Now he needs to tackle Erik. What are his weaknesses?
Chapter 67 – Iris
An ‘Unknown’ number flashes on Iris’s phone, and she quickly answers it, hoping it’s a fully recovered Anna.
“I’ve been arrested!” a stressed voice says instead. Rolf? “Can you believe it?” he continues. “They’re going to search through our house and my studio.”
“Really?” she says. What is he up to now? Rolf has been desperately needy lately, constantly calling her. Most likely, the police have simply warned him about his inflammatory art, but she does relish him feeling cornered for once. “And you always think you can get away with anything?”
“Seriously, Iris?” he sulks. “Don’t you care?”
“Rolf, what’s actually happening?”
She’s not in the mood for his theatrics.
“It’s true, Iris. I really have been arrested. They’re just trying to find evidence to charge me for Anna’s attack.”
Anna’s attack?
“Why?” she says.
“I don’t know.” He sighs. “They seem to think I had something to do with it.”
She doesn’t know where to start, what to say. He unequivocally blames Anna for their marriage break-up but would he go to such lengths to get rid of her? She can’t believe that he’s capable of such a monstrous act but he’s Rolf and he can be an enigma. There was that cut on his face. Did she fight back?
“Did you have anything to do with it?”
“Of course not!”
Then why would they suspect him? She needs to think. He’s the father of her child, the man she has shared her life with for so long. She has to process the information and sort it in her head, go through it step by step.
“Do you have anything to hide?”
“Not really,” he says. “Apart from the painting with Anna’s hair in it.”
“What painting?” There’s a painting? “With Anna’s hair in it?”
This shocks her more than Rolf being arrested. He always sleeps with the women he incorporates into his art. Anna would never…
“I guess they’ll charge you in no time,” she says, her voice hard.
She’s staring out the window, at the lush greenery that’s supposed to symbolise summer and love and dreams come true. Why is her world crashing down on her? Anna in a coma, Karin hostile and Rolf… he’s somehow involved. How?
“Don’t be like that, Iris,” he says. It sounds as if he’s crying. That would be typical, Rolf making himself the victim. “You make it sound as if you want me to go to prison.”
“Perhaps you deserve it,” she says. “And just out of curiosity, did you pick a strand of hair off the rug after she had been to the house?”
That would make sense, to get back at Iris.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Then please do tell me, how come you had her hair in your possession?”
She tries to sound calm but her blood is nearing boiling point.
“I may have met with her to obtain it…” he says.
He what? “You said that you didn’t, that it was a joke, a bad one but still, a joke.” She had believed him. How stupid of her. He had actually met with her!
“You scared me that time, Iris. I was going to tell you but you were so upset.”
“When?” she asks, the anger seeping through.
“It doesn’t matter. I’ve already told them she gave it to me willingly, that plenty of people do, and so far she’s not really been in a position to argue about that, has she? Anyway… perhaps you should be worried. The police don’t seem to know about your relationship with Anna, but maybe they will after going through our house.”
“She was only there one time, Rolf, and anyway, so what if they find out?”
“Maybe they feel you should have come forward?”
She is done with this conversation. They may have spent years together but if he gets charged, he only has himself to blame. Still, she has to protect Anna.
“You know that would just upset her husband and anyway, I haven’t done anything wrong.”
If Iris is forced to speak to the police, she won’t reveal the nature of her relationship with Anna. If Anna dies, she doesn’t want her husband to know she cheated. She owes Anna that. If anyone asks, they are simply ‘friends’.
“No,” says Rolf. “In your eyes you have done nothing wrong.”
He always thinks he’s better than her, trying to manipulate her into his twisted web.
“Anyway… I heard she might be awake,” Rolf says.
Her heart stops beating. “She is?” Or is he just trying to get attention?
“Well, it’s a rumour,” he says. “I’m sure they don’t want me to know.”
Iris hasn’t heard anything, so Rolf might be lying. She needs to find out for herself. If Anna is awake, it will be the best news. Will she want to see Iris? Especially after the email that Rolf sent her, who knows?
“Why did you send her an email?” she asks.
She expects him to at least try to wriggle his way out of answering but he comes clean immediately. “It wasn’t just one email,” he says. “I sent many.”
“Why?”
“I had to get her to trust me, to believe they were from you. Then I ended it on your behalf.”
She wishes she were standing in front of him so that she could hit him with something, or squeeze his neck. “If you weren’t the father of my child, I would never speak to you again,” she says.
“For fuck’s sake, Iris. Listen to me, I did you a favour. Don’t you see? She’s young enough to be your daughter. It would never have lasted anyway!”
Iris wants to hang up but can’t give him the satisfaction of losing her temper. To calm herself down, she thinks back to the first night she met Rolf, how she admired him. It was at a gallery opening where he was the centre of attention, telling stories about a warped reality and being able to exist in the present. She was instantly drawn to him; their eyes met across the room and she probably looked away momentarily, intimidated by his stare.
“You no longer intimidate me,” she says.
