The Boy at the Door

by Alex Dahl

  *

  I wake up and Johan is sitting by the side of the bed. I sit up, but when I do, I realize that I’m soaking wet. I can’t possibly have... Then, Johan holds up the second champagne bottle, empty.

  ‘You fell asleep on this,’ he says.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Cecilia—’

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘Look—’

  ‘Just... don’t.’

  He gets up, and rubs his eyes hard before turning back to me from the doorway. ‘I’m off to meet with Laila at social services.’

  ‘Fine. Bye.’

  ‘You do realize that this kind of behavior isn’t going to help your cause if you want Tobias back, don’t you?’

  ‘I said, don’t.’ I turn towards the wall and actually have to laugh a little bit at the memory of last night, and the expressions on the girls’ faces when I threw the bottle. It passed Cathrine’s head by less than two centimeters. The unbelievable nerve of some people. I should consider suing them for defamation and emotional distress. I hear Johan shut the door behind him, and am still chuckling to myself when he comes back a couple of minutes later.

  ‘For you,’ he says, handing me my phone, which I’d left in the kitchen. Its screen is flashing with an incoming call and Johan presses ‘accept’ as he hands it to me.

  ‘Hi, Cecilia,’ says a woman. ‘This is Camilla Stensland calling from Sandefjord Police. I was hoping you could come down here this morning. We’ve had some new developments with regards to the Annika Lucasson murder.’

  ‘Right?’

  ‘Can you be here in an hour?’

  ‘I guess so,’ I say miserably.

  ‘Please bring your legal counsel.’

  22

  Camilla Stensland has shaved a line down the side of her head, unbelievably making her look even more butch than before. I give her a tight smile, but she looks coolly back at me, rising to shake my hand. I picture her off duty, wearing some kind of baggy sports outfit, watching a rugby game on television, drinking beer out of a can, her feet wide apart – that is the kind of person she is. Also present is Inspector Ellefsen and another police officer I don’t recall having seen previously. I’ve brought my overpaid lawyer, Georg Sylling, a deceptively meek-looking man who generally manages to crucify his opponents.

  ‘Hi, Cecilia,’ says Camilla Stensland. ‘Thank you for coming in at such short notice.’ She gestures for Sylling and I to sit, and as I do, the atmosphere strikes me as particularly tense, even considering the circumstances.

  ‘This is not a formal interrogation, Mrs Wilborg, but we do want to ask you a few further questions. Since we last met, we’ve had some significant developments in the Annika Lucasson case, particularly after we appealed to the public to come forward with any information.’.

  ‘That’s. . . that’s great,’ I say.

  ‘As you can imagine, there are a couple of questions we feel need to be answered to be able to determine your role in the events that led up to Annika’s murder.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Late last night, as a direct result of a tip-off from the public, we discovered the remains of a second body, burned and buried on private land near Kjerringvik.’

  ‘A... a second body?’

  ‘Yes. Do you have any idea who this person may be?’ asks Ellefsen, holding my gaze.

  ‘Excuse me, how is this relevant to my client’s case?’ asks Sylling, just as I say ‘No’.

  ‘What does that have to do with Annika Lucasson?’ I ask.

  ‘Do you know who this individual is?’ asks Camilla Stensland, sliding a photograph across the table, her fingers briefly brushing against mine. I glance at the photo, and immediately feel wildly relieved to see that it is a complete stranger. The man in the photo is a heavy-set man in his forties with a pockmarked face and thinning, brown hair.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ I say. ‘Is he the dead person?’ Stensland and Ellefsen exchange a quick glance before Stensland slides another photograph over to me. This guy I know.

  ‘I know him,’ I say. ‘“I don’t understand...’

  ‘Can you please confirm the identity of this man?’

  ‘That is Krysztof Mazur,’ I say. ‘The guy who must have killed Annika.’ I let out a hollow little laugh.

