“There’s something I ought to clarify. I’m Torleif’s heir; he has no other close relatives. However, he wasn’t my biological father. When he and my mother got married, she was pregnant. I was born a month later, and he adopted me.”
“Right,” was the best Irene could come up with.
That explained why Stefan and Torleif bore no resemblance to each other. It was probably a picture of Torleif himself as a child that Irene had seen on his desk. Something was nagging away at the back of her mind, and eventually it managed to force its way into the light: why hadn’t there been a single photograph or anything else in the apartment to indicate that Stefan even existed? Her curiosity had been aroused, but she had no intention of asking him questions on that point just yet. He was here to report a stolen car, first and foremost.
“Am I correct in assuming you didn’t realize the car had been stolen until this weekend?” she asked instead.
“Yesterday, to be precise. I’m a doctor, and I live in Umeå. I was informed of Torleif’s death last Thursday, but I wasn’t able to fly down until Saturday. I arrived late in the afternoon; it was already dark, and I didn’t even think about the car. There was so much else …” He fell silent, looking uncomfortable.
Irene decided to follow her instincts. “Were you close?”
He shuffled even more awkwardly, and quite some time passed before he answered. “No. I wouldn’t say that. We had very little contact over the last few years.”
He looked tense, and Irene decided to leave what was clearly a very sensitive topic for the time being.
“But you’re sure he had a car? I mean if you had very little contact …” she said, deliberately leaving the question hanging in the air.
“He had a car. It was his only indulgence, really. A good car and one foreign vacation every year. And I happen to know he had a two-year-old Opel Astra. A white one.”
Stefan seemed very sure of his facts, but Irene would check with the vehicle licensing authority.
“How do you know that? The year and the make, I mean.”
“He told me. We spoke on the phone. He called me a few days before Christmas Eve, two years ago. As I said, we didn’t have much in common, so he spent most of the time talking about his new car. And these are the spare keys; I found them in the drawer of his desk.”
Two keys on a ring landed on Irene’s desk with a jangle. She noticed that the Police Sports Association emblem was on the key ring.
“Did you speak to each other after that conversation?” Irene went on, looking at the gold crown glistening on the emblem.
Stefan sighed heavily and shook his head. “No. It was the same old thing. We … quarreled and hung up on each other.”
A flush spread up toward his right cheekbone. Irene caught herself thinking how good-looking he was. The fact that Muesli wasn’t his biological father wasn’t exactly a disadvantage; quite the reverse, in her opinion. But she kept that to herself.
“What did you quarrel about?” she asked.
“The usual. My mother … he was always trying to pump me for information about her. And then he started talking crap about her, like he always did.”
“So what did he say?”
“Like I said … the usual. That she’s disloyal. That she should never have been allowed to have children. Same old same old.”
Stefan looked troubled as he talked about his last conversation with Torleif. Irene would have liked to probe further into the toxic relationship between Stefan and his adoptive father, but they were supposed to be talking about the stolen car.
Suddenly Stefan braced his shoulders and looked Irene straight in the eye. He said firmly, “No doubt you think it was unreasonable of me to break off contact with Torleif. He had no close relatives left, and he was something of a recluse. But he could be so nasty. For example, two years ago I told him I was going to be a dad. I thought he’d be happy, but instead he started going on about my mom and her bad genes, and saying that my dad—my biological father—was probably the same.”
His voice clearly revealed how difficult it was for him to talk about his fractured relationship with Torleif.
“Do you know who your real father is?” Irene asked.
He nodded. “Yes. Mom told me everything when I was fifteen. We lived in Warsaw for the first six years after the divorce. Mom thought my biological father was still living there, but it turned out that he had died the year before we moved back. It was the usual story: he was much older than her, and married. She was working as an office clerk, and he was her boss. She got pregnant. Her whole family is Catholic, so she refused to have an abortion. My biological father fired her because he was scared that she would start to show and people would guess. Her situation was desperate. She didn’t dare tell anyone in the family she was pregnant, so she answered an advertisement from someone who was looking for a wife. A Swedish man. Torleif.”
He grimaced slightly as he spoke his adoptive father’s name. Irene didn’t know what to say. Torleif had advertised for a wife in Poland, and he wasn’t the boy’s father! I wonder if Andersson knows about this, she thought. She would have to ask him.
“How old are you?” she asked.
“Twenty-nine. I’ll be thirty in April. And Amanda will be two. In April, I mean.” His face lit up when he mentioned his daughter, and the sorrowful look in his eye disappeared for a moment.
“My twin daughters will be twenty in March, but my dog will be thirteen in April,” Irene said.
They smiled at each other, and the atmosphere in the room lightened. Which was just as well because Irene realized that things could soon get tricky again. She had started to “poke her nose in,” as Andersson usually put it, so she might as well see it through.
“How long were Torleif and your mother married?” she asked.
“Four years. According to Mom, that was four years too long.”
His attractive smile faded, and the sadness returned to his eyes. There was a hint of something else too. Hatred? Anger? Fear? It was difficult to decide, but it was definitely there.
“Why did she say that? Was he abusive?”
