* * *
They didn’t say much while they ate, now and then giving each other a quick glance. The wine was now a red from Tuscany.
“He’s lying to me,” she said suddenly.
“Why is that?”
“Maybe he killed his brother.”
A gull came flying out of nowhere, screamed out a warning, and sailed away just as quickly as it appeared.
“You think that he went…”
“I wasn’t sure, but then I saw the key cabinet. I always hang the car key, my key, on the same hook, but that morning it was hanging on a different one.”
The wine was making Sammy a little less quick, but then he understood what she meant.
“He took your car.”
“Everyone recognizes his BMW.”
“And you have a nondescript Japanese car,” Sammy observed.
Therese took another sip. Can she be like Lindell? he thought. Obviously she liked swilling wine.
“He didn’t have anything to drink in Öregrund, otherwise he usually has a Hof beer or so when he’s driving, and he didn’t have anything when we came home.”
“He had to get up early for work, maybe that was why.”
“That was just what he said, but that hasn’t stopped him before from having at least one beer.”
“Are you sure?”
“I keep track of my things, almost phobic. I keep track of keys especially.”
He thought about the meticulous order in the house, which he’d noticed immediately during his first visit. Everything seemed to have its obvious place, like in a little dollhouse.
“Is that why you asked me to come, to tell me this?”
“Yes, I needed to talk.”
She looked at him. Her gaze was serious.
“I need attention, a little tenderness,” she said. “Andreas is cold. I’m just a way station.”
Like I am for you, thought Sammy.
“I can take that,” she continued, “if he didn’t say one thing, but think another. He just wants to escape. He hates Sweden.”
“Why would he drive to Tilltorp in the middle of the night?”
“I don’t know, but he was mentally absent when we were at Bojabäs, otherwise he likes going out to restaurants. He had something on his mind that he was brooding about.”
“Something he later wanted to check at home on the farm, even if it was the middle of the night, is that what you mean?”
“I know that he had a relationship before with that woman who died in the fire.”
“What did he say at the restaurant in Öregrund? Anything special, I mean?”
“He talked about the Philippines, as usual. He’d checked houses to rent, and said that he’d found affordable airline tickets. He never got so enthusiastic about anything on the home front.”
“Are you interested in going with him?”
“No, not at all,” Therese said in a voice that revealed that the question had been up for debate earlier.
“Did he say anything about Hamra farm?”
“He seldom does, you can’t be less interested in agriculture than he is, but now if I remember right, he talked about Waldemar, ‘that old jerk’ he called him. They’ve never really gotten along very well, but recently it’s gotten worse.”
“Why ‘old jerk’?”
“No idea. I’ve stopped listening.”
“Property is never good,” said Sammy, thinking about Angelika and her sister in Mölle, and their endless arguments about the farm in Jutland, the parental home in Hørsholm, and “the apartment” in Copenhagen, which the sisters owned together. It was a soap where the scenes and loyalties changed from time to time. There were faithless cousins, a demented aunt, and not least their own mother, a world-class schemer, schooled in the mendacious postwar Danish bourgeoisie.
“Shall we go in?”
In response Sammy started wordlessly gathering plates and dinnerware. He felt a strange emptiness inside, as if he’d lost the exhilarated tension he’d felt earlier in the evening, but now there was no return. He’d been drinking and in that way painted himself into a corner. He had to spend the night, even though that certainly wasn’t a brilliant idea. He carted his load to the kitchen counter, turned down a whiskey, and tried in vain to find a way out. There was none. Now he couldn’t start babbling about Angelika and that “it wasn’t right.”
“I’ve got to fix something in the car,” he said, making it sound like he was going to check the ignition or the oil level. Standing for a moment on the steps it occurred to him what had created the sudden onset of discomfort: Therese’s irrevocable rejection of Andreas Mattsson’s plans in Asia. She was as little interested in the tropics as he was in agriculture. That wasn’t what he needed to hear. Not now! Like the maladjusted farmer’s son, he wanted to be transported, to the Philippines, Bali, Svalbard, or anywhere at all.
In the glove compartment was the minimal toiletry kit, the one he always had with him. Angelika had joked about it as the “kit for precipitous flight,” a joke that he actually hadn’t heard for a long time. Now both of them were in flight. Her kit consisted of two suitcases.
He went back in, ill at ease but nonetheless not as anxious as perhaps he ought to be, experienced as he was in the studied art of performance. Therese apparently was soothed by his smile; she gave the toiletry kit a glance and stroked his back. He let go, convinced that he would pull through it all. He would have to process the self-contempt later.
“Are you armed?”
“Yes,” he said.
The look he got he perceived as desirous.
* * *
The text message read simply “Our dynamite guy?” with Ann as the sender. It was sent the day before, but it wasn’t until eight o’clock on Sunday morning that he read it. He turned on the TV in the kitchen: special broadcast because of an explosion in Hökarängen.
“My God how awful,” Therese said behind his back. He hadn’t heard her approach. It’s the age of bombings, he thought, and thought about telling her about the theft in Almunge and Björn Rönn, but did not say anything and instead drew her to him. She felt different than Angelika, but he already knew that since the night before.
