And then there was that damn sound again. Why couldn’t they just leave him alone? This was supposed to be his moment. He hadn’t even had a chance to kill her. That’s what the voices had told him. That it was the most important thing, after he was done.
He was supposed to use the water. That’s what the voices had told him. He was supposed to dunk her in the water. But there was no time, not with that idiot in the room. Instead, it was going to have to be the hatchet lying next to her. He snatched it up and raised it in the air as the woman with the gun screamed. But he couldn’t hear what she said, and though he didn’t understand how it happened, the entire stone floor suddenly flipped over and hit him hard in the back of the head.
75
Lasagne was really more Sonja’s dish than Fabian’s. No one could make lasagne like her. He personally felt it required too many steps before it was finally in the oven, and then you were left with utter kitchen chaos. All the same, he’d decided to give it a go. Maybe the smell would find its way to the bedroom and cheer her up.
Having convinced Karolina Jacobsén that the best thing she could do was to take the two boys to her parents in Växjö, he’d put the house under surveillance in case Eric came back. Then he’d gone home, expecting Sonja to be up and about again and busy making some kind of dinner.
But as though nothing could change her state of mind, she’d still been in bed with the curtains closed. It was the second day in a row, and he was beginning to feel concerned that she was headed straight for a severe depression if nothing changed.
Theodor’s closed door had, as usual, done little to keep his death music from reverberating through the entire house. When Fabian knocked and opened the door, he discovered a maelstrom of dirty underwear, pizza boxes with dried-up leftovers, stained sheets, drink cans, crisp and sweet bags, CDs and DVDs, snus tins and gaming controllers.
Theodor had been sitting in front of his screen in the middle of the mayhem, dressed in boxer shorts and a vest top, breaking uncountable traffic rules to get away from the howling police cars. He’d been struck by how big his son was. Not big as in grown-up but as in pudgy. He, who’d always been so thin they’d had to mix cream into his food. Now he was borderline overweight and so pale the spots shone like brake lights on his face.
But he hadn’t said a word about any of it, had simply stepped inside and calmly opened the window. Then he’d turned the stereo down and asked Theodor to go and have a shower and then come down and help with dinner. But Theodor had been too engrossed in his escape from the police to respond.
He’d wanted nothing more than to turn off both the music and the computer and have a serious talk about how things couldn’t go on like this. About how it was time for Theodor to face up to what he’d done, difficult as that may be. But he needed Sonja to back him up; as long as they weren’t in agreement and she stayed shut up in their bedroom, his hands were tied.
He indulged in a glass of wine and decided to put on music for company instead. He went for The Orb’s first album, a double disc from the early nineties with a title so long he’d never managed to learn it.
The sampled girl’s voice in ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’ made him think of Matilda. She wasn’t home, and that certainly didn’t feel good, considering she’d only been discharged a few days ago. That neither Sonja nor Theodor seemed to have any idea where she might be did nothing to reassure him either.
But halfway through making dinner, just as he’d located the nutmeg in the jumble of old spice bags in the cupboard and started grating it into the béchamel, he thought he heard her voice. To make sure it wasn’t part of The Orb’s soaring audio collage, he turned the stereo down, and yes, that was Matilda he could hear in the basement.
He took the pan off the heat, hurried down the stairs and was met by a piece of red cloth blocking his path. In a way, he was surprised, though he should have known this is where she’d be. He was not, however, relieved.
On the other side of the red sheet, a handful of flickering candles cast twisting shadows of Matilda and her friend Esmaralda. When he took a step closer, he could see Matilda through a small gap in the improvised curtain, sitting across from Esmaralda with her back towards him.
She blocked most of his view, but it wasn’t difficult to guess that they were sitting on either side of the Ouija board with their fingers on the pointer that was supposed to move across the row of letters to spell out words.
‘I think she’s ready,’ Esmaralda said.
‘Okay, let’s do it,’ Matilda said, clearing her throat. ‘Greta,’ she continued, now in a solemn voice that sounded several years older than her normal one. ‘Exactly a month and a day ago, you claimed a member of my family was going to pass away. I came very close but survived. Now I need to know if you meant me and something went wrong or if it was my brother or one of my parents.’
The silence after she stopped speaking was so thick with the girls’ expectations it was almost tangible. Or was it him? Did he actually believe the pointer would start moving and give them an answer? Was that why he didn’t just rip down the curtain and ask them to stop that nonsense? He, who didn’t believe in ghosts, spirits or whatever they were supposed to be.
‘Why isn’t she answering?’ Matilda said, sounding like herself again.
‘Maybe she doesn’t want to?’
‘What do you mean, doesn’t want to? She can’t just give us half the story and then clam up.’
‘Of course she can. That’s the whole point. They can do whatever they want. That’s why you can never provoke them.’
‘Esma, what are you doing? You can’t take your hand away.’
‘Are you really sure you want to do this?’
‘Yes, I am. We’ve talked about this. You can’t chicken out now.’
Esmaralda tilted her head; he caught a quick glimpse of her behind Matilda. ‘Fine, one more try. But just one. Then I have to go home. Greta, are you in here with us?’
