by Karin Nordin
‘What do you mean?’
‘I found a contract between Dad and Peter Lindqvist. In it Lindqvist agrees never to try and purchase let alone dig on Dad’s land.’
‘Peter Lindqvist the dead guy?’
‘The same. How’d you hear about that?’
‘Word travels fast. It’s impossible to keep a secret in Varsund. Not one like that anyway.’
There was a mumbling of unintelligible voices on the speaker, probably muffled by Sara covering the phone with her hand. Kjeld tried to listen, but he couldn’t understand anything. It was almost a minute later before Sara’s voice returned.
‘I’ll look for that survey when I get home.’
‘Thanks, sis.’
‘But you need to keep this to yourself until we can prove any of it. You don’t have to live in this town, but I do. And I do not want to be known as the woman who tried to sue the only reputable business in town only to find out there was absolutely no basis to my claims. Do you get that?’
Esme’s olive-green Volvo pulled up in the temporary parking across the street.
‘Kjeld? Do you understand me?’
‘Yeah, sure. I get it. Look, I gotta go. My ride just got here. Call me if you find that survey.’
Kjeld rang off and stepped out into the street. A four-door sedan swerved past, practically clipping him from the kerb. He shouted at the driver, but received a wrinkled middle finger in return, held up beside a hand-pull shopping trolley in the passenger seat.
Chapter 41
‘I need to talk to you.’
Roland closed up the laptop on his desk and turned his attention to the man across from him. All those years of knowing him and he still couldn’t get used to those bulging eyes.
‘The deed is done, Erik. I don’t know what you want me to say at this point.’ Roland leaned back into his chair, half turned to face the glass window overlooking the cavern. The orange hue of bedrock was lightened by the snow, giving it an almost crater-like appearance. From first glance it could have been the surface of Mars. ‘By the end of the year these offices will be packed up and we’ll be replaced by Holm and the rest of the MineCorp group. The deal is made. I couldn’t go back on it now even if I wanted to.’
Erik wiped a handkerchief over his sweating brow and dabbed it at the corner of his eye where it had begun to tear. This weather was a bear on his condition. His eyes had been swelling more than usual with the early winter chill. He didn’t normally have this problem back in Stockholm where the weather at least had the decency to wait until December to turn frigid. January if it was feeling particularly gracious.
‘That’s not what I mean,’ Erik said, his voice low and apologetic. ‘It has to do with Peter.’
Roland turned his chair back towards his desk and stared across the dark mahogany finish at the lawyer.
‘What about Peter?’
‘I know something about him.’
Roland’s expression drew into a hard scowl. He was trying to decipher the meaning behind Erik’s words without jumping to any conclusions. His body, however, betrayed him. His heart was already galloping in his chest in preparation for the words that would follow.
‘Don’t tell me you know who killed him,’ Roland said. Terse.
‘What?’ The comment took Erik off-guard. ‘No, of course not.’
‘And you didn’t kill him, did you?’
‘God, no. Roland, that’s not what I meant at all.’
‘Then what did you mean?’ Roland stared at him, his patience worn thin.
‘I know why he left,’ Erik admitted. The confession came out of him in a heavy gasp of breath like he’d been carrying it around for years instead of days. ‘I know why he really went on sabbatical.’
That wasn’t what Roland was expecting to hear and he frowned. ‘We all know why he left, Erik. He was burned out.’
Erik reached into his pocket and removed a letter. The envelope was sealed with a signature across the back. Erik had been holding on to it for years. He’d tucked it away in his safe at home, never thinking that he’d have to deliver it. Thinking about the consequences it could have now made his palms sweat.
‘The last time I saw Peter he left this in my office.’ Erik sighed, realising how ludicrous that must have sounded aloud without any context. He dabbed the handkerchief at his eye. The conjunctiva was red from irritation. ‘It was after he announced his sabbatical. He came by and we had a drink. A few drinks. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just talking about the good old days. About how things were different when we were younger. How Norrmalm was different. You know.’
‘Peter never had any trouble talking about the company. It was all he had,’ Roland said, eyeing the envelope with distrust.
‘He spent a lot of time talking about how the pressures had finally gotten to him and his regrets over the years. I won’t get into those. You know what I’m talking about.’