“I have to make a call,” he said. “There’ll be work to do.”
“But that’s south Stockholm,” she said.
He stood up and went out into the yard. First he called the station to get the private number of the colleague who had investigated the theft of Austrogel. It was Nils Stolpe, whom he’d known during his entire police career. Sammy thought Stolpe was a good policeman. They talked for ten minutes. It was a little sensitive that Sammy had visited the Rönn brothers and intruded on his colleague’s investigation in that way, but he could point to the connection to Tilltorp. Revealing Ann Lindell’s source and the tip she’d received in the Linnaeus Garden about Erland “Smulan” Edman was thornier, but he told the truth, that she’d called him immediately, but that he later forgot the whole thing. “That was when everything was happening in the village, and I forgot to call you.”
“The informant has been involved with us before?”
“Yes, as the son of someone who was murdered,” Sammy explained, and told him about Lindell’s role in that investigation, the murder of Little John many years ago.
“I remember some of that,” said Stolpe, who seemed to be taking it with equanimity that he hadn’t been informed earlier. “Maybe it’s time to bring in this Erland Edman?”
“I’m a little unsure about that. It would be stupid in any event to disclose where the tip came from,” said Sammy. “Can I go to see Rönn today? What do you say? Somehow we made some sort of contact.”
Stolpe thought about it. “I’ll have to discuss this two floors down, there are others who are rooting in this as you understand. It’s a fucking witches’ cauldron,” he said at last. “But if you don’t hear anything within half an hour, then go. Just one thing, can Rönn be volatile?”
“Don’t think so,” said Sammy,
who remembered the ax on the chopping block.
They ended the call, but Sammy remained standing with the phone in his hand. It felt as if he needed to make more calls. “Others who are rooting,” Stolpe had said, that could probably only mean that the security service was involved in the game, and surely not just them. A bomb produced rough seas.
He saw a movement in the window; his chain of thought was broken. Now he just wanted to get away from there, and he could sense that Therese wanted him to leave.
Thirty-Two
Bertil Efraimsson was affected, but still not drunk. It was the second time in his life, and this time too it was eau-de-vie that was the agent. He’d bought the bottle on Friday, perhaps with his sister Astrid’s birthday party in mind. It felt right somehow, he’d had an idea that the two of them would make a toast, but the bottle was stored away and not brought out until Sunday morning, when it was opened without further ceremony.
The Pentecostal blacksmith could no longer make sense of existence. For some twisted reason he thought that alcohol could adjust his attitudes to life, a quarter-turn here, a half-turn there, as if consciousness were a mechanical apparatus that needed to be prodded like an old mill. Resorting to a sledgehammer was too crude, there had to be fine calibrations with more elegant instruments. He played with his thoughts like that, saw it all like a day in the workshop, a day with detail work, with the magnifying glass set up over the workbench. It amused him, more than he cared to admit.
He drank deliberately. Was it good? Yes, maybe. He sat quietly on the garden chair, with the bottle by the table leg and the glass on the table. The sun was shining. He drank the brandy unmixed, just like his father and uncle had done.
Perhaps it looked idyllic, but he was basically becoming more and more terrified. He called Gösta, asked him to come over. Bertil’s voice must have betrayed the seriousness of his request, because his closest friend in all respects hurried over after only a minute or two. When the situation was clear to him he sat down. Not because he was particularly in the mood for alcohol in midmorning, but two were required for that bottle.
They carefully clinked their glasses. Gösta became exhilarated at once. They talked about the birthday party, who had been there and who was absent. When that subject was thrashed over there was silence. A single car passed now and then. The wagtail, which Bertil called Britta, came flying in a beautiful swoop and settled down on the sundial. In other words it was as usual, like before, except for the brandy.
“Did you see the news yesterday?”
“A real explosion,” said Gösta.
“Who does things like that?”
“Someone said it was that ISIS. There are lots of those swarthy types at the square.”
Bertil filled the glasses, which were small and neat.
“We have to talk,” he said. Even though Gösta understood very well what this concerned and that it was necessary, especially if their friendship were to continue, his mood was deflated. Why not just sip a little carefully from the water of life, and like Britta enjoy spring? Maybe he could go after the pot of meat soup he’d prepared a few days earlier, then they could have lunch together.
“This has been a strange spring, don’t you think?” Bertil said in his congregational voice. “I distrusted you when you said you hadn’t seen anything when the school burned, and I also suspect why you kept quiet, but we can put that aside. I haven’t been honest either.”
Gösta reached for his glass, but it was already empty.
“The glasses are from my grandmother and are probably meant for something sweet,” said Bertil.
“Maybe we should take it a little easy,” said Gösta. Bertil stopped his movement, straightened his body, leaned back, and nodded.
“The boy who disappeared came to me in March.”
“The cousin?” Gösta felt himself collapsing, like he was being emptied of air. The nightmare would never end.
“Exactly, the cousin. Where he’d been staying for over two months he didn’t want to say. He got to stay with me, but now he’s disappeared.”
“Was he staying…?”
