The Hand that Trembles

by Kjell Eriksson

  ‘Maybe both.’

  ‘Maybe he sympathised with your deed?’

  ‘Deed,’ Persson repeated.

  ‘Do you regret what you did?’

  ‘That was a second question,’ Persson said.

  He tried to smile at Allan Fredriksson, but the monumental fatigue that had crept over him during the course of the interrogation turned the smile into a grimace. Why can’t they just leave me alone, he thought.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Yet another clear night with a moon climbing over the horizon. He was standing out in the garden and followed with his gaze an aeroplane on its way east. Its lights twinkled like stars. He tried to visualise the passengers in their seats and the flight attendants hurrying in the aisles, but only managed brief disconnected images.

  He took a couple of steps, the small stones crunching under his feet. The sound echoed in the night and he veered from the path up onto the lawn, past the flagpole and the thicket of shrubby cinquefoil.

  It was completely calm. The cold had come creeping slowly. The temperature had been sinking one degree per hour and it was set to be the coldest night of the season so far.

  Darkness enveloped him more deeply the farther he went from the house. He looked back but kept walking. He knew the way and did not have to think about where to put his feet. After a while his eyes grew accustomed to the details, the old, half-fallen stone wall, the many stems of the rowanberry tree with its ghostlike blackened fruits, the tarp draped like a shroud over the lumber he had ordered to build a garage. Everything loomed out of the darkness. He walked without thinking of anything except the connections that each object that appeared before him told. Everything was connected, had a story, talked to him about a time gone by. It was like a museum of memories.

  This is your place on the earth, he thought suddenly. These four thousand square metres of land is the area that decides your life. Limits. He looked back up at the sky. The plane was gone and was by now a good portion of the way out over the Sea of Åland.

  He walked aimlessly but nonetheless reached the sea, where the breakers were slowly rolling in. He felt kinship with the water, how it stiffened in the creeping cold. Winter was inexorably here. There was something – he had always thought this – something sorrowful about the sea as it was engulfed by frigidity and darkness. A faint, repeated splash revealed a stone caressed by a glacial hand. The sea was death. Or was it perhaps the opposite, that the sea was life? He was confused by his ambivalent thoughts. He came from a line of fishermen and perhaps his confusion was an inheritance from those that had gone before? He did not know much about his ancestors more than that they had won their livelihood from the sea but also that several of them had died in boats that had foundered or under ice that had given way.

  The endless sea and the limited plot of land, a cottage, between them a swathe of forest, a wetland with alder and the heavy scent of scrubby plants with pale flowers and leathery leaves. Once he had seen his life so clearly, it was from above, in a sport plane. Several years ago an old classmate had taken him on a flight over the coast and they had surveyed the archipelago outside Östhammar at a couple of hundred metres’ height. From that perspective the house and surroundings on Bultudden had appeared unnaturally beautiful, like a dreamscape. He had had trouble getting his head around the fact that he actually lived down there.

  The dark form of the fishing cottage could be glimpsed some hundred metres away. He set his sights on the gleam of the moonlight in its windows and followed the twisty path along the edge of the water. Suddenly one of the windows lit up, a warm yellow tongue that licked the rock out toward the sea. He stopped short and curled up instinctively, crouching behind a thicket of sea buckthorn, before he was drawn to the light like a moth lurching about in the dark.

  He wanted to warm himself. Nothing more. He wanted to be toasty and snug like before. The Magpie would warm him, he was sure of it. She was as fragile as he was, a female outsider who lived by the sea, who had freely found her way to the point in her hunt for images, and he had started to understand her longing.

  Slowly he neared the cottage until he stood next to the wall. Her figure formed a fluttering silhouette on the rock. If he was given the opportunity to explain that he was a good man, they would become friends. Her rejecting stance would be replaced by warmth.

  He did not wish her ill. She would understand.

  FORTY

  What was it that made some nights so unpleasant? Even though she had not drunk any wine, which was otherwise one of the usual culprits in poor sleep and nightmares, she had still woken up several times during the night. A couple of times she had got up and looked in on Erik but she had found him snoozing peacefully. It wasn’t Erik who had woken her with a night-time whimper.

  That was something else. She sensed what it might be but pushed the thoughts away. The night before, after she had put Erik down for the night and picked up all the toys, watered the flowers, and done everything that is required to keep a home in somewhat reasonable shape, she had taken a long and warm shower. Under the jets of water she shaved, first her legs and armpits, finally her bikini line. Painfully conscious of her actions, she had allowed the razor to continue its work until she was completely smooth. Afterward she had studied herself in the mirror, even taken out her handheld mirror and studied her naked genitals, and blushed a deep red when she turned her face to the wall mirror. Never had she been so naked.

  Her fingertips against her skin, then the whole hand in a powerful grip, as if she was being caressed by an aroused man, the agonising pleasure when she pretended, when she dreamt for a brief moment. The most hurtful aspect was not the absence of a man but the feeling of not being seen. She was beautiful. Her body, in spite of her middle age and a child, was beautiful. She wanted to be desired, loved and caressed of course, but above all desired. No one saw her, shaved or not, no one stroked her with their eyes.

