by Moss, John
“Mitigating.”
Harry ate quietly while Hannah Arnason watched.
As a philosopher, he had been fascinated by the conflict between being a free agent in the world and witnessing life shaped by factors beyond his control. Here he was in a Stockholm bistro, with a woman of stunning beauty and inspiring presence, who seemed to play him like a puppet on invisible strings, but only after he had been played by a woman who looked like Ingrid Bergman and by her son who apparently killed young women to watch them die.
Until now, as a P.I. dealing with murder, Harry had felt like a priest at a wedding who officiates over matters he knows nothing about. He was attracted to murder because it turned the morbidity that haunted him inside out, so he could deal with it as an abstraction. Sometimes this seemed like a betrayal, using crime as a shield from reality.
Forget free will, mortality is stacked against you. But if the end is already known, everything else is a terrifying illusion. So …
In the instant that passed while he and Karen argued theology, Harry suppressed a surge of panic from the invading memory of a smashed canoe on a perilous river. And when he did, the conceit of being a puppet or a celibate collapsed.
He knew exactly what he was being asked to do.
He was being sponsored by this woman across from him to take a life, if necessary, to save a life. And, at the same time, being warned that it must be a rational act.
“Harry, do you carry a weapon?”
“No.”
“Good, it is safer if you do not.”
“For whom?”
She smiled ambivalently.
“Do you carry a gun?” he asked her.
“Possibly I do. It is not so important for me. My work begins after the crime has been committed. You are not so lucky, I think.”
They stared at each other across the table. He could see a distorted image of himself in the depths of her eyes. Odd, they had turned almost obsidian in the ambient light.
“Birgitta is likely to find me before I find her,” Harry said. “I’m assuming she still wants me to help make her case that her son is a monster.”
“You’re not sure? Possibly employed, that is a new demographic.”
“Possibly paid. That’s an old one.”
“Harry, if the son does not get to her before you do, he will be there soon after. The question is: does he want you as his witness when he kills her, or does he want you to stop him before he does it? Or is arranging your presence meant to ease his conscience, before killing you both? Be careful, my friend.”
She leaned over and took his hand in hers, slowly turning the silver band on his finger. “Any man who invites you to kill him is prepared to kill you.”
“Do you happen to know where she is?” he asked.
“More to the point, does he?”
Is that an evasion or a warning? Harry wondered, but expecting no answer said nothing.
She let go of his hand, but he left it poised on the table between them while he gazed at the ring, then into the darkness in her eyes, and then he smiled a sad smile and they talked of other things.
Karen was unhappy with the unorthodox approach to investigative procedure. Police follow protocol for a reason, she whispered. It protects them from their own worst impulses.
But Harry was intrigued by Hannah’s eccentricity, he liked that she hovered on the edge of convention. Dangerous and alluring, an effective illusion.
Gradually, the evening dissolved and Harry found himself back at Bentleys. He slept fitfully and woke midmorning, disoriented because the day had moved on while he slept.
He reluctantly struggled to extricate himself from the warmth of the down-filled duvet. Despite images swarming through his head of clandestine meetings and furtive encounters, subterranean columns and snow-blown passageways, he found himself strangely at home. It was as if his Swedish genes had finally connected with the world around him. His bed in Bentleys seemed inevitable. Stockholm in winter felt familiar at a visceral level.
It brings out your inner Viking, Harry.
What does? he wondered as he pivoted and rolled onto his feet.
Her words seemed to be coming from deep under the duvet.
Being here, it’s a good place to be.
He turned to look in the direction where her voice might have been and noticed the corner of a small mauve envelope sticking out from under the door.
Even before opening it, he knew whom it was from. The mysterious delivery, the mechanically elegant inscription of his name in green ink, the absence of postage or an address; who else but Birgitta moved with such stealth at the edge of his life, an ambiguously threatened and ominous presence most notable for being elusive.