  ‘We believe that it was Krysztof Mazur’s remains we found last night,’ says Camilla Stensland. ‘This would tie in with our theory as to who killed Annika Lucasson, and why.’ I swallow hard a couple of times, my mouth feels unnaturally dry and strange. They think I killed both Anni and Krysz. I try to think when the last time was that I saw Krysz with my own eyes. Several months ago. I mostly spoke with Anni, though he’d occasionally hover in the background, a glimpsed face in the shadows, momentarily lit hazy orange when he drew on his cigarette.

  ‘Can you please explain your relation to this man?’ says Camilla Stensland.

  ‘I knew him only as someone who’d accompanied Annika a couple of times when I met with her for the . . . the, you know, drugs. I had the impression he was her boyfriend.’

  ‘Are you certain that you never saw Annika Lucasson with the other man?’

  ‘This guy? No, never.’ Again, Stensland and Ellefsen exchange a glance and I peer down at the man’s crude face again, but I really cannot recall having seen him before.

  ‘But if you’ve found Mazur dead, how can he have killed Annika Lucasson? I thought you said he was in Poland.’

  ‘We found CCTV footage of his car on the ferry from Larvik to Hirtshals the day after Annika was murdered.’

  ‘But Mazur wasn’t in the car?’

  ‘We now believe that it was this man, Pawel Karlowski, who was driving the vehicle.’

  ‘We also believe that Karlowski was with Annika Lucasson on the night of her death.’

  ‘The... the night I met with her.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She was alone when I met her,’ I say. I shudder at the sudden thought of us back there in the boatyard in the dark. How frightened she’d looked.

  ‘You are absolutely certain that Lucasson was alone that night?’ I nod. I think about the way I hit her, how she dropped to the ground, how I stood over her, telling her to die. If somebody else had been present, it certainly wasn’t somebody interested in helping her.

  ‘I’d like to move on and ask you a question of a slightly different nature. It is very important that you think your reply through well and answer truthfully to the best of your ability,’ says Stensland, and I glance at Sylling, whose mild eyes are staring at her. I nod.

  ‘Were you at any point prior to October nineteenth, 2017 aware of the fact that your biological son, Tobias, was in the custody of Mazur and Lucasson?’

  ‘You’ve asked me that question before,’ I say, but my voice comes out thick and wobbly, like I’m speaking underwater.

  ‘Yes. And we need you to answer that question again.’

  ‘I’d like a moment with my client,’ says Sylling, standing up. We are shown into a small interrogation room across the hallway.

  ‘Look,’ says Sylling, ‘the point here is that they know that you knew. I can tell – they have proof. If you lie and say you didn’t know and they can prove you did, you’re looking at a prison sentence for perverting the course of justice.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ I whisper meekly, and attempt a very slight eyelash flutter at Sylling.

  He stares at me like I’m insane, and then he actually says it out loud. ‘You’re going to plead insanity.’

  ‘No. Why should I? I didn’t know. I had no idea they had Tobias! If I did, I wouldn’t have just continued like before, would I?’

  Sylling very slowly raises an eyebrow. ‘Come on, Cecilia. I’m a lawyer, not a judge.’ I open my mouth to tell this man to shut up and do his job rather than taunt me, but only a faint little cry escapes. Maybe all this was just... madness. Insanity. Yes, that’s it. Of course. I’ll just tell them the truth and blame madness.

  Back in the room with the othe
rs, the same tense, odd atmosphere remains.

  ‘I did know,’ I whisper as soon as I sit down.

  ‘My client will not answer any further questions concerning Tobias today. She is continuously undergoing medical assessment for her persistent health problems, and her psychiatrist will be able to provide the police with a full report with regard to how her illness is likely to have affected her previous account. Now, are there any further questions with the exception of anything pertaining to Tobias?’ I stare down at my hands as Sylling speaks; I don’t want to see Stensland’s sharp eyes or Ellefsen’s intertwined sausage fingers.