“No … well, not physically. But mentally. The age gap was pretty wide: fourteen years. She was only twenty when I was born. He almost broke her with his controlling behavior. He gave her hardly any money, but he still insisted that it was her job to run the household. Buy food and clothes for nothing, as she used to say. She prefers not to talk about Torleif these days.”
“Do you remember anything about those years with Torleif?”
He thought for a long time before replying. “Virtually nothing. Except he beat me when he found out I’d been playing with his cars. He collected miniature police cars. But that was probably the only time he hit me; it was the final straw for Mom. She packed up her things, which included me, and we went back home to Warsaw. She told me later that she’d had to borrow money from my grandmother to pay for the journey. I’m sure my grandmother had realized that Mom wasn’t happy in her marriage over in Sweden, but even today none of my relatives in Poland knows that Torleif isn’t my real father.”
“Did you have any contact with Torleif while you were living in Poland?”
“No. None at all. Mom got a good job because she could speak and write Swedish pretty well. She worked for a Polish company, and after a few years she became their Swedish representative, which was why we moved to Stockholm. She met someone new, a Swede, and remarried. I have a half-sister who’s sixteen. And Mom is still married to the same man, still living in Stockholm. But for those first few years after we came back, she was scared. I didn’t really understand much at the time, but since then I’ve realized … she was afraid Torleif would contact us again. That he would make trouble. Which he did.”
To Irene’s surprise, he started to laugh. He could probably see what she was thinking because he quickly became serious once more.
“It’s pretty funny, thinking back on it now, but it certainly wasn’t funny at the time.
He found out somehow that Mom and I had moved back to Sweden, and he managed to get a hold of her telephone number. I suppose he made use of his position as a police officer. You know more than I do about the methods of tracking people down.”
Irene nodded but didn’t say anything. She wanted him to carry on talking.
“He insisted on seeing me; he claimed he had access rights. But Mom was no longer the vulnerable little Polish girl he had taken pity on, as he used to put it. She came right back at him, told him that in that case he could pay her all those years of alimony that he owed her. And then she told him to go to hell. They argued until I said I wanted to see Torleif. I was fifteen at the time, and I still thought he was my real dad. I suppose I was yearning for a father, somewhere deep inside. I’d never really had another male role model. Except … I guess there was my grandfather and Uncle Jan, but they were back in Warsaw. And Mom’s second husband has always been good to me. But still … I suppose every child has an idealized picture of the parent who isn’t around. If only we could get to know each other, then everything would be terrific.”
He smiled and raised his eyebrows, a wry expression on his face.
“I guess you know what happened. I caught the train from Stockholm to Göteborg, all by myself. Full of anticipation. It was the beginning of July, and all the way there I dreamed about what a great time we were going to have. Me and my dad. We’d go to the amusement park at Liseberg. Get a hamburger. Drive out to the sea and go swimming. Go to a soccer match. That particular weekend an English league team was playing against IFK Göteborg at Ullevi. I was desperately hoping he’d bought tickets for the game because I’d told him about it when we spoke on the phone the previous day. Eventually I managed to convince myself he’d definitely gotten those tickets.”
He stopped for a moment, and Irene thought his eyes looked suspiciously shiny, and it wasn’t with happiness or laughter. She could tell that from his voice as he went on.
“He met me at the main train station. No hug to welcome me. Just a formal handshake. Then we went to his apartment and he cooked some kind of lentil burger. I nearly threw up. Do I need to say that there was no soccer game, no trip to Liseberg? We did go up to Delsjö for a swim, but that was all. I remember it was lovely up there, and I bought three hot dogs from a guy who was selling them from a little kiosk. I bought them in secret, when Torleif was in the water. Fortunately Mom had given me some money; after all, she knew Torleif, and she had a good idea how things would be.”
He paused again, then continued. “When I got back to Stockholm I tried to keep up appearances and said it had been great to see my dad. But Mom saw right through me, of course. She took me to one side and told me the truth. She showed me the adoption papers. Father unknown, it says. She’s never told anyone who my real father is; only she and I know. Even today she still says she regrets having let me go through with that visit to Göteborg, not telling me before I left. But the fact is, I was relieved when I found out the truth—that Torleif wasn’t my biological father, and that I never had to see him again if I didn’t want to. And I certainly didn’t want to!” He looked very determined as he finished speaking.
“Did you never see each other again?” Irene asked.
“Yes. Just once, when I came down to Göteborg to see Bruce Springsteen a few years ago. My girlfriend, who is now my wife, was traveling from Malmö, where she lived, and we’d arranged to meet at the central station. I had a few hours to spare, and I called Torleif on a whim. We met in a coffee bar, and the first thing I did was to tell him I knew he wasn’t my father. He didn’t seem to care. And I think we both realized we didn’t have anything else to say to each other. He used to call me occasionally after that; the last time was just before Christmas two years ago, as I said. And we quarreled as usual.”
Stefan leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath. The amber-colored eyes gazed steadily at Irene.
“I know I don’t have to tell you all this crap, but somehow I have a feeling that it’s important for you to know how things were. And perhaps it was important for me to be able to tell you. Maybe I should have spoken to a therapist before I became a father myself, but this is much cheaper.”