The signature inside confirmed it was from Birgitta Sviar. Not Ghiberti or Shtoonk. He wondered if she had variant personalities to go with her different names. Above the signature was an address:
Hotel St. Clemens
Smedjegatan 3
Visby, Gotland
There was no salutation, no plea for help or assistance, just a brief note suggesting he take the ferry from Nynashämn. The note was neither an invitation nor an explanation. Terse to the point of being imperious, it was a summons based on the assumption that he would come to the island of Gotland because he had no choice.
Harry was perplexed. While he should have been feeling relief to know she was safe for the moment, he was annoyed that she hadn’t simply knocked on his door. They could have worked out survival strategies together.
Harry couldn’t quite reconcile the grim hauteur to the note with the curious blend of incipient paranoia and gracious composure when Birgitta had first approached him. There had to have been a major shift in how she perceived her relationship with her son, and consequently with Harry. From being the pursuer, she had become the pursued.
If her back’s to the wall, she’ll be dangerous. I’d rather have him as an enemy than her. At least he’s out in the open, and she’s shrouded in shadows.
I have no reason to fear Birgitta.
You have no reason not to.
He called the front desk. A male voice answered. “Yes, Mr. Lindstrom?”
“Did a woman come in during the night, asking for me?”
“A young woman, yes. About two in the morning.”
“A young woman? Are you sure?”
“I think she was blonde. There are so many blonde women in Sweden, Mr. Lindstrom. Perhaps she was not so young. It was late. I told her she could not go up to your room unless I called first, but she did not want me to call. She left a letter, and I put it under your door so as not to awaken you.”
He is a man, Harry. A woman would notice another woman’s age. A man only if she is attractive or not.
“Was she attractive?” he asked.
There was a dull pause on the other end of the line, and then the voice said, “I am sorry, I did not think you would want to be disturbed.”
Meaning “yes, she was attractive.” He’s feeling guilty for ruining a midnight tryst.
While he showered, Harry puzzled out the implications of insisting they meet in Visby. Was she on her way to Fårö? Was she safer on Gotland than in Toronto or Stockholm? Was she closing in on Bernd— the pursuer pursued again in pursuit? Was Fårö where the dark purposes of this very strange family converged?
Then why didn’t we go there in the first place?
Because something has changed in the family dynamics. Whatever brought her to Stockholm has driven her away.
The same could be said for you, Harry. Whatever brought you to Stockholm is now compelling your departure. You have no moral alternative but to go to Gotland. And you’re curious. You’re dying to know what you’ve got yourself into.
He chuckled.
When he finished dressing, he picked up the large manila envelope Miranda had couriered to him and thumbed through the pages, setting the photographs off to the side. He was not sure what he was looking for until he found it, a paragraph about the girl from Gimli, noti
ng that her skin and the blanket weren’t fused by the cold, indicating her flesh had been frozen before the blanket was draped around her. Was this an awkward expression of delayed remorse? Or a means of wrapping the body to make it less repellent while transporting it to the cedar maze?
Perhaps both. Or for some other reason, Harry.
Yeah, Harry agreed. Disgust and remorse weren’t generally in a serial killer’s vocabulary.
Looking at Birgitta’s note again, he suspected she was casting herself as a lure to bring him in from the edges. And he was biting. Either she had discovered new and irrefutable evidence against Bernd or she knew Bernd was determined to kill her. Or both.
Either way, Harry, protector or witness, you’re an indispensable part of the plot. She needs you to convict her son, or as a guardian to mediate the consequences of her own convictions.
He telephoned the number on Hannah Arnason’s card. She wasn’t in. He left a message: “Onto something interesting. Heading off to Gotland. I’ll be in touch.”
Not heartwarming, Harry. And annoyingly vague. Just enough mystery to pique her interest? Do we go by ferry or fly?