  ‘Mrs Wilborg, were you aware of Annika Lucasson’s diaries?’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Everybody looks at me, and I realize I spoke too soon, too loudly.

  ‘She kept a series of journals over several years.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say, more controlled now. ‘I didn’t know that.’ How can they possibly know this? I fed every last scrap of her insane words to the flames and watched the paper curl and crumble.

  ‘In her last week, Annika Lucasson wrote about a series of events that give much more of an indication why somebody might have wanted her dead. When we went to the media with our public appeal which presumably you saw, a woman named Ellen Egedius of Karlstad, Sweden, contacted the police and came forward with some information. Information which turned out to be crucial to our investigation. Egedius was Annika Lucasson’s social care worker over many years, and remained a devoted friend to her into adulthood. Lucasson lived with the Egedius family for long periods of time, and they were very fond of her. In spite of this, Lucasson kept relapsing and, well, you know much of the rest. It would seem that her relationship with Mazur really was her downfall. In her final account, Lucasson refers to a postbox in Sandefjord where she kept her diaries, presumably out of fear that Mazur, who was extremely violent and unstable, would find them. We have opened that postbox and found it empty, and for that reason we need to establish whether anyone else might have had knowledge of the journals.’

  ‘I certainly never heard of any journals.’

  ‘As I’m sure you’ll understand, Mrs Wilborg, we will be going through the CCTV footage from the post office over the next few days to establish who might have had access to postbox eighteen, so we’re confident we will gain clarity with regards to this.’

  ‘Great,’ I say, forcing a tight smile. I feel Sylling’s eyes on me. I want to knock the table over and bolt from this room or smash the window above Stensland’s head. Suddenly I think about last night – the shattered glass, the spiteful ladies scarpering, the look of horror on Luelle’s face. I can’t stop a little laugh escaping. They all look at me, and I return my gaze firmly to my hands resting on the table, and use all my focus to keep them completely still.

  ‘Fortunately for us, Lucasson had the foresight to send a copy of her journals, all the way back from 2010, to Ellen Egedius, along with a goodbye letter.’

  ‘Oh,’ I hear myself saying.

  ‘We’d like to take a break now. Your husband has arrived, he’s waiting for you in the foyer. Afterwards, we’d like you to read through certain parts of Annika Lucasson’s account so that we can ask you some further questions.’

  ‘Sure.’

  October 18th, 2017

  Dear Ellen,

  I’ve fought myself, endlessly, about whether I should post this to you. I want need you to know that I’m absolutely not doing this to hurt you, or to make everything even worse. I’m doing it because you once told me its always better to know the truth, no matter how painful. I want to tell you the truth. Everything thats happened. A few weeks ago I wrote you a long explanation telling you everything I’ve done and explaining why things came to be the way they are. I based it on my diaries and I spent a long time on it because I wanted you to maybe understand. I didn’t post it then, I decided to only post it if it doesn’t look like I’ll live for very much longer. And that’s how it looks now. I’m in a bad way. If I don’t die, I will disappear, so completely that you’ll never hear from me, or have to see me again – that I promise you. You can read it below, I dont know how I’m going to get this to you, Ellen, but I know I have to find a way. You will wonder what the mass of paper in the enclosed folder is. It’s a copy of my complete journals from the last few years. Most of this letter, the parts that are most important for you to understand what’s happened, is based on my diary entries. You don’t have to read any of it, Ellen, but I thought you might like to have the option.

  I won’t lie – not a single lie, I swear, so I’ll tell you right away – I’m high, writing this. I wouldn’t otherwise be able to. I’m so high, but so lucid. Hundreds of episodes and feelings and memories and thoughts are coming to me all at the same time and I will try to describe them as best I can. Good smack can be like that, but thank God, you’ll never know a thing about smack, dear Ellen. I wasn’t high when I wrote much of what you’ll read below though – I stayed pretty clean in the last few months up until like a week ago. I had a little boy to look after. I miss him. I want you to know about how that happened and that I never meant to hurt anyone. In case I forget to say later or in case you won’t read further because you are upset, and I totally understand that, Ellen – I don’t have the right to ask anything of you – I will say it right now – I am so sorry. I am so very sorry. I am sorry for everything I’ve done, for all the stress I’ve caused, for disappearing, for making you look a fool, for repaying your endless love and support with nothing at all.

