by Karin Nordin
He caught a glimpse of his own reflection in the glass and was surprised by how old he looked. The lines around his eyes were more pronounced now and his hair was beginning to recede. Despite the occasional aches and pains in the morning, he was in decent shape for a man pushing seventy. His doctor regularly told him that he was “fit as a horse” and would be even more so if he stayed off the whisky and cigars, but at his age those were the things worth living for.
He was getting too old for this.
Peter had taken over Norrmalm from their father after his passing thirty-four years ago. The assumption was that Peter would eventually pass it on to his own children just as the Lindqvist family had done for more than five generations. But after his wife and unborn son died in childbirth, Peter decided not to try and have any more children. He didn’t even remarry. He just buried himself in the business, allowing work to fill that familial void. And when he decided to take a leave of absence the responsibilities fell to Roland. But Roland was already preparing for retirement.
Roland remembered the day Peter told him about his need to “step away from the company for a while” like it was yesterday. The news hadn’t taken him by surprise. Peter’s passion for the business had diminished considerably after he turned sixty. Roland always assumed this was because their father hadn’t made it to his own sixtieth birthday, but later he considered the possibility that Peter had finally felt the empty weight of investing everything into Norrmalm. Thus the revelation that Peter needed a break hadn’t been a shock, but it had rattled him. And what followed was an argument that was never fully resolved because Peter refused to take an answer other than the one he’d already decided – that Roland would take over for him until his return.
A return, it seemed, that either wouldn’t or couldn’t occur.
On Friday it would be five years to the day that Peter left. At the time Roland understood Peter’s choice. The pressures of the business had taken its toll on his brother. If Roland had been in his brother’s position he would have burned out as well.
Thankfully, Peter had surrounded himself with a more than competent executive board who eased Roland into the transition. It didn’t stop Roland from cursing his brother’s name whenever he had to miss tee time in order to curry favour to some government official or environmental analyst, but it helped. And once the merger with MineCorp was complete, it would be worth it. Then Roland could step back from the role of director and enjoy the pleasures of retirement while still retaining a large share of future profits afforded to him and his family by birthright.
Once he got ahold of Peter and convinced him to agree to the merger, that is. That was proving to be the greatest impediment to Roland’s plan. Despite Roland’s attempts to contact his brother, he hadn’t been able to reach him. His messages were continuously going to voicemail and there were no replies to his emails. Of course, this went along with Peter’s departing wishes to be left alone during his leave of absence, but Roland thought his brother would at least make an exception for family. Peter was still Norrmalm’s majority shareholder, after all. And without his signature, Roland couldn’t do anything that would drastically change the arrangement of the company.
Not until Friday. On Friday Roland could file a request for a declaratory judgement for death in absentia for his brother and, as closest living relative, inherit full rights to his brother’s estate. Including Norrmalm Industries.
This wasn’t the time for playing it safe.
Roland returned to the table and pressed the intercom again.
‘I just placed the files on your desk, Herr Lindqvist,’ Hanna answered, her voice slightly out of breath on the speaker.
‘Thank you, Hanna. I’m going to send you an attachment of the updated contract agreements for the proposed merger. I’d like you to forward it in an email to Jakob Holm at MineCorp before you leave for the day. And CC it to our financial adviser, as well.’
‘Of course, Herr Lindqvist,’ Hanna replied. ‘What should I say?’
‘Tell him I want their answer on the merger before noon tomorrow or I’ll present the proposal to their competitor in Germany.’
‘Very well, sir. Anything else?’
Roland paused. He glanced back out the window. The sun had long since dipped below the tree line and the deep red glow that spread across the orange cavern began fading into night. Two more days and it would all be his. Then he could get rid of it.
‘You can politely inform him that I’m done with negotiations. This is my final offer.’
Chapter 4
Kjeld followed Sara upstairs, the floorboards creaking with each step. While she checked on their father alone – “better that I tell him you’re here before he sees you” – Kjeld stood in his childhood bedroom and observed how much it had changed. The furniture was still there, but very little of him was left. The Dark Side of the Moon poster that once hung above his bed had been removed, leaving behind it the remnants of sticky tack on the wall. The dresser was cleared of his model aeroplanes and lava lamp. The desk, which someone had since pushed up against the window that overlooked the front drive, was empty aside from his high school graduation photo – complete with student cap, Kurt Cobain-styled shoulder-length hair, and a toothless grin that was uncomfortably obnoxious twenty years later.
‘He didn’t throw everything away,’ Sara said from the doorway.
‘Just the stuff I liked?’ Kjeld said. He regretted it almost immediately.
Sara crossed her arms over her chest and watched as her brother searched for something of himself in that room. ‘There are a few boxes in the cellar. Pictures, mostly. Some school reports. Toys.’
‘Toys?’ Kjeld made a face.
‘Excuse me, models. Whatever it is you used to spend hours putting together.’