13 VISBY
BIRGITTA HAD DIRECTED HIM TO TAKE THE FERRY FROM Nynashämn. At this time of year, that could only mean she intended to create a delay. It would be bitterly cold on the open Baltic and the approach to Gotland could be obscured by weather or whitewashed with snow. She had probably flown early in the morning and wanted him there, but not too soon. He decided to fly.
As it turned out, the weather was perfect. The infinite shades of grey in the Baltic exaggerated the limitless expanse of an azure sky, as if the whole universe were in daylight. However, by the time Gotland loomed from below and his plane had begun a broad circling pattern before landing, a vague sense of apprehension had crept through Harry and displaced his pleasure at observing the world from a celestial perspective. Something he had noticed in Arlanda Airport had been working away at him.
While scanning the departures board for his Skyways Express flight to Visby, a flashing on the arrivals side caught his eye. Two flights from Reykjavik were listed in close proximity, one with SAS and another with Air Iceland.
Birgitta Ghiberti had flown to Iceland and disappeared, according to her son. Then she turned up in Stockholm at a public reception before vanishing again.
And?
What if she doubled back? he wondered. Two airlines, dual citizenship, two passports under different names. Very hard to keep track. She could have returned to Toronto after Bernd paid me a visit on Christmas Day, then flown directly to Stockholm. Bernd and I were both in the cities where the murders happened, when they happened, but there’s a reasonable chance that Birgitta was too.
Murders don’t happen, Harry. But so what if she was there? You’re not suggesting?
Anything’s possible.
That’s doesn’t mean everything is.
He gazed down at the wind turbines that were spread across Gotland as far as he could see, reaching skyward like quills on a startled porcupine. The image made him smile. As the plane swooped low, the town of Visby loomed like a magnificent miniature, too perfect to be real. On the western slope to the sea, in the heart of the modern city, a medieval town contained by a high wall stood largely intact from the fourteenth century when it had been a pirate redoubt. Red tile roofs floated over snow in the midday sun and everywhere inside the walls the standing ruins of church towers soared awkwardly upward, stone claws slowly releasing their grasp on heaven after various wars for the island’s possession.
Harry closed his eyes. The town became Birgitta in his mind, a complex trope for a woman he had met only briefly. She carried her age like a beautiful façade, with its intimations of conflict and compromise, intrigue and survival. But what secrets, he wondered, what terrors and horrors and unholy memories, lay buried within?
The plane jolted as it touched the earth and rolled to a stop. He opened his eyes, disembarked, caught a taxi. They drove through the northern gate, and he had the cab drop him at the modest entry to the Hotel St. Clemens that opened off Smedjegatan, a narrow and unassuming street, into a small courtyard fronted by buildings of different vintages.
At the reception desk he was treated like family, a distant relative who hadn’t been seen in years. The woman was surprised, though, that he was there already. Harry was surprised she knew anything about him.
“We have been expecting you, yes. Tomorrow, Dr. Lindstrom. But you are not to worry, we will accommodate you. Ms. Sviar will be delighted to see you, I am very sure, but surprised you are here too soon.”
Harry settled into his room in an outbuilding that opened directly onto the street. He discovered in the brochure by the bed that every room was different and the price ranges varied considerably. His room was quaint and cozy, and he loved that it was not like a hotel. He felt as if he were a guest in a country estate that had somehow become enclosed within the stone walls and narrow spaces of a bustling town.
After soaking his injured foot in ice-cold water until it was numbed, he walked over the shovelled cobblestones of the courtyard to reception and was disconcerted to find Birgitta had gone out, but not so unsettled as the concierge, who clearly felt it inappropriate behaviour. The woman had booked Harry’s room and therefore in some respects qualified as his host.
The concierge called a taxi, not because the distances within the walled town were great but because it was cold and her guest was unfamiliar with the layout of the medieval streets, which, she assured him, would be confusing to a stranger like himself. He was wondering how he differed from strangers unlike himself when a cab pulled into the courtyard and the kind woman stepped out into the cold to give directions without first asking Harry where he wanted to go.
