Lindstrom Alone

by Moss, John

  “Only to ask if I remembered a murder ten years ago in Visby. Did I recall reports of black paint on the victim’s fingers? I told her I remembered, but she didn’t pursue the matter, not until she found Skadi’s manicure case. It was out in the open in the bathroom Skadi and I shared in the Toronto house. There were fresh fingernail parings inside. That’s when she went to you.”

  “She still thought the nail collection was yours.”

  “Harry, who knows? She needed to think it was mine. She insisted the Icelandic kit was mine, as well.”

  “But it was Skadi’s.”

  “So, I blew up, I went away. Birgitta tried to get the police to come after me, then Lindstrom and Malone. She was convinced I was a killer and that I had gone to Sweden. But Skadi was still in Toronto. She was staying in Sigrid’s room. I couldn’t leave her. I returned home the morning you and I met, Harry, when you came to the door. As you remember, I sent you away.”

  “And your mother sent me a cheque.”

  “Good. I hope she was generous.”

  “To a fault.”

  “And then there was another blow-up. An indigent young woman from Manitoba. Her body turned up, frozen dead in the trunk of Birgitta’s car.”

  “Turned up!” Harry exclaimed. “I didn’t see that one coming.”

  “Nor did I. Skadi had had the car all day and most of the night. Nevertheless, my mother blamed me, as you might expect. Not for the killing, which seemed to her of only passing interest, but for causing Skadi to be how she was. It was easier to accept her son was the devil’s offspring than her only living daughter was a danger to anyone except herself.”

  “I thought she didn’t learn about the Gimli girl until they got to Iceland,” said Harry.

  “It was hard to ignore a corpse in her car. She knew. That’s why she wanted Skadi out of the country.”

  “But the car was Birgitta’s. It could have been her?”

  “Who? Birgitta killing the girl in the trunk? I doubt it.”

  “Then why would she tell me she’d done it?”

  Asked and answered, Harry. To suck you into the vortex.

  Bernd shook his head slowly in resigned frustration.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “She did help dispose of the frozen body. She insisted we wrap it in a blanket.”

  “When she was in the trunk she was naked?”

  “Yeah, when we found her.”

  “So that part is true. She was frozen to death in a sauna.”

  “Ironic, isn’t it?”

  “Your mother said the same thing.”

  “Did she?” He didn’t seem surprised. “So, the three of us drove around Rosedale with the corpse in the trunk of the car until we found the cedar maze. We thought the body wouldn’t be discovered until spring.”

  “Is it possible your mother killed the girl.”

  “No. Unless the body had been in the car longer than I thought— Skadi driving around with a corpse in the back? That, Harry, is ironic.”

  “The only irony is that you seem amused.”

  That’s not irony, Harry. It’s appropriately mordant, macabre, and morbid.

  “Look, I assumed Skadi had killed her, I still think so, and Skadi seemed quite amenable to taking the credit.”

  “The credit?”

  “The responsibility. She was confident Birgitta would not betray her, no more than I would have done.”

  “Then you broke into my condo, stole my things, so I’d take the fall for that one, at least. But why try to kill me? That would have defeated your purpose.”

  “We didn’t. That was Skadi on her own initiative.”

  Harry hadn’t seen that coming.

  “Skadi listened to my mother and me conspiring. She wasn’t exactly a conspirator herself, but when she heard how we intended to set you up, since you were already involved, she thought you must be our common enemy.”

  “The enemy. And I needed to be eliminated?”

  “Skadi snuck into your apartment after I left.”

  “On Christmas Day? So she and her mother were still in Canada?”

  “It’s easy to hide when no one knows you exist. Skadi was virtually invisible. And Birgitta travelled with two passports and three names.”

  “Skadi locked me out on the balcony to die from exposure.”

  “She came back and told us. That’s when we knew we had to get her back to Sweden as soon as possible.”

  “And the ceramic orange?”

  “Skadi’s inspiration, drawing you out into the cold with what she called the forbidden fruit.”

  “She was thinking ahead enough to steal the ring and the scarf.”

