holds me back. At least until tomorrow. Probably a few more days after that. The last thing I am is in a hurry, and perhaps I will find myself drawn into the role of observer. Perhaps there will be things to write about. When I told Dr L about my plans for quite a long trip, he did not show much enthusiasm at first, but when I explained that I needed time to think and write about what had happened in an unfamiliar environment – and that this was the whole point – he nodded in agreement; eventually he also wished me good luck and it seemed to me that this genuinely came from the heart. I had been under his care for more than a year, and it must naturally feel like a triumph on the rare occasions when a client can be allowed out to run free.

  As regards Erik, it was generous of him to let me stay here at no cost, of course. He claimed to have rented the house jointly with a girlfriend, but then they broke up and it was too late to cancel. I initially thought he was lying, guessed he was gay and wanted me as his plaything, but apparently not. I don’t think he’s homosexual, but I’m far from sure. He could be bi, Erik, and he’s certainly a far from straightforward character. I assume that’s why I can put up with him: there are dark corners in him that appeal to me, at least for as long as they remain unexplored.

  And he’s not short of money; the house is big enough for us not to get in each other’s way. We’ve agreed to share the food bills while I’m here, but we also share something else. A kind of respect, perhaps I’d call it. It’s almost four whole days now since he picked me up on the road out of Lille, and three since we got here. I normally tire of people in a fraction of that time.

  But tonight – as I write this – I am starting to suffer my first real misgivings. It began with that extended lunch down by the harbour in Bénodet. I soon realized it would be a prelude to a trying evening. It’s impossible not to notice such things. A thought even ran through my mind – once we had finally found seats in that noisy restaurant, and finally made the waiter understand our orders.

  Kill everybody at this table and leave.

  It would have been the simplest thing for all concerned, and it would have been no skin off my nose.

  If only I had had the means. A gun, at least, and an escape route.

  Perhaps it was just an idea born of the fact that it was so hot. The distance between intense heat and madness is a short one. We had moved the tables around and dragged the big parasols into various positions to create some shade, but I still ended up in the sun – particularly whenever I leant against the back of my chair – and it was anything but comfortable. Existence felt like one big itch. Pulsating irritation ticking towards some implacable point.

  The whole enterprise was of course an act of sheer folly. Perhaps it was not the result of any one person’s direct initiative, perhaps it was just a matter of general, misguided deference. A group of foreign fellow-countrymen happen across one another at a Saturday market in a small place in Brittany. It is entirely possible that convention demands certain sorts of behaviour in such a situation. Certain rituals. I loathe convention as much as I loathe the people who live by it.

  It is also possible that I would not view a group of Hungarians round a restaurant table in Stockholm or Malmö in the same light; it is the internal dynamic of the group I find unbearable, while from outside it has no effect on me. Knowing and seeing through things is usually worse than being ignorant. Or pretending to be ignorant. It is easier to live in a country where one does not fully understand the language.

  Take French, the language currently all around us, which appears at its most pregnant when one cannot fully comprehend what is being said.

  But my thoughts never show from the outside, I let no devil cross my bridge. I curse inwardly but merely smile, and smile. That is how I have learnt to make my way through existence. Navigare necesse est. It could even be that others think me pleasant. Thoughts are not dangerous as long as they remain thoughts, that is of course a truth as good as any other.

  And it is my principle never to say anything disagreeable.

  So it was a question of two couples. I initially assumed that they already knew each other, that perhaps they were all on holiday together – but this turned out not to be the case. All six of us just happened to bump into each other amongst the market stalls in the square: home-produced cheese, home-produced jams and compotes, home-produced Muscadet, cider and crocheted shawls; it was quite possible that one of the women caught Erik’s eye. They are both young and fairly attractive, so perhaps he even fancied them both, and he undeniably turned on the charm as we sat there eating our seafood and emptying one bottle of wine after another.

  Quite possibly I did, too.

  And then there was the strange Kymlinge connection. Erik has lived in the town all his life; apparently, the woman in one of the couples grew up there and then moved
to Gothenburg, and the other woman has lived in Kymlinge since the age of ten. None of the three knew each other even remotely, but they all found this geographical coincidence irresistibly fascinating. Even Erik.