Kjeld laughed. It was almost refreshing to know that they could so easily fall back into their old roles. Embrace the patterns that used to make up an almost daily ritual of antagonistic jibes between them. Squabbling siblings. Sara, the dutiful older sister with her entourage of friends, trying out new make-up styles from fashion magazines and managing high marks in her classes without really trying. Kjeld, the quiet troublemaker, building model aircraft while listening to adversarial rock music and summarily proving to be a repetitive disappointment to their father. Decades later and they were still playing their parts in a never-ending performance of familial dysfunction.
Kjeld sat on the edge of the desk and looked across the room at his sister.
‘What did he see?’ he asked. ‘What did he tell you?’
Sara sighed and averted her gaze to the floor. ‘He didn’t say anything. I was in the kitchen making lunch when Inspector Ek showed up at the door saying Dad called the police.’
‘Gunnar Ek?’ Kjeld asked, surprised.
‘The same. He came back to town a few years after the two of you finished police college. He took over from Ulf Arnö when he retired. That must have been seven, maybe eight years ago now.’
‘Gunnar never struck me as the type to stick around,’ Kjeld said.
‘Not everyone was born to hate it here.’
‘Not everyone was born with common sense.’
Sara pursed her lips and Kjeld could tell he’d gone too far.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Being here just brings back a lot of bad memories.’
‘There are good memories, too, Kjeld. If you don’t ignore them.’
Kjeld tried to remember the good moments, but he found that they were few and far between. Most of them involved his mother. Kjeld had always been closer to her. Always felt like she understood him better than his father did. And he’d grown up with the distinct impression that his mother expressed a kind of protective nature towards him that she didn’t with his sister. Perhaps she recognised that he needed more attention than Sara. That his inarticulate struggles as a young boy with a demanding father required a gentler touch to help him cope with the conflict between himself and his father’s expectation
s. Expectations that he would remain in Varsund, pursue a career in wildlife or forestry like his father, continue the family tradition of caring for the birds, and raise his children to do the same.
And while there had been a time in his life when Kjeld had considered doing all of those things, that time had passed. His father never could quite come to terms with the fact that Kjeld wasn’t meant for a simple life in Varsund. That he needed something more. His mother had always understood him. But as much as Kjeld remembered her fondly, the last few years of her life made it difficult for him to forget the animosity between himself and his father. And that was where the understanding had ended.
‘What did Gunnar say?’
Sara dropped her arms and rested her hands on her hips. ‘He said Dad called the station to report a murder. He claimed to have seen someone fighting in the barn.’
‘Who?’ Kjeld asked.
‘I don’t know! Dad didn’t know! He just said he saw someone get murdered out there. But Gunnar and two other officers searched all over the property. They didn’t find anything. And when we tried to question Dad about it, he got confused.’ Sara took a deep breath and exhaled, her lips blowing an exhausted raspberry. ‘It’s getting to be too much for me. I had to quit my job five years ago just to manage.’
Kjeld frowned. He opened his mouth to apologise, but the words didn’t come out.
‘I just couldn’t do it,’ Sara continued. ‘Taking care of Dad and taking care of the kids. Tom. Our house. This house. Those stupid birds. It’s too much. I don’t have any time. I don’t do anything else.’
Kjeld wanted to be sympathetic. He was ashamed that his sister was going through all of this without his knowledge. If he had been a better brother, he would have supported her more over the years. He might have been more involved and realised that the universe didn’t revolve around him and his problems. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking. Kjeld was stubborn and selfish. In that regard he was more like their father than he liked to admit. And even if he had recognised what Sara was doing on her own, he didn’t know if he would have done anything different. So resolute was the resentment between him and his father. A resentment that Kjeld thought his father might have been trying to resolve by calling him.
But that wasn’t the case.
‘Would it be all right if I stayed the night?’ Kjeld asked.
‘Are you going to behave yourself? Because I’m not joking, Kjeld. I don’t want you digging around and bringing up all that bullshit from the past. Dad is ill and I’m tired,’ Sara said, her eyes warning him even more than her words.
‘I promise to be myself.’ He smiled.
‘Your better self, I hope,’ she replied. ‘There are clean sheets in the linen closet. Dinner is at six.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Kjeld teased.
‘I’m serious. No digging into the past. Not with Dad.’
Kjeld searched her face for any sign of leniency in that matter. He couldn’t promise not to ask questions, after all. Perhaps their father was only imagining things, but Kjeld couldn’t get the sound of his voice on the recording out of his mind. Something had happened. Maybe not a murder, but something that caused his father to break his vow never to speak to his son ever again. And Kjeld wanted to know what that something was.
‘I’ll try to limit my digging to a shovel.’
* * *
‘Dad, look who’s come for dinner,’ Sara said, easing Stenar into the chair beside the kitchen window.