  All this she had paid for. The night had been an anguish. Now she got up, ashamed, not over her body or her yearning but her inability to do anything about it. Hidden deeply under an ever more organised home life – for she had definitely become better at all this that constituted everyday life, the home and Erik, all this bustling about, plant watering, tidying up, and caretaking – was the suspicion that she would never again experience the closeness of a man.

  She cracked the door to Erik’s room. He was still sleeping and would continue to do so for another half hour. She loved him, it went without saying that he stood at the centre of her concerns, but wasn’t there more to life than that? He gave her an incredible amount, but what then? In a few years he would be a teenager, all too soon a young man, and then he would disappear more and more from her sphere. Would she continue to tend her home and go to a work filled with violence and human suffering? Was a well-raised son and the prospect of grandchildren all?

  She was starting to believe that if there was going to be a change she would have to do something more radical. It was not enough to shave herself and prance around in front of the mirror, reflecting her own anxiety. She chuckled suddenly as she visualised herself desperately vacuuming or interrogating suspected murderers, while her sex cried out for hands and a pulsating member. She would give everything for a hot breath against her throat.

  But what to do? Something radical? Should she quit? What were the alternatives? Start to go out? What she had seen of the city nightlife, the dance clubs, had not tempted her. The chances of scoring a one-night stand were pretty good, but after that?

  The feeling of being alone and unloved was more and more replaced, as she got breakfast ready, by anger. It was an anger directed inward. Would she let herself be knocked down, even affected in her dreams by her shortcomings and lack of initiative? Wasn’t it just a matter of grabbing the bull by the horns, of starting to live? And what was wrong with only one night of pleasure? Perhaps in all actuality that was the solution. If a man turned up who could become more than a temporary connection then it would have to de
velop of its own accord.

  She paused with her hand on the refrigerator handle, saw herself at Svenssons or Flustret. How would she behave? She couldn’t go there alone. I don’t have anything to wear, was her next thought. Mentally she scoured her wardrobe.

  ‘I’ll buy myself a dildo instead,’ she muttered.

  She had heard someone on the radio talk about a multifunctional magically vibrating thing called ‘the butterfly.’ Apparently it provided miraculous pleasure.

  She had to force herself to open the refrigerator and get out the yogurt. Being horny slowed her down.

  When Erik ran off to the Hedgehog room and had steered his course straight to a teepee in the middle of the room, Ann talked for a while with a newly hired preschool teacher, Lotten, who told her that they were currently working with the theme of housing. Right now they were doing tents, then they would move on to yurts, and after Christmas hopefully igloos.

  Ann praised their creativity and hard work, perhaps a bit too forcefully, because the woman looked almost embarrassed and dismissed the approbation.

  ‘I’m envious,’ Ann went on, but aware that she was not being completely honest, ‘when I see how you work. It seems so … inspiring. My job is just about misery.’

  Lotten looked closely at her.

  ‘You’re a cop, aren’t you?’

  Ann nodded and saw Erik come crawling out of the tent, turn his head, and flash her a quick smile before he ducked back in again.

  ‘I read about the county commissioner this morning. What a strange story.’

  ‘Do you have the paper here?’

  ‘Yes, I think it’s lying around here somewhere.’

  They went to the staff room. The newspaper was on the table and Lindell immediately saw the headline: Missing Politician a Killer?

  Lotten left her and Lindell quickly read through the story, which filled a whole page. One article went through the backstory, how Sven-Arne Persson had disappeared from Uppsala in the autumn of 1993 and what speculations it had triggered.

  Now he had returned and freely given himself up to the police and confessed to the killing of Nils Dufva, the so-called wheelchair murder of the same year.

  Lindell left the preschool, jumped in her car, and called Ottosson.

  ‘Who’s been talking?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Ottosson said mournfully.

  ‘We agreed not to let this out and the next thing we know we get wartime headlines. What is this?’

  ‘Fredriksson and Sammy haven’t said squat to any reporter, I’m sure of that. They’re just as mad.’

  ‘I’ll put money on the fact that it’s that bitch at the front desk,’ Lindell said. ‘Or Riis.’

  ‘We don’t know,’ Ottosson repeated.

  Lindell made a violent manoeuvre with the car and nipped in front of the queue at the red light on Vaksalagatan. She wished she had strobe lights on the car.

  ‘And we are not likely to find out,’ he added. ‘Are you on your way out to the coast?’

  ‘I’m going to meet Marksson at half past eight. I’m already late.’

  ‘How are you doing?’

  With Ottosson you could never be certain what he meant by a particular question but she assumed he was referring to the case.

  ‘I think there’s something we’ve overlooked,’ she said, but did not attempt to elaborate this further, mostly because she herself did not understand it.

  They agreed to meet in the afternoon. Lindell turned off the telephone and thereby Ottosson and the whole unit. She thought about her conversation with Lotten. Was she envious? Was the nursery school – or something equally undramatic – a realistic alternative to police work?

  She chuckled.

  ‘Fuck,’ she said out loud.

  She was on her way to a man on the coast. But it was the wrong man.