He grinned to show that he was joking, but those amber eyes told the truth. They revealed a little boy who had had a really tough time when he was growing up. In spite of that he had survived and succeeded in building a future for himself and his family. Irene had come across many children like that over the years: survivors in spite of everything.
“I really appreciate the fact that you’ve confided in me. I knew who Torleif was when he worked in the third district, but I never got to know him on a personal level. I suppose the age difference had something to do with that,” she said, smiling back at Stefan.
He nodded, but didn’t say anything.
“How long are you staying?” Irene asked to break the silence.
“Until Thursday. I spoke to a funeral director this morning, and I’ve made all the necessary arrangements. Now I need to deal with his estate and put the apartment on the market. All those practical things that have to be done when someone dies. The funeral is in three weeks; I’ll come back down then.”
“I’ll put out a call for the car. I can get the license plate number from records.”
They both got to their feet at the same time and shook hands as they said goodbye. Irene gave him her card in case he needed to contact her.
“THAT’S VERY STRANGE,” was the superintendent’s response when Irene had finished a brief summary of her conversation with Stefan Sandberg.
“So you didn’t know that Torleif wasn’t the boy’s real father?”
Andersson shook his head. “No. Quite the opposite. He used to boast about the fact that he’d already gotten her pregnant before they were married. He always claimed they had to get married. When they split up he said it wasn’t right, that she’d run off back to Poland so he didn’t get to see his son. I remember telling him to go over there and visit the boy. I mean, Warsaw isn’t exactly on the other side of the world. But then he complained about how expensive it was to travel. He could be a real miser, to be honest. I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but it’s true. I suppose that’s one of the reasons why we gradually lost touch …”
Andersson left the sentence hanging in the air as he stared blankly out of the window. Outside there was nothing but a compact darkness, broken only by the lights of the city. The weather forecast had promised rising temperatures, but there was also the risk of further snow or rain. Irene loved clean, white snow, but in the city it soon became black and filthy. The thought of rain on top of all that snow made her shudder. The whole lot would turn into a black, slushy mess.
Andersson glanced wearily at her. “What do you think about this business of the stolen car?” he asked.
“Presumably some thief was keeping an eye on the area and noticed that the car hadn’t moved from its parking space. It is pretty new, after all.”
The superintendent nodded, but didn’t really seem to be listening to her answer. His mind was clearly elsewhere. What was wrong?
As if he’d noticed her concern, he said, “I’ll be in a little later than usual tomorrow. After ten. I’ve got a check up.”
His curt tone left no scope for questions. Irene was worried, with good reason. Andersson wasn’t exactly blessed with an iron constitution. He was overweight, and suffered from asthma, high blood pressure and vascular cramps, among other things. Had one of his ailments gotten worse in some way? Or had he developed something new? The questions were on the tip of her tongue, but she was sensible enough to hold back. He wouldn’t like it if she asked. She might find out eventually.
“We’ll have a meeting after lunch tomorrow. By then we should have the autopsy report on the little Russian. Can you let the others know, please?” He waved his hand as if to indicate that the audience was over. It wasn’t like him to be distracted and dismissive. There was obviously something on his mind.
THE MOOD AROUND the table was subdued. Before dinner Krister had told them what had happened when he took Sammie to the vet. Irene pushed her food around her plate, unable to eat. Her worst fears had been realized: the hard lumps were probably tumors. The vet couldn’t say for certain what kind of cancer it was, but the fact that the tumors were spread all over Sammie’s body, more or less, meant that the prognosis wasn’t good.
“According to the vet, the only course of treatment is to carry out a biopsy on one of the lumps, and then to prescribe an appropriate form of chemotherapy,” Krister explained.
“Chemo makes you sick. And you lose your hair … or fur.” Jenny sighed gloomily.
“He’s happy and as bright as a button. Maybe he’s a little more tired than he used to be, but after all he is almost thirteen,” Irene said.
“Thirteen’s old for a dog,” Jenny said.
Both Krister and Irene looked at her. It was Krister who eventually spoke. “You don’t think he should have any treatment?”
“No. That would just make the time he has left miserable. It’s better to let him be himself for as long as he’s feeling okay.”
On top of being a committed vegan, Jenny was also opposed to all forms of pharmaceutical drugs. She abruptly got to her feet and went into the living room. Sammie was lying under the coffee table snoring contentedly. He woke up when Jenny lay down beside him and buried her face in his soft fur. Still half-asleep, he noticed that she was crying and did his duty as he had done so many times before. Gently he nudged her hair with his nose before licking away her tears. They were salty and delicious. He had done the same thing through all the years, whenever one of the twins had been upset. Eventually he could turn their tears into giggles and laughter. It always worked. But not this time. Instead Jenny sobbed as if her heart would break. Sammie grew more and more unhappy. He looked at his beloved young mistress in confusion as she lay there beside him, sobbing away. His troubled gaze met the eyes of his master and mistress. Krister and Irene were standing in the doorway, at a loss in the face of Jenny’s grief.
The Beige Man Page 12