  “Ah, Harry, no. That was me. I broke into your place when you were in the hospital. I needed to unlock your balcony door, so your death would have seemed like an accident. But you survived.”

  “Barely.”

  “I took the scarf and buried it in the snow beside the girl in the maze. I kept your ring on a premonition.”

  “That Skadi would kill again?”

  “Birgitta planted the ring under the corpse in Hagaparken.”

  “She was there!”

  Bernd did not respond.

  “So you were working together in Stockholm. What changed?”

  “What do you mean, Harry?”

  “What changed? Something did. Suddenly we were all in the middle of the Baltic, including Inspector Arnason and Constable Sverdrup.”

  “At your invitation, Harry,” said Hannah.

  “More specifically, at Birgitta Ghiberti’s, in time for you to witness her ultimate sacrifice among the ruins of St. Clemens.”

  Bernd seemed annoyed to have lost control of his story. “Birgitta,” he said. “Birgitta changed. She decided after watching the death in the park that I must be stopped!”

  “You!” Harry exclaimed.

  “If I were eliminated, she was certain Skadi wouldn’t kill any more.”

  “If you were stopped!”

  That’s about as logical as you would expect.

  Birgitta was not about logic.

  I know, Harry.

  Bernd sank back, despondent and exhausted.

  Harry, I’m not sure I believe him.

  About what.

  Anything!

  I think he’s trying to be truthful. It’s bloody difficult given the lies and malevolence he’s lived with all his life.

  “She actually saw Skadi kill the girl in the park, didn’t she?”

  “She followed her. She had rented a car in your name, Harry.”

  “Ah,” said Harry. “So she could have saved the girl. If she followed Skadi, she must have got there before the girl died.”

  “She made Skadi leave. She was worried they’d get caught if the girl lived.”

  “And she coloured the girl’s nails,” said Harry. “She used Goth nail polish to replicate the corpse of the girl from Gimli. She just happened to have some with her.”

  “Apparently she did.”

  That macabre detail struck Harry as especially gruesome. He continued, “She stripped the girl naked—before the girl was dead, before she was stiffened from the cold or rigor mortis set in.”

  “It takes several hours,” Bernd observed with peculiar detachment. “The girl in Toronto had been killed in a sauna. We had no clothes, she was in the trunk of the car, and she was frozen stiff. We would have had to cut her in pieces. Skadi was too gentle for that, mother was too fastidious, and I was stricken helpless. It was easier to change the pattern than to break up the body.”

  “But the girl in Hagaparken was still warm and pliable.” Harry felt a surge of revulsion at the clear intimations of irredeemable, irremediable evil. He felt incredulous horror at the open display of moral degeneracy.

  “Your mother was a fiend.” The word seemed weak and empty, a vapid summation of unbearable malevolence.

  Bernd looked downcast, as if a suspicion had just been confirmed.

  “Please to continue,” said Sver
drup.

  Bernd squinted in the candlelight. His breathing was laboured. When he said nothing, Harry spoke up, “Bernd, even then, Birgitta was wrong, wasn’t she? Skadi did kill again.”

  “Despite my mother’s best intentions.”

  “Her intention to have you caught after having executed her in the church?”

  “And or, Harry, and or—to have you take the blame. Either way, she would have died at peace.”

  A separate peace.

  “But Skadi didn’t come to get me like she was supposed to. Both Skadi and Birgitta knew you were watching, Harry. Skadi followed Birgitta and smashed in her skull with a rock.”

  Which must have been a satisfying expression of primal rage.

  “And you only found out your mother was dead when Inspector Arnason came calling in the middle of the night?”

  Bernd nodded in affirmation.

  “Either that or Skadi did come to get you. And you killed Birgitta.”

  Bernd seemed stifled by remorse for having betrayed his sister.

  “You talk about refuge and sanctuary, Mr. Ghiberti.” Hannah’s voice was soothing. “Do you mean from your mother?”