Kjeld watched as his father sat down. Despite the extra two inches Stenar had on him, he seemed smaller than Kjeld remembered. The flannel button-up shirt that Sara had dressed him in was at least one size too big and Kjeld could tell from the way the belt was cinched unevenly around his waist that an extra hole had been added. Perhaps two. His hair, once thick and dark, always perfectly parted to one side through excessive abuse of Brylcreem and pomade, had turned thin and grey. Kjeld could see that Sara had tried to comb his hair, but without those greasy tonics it flopped over his forehead, exposing the smattering of rose-coloured age spots on his scalp. When he sat, it was with a hunch that caused him to lean to the left, and the stiffness of his posture made Kjeld wonder if he’d recently had a stroke. Or was having one now.
‘Are you okay, Dad?’ Kjeld asked.
‘He’s always a little off balance after his naps,’ Sara said, pushing Stenar’s chair closer to the table. ‘He gets around fine most of the time. Sometimes I catch him out wandering in the woods when he should be in bed. But his shoulder cramps up if he lies on his side for too long.’ She tucked a cloth napkin into the front of Stenar’s shirt. ‘That’s why you’re supposed to use the extra pillows I got you.’
‘The what?’ Stenar asked, breaking his stare from the window.
‘I said look who came for dinner,’ Sara repeated, her voice slower, more succinct.
‘Who?’ Stenar asked.
‘It’s me, Dad. It’s Kjeld.’ Kjeld waited for his father to look in his direction before giving a slight nod of the head.
Kjeld didn’t know what he’d expected to see in his father’s face. Anger? Scorn? Frustration? Disappointment? When he stormed out twelve years ago it had been with the intention of never returning. Still, he’d sometimes wondered what he would see in his father’s eyes if they ever crossed paths again. He imagined countless interactions between them, all full to the brim with hatred and animosity, with years of unresolved tensions and a near-infinite amount of blame. And all of those imagined reunions ended in confrontation. Sometimes verbal. Sometimes physical. It was always an argument that never reached a resolution except the kind of resolution that the men of the Nygaard family were best at: avoidance.
So when Stenar stared back at him, his eyes blank, void of recollection, Kjeld was furious. Furious and disappointed that he’d spent all of those years hating a man who’d forgotten him.
Sara brought the bowl of boiled potatoes to the table and scooped a few onto Stenar’s plate.
Stenar looked up at her, his expression suddenly bright and lucid. ‘Kjeld is my son.’
‘That’s right, Dad,’ Sara said, returning to the refrigerator for the pickled herring and the sour cream. ‘And he’s here for dinner.’
Stenar looked at Kjeld. Again that vacant stare. Empty of anger or hatred or disgust. Empty of any emotions. And then, with no seemingly obvious trigger, his brain perhaps latching on to some loose memory of the past prompted by a smell or sound, his mouth broke into a broad smile.
‘Kjeld!’ he exclaimed. ‘Wonderful to see you, boy. How have you been?’
Kjeld hesitated before answering. ‘I’ve been well.’
‘Good to hear it,’ Stenar said. ‘Good to hear it. And work? Work is good?’
‘It’s steady,’ Kjeld replied.
‘Good, good.’ Stenar removed the napkin from his shirt and placed it in his lap instead.
Sara dished out the herring onto Stenar’s plate along with a large spoonful of sour cream and chives.
Stenar picked up his fork and knife and began smearing the herring into the sour cream.
‘Should I cut that up for you, Dad?’ Sara asked.
‘Nonsense, Sara. I’m not a child.’ Stenar laughed. Then he stuffed a forkful of potatoes into his mouth.
‘Pickled herring for dinner? Really?’ Kjeld asked.
‘That’s all Dad ever wants to eat,’ Sara insisted. ‘Every time I try to make something else, he refuses to eat it until I add pickled herring to the plate. Meatballs with herring, pancakes with herring. Last week we had pyttipanna with herring.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ Stenar interrupted. ‘Everyone knows pyttipanna is eaten with sausages. Now, your mother, she made the best pyttipanna in all of Jämtland. She used to add silver onions with the gherkins to give it more taste. And she always made the brown sauce from scratch.’
Kjeld filled his plate with potatoes, but held off on the herring. The idea of eating something cold for dinner went entirely against h
is nature and he didn’t want to spend the evening belching up briny fish.
‘I don’t remember that,’ Sara said, frowning. ‘Do you remember Mum making her own brown sauce?’
Kjeld shrugged. ‘I have no idea.’
‘It’s true,’ Stenar said, slurping up a piece of herring that nearly fell off his fork.
‘I’ll have to go through the old recipes and see if I can find that brown sauce,’ Sara mused out loud, her attention wandering over to the stack of cookbooks that had occupied the counter since before she and Kjeld were born.
Kjeld continued to watch Stenar, wary and uncertain of his father’s sudden clarity. A clarity that seemed not to include the fervid bitterness between them. And although it aggravated him that his father didn’t return that heated resentment, Stenar’s unconscious disconnection to the events that tore their family apart might make it easier for Kjeld to get to the bottom of the bizarre phone call he’d received two days ago.
‘Do you remember calling me the other day?’ Kjeld asked, carefully observing Stenar for any kind of reaction that might give away the truth between the confusion.