  FORTY-ONE

  The interrogation of Sven-Arne Persson was resumed at half past eight in the morning. Sammy Nilsson thought he looked decidedly more alert than the day before. Persson praised the breakfast but complained that his stomach was acting up.

  When the coffee was on the table, Sammy Nilsson turned on the tape recorder, recorded the session details, and thereafter looked at Persson as if he expected him to automatically resume his narration.

  ‘Have you thought about—’

  ‘Yes, I have been thinking,’ Persson immediately interrupted, ‘I have been thinking as hard as I can. There’s nothing for me to add. Now I just want peace and quiet, that is the only thing I want.’

  Peace and quiet, Sammy Nilsson thought, and felt a sudden spurt of irritation toward the man on the other side of the table. He kills a defenceless old man and then demands peace and quiet.

  ‘How were you feeling that autumn twelve years ago?’ Allan Fredriksson asked.

  ‘Fine,’ Persson said quietly, but corrected himself at once. ‘No, that is, I was intensely uncomfortable. I had it up to here with politics. All the bitches.’

  ‘Bitches?’

  ‘Yes, haven’t you noticed that the old biddies have taken over? All these well-spoken ladies in their trouser suits but without substance, without sense, only air. And there are men who are old biddies too. It may in fact be the case that there are more men than women in this category.’

  Allan Fredriksson could not help smiling. Sven-Arne Persson was showing a human side for the first time. Up to this point he had appeared almost completely unfeeling, despite his politeness. Now a little humour was emerging. Fredriksson knew it was good and continued along this path.

  ‘You’re talking about your political opponents?’

  ‘And my friends,’ Persson said. ‘The talkers are distributed everywhere. That is no party-specific characteristic.’

  ‘And would you call yourself an old biddy?’

  Persson looked up, bewildered.

  ‘You were a man in the midst of a career. How did you reach your position? Through empty chatter, as you call it, or were you unique?’

  ‘Not unique, perhaps unusual, but I was on my way to becoming a biddy. But we can forget all that now. This isn’t a political seminar. I went to India to get away from all this loose talk.’

  ‘So you didn’t leave because you had committed a murder?’

  ‘For both those reasons.’

  ‘Were you afraid of being found out?’

  ‘No, not really. You didn’t seem to be getting anywhere in the investigation. I had some contacts and kept myself abreast of your progress. Don’t take it personally. It was a difficult case, I know.’

  ‘Your flight must have been painstakingly planned. You had arranged for a false passport, put away large sums of money, and even prepared a disguise so that you could leave City Hall without being recognised.’

  ‘It amused me.’

  ‘To plan this?’

  Persson nodded.

  ‘Do you know how you seem to me?’ Sammy Nilsson broke in. He had been listening to this dialogue without speaking. ‘You seem like a cold, calculating guy, who wants to pose as a defender of the weak, the only honest politician, but in reality he is a remorseless killer who disappears after his deed for his own amusement, not only fleeing from justice and civic responsibilities, but even from his own family.’

  ‘I had a wife, not a family.’

  ‘In short,’ Sammy Nilsson said, ignoring Persson’s comment, ‘you’re a bastard who hides behind pseudo-arguments about “old biddies”. You leave your wife and your friends to their worries and complete ignorance and you even seem to like it.’

  ‘That is probably an accurate description,’ Persson answered. ‘I’m not going to argue against your image of me.’

  ‘So the question is why you return all these years later. You do not seem particularly remorseful.’

  ‘I got tired of India. I imagined spending my last remaining years in an institution.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ Sammy Nilsson said.

  Fredriksson coughed and leant forward, as if he wanted to push
his colleague aside.

  ‘If we come back to a thread from yesterday,’ he said, and smiled at Persson, ‘your uncle Ante. First you told us that you were alone in Kungsgärdet but you later changed your story to say he was waiting in the car. Do you hold firm to this?’

  ‘Yes, he stayed in the car. I took one of his crutches, so he couldn’t leave the car.’

  ‘Why did he even come along?’

  ‘We were out for a ride. That was something we did sometimes, went on small excursions.’

  ‘Small excursions,’ Fredriksson repeated. ‘Did he know where this one was headed? Who you were going to see?’

  ‘No. I said I was running an errand.’

  ‘Why did you choose an excursion?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘If you had been planning to murder Nils Dufva, wouldn’t it have been better to go there alone?’

  ‘Maybe I didn’t want to kill him.’

  ‘The crutches.’

  ‘I brought them for self-defence. I was led to believe that Dufva was a violent man.’

  ‘Bound to a wheelchair?’

  ‘What can one know?’

  ‘Can you precisely describe your exchange of words when you were face-to-face with him?’

  ‘We didn’t say much.’

  ‘Did he recognise you?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘I guess he wondered what I was doing walking into his house. I can’t remember exactly. It was a number of years ago. And there was such a racket in his place I couldn’t hear properly.’

  ‘What kind of racket?’

  ‘The old man had both his television and radio turned on, and on the highest setting. As I said, it was an infernal racket.’

  ‘You didn’t turn off the appliances?’

  ‘No, why would I have done so?’

  ‘You weren’t there to talk?’

  Sven-Arne did not reply. Fredriksson made a notation in his notebook.