  It’s been almost three years since we last spoke. Even after I went to live with Krysz again in Gothenburg, you tried to contact me. You wrote to me saying it wasn’t too late, that it would never be too late and that you and Josef love me like you love Sofia and Vicky and that you and Josef have three daughters, always will, but I didn’t answer you. The last letters I burned, unopened. Maybe you thought that it was easy for me to leave it all behind, but it wasn’t. I need you to know that.

  I love you.

  Annika Lucasson X

  ‘That poor woman,’ I say. Johan blinks and blinks theatrically, like he just can’t believe that he’s reading the dead woman’s words.

  ‘Keep reading,’ says Camilla Stensland. ‘It would seem that the rest of this letter has been composed over quite a period of time. It’s fragmented, but she probably felt a strong need to confess to Ellen Egedius in some way and didn’t have the confidence to post it until her final days.’

  You said that writing about my life was a good idea, because I’d be able to read back and see that everything wasn’t as bad as I might have remembered, but I don’t think I realized back then that by writing and then reading it, it becomes very clear that things are cyclical. At least in my life. Had I known that sooner, perhaps I could have avoided a round or two of the eternal circle-dance of getting clean, picking up the pieces, leaving Krysz, before getting back with Krysz, back on smack, watching the pieces scatter to the ground again. And again. I haven’t written much in my journals in the past two years, mainly because I have been afraid of my notes being found by someone who’d alert the police. We’re always on the move; it’s hard to keep track of all my things. A little notebook could be left behind and then everything would be terrible, so I’m usually scribbling on some random paper which I then hide as well as someone in my situation can. Before, I’d never done anything so bad as to get into real trouble with the law. I’d done a great deal of drugs obviously, but most of what I did, I did only to myself. Since what has happened in the last year, that has changed, and I now know what it feels like to always look over your shoulder. I haven’t written to you either, Ellen, because what would I say?

  I’ve been more or less clean for close to a year now, and though I’m being supported with methadone through a women’s charity here in Sandefjord, it has been increasingly difficult of late, as Krysz is in a bad place again. His daughter Magdalena died. After he lost her, he lost his God, too. I’d feared that this would happen – that no God
could provide solace for a man burying his child, but Krysz had seen that same God give comfort to others in similar situations, so I dared to hope. I want to write again; I need to try to make sense of everything that has happened, but first I want to write to you. Things are spinning out of control here fast and it has even occurred to me that these words may very well serve as a kind of testimony in the event of my death.

  The first year after I left you and moved to Gothenburg, things were going okay, considering the circumstances – Magdalena was gravely ill by then. I was squeaky clean, so was Krysz, though he was never half the user I have been. Then Magdalena died, after several weeks of devastating suffering, veering between lucidity and terrible pain. It was too much for him. Of course it was. He began waking in the night, screaming. This quickly escalated to drinking and pot-smoking in the evenings, followed by occasional violence and frequent verbal abuse. In the mornings he’d be sorry, so very sorry, and he’d go back to the church and try his best to find meaning in Jesus’s words. His apologies had stopped reaching me by then; I’d become equally numb to both violence and repentance. It wasn’t long before I was shooting up again, but even before then, I was so very, very tired. I still am. In those days, I thought often about my little apartment in Karlstad where a district nurse was always on duty, where I’d watched the plants I’d planted on the balcony grow green and strong, where you came to visit and I proudly poured us tea in the sweet little pink cups I’d bought for myself at Åhlens. Nothing fancy, but it was mine. I’ll never forget the moment I left it.