Lindstrom Alone

by Moss, John

  Harry got up and walked out into the afternoon twilight. Following a map he had picked up at the café counter, he made his way over cobbled streets smoothed by the winter snow and through passageways between buildings that pressed close on either side. He stopped in a little shop and tried on a nubuck sports jacket from Finland. He had noticed it in the window from the taxi on his way to the Skafferiet Café. The jacket was a perfect fit. Like the Armani he’d destroyed, it moulded to his body with gracious opulence. It made him feel good. He didn’t notice the price until he paid, but shrugged off the pain as a necessary evil.

  When he put his sheepskin on overtop, he realized the leather would take on the same smoky aroma. He found this strangely reassuring. The two of them together, the coat and the jacket, were a little too bulky for comfort. He’d pack the jacket up in his carry-on bag, but for now, it felt good.

  When he began to walk again, his toes throbbed, and after a while the moisture from his opened wounds bathed them with sickening warmth. He passed safely into the courtyard of the St. Clemens Hotel. He had hardly noticed when he checked in but the hotel was nestled snugly at the back against the walls of a ruined church, cloistered in shadow and stone.

  Sanctuary, he thought. But from what or for whom, he wasn’t certain.

  After cleaning and dressing his toes, he hobbled over to the main desk. Birgitta had been back and gone out again, much to the embarrassment of the motherly concierge. Harry crossed the courtyard back to his room and settled in for a nap, but his mind roiled with a sense of foreboding, centred around this unusual woman who was obsessed with her son as a serial killer and courted his hatred like a spider, a fly.

  For someone who had requested Harry’s presence, she was strangely elusive. Was it fear, indifference, or a power play to establish control?

  Drifting into sleep, he entered a shadowy world of medieval fortifications under siege, eighteenth-century coffee houses as the refuge of sages and scoundrels, and snowscapes with wind turbines rumbling above the bodies of two naked women, frozen with eyes open, gazing into a blank future. He was aware of himself only as an absence.

  When he woke up, he had to grasp for a moment to find who he was. Identity re-established, he got up and phoned the concierge to connect with Birgitta Sviar. It didn’t surprise him to find she had not yet returned.

  “She will be at one of the restaurants on the Stora Torget, the big square farther up the hill. Perhaps she did not understand you are here in your room.”

  “Did you tell her?”

  “I am so sorry, Dr. Lindstrom. I thought you were together already. I will call you a taxi.”

  “No, thanks. Thank you, I’ll walk.”

  “I saw you are injured.”

  “The walk will do me good. I just need to loosen up a bit.”

  The big square was actually quite intimate, with the lights of half a dozen restaurants gleaming off the snow piled neatly in rows. Harry walked by each of the restaurants very slowly and the smell of roast lamb filled the air as he passed. He could not see Birgitta Ghiberti. He did another round, this time going in and explaining that he was looking for a friend. When he had no luck, he stood under a street lamp, feeling absurdly forlorn.

  A young woman wrapped in furs walked toward him, moving very carefully in high-heeled boots over the icy pavement.

  “Excuse me,” said Harry in his most non-threatening voice.

  “Yes,” said the woman in perfect English, smiling graciously and not in the least intimidated. “Can I help you?”

  Harry grinned. “If you were a visitor, where would you find the best place in all of Visby to eat?”

  She gestured around her in a sweeping motion.

  “There are so many good places,” she said. “And always the Gotland lamb is superb.”

  “But somewhere special?”

  “A hotel down by the harbour, the Lindgarden. It has very good food and very nice atmosphere. Perhaps you should try there.”

  She gave him directions, and Harry made his way downhill on cobbled streets and past medieval walls toward the Lindgarden. His toes thrust hard against the front of his boots. He tried to distract himself by admiring his surroundings. Stockholm was a city of bricks and mortar, Visby of timber and stones. Both favoured warm pastels on stucco and plaster. As he descended toward the harbour, the roofs of the walled town below him gleamed vermilion in the moonlight. The walk itself was an adventure through time.