Fabian leaned forward but could only see a small section of the Ouija board.
‘Look, at least she’s still here,’ Matilda said.
‘Greta, do you feel like answering Matilda’s question? If not, you can just say no.’
‘Is someone in my family still going to die?’
After a few seconds of silent anticipation, Matilda turned fractionally to her left while moving her right arm in the same direction, and when he got up on tiptoe, he could see the pointer on the board underneath their fingertips.
‘An A,’ Matilda said. ‘See. She does want to answer.’
‘But who in your family has a name that starts with an A?’
‘Mum… Her middle name’s actually Antonia…’
He could tell Matilda was on the verge of falling apart, so he decided to step in and end the séance, but before he could act, he saw the pointer actually moving across the board.
‘An L,’ Matilda exclaimed. ‘See?’
It looked like it was moving quickly.
‘Then it can’t be Mum.’
‘And now another L,’ Esmaralda said. ‘Could it be someone else’s middle name?’
‘Not that starts with ALL. Something’s not right. Greta, are you spelling out a name, or—’
‘Wait, there’s more,’ Esmaralda cut in.
So quickly they seemed hard-pressed to keep up.
‘YOU,’ Matilda said. ‘ALL YOU? What does she mean by that?’
He could hear the pointer was still zooming across the board and if the girls were to be believed, it was spelling out intelligible words.
‘ALL YOU KNOW,’ Matilda exclaimed. What does she mean, ALL YOU KNOW?’
‘You have to calm down. You’re just making her cross.’
‘Greta, can you please just answer my question? Is someone in my family still going to die, or did you make a mistake?’
‘Matilda, have you forgotten what happened last time? When you broke all the rules and—’
‘But something’s not right. She’s not answer
ing and I have to—’
‘The only thing you have to do is listen to me! I’m leading this séance, not you! See, she’s not done. Are you paying attention? An I. And an S. I’m guessing it’s IS.’
‘ALL YOU KNOW IS,’ Matilda said and Fabian could see her shaking her head. ‘I don’t get it. Do you?’
Esmaralda shushed her. ‘W, R, O, N and a G.’
‘WRONG,’ they said in unison. ‘ALL YOU KNOW IS WRONG.’
They waited for the pointer to keep moving, but it didn’t.
‘Greta, if you’re done, would you mind explaining what you mean?’ Matilda said.
‘Maybe we misunderstood last time. Maybe that’s what she’s trying to tell us.’
‘What do you mean, misunderstood? There was nothing to misunderstand. I’m telling you, something’s not right here. She said, I know she said, someone in my—’
‘But did she? What if we just—’
‘Esma, don’t even. You know as well as I do what she said. Hello? Greta, are you still there? Are you still with us?’
They waited, but nothing happened. The pointer had stopped.
All you know is wrong.
Fabian repeated the words inwardly. The pointer had moved across the board. He’d seen it with his own eyes. Could it have been Esmaralda deliberately guiding it to try to reassure Matilda? To help her to put all the death and misery behind her? But if that was the case, why wouldn’t she have spelled out I was wrong? Or simply no one.
All you know is wrong.
The explanation was, of course, that the pointer moved so easily across the board the girls were unaware that they were in fact the ones moving it.
All you know is wrong.
And this particular time, chance had made the letters form a full sentence that could possibly help to reassure Matilda.
All you know is…
He hadn’t even noticed the sheet being pulled aside. Suddenly, Matilda was just standing there, pointing at him.
‘I told you something was off.’
76
Lilja dropped her clothes on the floor, stepped into the shower, which had been on for a while to warm up, filled one hand with shower gel and started washing off her make-up under the hot jet. She was fully aware there were special make-up removal products, but she didn’t keep things like that at home and, if she knew herself, she never would.
For the first time in her career, the newspapers had called her a hero following her arrest of Assar Skanås. She’d gone from being the left-wing extremist pointed out by Sievert Landertz to the protector of the city, the reason people felt safe letting their children play in parks again.
But hero and protector was the last thing she felt like. Her face was still tender where Hampus had struck her, and the hot water, coupled with her lack of sleep over the past few days, was helping tiredness triumph over anger. It was only quarter past eight, half eight at most. And yet she would have no problem falling asleep standing up in the shower.
She’d been running on fumes for the past few days, with Skanås evading them and making them look like fools. At least he was now in intensive care and would likely have a colostomy bag for the rest of his life and would never be able to get it up again, no matter how randy he felt.
She could have aimed for his shins, but she hadn’t, even though that was exactly what she was going to claim in the impending investigation. It was hardly her fault he’d suddenly bent over just as she pulled the trigger. Guilty was the last thing she felt. Whatever she’d done to Skanås, it would never come close to the trauma Ester Landgren must have gone through. And what would have happened if she’d found them five minutes later didn’t bear thinking about.
Tomorrow, when she was rested, she was going to take the day off and check some things off her personal to-do list. Like making sure the bank transferred half the money from her joint account with Hampus to her private savings account. They only had eleven thousand seven hundred and forty-three kronor, but what’s right is right.