  For my part, I found it nauseating in equal measure. As if they had all arrived on a coach tour and could now sit in this French village, revelling in the natives’ customs and peculiarities and comparing them with people’s behaviour back home. In Kymlinge and elsewhere. I drank three glasses of chilled white wine before the main course, a familiar sense of desperation trying to take possession of me as I sweated in the sun. An itch, as I said.

  Where my own relationship with Kymlinge was concerned, I chose to stay silent. And I am sure none of the others knows who I am; if they did, it would be impossible for me to stay here.

  Henrik and Katarina Malmgren are one of the couples. She grew up in Kymlinge, but they live in Mölndal just outside Gothenburg now. They’re both around thirty, she works at Sahlgrenska hospital and he’s some kind of academic. They’re obviously married but haven’t any children. She looks like the kind of woman who could, and would like to, get pregnant, so if there’s some medical problem it no doubt lies with him. Dry and tense, slightly florid complexion, presumably burns fairly easily in the sun, perhaps he was enjoying the extended lunch as little as I was. He gave that sort of impression, at any rate. He probably feels more at ease in front of a computer screen or amongst dusty books than out with people; it’s debatable how the two of them got together at all.

  The other couple are called Gunnar and Anna. They’re not married, don’t even live together, apparently. They both had to struggle rather with their natural superficiality, trying to give the appearance of having thought things through and reached some kind of attitude to life. It didn’t work very well, of course, and it would have been to both their advantages to keep their mouths shut, particularly her. He’s a teacher of some kind, I didn’t gather any more than that, and she works at an advertising agency. In some kind of client-facing role, I assume; her face and top half are undoubtedly her main assets. It also emerged that together they had just bought a horse to run in trotting races, or at any rate were in the process of doing so.

  For some impenetrable reason, Katarina Malmgren speaks virtually fluent French, a capacity none of the rest of us round the table came anywhere near to possessing, and during our lunch she was accorded the undeserved status of some kind of oracle. We had at least eight different kinds of shellfish to eat, and she had detailed discussions with the waiter about every single one of them. Corks with pins in them for poking the reluctant inhabitants out of their shells; when you finally get the little muscular morsels in your mouth, you never know if they’re alive or dead. As I understand it, you’re supposed to bite through them and kill them before you swallow.

  Erik took charge of the drinks; we started with ordinary dry white wine, but after three bottles we switched to the local cider, sweet and so lethally strong that we were all obliged to take a two-hour nap in the afternoon.

  We accordingly went on to spend the evening at Gunnar and Anna’s. They’re staying about a hundred metres from here, along the beach towards Beg-Meil, another picturesque little house, nestling in the dunes. We sat on their terrace, all six of us, ate more shellfish and knocked back the wine and Calvados. Gunnar sang, too, and accompanied himself on the guitar. Evert Taube, the Beatles, Olle Adolphson. The rest of us joined in as the words came to us, and it was easy to start thinking of it as a slightly magical evening. Sometime around midnight, we were so drunk that there was talk of skinny-dipping in the sea. An enthusiastic quartet comprising the two ladies plus Erik and Gunnar set off with a bottle of sparkling wine and their arms round each other’s shoulders.

  I sat there with dry-as-dust Henrik; I ought to have asked him what he actually does, exactly what his field of research is, but I didn’t feel like talking to him. It was more pleasant just to sit and sip the Calvados, smoke and stare out into the darkness. He made a few attempts to start a conversation about some characteristic or other of the people here in Finistère, but I didn’t encourage him. He pretty soon lapsed into silence, presumably as uninterested in my views on assorted topics as I am in his. He seems to have some kind of integrity embedded in that dry nature of his, after all. It felt as though we were both sitting listening to our friends out there in the water in the dark. He had more call to strain his ears, of course; it was his wife, not mine, who had taken all her clothes off in the company of three strangers.

  It is five years since I had a wife. I miss her sometimes but mostly not.

  When the party returned, they were at any event modestly draped in towels, and altogether more subdued than when they set off, and I could not help feeling that they were sharing a secret.

  That something had happened and they were concealing it.

  But maybe they were just drunk and tired. And chilled – the Atlantic in June is way below the twenty-degree mark. We only stayed half an hour after they came back. As Erik and I walked back along the beach towards the road to our house he had obvious difficulty staying on his feet, and he crashed out as soon as he got indoors and kicked off his sandals.