  Ms. Sviar was sitting in a corner. The table was set for two. When he approached her she looked up, smiled. They might have been lovers, meeting by candlelight, or old friends getting together to reminisce.

  “Mrs. Ghiberti,” he said. “I seem to have found you.”

  “And I, you, Dr. Lindstrom.”

  She motioned to a chair and a waiter held it for Harry as he draped his heavy sheepskin over the back and slid into place at the table. The waiter tugged at his coat, which Harry relinquished, and took it off into the shadows.

  “It is a pleasure, once again,” said Birgitta. “May I recommend the roast lamb. It is from Gotland sheep and there is nothing better. But you must have it blood red, of course. Or the rack, but then a little more cooked so the meat will strip easily from the bones.”

  Harry grimaced and decided on salmon fillet, with a side order of coleslaw, which somehow in Sweden was a gourmet treat.

  He noticed the Lindgarden’s extensive wine list included the 1945 Ch. Mouton Rothschild among its selection of Premier Grand Cru Bordeaux. The price was not given. If you had to ask, you couldn’t afford it. He couldn’t.

  They ate quietly and after they were finished, Harry observed that he had been asked by Bernd to find her.

  “Why? I’m not missing.”

  “He seems very afraid for you.”

  “For me or of me.”

  “Both, I suppose.”

  “Am I so formidable?”

  “Apparently you are. Given your shared history, his fear does not seem entirely arbitrary.”

  “Are you afraid of me?”

  “Should I be?”

  “Possibly you should.”

  “I’m not. Puzzled perhaps, but not afraid.”

  “Puzzled? By what?”

  “By your connections with the dead young women.”

  Her eyes widened, as if he were being indiscreet.

  “Which ones? You don’t imagine that I killed somebody, do you?”

  “It hadn’t occurred to me that you had,” he responded. It had occurred to him. He wasn’t shocked that she seemed entertained by the possibility of being a suspect. Considering the ominous play of intimacy and icy detachment in their relationship, nothing would surprise. She wore paradox like haute couture.

  “Would you like a liqueur, perhaps?” she offered.

  In the glimmering light of the dining room, Birgitta Ghiberti radiated a kind of beauty he had seen in paintings of the early Renaissance, combining a saintly glow with an earthiness that made her desirable without being accessible.

  She ordered Xante for them both, and when their drinks arrived they quietly sipped as they savoured the taste and aroma, which suggested baked pears infused with cognac. It was a new drink to Harry and he was pleasantly surprised by its complexity. Most liqueurs left him less than happy with their cloying sweetness and the contrived intensity of their flavour.

  “Do you know I am named for a saint?” she said, as if the statement were relevant.

  “No,” said Harry. “But I’m not surprised. There are lots to go around.”

  “Saints?”

  “Saints’ names.”

  “Saint Birgitta’s great vision, in the fourteenth century, was a number.”

  “A number? How many angels can dance on the head of a pin, a question with profound implications among clerics at the time.”

  “No, no. The number of Christ’s wounds as he made his way to the cross.”

  “Is that significant?”

  “In her vision, it is. He claimed
to have received 5475 blows. Her Lord told Saint Birgitta that if she were to recite fifteen Hail Marys and Our Fathers each day for a year, she would honour each wound on its own, and He would be very well pleased.”

  “You are telling me this because?”

  “Because I am. Do you know your Hail Marys and Our Fathers?”

  “I do, but they’re not mine.”

  “Not Catholic?”

  “Not Christian.”

  “Agnostic?”

  “Antagonistic.” He shrugged. Shrugging was the best possible way to avoid a discussion of religion. If it wasn’t leading to enlightenment in relation to murder, he was happy to forgo the theological chatter.

  She gazed at him over her glass. Her long fingernails looked almost real in the burning light that filled the room from the fire and candles, dancing off the walls in patterns suggesting Gustave Doré’s chiaroscuro version of Dante’s Inferno.

  “I didn’t expect you until tomorrow.”

  “But you did expect me.”

  “Oh yes. I knew you couldn’t resist the possibility of another young body.”

