Several scraps of A4-paper, various plastic folders, three dog-eared textbooks, an empty packet of cinnamon rolls, two plastic coke bottles (one with a lid missing), the remnants of a broken plastic triangular ruler, and various pens and pencils. All inkless. All pointless.
Gustav spied the familiar round figure of Eric Cartman amongst the rubble. There is a God! Screw you guys, I’m going to gymnasium! He put the keyring between his teeth and started to pile things back into the rucksack. But lying amongst the rubble of his belongings was a little crumpled packet.
He looked around the stairwell. Not that there was anybody about at that time in the morning. His Mum had left for work an hour ago, his little sister leaving just afterwards to walk to school. And the two old biddies who lived on the first and second floors didn’t make any noise in the morning until their carers had been in to help them wash and dress. After that, the TVs would blare all day, but right now there was total silence. And then it all went pitch black. Total darkness.
He stood up and felt around for the stair light switch. It clicked and the light returned, together with its tick-tick-tick sound. He grabbed the packet from the floor. Mum! If she ever finds out… Gustav was not only tired and late, he could now top it all off with a very large helping of guilty conscience. He stuffed the packet into his top parka pocket and zipped it up. And scooped the rest of the jumble back into his rucksack, stuffing it down and flipping over the top. There was no time to worry about Mum right now. And anyway, it would be over soon.
Outside in the courtyard, the grass was white. Gustav could feel his ears and the tip of his nose starting to tingle. Not just tingle – they were actually beginning to burn from the cold. What is it – minus 15 this morning? And he had absolutely no idea where his gloves or hat might be. He checked his pockets, well knowing that he had just emptied them in an attempt to find his bike key. He’d been at Strandhøj last night – had he left them there? Then again, they might be in his room. They could be anywhere in his room. He looked up at the windows from the courtyard and then at his watch. There was no time to go back and look. He could hear Mum’s voice in his head:
“Have you seen my gloves, Mum?”
“No. Have you tried your room? Though you’ll be lucky to find anything – it looks like a bomb has gone off in there…”
“Never mind, I don’t need them, it’s fine.”
“When did you last have them on?”
“Mum, if I knew that, I wouldn’t be looking for them now, would I?”
“Did you have them on when you cycled back last night?”
“I told you, Mum, I can’t remember!”
“You’d forget your head if it wasn’t screwed on—”
“It doesn’t matter. I don’t need them anyway!”
“But it’s cold out there and—”
His bike glistened. A few drops of condensation dripped off the tyres. Great, it was shaping up to be a fantastic ten-minute bike ride. Nothing better than plonking your bum on an ice-cold bike seat. He used the sleeve of his parka to rub off the worst of the frost. And to think I actually laughed when Mum had wanted to buy me a lambswool cover! The guilt came flooding back.
He pushed the packet to the back of his mind. Oh well, not all was rotten in the state of Gustav’s world. At least there was something in his day to look forward to – tonight at the Kro. Gustav had checked the hotel work schedule twice (for the record, he had checked it three times, just to be sure) and he and Ida would be working the same shift. He was the dish washer at the Kro. She had been promoted to serving. And they would battle together, in the kitchen, with their playlists. Ida was a Lukas Graham girl, he was into The Minds of 99 but they could always meet over Kashmir.
A tingling sensation went right through his body, and this time it wasn’t due to the sub-zero temperatures. He hadn’t been sure at first – I mean, Ida was friendly and polite to everyone, wasn’t she – but the last couple of times she had looked at him, it had seemed liked she really liked him. ‘Liked him’ kind of liked him. Gustav had been trying out one of the flirting tips he’d seen in his little sister’s tween magazine. God forbid Lærke should ever find out that he had been reading it and tell her schoolmates. He would be the laughing stock. On the other hand, Lærke’s friends were always giggling when he was around. Girls!