“In Sigvard’s old room.”
“That explains a few things,” said Gösta, who thought about Bertil’s mysterious behavior the past few months, the shopping trips to Uppsala and the late-evening habits.
“He was sad, of course. Omid knew that his cousin had died. I don’t know how he found out.”
“Does he speak Swedish?”
“Pretty well, and he’s quick-witted, he learns really fast. He is extremely technically oriented.”
“When did he disappear?”
“A day before the smithy burned, on Friday,” Bertil said, reaching down for the bottle by the table leg.
“Oh my goodness,” said Gösta, pushing his glass forward. “Was he the one who set the fire?”
Bertil carefully poured the brandy, screwed in the cork, and set the bottle back before he answered.
“What should a person think?”
“But how did he know…”
“Omid saw Mattsson’s boy from the window, and asked who it was. I think he recognized him from New Year’s Eve.”
“And you told where he lived?”
“That was thoughtless. He asked about a lot of things and I was used to answering most of it. He wanted to talk with Daniel, he said, but I knew that the whole Mattsson gang would be gone that weekend, so I said that there was no point in going there.”
“But he went there and set the fire?”
“I don’t really know.”
“Did he kill Daniel?”
“He wasn’t like that,” said Bertil, and Gösta had seldom if ever heard him sound so helpless.
“But in those countries you resolve conflicts by killing each other.”
“He wasn’t like that,” Bertil repeated, as if he wanted to convince himself that it was true.
“You can go to prison,” Gösta said, not displeased to have a certain advantage. “You’ve held back information.”
“I don’t care about that. I helped him and I don’t regret it. He was in need. Imagine yourself, Gösta, being so vulnerable in a foreign country. Reaching out a helping hand is never wrong.”
Gösta felt Bertil’s gaze, but chose not to say anything.
“And that applies to you too,” Bertil continued. “Have you told everything you know to the police, about what you saw?”
“Does a person have to be open about everything?”
Personally Gösta felt no need to always be honest. There must be a place for deceit and self-deception, otherwise life would be unbearable, like an endless revival. Once he’d gone with Bertil to a camp meeting, a guest preacher had come to the area, a tent was raised, folding chairs set out, extension cords laid. It was simple and functional, Jesus doesn’t need more, Bertil explained. They were very young, Bertil had been saved for a year or so, and he himself was curious. Bare lightbulbs dangled from the ceiling, there was a smell of trampled-down grass, cheap perfume, and sweat. The congregation was dressed up, expectant, many ecstatic. The preacher started carefully, but quickly and expertly revved up, thundered, and waved his arms. The excitement rose. A few fell like bowling pins and were expertly caught. He saw Olofsson, who normally was a sensible plumber, burst into tears. The Bergmans in the old cabin were speaking in tongues, perhaps with each other.
Then there was witnessing. One by one the congregants stepped forward; everything should come out in the light. No one could escape questioning and judgment. Gösta was bewildered. He didn’t want all the sincerity, didn’t want to hear about all the filth, about sins and mistakes real or imagined, he didn’t want to see acquaintances exposed. He broke out of the collective madness and ran off to his moped. Bertil, who had ridden behind, had to manage as best he could. As someone newly saved he was surely able to fly.
“What will you do?” Gösta asked.
“I thought about talking with Ann.”
“Why is that?”
“She’s a police officer, or was, maybe she knows what to do.”
“There’s no point,” said Gösta, but did not explain why. He felt increasingly displeased. Since the refugees came here everything has gone wrong, it struck him, but he held his tongue. Bertil always knew better, always had something to say.
“I never heard him laugh. What I thought at first was laughter, was weeping instead. Can you understand? It was at night, he wept in his room. And it sounded like laughter somehow, concealed despair.”
Like a hyena, thought Gösta.
“It sounded uncanny in the dark, as if all the world’s sorrow had taken over the house. A few times I went up to his door, but I never knocked, never opened it. I prayed to God that He would console the boy. And maybe it helped sometimes. There were moments when he smiled. We used to sneak out to the workshop, he was comfortable there. I taught him to weld, the basics anyway. When he put the pieces together well he might look a little satisfied, and that made me smile too. It had been a long time since I had a companion in the workshop.”
It struck Gösta that it had also been a long time since he’d seen his neighbor smile, much less laugh. And didn’t that apply to Gösta too? They were on the downhill side of life and there wasn’t much to be happy about. Nowadays.
“I told Astrid. I had to.”
But you didn’t trust me was on the tip of Gösta’s tongue.
“He could become a good machinist,” Bertil continued. He looked content, apparently unaware of Gösta’s increasingly dogged expression. Maybe it was the alcohol that led them in different directions? It was as if Bertil became inattentive to the brandy’s effect, he simply let the intoxication come, while Gösta, who was a considerably more experienced drinker, kept an eye on himself and the other man.
* * *
When Gösta had gone home Bertil heard the blackbird sing for the first time. It was sitting at the top of the old larch tree. The tree that he had decided to cut down several years ago, but which still stood there, mournfully scrubby. Now he was glad he hadn’t chopped it down.
The Night of the Fire Page 21