  “Another?”

  She lowered her head and smiled discreetly.

  “Are you saying?”

  She is, Harry.

  “That I might kill again? Yes, of course. I thought you had it all figured out.”

  I told you.

  Harry was at a loss for words. This woman so horrified by her son as a killer, was she spontaneously confessing to murder? He waited for Karen to comment but she chose to remain silent for the moment.

  “The two young women?” he asked with as much coherence as he could muster. “You’re saying …?”

  “In the cedar maze, yes, and in Hagaparken.”

  She was enjoying his discomfort.

  “Not Bernd?”

  “And not you, Dr. Lindstrom.”

  Of all the questions he wanted to ask, the first that came to mind seemed perhaps the most trivial: “The girl in the blanket, was it revulsion or remorse?”

  “Was what, I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Why did you cover her?”

  “Oh that. Well, I took her north to Muskoka. She was outside a part-time agency on Eglinton Avenue. I told her to hop in; we’d skip the commission. I needed help with preparing our cottage for winter guests. She was a pretty little thing, a bit nervous, a nail-chewer. By the time we got to Port Carling, she was relaxed; we were old friends. When it seemed we were locked out, I told her I’d pay her anyway. I suggested we compensate for the trip with a wood-fired sauna down by the boathouse. I built a low fire in the stove that was fed from outside; we stripped to the buff in the little vestibule. And you know, Harry, my body stood up pretty well by comparison. Eventually, I stepped out, locked the door, got dressed, heaped snow on the fire, and when I was sure it was out, I went for a late lunch at a diner in Port. Nothing to it, really. I spent a few hours at the library and after dark when I returned she had passed away. She froze to death in a sauna. Isn’t that ironic? It must have been a gentle death—not even scratch marks on the walls. I wrapped her in a blanket before I put her in the trunk so she wouldn’t thaw.”

  The waiter approached and asked if they wanted another Xante. They both nodded, yes. Harry hoped it would calm his churning gut, and Birgitta, apparently, to celebrate arousing his revulsion.

  “So there you are. Is that what you wanted to hear? The girl in Stockholm was a variation on the same theme. This time I had a gun. It wasn’t real but it was effective. I picked it up at an antique shop in the old town. It looked very authentic.”

  “And you planted my wife’s wedding band under her corpse.”

  “Your wife’s wedding band?”

  Harry waited.

  “Yes, yes I did.”

  There didn’t seem to be any explanation to account for her lapse in memory, so Harry continued, “You stole it from my condo.”

  “From that beautiful jewellery box. I love Japanese lacquerware.”

  “And you tried to kill me. Why?”

  “Oh no, you’re wrong about that.”

  “Well, you got my attention. I lost bits of a couple of toes and died for an unpleasant period of time from hypothermia.”

  “Poor you, but you don’t remember it, do you? The being dead part. People only think they do. And the toes, do they still hurt?”

  “They do. And the orange, that was to get my attention, as well.”

  “The orange? Oh yes, I remember. It struck me as odd that you’d have ceramic fruit; you don’t seem the type. It clashed with your lovely carpet. The clockwork orange.”

  “In the snow.”

  “Yes, in case you thought the door had blown open by itself. I wanted you to know someone had been there. I didn’t want you to know why.”

  She seemed to be reciting the details as if she had gone over them, perseverating, trying to inscribe them in memory.

  “You assumed I’d think it was Bernd?” And he had.

  “If I took the ring and your scarf and just disappeared, you might never have known. I needed you to make the connection.”

  “With Bernd. You thought an orange in the snow would do that?”

  “Very Dadaist, don’t you think? It did work, didn’t it?”

  “And you planted the scarf and the ring because?”

  “To keep you involved.” She offered a condescending smile.

  “You do not believe in natural justice?”

  “Ah, but I do. I do not believe in police.”

  “You do not believe in the law.”

  “Law should never be a matter of faith, Harry. What I do believe in is the capacity of the desperate to endure.” She sighed. “I’m surprised you didn’t wake up. If you’d ever had children, you would have.”