It had sounded stupid when he had read it in the magazine, but he was getting desperate and decided to try it out. Staring at Ida when she wasn’t looking, then turning away when she looked at him. Several times in a row. And last night when he had done it, when she had come in with the huge stack of plates from the Old Boys’ Badminton table, she had held his gaze for just a little bit longer and seemed to blush. Though that might have been because she had been run off her feet: those Old Boys were a handful. But, no, he was sure that he wasn’t imagining things. Maybe tonight he should make his move? He was wearing his lucky underpants… Yes, he’d ask her tonight.
Gustav managed a small smile and bent over and unlocked his bike. Adjusted his earbuds, pulled the sleeves of his coat as far down as possible over his numbed fingers and walked out of the courtyard, walking a little bit taller with every step. He got out into the street, took a deep breath and put his leg over the crossbar. It was then that he noticed his gears were frozen. Brilliant, just bloody brilliant!
CHAPTER 4
Karin Rasmussen switched on the kettle and looked out the window. She loved icy January mornings – the frost made the tops of the playhouses shine as if they were covered with diamonds. Soon they’d be covered with wriggling, toddler bottoms.
“Cup of coffee, Stig?”
“Yes, thanks, love. I’ll just nip out and get my toolbox.”
Karin had arrived at Æblegården nursery at 6.30 am, as she always did on Thursdays. Jannick opened on Mondays, Sonja took Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Karin unlocked the main gate and the front door. Switched on the table lamps in Red Room and Blue Room and started on the day’s bread dough. She loved the repetitive morning ritual of mixing and kneading in complete silence – the calm before the storm. She moved the large bowl of dough to one side and took two white Ikea mugs out of the overhead cupboard. A spoonful of Nescafé for each, splash of milk for her, plus two sugars for Stig. No need for a biscuit with that much sugar!
Stig was lying on the floor of the laundry room, tinkering with the radiator underneath the changing table. She stood with his cup and a blue plastic bowl piled high with biscuits.
“Think you can fix it?”
“Yeah. Just needed a new valve. Should be finished in a couple of minutes.”
Stig and Karin had always been together. They met in the school playground, were best friends through school, dated through gymnasium and moved in together as soon as they had enough money to leave their respective Strandvig nests. And so it had continued until they both turned 30, and the world expected them to act like adults. The pressure was on to buy a house: their own place. And they slowly realised that, in truth, they would each prefer to have a place of their own. It would be wrong to say that things had dried up because there had never been strong flowing currents of passion in the first place. Their love for each other was more of a babbling brook. So there was no big bust up, no pay-outs and no fights over kids: children had never been part of their equation. Karin and Stig were comfortable with each other. Filing for divorce had never been an option, quite simply because it had never crossed their mutual mind.
“Done! Should be warm in about 10 or 15 minutes.” Stig warmed his hands on the cup and took a couple of biscuits from the plastic bowl. “Anything else need fixing?”
Karin smiled, “Round here? There’s always something that needs fixed! Actually Jannick said to me last night that one of the lamps at the back of the carport isn’t working. But I’m not sure if we have any of those special bulbs left. You’ll need to take a look in the shed.”
“Okay,” said Stig, taking another biscuit, “will do.”
“Only if you have time, t
hough. It’s not urgent.” Karin looked at her watch, “Hey, shouldn’t you be up at Strandhøj?”
“Nah, it’s okay, Johnny said he’d open up this morning. You know, Johnny. Always keen to lend a hand. Could have been a boy scout!”
“Boy scout, my elbow. Johnny only helps out if there’s something in it for him, you mean. Always looking for the next big break. Or easy money. He’ll end up getting his fingers burnt one of these days…”
Stig decided that it was best to say nothing and continued to munch on a biscuit. He had heard it all before from Karin and nothing he could say would change her mind. Once she’d made her mind up about someone, she wouldn’t budge. And when it came to Johnny, he really couldn’t blame her. He’d known Johnny for as long as he had known Karin, because all three had gone to school together. Johnny and Stig in one class, Karin in the year below. The boys in Stig’s class played football together at break and lunchtime. After school the whole pack would head into the forest to build dens. Stig’s favourite time of year was the autumn, when they’d collect hundreds and hundreds of chestnuts and lie on the grass listening to the red deer bellowing. In the summer months the boys would bike down to the beach and skim stones. And they always ended up swimming, more often than not, in their underpants. They had been good times.