  As for me, I feel surprisingly clear in the head. I’d almost say analytical. Words and thoughts have a clarity they can only possess at night. Some nights. I can sense the sea out there in the dark, and the air temperature must be twenty-five degrees. There are insects bouncing against the lamp as I light a Gauloises and slowly sip my last drink of the day. Erik is asleep with the window open and I can hear his snores; he must have at least two litres of wine in his veins. It is a few minutes past two, and it feels good to be alone at last.

  The Malmgrens’ house is in the other direction, on the far side of the Pointe de Mousterlin. Along this coastal strip there must be about fifty holiday lets, all told; most of them are a kilometre or so inland, of course, and maybe it isn’t so odd that three of them should be rented by Swedes. As I understood it from Erik, they didn’t all go through the same agent, but the others are basically new arrivals, just as we are.

  Three weeks of potential socializing lie ahead of us. I suddenly realize I am thinking of Anna. It happens against my will, but there was something about her naked face and wet hair when they got back from their swim. And that guilty look. In Katarina’s eyes there was something else, a kind of yearning.

  I should have watched Henrik’s face too, of course, for some sense of counterpoint, but I didn’t. The observer role is not always that easy to maintain.

  To live is not necessary, I find myself thinking. I don’t know why that thought occurs to me.

  Husks, we are nothing but husks in eternity.

  Commentary, July 2007

  Five years have passed.

  Sometimes it feels like fifteen years, sometimes like five months. The elasticity of time is remarkable, and everything depends on the starting point I choose to view things from. Sometimes I can see Anna’s face very clearly in front of me, as if she were sitting opposite me here in this room, and the next moment I can see those six people, including myself, from a great height; ants on the beach, milling around, performing their futile, meaningless gyrations. In the cold light of eternity – and in the trinity of the sea, the earth and the sky – our negligence seems almost laughable.

  As if they really could have gone on living. As if not even their deaths would carry sufficient weight and meaning. But I have made up my mind and will carry out what has been decided. Actions must have consequences, otherwise creation goes off the rails. Decisions must be acted on, and once made they no longer need to be questioned. Carving these thin lines of order into the chaos is all we are capable of, and our whole duty as moral individuals resides there.

  And they deserve it. The gods must know that they deserve it.

  The first thing that strikes me, beyond that, is my own naivety. How little I understood that first evening. Those six people in their houses on the beach. I could have packed my rucksack and
left that flat strip of coast the very next day; had I done so, everything would have been so different.

  Or perhaps I never had a choice. It is interesting, of course, that I had that thought at the restaurant in Bénodet. Kill everybody at this table and leave. Even then, right at the start, there was something in me that realized what was going to happen many years later.

  I have decided who has to be first. The order itself is not unimportant.

  24 JULY – 1 AUGUST 2007

  1

  Detective Inspector Gunnar Barbarotti hesitated for a moment. Then he engaged the seven-lever lock.

  This was not routine. Sometimes he didn’t bother locking the door at all. If they want to get in, they’ll do it somehow, was his way of thinking, so there’s no point forcing them to do a lot of damage.

  Perhaps thoughts of that kind bore witness to a kind of defeatism, perhaps they bore witness to a lack of faith in the group of professionals he himself represented; he fancied neither of those suggestions was particularly incompatible with his take on the world. Better a realist than a fundamentalist, after all, but there were no ready indications to point in either one direction or the other.

  Such were his thoughts – and he wondered at the same time how the matter of locking a door could give rise to so much porous theorizing.

  But perhaps there was no harm in having an active brain in the mornings? And in any case, since moving into his poky little flat on Baldersgatan in Kymlinge after his divorce five and a half years ago, he had never had any uninvited visitors – apart perhaps from a dodgy school friend or two brought home by his daughter Sara. We ought to think the best of our fellow human beings until they prove the opposite; this was the guiding principle that his optimist of a mother had tried to get into his head from when he first became amenable to persuasion, and as a rule to live by it was as good as any other.

  And anyway, it would take a peculiarly dense burglar to think such a basic mahogany-laminate door as his could conceal anything worth stealing and selling. That was just being realistic.