by Moss, John
Bernd appeared preoccupied but relaxed. Skadi was more distant, as if trying to hear voices from a long way off, and occasionally she permitted herself a small smile, as if the occasional message was getting through.
It was time to force things to a crisis.
“Bernd, your mother—”
“Not here,” Bernd snapped. His dark eyes flashed a warning.
Skadi still didn’t know Birgitta was dead!
Check.
Bernd did.
Check.
And Bernd knew that Harry knew.
Now that seems unlikely.
But he does.
Checkmate.
“Shall we go for a walk? I’d like to show you something.” Bernd spoke with no suggestion of malevolence or panic in his voice, but with an underlying force that made it clear this was more than a social invitation.
No way, Harry. Stay where you have witnesses.
Harry glanced at Skadi and then looked at Bernd, who had risen to his feet.
If it’s one to one, I can look after myself.
Tough guy, Bogie. I thought you were a gentle, contemplative man.
Fiercely, remember.
“Let’s go, then,” Harry said, also rising.
“Good,” said Bernd. “We’ll walk along the shoreline.”
Bernd moved out through the living room into the hallway. Harry followed but had to stand back to allow the other man room. Aunt Annie glanced up with a look of recognition and immediately let her eyes wander back to the flickering screen. Aunt Lenke didn’t look up.
Unexpectedly, Skadi appeared behind Harry and helped with his coat, both pairs of gloves, and his toque. It struck him that she had cast herself as his second in a duel that was about to take place. And yet her facial expression was neutral. He couldn’t tell whether she was oblivious or just didn’t care which of the two men survived.
Harry trudged in Bernd’s footsteps, head down against the force of the onshore wind. Once they crossed the road, it was easier going, even though they were more exposed. The snow had blown clear in large patches of frozen shale, but drifted in the lee of the boulders like mounded shadows.
They made their way to the weather-beaten board and batten shed. An old fishing dory leaned up against it. Its bottom looked worn but sound. Patches of yellow paint were chipped away and the lapstrake planks were furred, but there were no cracks. It had clearly been displaced years ago from its rightful refuge inside the shelter. A couple of red plastic fuel containers were set into the dory’s lea; a curious anomaly since there was no engine. A pair of old oars protruded from the shadowed space between the boat and the shed.
At the top of a low ice-glazed ramp on the seaward side, Bernd lifted a wooden bar from its slots and set it aside, then fiddled with a broken padlock holding the double-hung doors closed to the elements.
Harry hesitated for a moment, then followed Bernd inside.
He might clobber you from behind and kill you, Harry. Taking down a dangerous fugitive and eliminating his worst enemy, all at the same time.
Or he might simply want to know how much I know.
Harry sat stone-faced on a bench with his back to a wall while Bernd split some kindling and started a fire in the rusty pot-bellied stove. When he set down the axe, Harry was tempted to reach for it, but the other man was closer, and there could be an extremely bloody battle for possession. If the other man ignored him, then he would be stuck with an axe in his hands for no apparent reason.
The inside of the shed began to tremble like a gigantic ember from firelight seeping through the copious cracks and open seams in the cast iron. The walls were lined with cardboard boxes that had been slit open and tacked to the studs. Graphics and print at odd angles shimmered as the warmth from the stove displaced the cold. Both men took off their outer apparel.
There was no sign of fishing gear, apart from an ancient coil of rope, but there were tattered comic books on the plank floor and a few coverless copies of Playboy on a workbench that spanned the onshore side of the shed. The centrefolds appeared to be intact.
Harry could tell by the way Bernd settled so comfortably into the space that this had been his boyhood hangout.
Bernd sat on the bench opposite.
“Now we wait,” he said, in a voice that seemed congenial and yet threatening.
“Interesting,” Harry responded, looking the man straight in the eye.
“You know my mother is dead, of course.”
“Apparently I killed her,” said Harry.
“Yes, that is how it appears. That’s how the inspector sees it.”
“You’ve talked to Inspector Arnason?”
“In the early hours of the morning. She came to my hotel in Visby to tell me Birgitta had been murdered.”
“And she told you I bashed in her skull?”
Harry thought he saw a tremor of emotion sweep across the man’s face.
“Interesting, isn’t it?” said Harry. “You warned me you would do it, you asked me to stop you. Was that just to keep me close to the action? You planned to frame me from the get-go.”
A sliver of firelight glinted in the other man’s eyes.
“No,” Bernd said. “That was Birgitta’s idea.”
Harry leaned back against the cardboard wall and half-closed his eyes.
We were right, Harry. The brutal blow was kind. It seems they were in it together.
“You killed your mother with her consent. At her request, her insistence, perhaps. She left you no option.”
Bernd looked down at the rough planks of the floor and the firelight fell from his eyes. His head bowed slightly, and his long nose cast a flickering shadow across his cheek that looked like the edge of a deep and bloodless wound.
The crackling of the fire against the din of the gusts hurling pellets of spray against the doors muffled but didn’t erase the sounds of their heavy breathing.
“Perhaps she discovered she liked it,” Bernd said.
“Killing?”
“Yes.”
“But it horrified her?” Harry hoped for at least that much.