Stig had looked up to Johnny. He was the unspoken leader of the pack, the one who dared do things that the others only dreamed of. The one who was forever getting in trouble, or forever getting others into trouble. Most of the kids were in awe of him and quite a few were scared of him, which meant that he was never short of an audience. Stig wasn’t quite so comfortable watching Johnny in action. Like the summer afternoon when the pair had gone into the petrol station on the coast to buy ice-cream. Stig could only look on dumbfounded as Johnny – very deftly – stole two packets of cigarettes while the attendant was busy operating the noisy metal soft serve ice-cream machine. Stig felt dreadful, not having had the courage to stop Johnny, especially as the attendant was a teenager they both knew from Strandvig.
“Why did you do that, Johnny? That was Mikkel’s big brother!”
“Relax! No-one saw us. Here you go, one packet for me and one packet for you. We’re in this together.”
Stig had put his hands in his pockets and looked down at the ground.
“I don’t want the cigarettes! You stole them, you keep them.”
“OK, scaredy cat, I will. If you don’t want them, I’ll give them to Mads.”
“But what about Mikkel’s brother. He’ll see that there are packets missing!”
“I said ‘relax’! The petrol station makes plenty of money…”
“But what if Mikkel’s brother has to pay for it?”
“Shut it, okay, Stig? God, you’re such a goody two shoes…”
They had eaten their ice-creams in silence and Stig was glad to finally be able to bike home to the security of his mum and dad. Though he was just as shocked as they were when he opened his satchel later that night and a crumpled packet of cigarettes, still in its squeaky cellophane, fell out.
Stig had burst into tears and the whole story came out. He was scared of Johnny, but he was even more scared of his parents’ reaction. From that moment, Stig’s parents made him cut the connection. He’d gone to bed that night, sobbing, trying to stifle the sound with his pillow. His mum had come in, sat down on the side of the bed and rocked him to sleep, just like she had done when he was a toddler. For Stig it had been a relief to end the friendship and, kudos to him, Johnny hadn’t minded in the least – “No sweat, Stig, I’ve got plenty of other mates”. And now, twenty years on, here they were, back together here in Strandvig. Workmates who looked out for each other.
“…and I really wish you’d stay away from him!” Yes, Karin was on a roll.
“Well, we work together, so there’s not much I can do about that, is there, love? Besides, it was him who offered to cover for me this morning, so it’s really thanks to him that you now have a fully functioning radiator!”
Stig felt it again. The heat was slowly coming back, but the air in the room was very definitely glacial due to Karin’s silence. “Johnny’s alright, love. Just give him a chance.” He held Karin’s face in his hands and gave her a big peck on the cheek, “He just needs the love of a good woman, that’s all. We can’t all be that lucky!”
Karin tried to scold him. “Oh, you big, soppy thing. Run along with you!”
Stig picked up his tools and threw the packaging from the valve into the bin. When he turned around, he found Karin emptying the bowl of biscuits into one of the drawers in his toolbox.
“Oi! Are you trying to fatten me up?”
“Don’t want you wasting away, do we now?”
“Oh I get it. You don’t want all the other girls running after me...”
Karin pretended to hit him on the arm. “Just you behave yourself!”
Stig picked up his toolbox and blew her a kiss, “Don’t I always, love? Oh, by the way, did you hear who’s back in town?”
“No.”
“I’ll give you three guesses!”
“Stig, I haven’t got time for this, the kids are arriving. Just tell me!”
“Mads.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, met him down at the Kayak Club – he’s back for good.”
“Oh.”
Karin waved Stig off and went back into the kitchen. Mads was back in Strandvig? She hadn’t seen that coming at all. She could hear small voices in the corridor: time to get cracking.