The words seem to stump him. In a friendlier voice, he says: “I’m just telling you to be prepared, Iris. The police will obviously question you since you’re my wife.”
“I will tell them the truth,” she lies.
He seems to hesitate before he answers. “You will?”
“I have nothing to hide.”
“If you tell them the truth you will put me in a very difficult position, Iris. They might think I was jealous and wanted her out of the way.”
“That’s possible.”
“Fucking hell! You see, Iris, what I don’t understand is this: if they don’t know about your relationship with Anna already, then why would they even suspect me?”
Chapter 68 – Daniel
Dan is reading the paper at breakfast, like a proper grown-up. It’s going to be sunny today. Maybe he can take the boys to the beach this afternoon? There’s a long stretch of sand with shallow water close by. Every now and then he tickles Sebastian and Lukas and they laugh. It’s amazing how they look up to him. He imagines what it will be like to drop them off at day care after breakfast (in a year he will have an actual driving licence if he can work out how to pay for it – maybe Anna will?). Afterwards, he will come back home. Anna will be newly showered and even if she isn’t, he will still fuck the shit out of her. She will giggle, then moan until she screams with excitement and comes.
He looks across the table at Erik, who will be long gone by then. Maybe he was cool once but he’s a nerd, someone who thinks he is younger than he actually is.
“When is your next gig?” Dan asks. “I would love to hear you play.”
Erik laps it right up. “That would be awesome but it will be in a bar. You’re not eighteen yet, are you?”
“Next year,” Dan says. But I doubt you’ll be around then. “I could babysit while you’re playing?”
Both Se
bastian and Lukas think that’s a great idea.
“Please, Daddy!”
“But I’m not playing tonight,” Erik says.
Dan ignores him. “What’s your favourite movie?” he asks the boys.
“The Lego Movie.”
“Maybe we could watch it together?”
“Yes, please! Tonight?”
Dan looks expectantly at Erik. “Would that be okay?”
Sebastian and Lukas are doing such funny faces: ‘pretty please we promise to be so very good’. Dan laughs. He’s noticed that Erik struggles to say ‘No’ to them and has entered this as a weakness in his notebook.
“Fine,” Erik says. “But David, your house is ready to move back into, right?”
“Actually, my mum sent me a message late last night. They recommended another night. Apparently they had to spray twice.” Lying is easy. All those years he watched Frida lie has taught him how not to do it. She is always annoyingly obvious and adds too much detail, as if that’s supposed to make him believe her. I didn’t drink, I promise. I had no money so I couldn’t have gone to the liquor store even if I had wanted to. They cut my salary this month, those buggers, some story about me being late too often. Plus I don’t need to drink, you know that. I don’t really feel like it tonight actually.
Dan can tell that Erik is thinking about what to do.
“Does your mum know where you are?” he asks.
“Of course. Anna came to visit my house once and my mum really liked her… so she’s totally happy about me being here.” He stops himself. That’s already too much.
“Anna came to visit your house, did she?”
Dan can immediately tell that Erik doesn’t like this.
“Well, Anna was actually trying to do me a solid because my mum doesn’t care about school. She would prefer that I work and make some money.”
“And did your mum come around?”
Both Sebastian and Lukas are listening too, their little mouths full of cereal.
“Yeah,” Dan says. “Anna’s a great teacher.”
“Okay, well… as long as your mum is okay with it.”
“Awesome,” Dan says and high fives Sebastian and Lukas. “Shouldn’t you two be getting dressed now? But don’t forget to clear the table.” That’s what an adult would say. Frida would tell him to fucking clear the table but Dan actually knows his manners when he wants to. Erik looks at him appreciatively over the table. See, I’m helping. You need me. We’re cool, Dan thinks. But just in case, he has prepared another speech.
“I was planning to learn guitar,” he says. “If you have time, would you be able to teach me? I read about your band and it has awesome reviews.”
It’s true, he has read old reviews online and they did say ‘okay’ and ‘pretty good’ in-between a number of less favourable statements such as ‘inconsistent’ and ‘all over the place’.
Erik’s face brightens. His music is definitely another weakness.
“Sure thing. What kind of music are you into?”
“Eh… mainly eighties. My mum plays it all the time. ‘Should I stay or should I go’ by the Clash and ‘Don’t you forget about me’ by Simple Minds are my favourites.”
Both of them were mentioned in the last article about the band.
“Wow, you know your stuff. It would be an honour to teach you. Do you have a guitar yet? If not, don’t worry, I have a spare one.”
They talk about music for a while and when Dan has exhausted his knowledge of eighties music and guitars, he demonstratively turns over a page in the newspaper.
“I need to keep track of the news for school,” he explains.
Erik is now in a great mood and Dan sits back and relaxes. He’s so easy to read, that man. This will be a piece of cake.
Dan quickly locates an article about Anna’s attack. The papers generally provide a short update, especially now that a suspect has emerged. He reads it with great interest. The suspect isn’t named but it says that he’s a local artist, and to Dan’s great pleasure, a character witness has come forward saying he is a ‘sadistic swine’.