  “From death,” Bernd said, rousing himself. “As children we were haunted by the deaths of our sisters in ways it is hard to imagine. For years through my adolescence, I brooded about being a born killer. It thrilled me and scared me so much I would wake up from nightmares screaming. At home, Birgitta would get up and close her door. Here, Skadi would come down from her room and crawl into bed with me and hold me. She was so little and fearless. I know she believed my mother, that I was a killer. And she loved me more than anyone in the world, her natural-born killer, because she felt safe with me. Who better to protect her from death than Death himself? She would make up fantasies about death, about being dead, she would lay herself out right here in the ancestral grave on a bed of reeds and wildflowers, and wait, sometimes for hours, until finally I would find her, and then she would hold her breath until I declared her alive. Which I always did, of course, and she always survived.”

  “Death was power, play, affection, everything, then,” said Hannah Arnason, sympathetically, before switching strategies. “Bernd, you were not in Iceland last summer with your sister, were you?”

  “I was.”

  “No, you were not.”

  He took a long time answering. Sverdrup coughed phlegmatically and Harry struggled to quash his frustration at not being the one asking questions. But Arnason was in charge; Harry was an observer with vested interests.

  “No,” he admitted at last. “I was in Africa.”

  Records of travel between Nordic countries were scant to nonexistent but to North Africa could be traced. He was probably telling the truth.

  Hannah seemed satisfied, as if he had confirmed her suspicions. She exchanged a knowing glance with Sverdrup.

  “That leaves Skadi and me,” said Harry, leaning into the conversation. “We know she was in Iceland; her own research notes will prove it. And I’ve never denied it. So there you are.”

  “You take this lightly, Professor Lindstrom.”

  “I do not,” he declared emphatically. “But you’ve made sure I’m involved. You and your henchman sent me to Fårö to flush out the killer. I assumed it was Bernd. You suspected it was his sister all along. You knew some of the murders were done when he wasn’t around. You thought I could force him to betray her, which he did not do, even after she tried to kill him. She was actually quite open about it in an opaque sort of way. Whatever you think of Bernd’s love for his sister, no one could ever doubt his commitment. You set me up.”

  “Did I? Well, it was very convincing, wasn’t it? I think you broke Constable Sverdrup’s nose.”

  “And I think he gave me a bloody concussion.”

  “But we did flush her out, didn’t we, Harry?”

  “At the cost of nearly getting us burnt to death. She was trying to protect him from you.”

  “By trying to kill you both, apparently. You’ll have to tell me about that, some time. But you survived.”

  She could not have known about the boatshed fire but seemed unconcerned, even with the peeling skin on Harry and Bernd’s faces as evidence.

  Harry turned suddenly morose. “You knew I didn’t push the girl into the crevasse. You never thought I did. She wasn’t your sister, was she?”

  “No, just a name. But real to the people who mourn her, real to herself until the end.”

  Her gaze had been fixed on Harry. She turned, trying to see across the candlelight into Bernd’s eyes. He was wheezing; he had been through a lot and appeared on the verge of respiratory collapse.

  When Harry began to talk again, she returned her attention to him.

  “I’m assuming,” he said, “you also made up that garbage about Miranda Quin. Whatever she told you, you manipulated the facts.”

  Facts and truth, Harry, they’re never the same.

  “She was worried about you, that part is accurate.”

  “And otherwise?”

  Hannah shrugged. “Otherwise? Well, her usefulness has ended. Otherwise, she was certain it could not be you.”

  Harry felt a warm flood of relief course through his entire system. Miranda had not betrayed him. Of course, she wouldn’t. She had entrusted him with her father’s toque, which she had kept with her for over thirty years. Hannah Arnason had simply used Harry’s doubts about himself, his lack of confidence in the good faith of others, to her strategic advantage.

  “And you?” Harry asked.

  “I doubted you were a killer from the beginning.”

  That makes what she did to you unconscionable, Harry.

  But effective.

  Bernd rallied from the margins.