CHAPTER 5
Martin Brix, in his dark blue Swedish slim-cut suit and dark brown leather shoes, stretched across the back seat and strapped Mathilde and Mathias into their car seats. They sat up straight, like little dolls, in matching pale blue and pale pink all-in-one ski suits. Matching pale blue and pink balaclavas, matching pale blue and pink gloves. And matching grey camouflage Angulus boots. Everyone could see they were twins, so why the blazes did Maria insist on dressing them alike?
He stood upright and shivered slightly, patting the pastel, striped, cashmere scarf around his neck, as if it would somehow magically transfer heat to the rest of his body. He daren’t adjust the scarf because it had taken him a full five minutes in front of the mirror trying to make it look like he had – nonchalantly – just thrown it on.
Still, it was better not to say anything to Maria – anything that would spark off yet another argument. Thank God he had a late meeting at the office tonight – the perfect excuse to stay on for dinner in Copenhagen. He’d heard so much buzz about that new seafood diner in Kødbyen, the old Meat Packing district, just a few minutes’ walk from his company’s loft offices. But Martin had a small niggle at the back of his head. What was that old saying about eating shellfish…to avoid eating it in the months that contained the letter R. Or was it the ones that didn’t? He dismissed the thought just as quickly as it had popped into his head. Two of his co-partners in the advertising agency (therefore, Martin’s ‘rivals’) ate there last week, so he had better go there tonight. It was dog eat dog in this business. Or fish eat fish. R or no R.
Martin sat down carefully behind the wheel and clicked the remote to open the electric garage door. He ran his hands over the steering wheel while he waited for the door to lift open, put the BMW into gear and gently rolled the car out of the dark garage into the blazing, white light outside.
A toddler’s voice piped up from the back seat, whisking him back from the cool, hip Meat Packing district to the cool, icy tree-lined street.
“But is she?”
“Erm, is she what?”
“Mum? Is she picking us up. Mum?” Mathias knew that dad took them to nursery and mum picked them up.
“No, I’m afraid not. Mum won’t be finished until late today.”
“Neeeeeeeeeeeeej!” chorused Mathias and Mathilde.
“Ida is coming to pick you up—”
“Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” chorused Mathias and Mathilde.
Ida,
a girl who went to the local high school, was their favourite babysitter. The twins had encountered numerous babysitters in their short toddler lives, but Ida was, to date, the only babysitter who hadn’t quit after a week and wasn’t fazed by Mother Maria’s impossibly rigorous standards. Maria demanded stability and consistency for her children, but Maria herself was capricious and consideration for others didn’t figure in her calculations. Ida didn’t seem to mind the endless changes of plan at the Brix household: being summoned at short notice or being dropped at the very last minute. Saint Ida was, moreover, hugely popular with the children. She let Mathias and Mathilde eat ryebread with chokolade pålæg (thin slices of chocolate) as an afternoon snack – eating rather a lot of slices herself – if they promised to eat a piece of ryebread with leverpostej (liver pâté) first. Ida was also good at reading stories and also a dab hand at building Duplo. A star in anyone’s book.
“Will she make us pancakes for dinner?”
“No.”
“Øv!” chorused Mathias and Mathilde, greatly displeased.
Silence from the back seat.
“She’s just going to bring you home and play with you until Mum gets back.”
“But she makes better food than Mum!”
Martin had to agree on that one, but chose to ignore the remark. Who could blame the kids for turning up their noses at a solid diet of spelt and quinoa? Never mind celeriac burgers parading as the real thing. His own suggestion of local, organic beef burgers having been shot down like a big fat duck. Yes, now that he thought about it, he was pretty sure that it was the months containing R that were safe. He blinked his eyes. He’d enjoy some lobster tonight. Perhaps a small steak to follow. No sauce. Just lean protein.
Still silence from the back seat.
“Ida’s working at the restaurant tonight, so she can’t stay for dinner, even if she wanted to.” Martin had never been a fan of Strandhøj. He considered it too ‘local’ for his taste. The food was good, but the clientele? Well, he’d never say it out loud, but to him they were ‘provincial’.
Death Comes to Strandvig Page 2