When Dan called the police with the anonymous tip, he told them Rolf was obsessed with Anna and that Rolf’s car had been seen following Anna in Hågarp one night. It was risky but he didn’t think anyone could have seen him behind the wheel. It was dark and the dude’s windows were tinted.
“How do you know all this?” they asked.
He told them he knew Rolf and that he had heard him talk about Anna in a very fixated way, as if he had to have her at all cost. He claimed to be afraid for his own safety and therefore wouldn’t be able to come forward as a witness.
“We will look into it,” they said but he felt they didn’t think it was enough. He needed to tell them more.
“He’s into some grisly art,” Dan said. “Blood and body parts and shit.”
He had been smart enough to do a bit of research on the guy. For someone who was in the paper so much, he should have more money, but maybe no one wanted to buy his sicko art.
“I’ve heard he’s violent too. He’s rumoured to have murdered people to display them in his paintings,” Dan said. “But I don’t know, that’s just what I’ve heard.”
He didn’t want to sound too confident, or they might think he was framing the guy.
Nothing happened at first. There were no news articles, so he kept busy with other strategies. If truly desperate, he would involve Frida. The anonymous phone call was the seed, however, that would hopefully grow. Now the article says that a school janitor, who had been on holiday since the incident, has stepped forward. “The said artist was talking to Anna in what looked like a heated conversation,” he told the journalist, clearly clamouring for a moment of fame. Rolf’s name isn’t mentioned but it’s him, for sure.
The fact that someone has also labelled him ‘sadistic’ is pretty awesome. More people digging the Nissan dude’s grave is a good thing. No more poking his dick into Frida and, more importantly, no more trash talking Anna with Frida.
He might have to remove Frida if she stands in his way. It will be easy; he’s daydreamed about it enough times. It’s just that Anna is not herself at the moment and that’s a gamble. He needs Frida as a back-up. No foster care for him.
“David, hello?”
Erik is waving a hand in front of his face.
“Don’t you have school to go to?”
“Oh, yes. Of course, I’ll just shower and get ready.”
“Can I just ask you something?” Erik says and Dan nods. Go ahead. “Have you heard any rumours at school about me?”
“Eh, no.” But this is interesting. “What kind of rumours?”
“No, it’s nothing. I just thought, well, people talk, you know, in a small place like this.”
“I could listen a bit extra,” Dan offers. “And if I hear anything, I’ll tell you.”
Erik looks pleased about this. “That would be great.”
Another weakness. Erik cares what other people think. That could come in handy. He needs to make Erik think they’re aligned, that Dan is his buffer from the world outside. That would bring awesome power.
“I won’t let anyone talk badly about your family,” he says. “I really care about you all.”
“Thanks, David. I appreciate that.”
Feeling like he’s scored, Dan whistles as he showers and gets dressed. Although he realises he will need to do some washing later; he’s running out of clothes. Or he could buy new clothes with the money he made from his last beer sale, maybe before Anna comes back? He wants to look presentable so that she sees the potential in him.
She saw him across the room and immediately felt an attraction.
He looks at the line. It’s shit. The words are just not flowing. Perhaps he’s read too many of his mother’s romance novels? It makes him sound like a pussy. He sighs. He needs to decide what he wants. It’s so complicated. She has to love him but she also needs to understand that he has a raw urge to stick his cock
inside of her. Repeatedly. He’s running out of patience. She better come home and spread her legs soon.
Chapter 69 – Erik
Officer Johansson and a young policeman Erik hasn’t seen before are sitting on the other side of the table. He doesn’t have time for this, but they haven’t given him a choice.
“How did you get in touch with Tina Olsson?”
He’s not keen to involve Rob but what to do?
“It was my mate, he used to date her. Really, she was just trying to help me.” That one’s for you, Rob.
“Help you how?” Officer Johansson looks at him sternly. “Why would you need help?”
Okay, maybe he shouldn’t have chosen those words. He looks back at her, his eyes trying to convey: remember how you used to think this was hard for me, how you felt sorry for my family?
“I just felt like you weren’t involving me,” he says. “That’s all.”
“Our focus is to find Anna’s attacker,” Officer Johansson says. “Not to keep you informed.”
Wow, that hurts.
“I have an alibi,” he says.
“You could have hired someone.”
It’s the new face sitting next to Linda Johansson. His self-satisfied mug and shaven head makes him look more like a thug than a professional member of the police establishment. Erik feels a violent dislike for him. But he’s an adult, so he politely says: “My wife means everything to me.”
“Well, we’ll see,” the new face says.
What does that mean? Erik stares at him, the wide, penetrating eyes uncomfortable. Are they… investigating him?
“You have already arrested someone,” he says. “I don’t have to listen to this.”
“Getting a bit defensive,” the new face says.
“I have nothing to hide,” Erik says. He holds up his hands. “You want my phone?”
They will find messages from Pernilla but he no longer cares. So what if he made a mistake? One mistake. Just because he isn’t perfect, doesn’t mean he beat Anna up.
“Speaking of phones,” Officer Johansson says. “How many times did you talk to Tina Olsson?”
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