  “You counted on the rage of Harry’s righteousness to bring me down,” he declared, addressing Hannah with withering contempt. “Whether I was guilty of murder or not. He was expendable. And my sister, if you suspected she was a serial killer, why didn’t you stop her? Did you need my mother to do the work for you? Did you need me to betray her? Did you need Harry to catch her in the act? Perhaps for your own perverse reasons you needed her to kill again? Or were you waiting for Birgitta’s murder, the only violent death of the lot.”

  “You don’t think young women dying of exposure is violent?”

  Harry did a double take. This was not Karen whispering in his head, and it was not Inspector Arnason. It was Horatio Sverdrup.

  24 INSIDE THE BURIAL MOUND

  THE PENETRATING CHILL HAD SEEPED THROUGH AND Harry began to shiver. When he had first come in out of the storm, he had been cold but dry and warmed quickly. But the root cellar was damp and the walls of piled stones glistened with moisture. The beams overhead gleamed with condensation from the bodies and breathing of four living people in a confined and airless crypt.

  He reached for Sverdrup’s hat and gloves, which rested on the rubble floor beside his crate. As he picked them up he caught a whiff of stale tobacco and looked over at his devious benefactor. The man was ashen and held his jaw stiff to fight the tremors coursing across the rough terrain of his face. Harry handed him his hat and gloves. The other man nodded and pulled them on. Almost immediately, he removed them again and without a word turned to Hannah Arnason, who was sitting close beside him. He took her hands, one at a time, and slipped the gloves over her fingers, securing them snuggly around her wrists, and then he placed the fur hat on her head and pulled the flaps down warmly over her ears. She accepted his ministrations without comment.

  Harry, you’ve got competition.

  Sverdrup rose to his feet, embarrassed. Hannah’s eyes followed him into the shadows, and Harry thought he detected the hint of a smile. Then she returned her attention to Bernd.

  “I can understand if you had wanted to murder your sister. Especially if you had killed the others.”

  Bernd didn’t rise to the bait.

  “But why would you want to kill your mother?”

  Becau
se she was a heartless bitch?

  “I didn’t,” said Bernd. Exhaustion was creeping through his voice. “I am very fond of my sister.”

  In the extreme.

  “And I loved my mother.”

  Ah, yes. Aristotle again. Sophocles. Oedipus.

  “I killed no one.”

  Not directly.

  “I would imagine you wanted to murder them both for a very long time.” Hannah paused, as if enacting a courtroom revelation but she wasn’t sure where her rhetoric was taking her.

  Harry said, “Birgitta threatened to expose Skadi if you didn’t cooperate. I doubt she’d have done that. In her own odd way she adored her. But you would have done anything to protect your sister as you had been for years. That was your mother’s ultimate power over you, Skadi’s vulnerability.”

  Bernd offered a fleeting enigmatic smile.

  They were all suffering from the damp chill. Sverdrup lit the last three candles, so seven or eight were blazing on the decrepit table. No one suggested they leave. Not now, not when secrets were opening and mysteries were being resolved.

  Bernd looked at Hannah quizzically and waited.

  “We in fact know it wasn’t Harry,” she continued, having brought her rhetoric under control. “My constable and I observed him approaching the crime scene. We were there first. But in the few minutes between his leaving the hotel and our discovery of Birgitta’s corpse, someone else had slipped into the ruins and killed her with a rock pried loose from the walls, possibly earlier. It was a carefully premeditated murder.”

  She pulled Sverdrup’s hat from her head and rubbed her ears, indicating it prevented her from hearing. Then she did that thing that unnerved Harry with its impossibly subtle yet obvious sexuality: she ducked her head down, and, twisting so that she looked up at him through a veil of hair the colour of sunlight, she smiled.

  “What do you think, Harry?”

  “Whether she was killed by her surviving daughter or her only son, we know Birgitta arranged her own death. Bernd more or less admitted in the fishing shed that he killed her, and then, here, he offered up Skadi. What we’ve learned about the Ghibertis and the Sviars is that there are often profound gaps between what seems to be and what is.”

  “I did not offer up Skadi. I suggested there could be doubt as to who killed Birgitta.”