  He was about to protest but he stopped himself. The less she knew about him, the more comfortable he felt.

  “And if I had wakened?”

  “What, you would have captured me? But you didn’t.”

  “You were still there when I came out of the bedroom? You locked me outside. I saw you through the window.”

  “Whatever you saw, you never imagined it was me.”

  “You knew I’d freeze to death.”

  “No, Harry, I knew you were resourceful. That’s why I hired you, or, if you’d rather, since you refuse to be paid in advance, why I enlisted your aid. I needed you. I still do.”

  “Then I’m glad I survived,” he responded, with a caustic absence of expression.

  “You think you’ve caught me, now, of course?”

  “I do.”

  “Unless I’ve caught you, Harry.”

  How can she be so smug, Karen hissed? What’s she up to?

  Damned if I know.

  And damned if you don’t. We have the answer now; we just need the right questions.

  “Are we at an awkward impasse, Harry?” Birgitta’s eyes widened again. “I do not expect absolution, you are not my priest. And more to my benefit, you are not the police.” Her lips curled at the edges. Far from appearing to be cornered, she seemed empowered by his presence. And by her confession.

  Birgitta Ghiberti tilted her head low, looked up at him through her lashes, and her lips parted into a seductive curve. This was evil incarnate and her beauty was enhanced by her crimes. Harry reached across the table to put his hand on hers in a futile gesture of suppression, in a morbid attempt to connect, but she pulled coyly away.

  Why connect, Harry? Connect with what? You want to understand, don’t you? You can’t.

  “I’ll tell you what,” the woman said, sitting upright again. “Let us suppose I have taken up my son’s curious pastime—”

  “It seems you have.”

  “But by choice, Harry. Not under compulsion.”

  “An interesting distinction.”

  “I will make a deal with you. Your pact with the devil, if you’d like. I will not do another while you’re here. So, good for you, Harry, you have prolonged a human
life. Of course, you can’t stay forever. I can.”

  She’s taunting you, Harry. But why?

  “And if I find your victim first?”

  “Perhaps you can save her life.”

  Maybe you did connect, Harry. You’ve always had a way with beautiful women. Or maybe your professorial convictions about our fundamental humanity are still as contagious. Maybe she’s not as bad as she wants to be.

  Believe it, this woman wants to be bad.

  Birgitta stood up and smoothed the front of her long skirt over her thighs, then leaned down and whispered, “In spite of all that you know, Harry, there’s nothing you can do. Have a nice walk back.”

  He tried to settle the bill, only to find she had paid for both of them on her way out. By the time he retrieved his coat, she was gone. Outside, he saw her slip into a small blue sedan parked across from the Lindgarden and drive off toward their hotel.

  Harry pulled on his black toque and drew his sheepskin close. His toes seemed a banal distraction. He ignored the pain and as he walked he wondered, did this strange woman really kill those girls or was this another delusion? Bernd now seemed more the victim of his mother’s malevolent obsessions than a villain.

  In the morning, Harry would try to reach Hannah Arnason. He wondered if she knew any of this. They needed to talk.

  14 THE RUINS OF ST. CLEMENS

  HARRY WALKED PAST AN ANCIENT LOG BUILDING AND along the deserted Strandgatan toward his hotel. A small blue car parked in the shadows caught his attention, and he approached it warily. No one was in the car but it was poised across the end of a cobbled passage leading away from the harbour, as if the driver meant to return shortly. The lights of a tiny souvenir shop not far above the main street flickered from people moving about inside. He moved up the snowy incline and walked slowly past, keeping to the darkness as much as he could.

  Birgitta was having an animated conversation with the clerk. Harry backtracked to peer in, realizing they would not be able to see him through the reflection of the shop interior. Birgitta’s back was to him but he could see the other woman clearly, although it was impossible to read her expression. She was young, a blonde with flushed cheeks, an attractively upturned nose, and with pale eyebrows that made her eyes seem bland. She was listening attentively and then shrugged as the older woman leaned forward and kissed her in the French custom on both cheeks and turned to face Harry directly.