“She asked me to stop her. Once you have killed in cold blood, there are no moral imperatives left. It is difficult to resist doing it again.”
“You know this.”
“I know this.”
He raised his head, and the light through the cracks in the cast iron glinted in his deep-set eyes.
“But killing your mother was different.”
“You can love and fear and hate the same person.” Bernd paused, as if taking stock.
She knew she was going to die, Harry. That’s why the confessional revelations over dinner. Pleasure from the power of knowing what you, the pawn, couldn’t see coming, what you didn’t have the moves to prevent.
“You kept to the shadows,” said Harry.
“She died painlessly.”
“You slipped away.”
“By moonlight. When Inspector Arnason showed up in the small hours, I was actually surprised to learn she thought you had done it. But it all fit. My mother was still in charge. She framed you for the murders she committed, so why not for her own execution? She knew that you would follow her into the ruins.”
She saw you watching, Harry.
“Was Skadi a part of all this? How much did she know?”
“We told each other everything.”
“Everything!”
“I’m sure we lied here and there. Out of love, not squeamishness.”
“But you didn’t tell her Birgitta was dead.”
“I would have, eventually.”
“When Inspector Arnason arrived at your hotel, were the Gotland Police with her?”
“She was on her own.”
“And after she left, you picked up Skadi and came here. Why?”
“Why bring Skadi? Skadi lives with the aunties when she’s not in Visby. Why come? To find you. And you came to find me. And here we are, in a fisherman’s shed on the bleak and blessed co
ast of Fårö.”
“Inspector Arnason told you I’d be on Fårö?”
For the briefest instant, Harry was skeptical. If Hannah Arnason knew where Harry would be, then his escape was a set-up. Hannah and Sverdrup had stage-managed the whole thing. Sverdrup took one on the nose to ensure authenticity, not to fool his boss but to fool Harry. And it worked.
Harry had headed north to confront Bernd Ghiberti, the serial killer. Bernd was their primary target. It was a calculated risk, given they seemed convinced by Birgitta’s scheming that Harry had killed at least two young women, and the jury was out on which of the two men had caved in the back of Birgitta’s head.
“You had to come, Harry, you had no choice. I’m the only person who can prove your innocence. You knew I had nowhere else to go.”
“And I may be the only person able to prove your guilt.”
“But I doubt that you can, Harry. It is your word against mine. And you were found with my mother’s blood on your hands.”
“Not literally. It was on Sverdrup’s.”
“Inspector Arnason’s assistant. An unpleasant man, isn’t he? Some people are innately unpleasant. It’s a genetic trait.”
“When you said we’re waiting, are we waiting for Hannah Arnason?”
“The police, yes.”
“But she will come without the police, Bernd. She is hell bent for vengeance and Sverdrup is her accomplice. It’s just hard to say whether she’s after you or me.”
“Maybe both.”
Bernd Ghiberti slouched on his bench, then straightened and sat back, leaning against the wall. The two men eyed each other warily.
The wind howled against the walls. At last the other man spoke, “I do not believe Hannah Arnason is an outlaw.”
Virtue is where you find it, Harry.
“She’s certainly a renegade,” Harry said. “And highly motivated. She wants revenge. You murdered her sister, the young woman in Iceland last August. You dropped her down a ravine and the girl died an ungodly miserable lonely death.”
“Arnason’s sister! I didn’t know. But you’ll get blamed for that one, too, Harry. I know you were in Iceland last summer, as well as in Toronto and Stockholm when the murders occurred. If you die, I am exonerated.”
A heavy price to pay to prove a guilty man innocent, Harry.
“So you have a moral obligation to kill me,” Bernd declared.
“So it seems.”
“I wonder if Birgitta knew you were such a righteous man? She must have, to play you so well.”
“Righteous, perhaps; not self-righteous, I hope.”
“All good works are self-righteous, Harry. And my mother counted on you being a good man. Myself, I also have a capacity for good.”
Also, Harry!
“My project in Africa is to honour my sisters. A form of self-righteousness, I accept that. I have never done harm in Africa.”
“Ah,” said Harry. “Noblesse oblige.”
“If I die, you will never establish your innocence.”
“And if you live?”
“You will never establish your innocence.”
The sides of the pot-bellied stove glowed molten red. The air had become stifling, both men were sweating, the wind howled against the board and batten siding, and the old shed shuddered on its meagre foundation.
Harry knew he had nowhere to go. If he was not literally a prisoner of the man across from him in the shed, he was certainly a captive of the windswept landscape, the sparse population, and the pitiless weather.
He could understand Bernd wanting to bring him to the shed. Whatever was going down between them, it had nothing to do with the aunts. Or with Skadi. It was a place where Bernd was comfortable, a refuge in childhood, a secluded retreat, and a sanctuary, now, from the insults assailing him, thrown up by his sadistic mother and a collapsing world.
Harry was reluctant to break the silence. Taken out of context, this was a companionable interlude. If he had been expected to rage against Bernd, it wasn’t going to happen. Hannah Arnason had hoped to unleash a fury that would flush the serial killer into the open. Why else set up Harry’s escape? Birgitta Ghiberti had been motivated by exactly the same desire: force Harry to expose Bernd in order to establish his own innocence. She wanted Bernd caught, no matter what the cost. Birgitta wasn’t trying to protect her son but to stop him from killing again.