He watched carefully, in lieu of dropping breadcrumbs, as the driver took him along the Murgatan, just inside the eastern wall, up past Österport, the Gate at the top of the old town, before dropping him off at the Skafferiet Café on Adelsgatan, which the driver assured him was a very good choice. For what, Harry wasn’t sure, since he hadn’t been consulted.
For a moment before entering, it occurred to him that Birgitta had set up a rendezvous, but once inside he quickly realized this was unlikely. She was a woman who would choose her setting to best advantage. The Skafferiet celebrated its age, its rustic charm, its worn and battered authenticity, with a casual panache that would be inimical to Birgitta’s languid elegance.
Picking up a coffee at the gourmet shop counter, he moved through an arch into the first of two low-ceilinged rooms filled with the dancing flames of candles in wall sconces and tea lights on tables, surrounded by walls of thick painted boards washed in pale blue. The depths of the candlelight caught in the textures of age-weathered wood created a magical sanctuary. He passed by the crackling fire and settled into a small table with a clear view of the elevated hearth and of the adjoining room with its ancient benches and larger tables for rendezvousing mothers with babies and clusters of kids learning to drink coffee and be worldly-wise.
Sipping his latte, he gazed at the quiet hubbub as people around him bought pastries, drank coffees, and chatted amiably where for centuries, it seemed, they had been doing the same thing.
Stay in the present, Harry.
His own presence wasn’t in doubt. But why he was on Gotland seemed more obscure than ever in the Skafferiet Café. Karen had argued it was out of curiosity, or following a moral imperative. He was inclined to think it had something to do with professional pride or, at the other extreme, with innate morbidity, whatever had led him into philosophy as a career and shaped his more recent fascination with arbitrary death, whether accidental, self-inflicted, or through malicious intent.
He walked over to the counter and ordered another latte.
Resuming his place with a good sightline to the fire, he purposefully avoided self-inquiry in favour of dealing with the Ghiberti anomalies.
Anomalies, Harry? People are dying.
The la
st two—they don’t fit the pattern.
Well, since I’m inclined to believe the case against you in the Haga Park was fabricated, that leaves Bernd—
Who had alibis.
More like plausible explanations.
Which Miranda Quin and Hannah Arnason both seemed willing to buy.
Taking the word of a serial killer—
—if he is—
—over yours.
They haven’t arrested me.
Not yet. They know where you are. Perhaps you’re more useful under the illusion you’re free.
The same could apply to Bernd.
It could.
He toyed with the dregs of his coffee, swilling them gently to reveal patterns in the grounds at the bottom of the cup. He looked round. The fire was blazing. Everyone seemed to be with someone else in the ancient café. He felt hollow inside and very alone.
It was a familiar feeling, like he was a little in everyone’s way. Harry had grown up as an only child, but without the advantages of being firstborn. His older brother died when Harry was seven, drowned playing pond hockey while they were living in Trois Rivières. Harry remembered him vividly, in the last three years merging him with his son Matt in his anguished memories. His parents never recovered from Bobbie’s death but they closed ranks and were mutually supportive. Isolated in their grief they held Harry awkwardly close, but without intimacy or affection. He could not take the place of his lost brother but was a continual reminder of his absence. He lived with his brother’s ghost until the day he left home, when Bobby apparently decided to stay with their parents. Harry went off to the University of Victoria on Vancouver Island for his first two years, then Victoria University in Toronto for the next five, switching from business to honours philosophy, followed by a master’s and almost forgetting he had once had a brother, had once had a family.
During those Toronto years, he spent a number of happy weekends with his venerable Aunt Beth, trying to recover his misplaced childhood in the warmth she reserved only for him. She was ancient by then but survived long enough to watch him graduate. He did not bother informing his parents about convocation, although he let them know he was heading off to Cambridge the following year. They didn’t respond to his letter and both died before he returned.