She was also going to have a look at that one-bed she’d found down on Carl Krook’s Gata in town. It wasn’t her favourite part of Helsingborg. But at least it was central, and the woman who’d answered when she called had sounded really nice and had even been willing to lower the asking price if she would consider signing a two-year contract. And given that it was available that Sunday, it could hardly get better.
Until then, she’d considered sleeping on a mattress in her office. That’s what she usually did when she left Hampus. But this time, she’d decided not to disappear before the moving men came. This time, it was real, and once the penny dropped for Hampus, he’d be capable of anything. Like cutting up her clothes or selling or even burning her furniture.
As soon as he got back around five, she was going to grab the bull by the horns and tell him. Straight up, with no extraneous bickering, she would explain to him exactly what the rest of the week would look like. That he could sleep either on the sofa or wherever he pleased, so long as it wasn’t in her bed. That they were going to have as little to do with each other as they could until she moved out, and that the kitchen was hers at breakfast, while he was free to use it for the rest of the day and night.
The problem was, he hadn’t come back at five. He still wasn’t home, which meant he was out trying to drown his guilty conscience at Pallas. In a way, avoiding the confrontation was nice; she certainly wasn’t going to wait up until he came home all drunk and needy. Instead, she was going to catch up on sleep and make sure she was out of the house by the time he woke up.
Everything was ready. The letter in which she’d written everything she’d planned to tell him in big, clear letters, to make sure he couldn’t miss any of it, even if he was still seeing double. All his clothes, which she’d removed from the bedroom and placed neatly in the armchair so he couldn’t use them as an excuse to sneak in when he got back. The breakfast that was ready and waiting in the fridge and the thermos with scalding hot coffee.
To dot the final i, she turned on the floor lamp and aimed it at the letter. Then she went into the bedroom, crawled into bed and set the alarm on her phone for half five.
Hampus stepped through the front door twenty minutes later, but Lilja was already too asleep to notice anything other than her own dreams. Not even her phone on the bedside table managed to cut through the oblivion when, an hour later, it lit up and emitted the sound that meant she’d received a text message.
Soon, the little Jew cunt is going to be crying blood. Soon…
77
Fabian put on an oven glove and took the lasagne out. ‘Matilda, could you go upstairs and let your mother and Theo know dinner’s ready?’
‘Mm…’ said Matilda, who was still sulking about him listening in on their séance.
He’d tried to convince her Greta was probably completely indifferent to his presence. He, who didn’t even believe in spirits. And he’d tried to persuade her that the words All you know is wrong was simply her way of telling them they’d misunderstood her words a month ago or that she’d been mistaken herself, and that there was nothing to worry about.
But she hadn’t bought his arguments, and to be honest, he wasn’t sure he did either. Somehow, you just couldn’t get around the fact that the whole thing was very strange.
All you know is wrong.
His own explanation about it being a random string of letters didn’t add up either. And if it wasn’t that, what was it?
What’s for dinner?
He read the text from Theo and replied Lasagne and added a small Come on. It’s going to be delicious. And nice :)
‘Matilda, go and let Mum know.’
‘Oh my God, nag much? Calm down.’
‘I’m completely calm, but the food’s getting cold.’
I’ll skip it, have a sandwich or whatever later.
The text was so typical of his son. A nonchalant shrug to signal just how little he cared.
No, Theo, you won’t, he wrote as quickly a
s he could. You’re going to come down, and you’re going to have dinner with the rest of your family. And you’re going to do it now.
‘If it’s that important, why don’t you go yourself?’ Matilda said.
Don’t think so. PS: Might be a bit late for the whole authoritarian father bit.
Fabian left the kitchen without replying, climbed the stairs in a few steps and threw open Theodor’s door. ‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’ he said as he entered the room, where Theo was sitting on the desk, smoking by the open window. ‘And what have we said about smoking?’ He snatched the cigarette out of his son’s mouth and ground it out against the desktop.
‘What have we said about knocking?’ Theodor blew out the smoke as though he couldn’t care less about Fabian being there.
‘Don’t you think I know what you’re doing? Huh? Don’t you think I can see right through you and your little play-acting now you have Mummy on your side?’
Theodor heaved a sigh.
‘You seem to think you can do whatever you want. That the coast’s clear because Mum’s too tired to take this conflict. But this isn’t working.’
‘What do you mean, not working? What the fuck are you on about?’
‘This! What the fuck did you think I was talking about?’ Fabian spread his hands. ‘Shutting yourself up in here, incapable of doing anything other than play video games, eat crisps and get fatter and fatter. Not even trying to hide the cigarette when you’re caught smoking. The stench when you open the door and step into this pigsty. I’m talking about you, Theo! You and the self-pitying fucking martyr’s act you’re apparently going in for.’
‘Right. Okay. You done?’
‘No, I’m not. Far from it. And I want you to look at me when I’m talking to you.’ He grabbed Theodor’s chin and forced him to meet his eyes. ‘There are limits, and you’ve crossed so many I’ve had enough.’
‘Right, that’s sad for you, I guess.’
‘And you! Primarily you. Because from now on, you will face the consequences of your decisions.’
Motive X Page 38