What if Bernd did the last three, as well? What if Birgitta didn’t murder those girls? And you didn’t, we’re fairly certain of that.
His mind was swirling in a galaxy of possibilities.
Birgitta had described the lacquered jewel box? She had seen the ceramic fruit on his coffee table. From where she had been sitting on the blue sofa, she had had a vantage through his bedroom door; she could have seen the box during their interview. She didn’t necessarily take anything from it, and she wasn’t necessarily the intruder who locked him out on the balcony. It could have been Bernd, after all. She knew the wedding band had been found with the frozen body in the Haga Park. This only proved that she and her son had been in contact since the murders. And she knew about the Möbius scarf in Toronto!
If she had killed no one, why would she arrange her own execution?
When his mind had been shattered by emotion after the accident, Harry had fallen apart. Too much thought and he was like a dry stick in the wind, too much feeling and he was threatened with perpetual grief. It wasn’t always easy being Harry. But when a logical challenge presented itself, brought sharply into focus by danger, the fusion of battered intellect and charged emotion was a lovely distraction. He was almost happy.
Bernd Ghiberti stood up and paced. There were no windows and no lights, except for the dancing strands of fiery illumination from the blaze in the pot-bellied stove. The double doors rattled in the wind. Harry watched the man closely, wondering if he shouldn’t take the initiative. The axe was within reach. If he picked it up, there was no turning back. He might be able to stop Bernd from killing again, something the police and Bernd’s mother were unable to do, by driving an axe through his skull. Hannah Arnason had virtually sanctioned such extreme action.
Not your style, Harry.
He glanced at Bernd who was looming over him. The axe was within his reach, as well. He addressed Karen: not my style, either, to be crushed by a psychopath in the blink of an eye.
Don’t blink.
Harry thought about that, then addressed his adversary in a conspiratorial whisper, “They won’t be in a hurry, you know. No one’s going to be here anytime soon.”
Bernd looked at him quizzically. Harry improbably patted the space on the bench beside him. Instead, the other man pulled up an empty crate and settled onto it at an angle, so they both were washed in a sheen of firelight.
It was time to talk.
“Why did you bring me here?” Harry asked. “You said you had something to show me.”
“Only this place.”
“Really.”
“It is the one place in the world I feel safe. I wanted you to see it.”
That was a startling admission, apparently for both of them. Harry tried not to show his surprise but Bernd Ghiberti seemed thrown by what he had said. He rose abruptly, on the pretense of checking that the doors were securely shut. He gave them a good shake, then returned to his crate.
“It seems to have fallen on you to be my witness, Harry.”
“To what?”
“My life.”
Harry waited.
“When I was small, we came here on short visits to see the aunts, all of us, except my father. My sisters Giovanna and Isabella and Sigrid, my mother, and myself. And Skadi. We were a family. After Sigrid died I was sent here every summer for two or three months.”
Harry gave him time to gather his emotions, then asked, “Skadi? She couldn’t have been here back then?”
Bernd seemed to have been caught off guard. Harry could tell he was taking a brief tour through his storehouse of memories, trying to
arrange them in a logical sequence. Bernd circumvented Harry’s question.
“Skadi and I played together, sometimes we did puzzles. I taught her chess but she would usually beat me. She didn’t like that so we stopped. She never came here, to my shed, though. This was my private place. She had her own up the road.”
“Bernd, she’s far too young. She’s a student.”
“She is completing her PhD in Nordic studies. Her doctorate.”
Harry was incredulous.
“She is twenty-eight,” said Bernd.
“Skadi?”
As a great judge of women, Harry, you are quite inconsistent.
Harry struggled to process the new information about Skadi. Could there be any significance beyond an adjustment to accommodate a shift in his perception of the empirical world?
Don’t be pompous, Harry.
I’m not, he responded, pompously.
“How is she related? Is she a Sviar?” he asked out loud.
Bernd looked at him and said nothing, and in that instant Harry knew.
Skadi appeared young because her complexion was pallid and her features bland. Her blue eyes were pale, her nose slightly upturned in the Scandinavian way, and her hair was the colour of lemons. Her smile was kind and gentle and knowing. She might have been an adolescent Ingrid Bergman. Or the actress at thirty, but out of focus.
“She’s your sister, isn’t she?”
Bernd nodded assent with forbearance, suggesting it wasn’t something either to be ashamed of or talked about. It was just what it was.
“What’s her special interest?” asked Harry. With his residual set of mind as an academic, it was more important for Harry to situate Skadi in an intellectual world than to sort out her parentage or the strange circumstances of her isolation.
Bernd Ghiberti took a moment to comprehend the question, then shrugged as he answered. He too was an academic.
“Her dissertation is on the correlation in Nordic countries between aesthetic expression and the conditions of winter.”
“Winter?”
“Perpetual darkness, bitter cold, social isolation.”
“What about robust constitutions, warm fires, congenial dispositions?”