‘Yvonne.’
Erik nodded. ‘I can’t imagine how that must have been for him. Even now when I think back, I have trouble making sense of it. It’s not right for someone so young and full of life to be taken from this world.’
Roland considered saying something on that matter and then didn’t. In the great scheme of things, there really wasn’t anything to say about it. The death of Peter’s wife and child had been tragic, but it was something they all mustered through eventually. And as sore a subject as it had been at the time, it was decades in the past. Roland could hardly even remember what she looked like now. ‘What’s in the envelope, Erik?’
Erik took a deep breath. ‘At first I thought he would come back after a few months. A year, at most. But he didn’t. I guess a part of me was concerned at the time, but I rationalised it. Peter valued his privacy, after all. He told me to keep this letter for you until he returned. And I was only to give it to you should he … well, should something happen to him. I didn’t get the impression that he was worried about anything. He was just tying up loose ends. Being safe. You always hear stories about healthy people suddenly becoming ill or passing without warning. That’s what he said, anyway. That was his reasoning. But when I heard that the police had verified his death … I don’t think Peter had this in mind when he wrote whatever is in this letter.’
Roland listened, his gaze unwavering from its stare. He was searching Erik’s face for some fault in the story. Some glimmer of a lie. But he didn’t see anything. Then again, it was hard to see anything beyond those protruding peepers.
Roland reached forward and tried to tug the letter out of Erik’s grip, but Erik tugged it back.
‘Let me say one more thing. You know what this company means to me,’ Erik continued. ‘My career is built on Norrmalm and its success. Peter made that happen. Without him I would still be practising family law in some suburban village, living alone in a one-bedroom apartment without a balcony, and wishing I’d had the gumption to pursue corporate law. Peter is the one who gave me that confidence. I know it was none of my business disagreeing with your choice to sell, but I hated to see that era end. Especially without him.’
Roland turned back to the window, the tension in his face lessening. As much as he hated to admit it, he believed Erik. He believed his pitiful story about feeling he owed a debt to Norrmalm and to Peter. On anyone else it might have seemed too pathetic, but Erik had never been the kind of man who stood comfortably on his own two feet. And when he did gain some semblance of self-assurance it was on the backbone of more confident men. Men like Peter.
‘Peter leaving was a sore topic for me at the time,’ Roland said after a pause. ‘I didn’t want this for myself. I wasn’t expecting it or prepared for it. I know I shared in the ownership, but Norrmalm was always supposed to be Peter’s company. When he told me he was leaving I didn’t take it well. We argued.’
‘He may have mentioned that.’
‘We’re all just stubborn old men, aren’t we? When I signed that declaration of death in absentia I thought I was doing the righ
t thing by my family. I really did. And then they found that body and I just knew. I knew it was my brother before the police even told me. It was a feeling in my gut. And it felt like my fault. Like I had murdered him. That somehow by signing that document I’d made it real.’ Roland pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘What’s in the letter?’
‘I don’t know. I never read it. But I think it might be—’ Erik cut himself off. There was something else on his mind, but he hesitated sharing it.
Roland raised an eyebrow. ‘What is it?’
Erik cleared his throat. He was ashamed by his own indecision to come forward with the truth, but he’d once made a promise to Peter that he would never break his confidence. Except Peter was dead now and that meant Erik was the only one holding on to the guilt of a secret that wasn’t even his own.
‘Peter had a secret,’ Erik admitted. ‘And I think he meant to tell you with this letter.’
Chapter 42
‘Find anything yet?’
The floor was a mess. Stacks of mouldy, cobweb-covered boxes and papers pulled up from the cellar lined the living room. Kjeld had looked through so many documents – everything from old auto mechanic receipts to some of his dad’s work invoices – that his eyes were beginning to cross.
Stenar, who’d been reluctantly dropped off by Sara after he’d thrown a fit at her house and frightened her children by breaking a lamp because he wanted to be taken to his own home, hovered over the old record player at the far side of the room. He flipped through the stack of vinyls that Kjeld had brought up along with the boxes. Every time he pulled out an album he sent handfuls of dust falling to the floor.
Esme held up a sheet of paper, yellowed and frail. ‘Geographical property survey from 1979.’
‘From 1979? Are you sure?’ Kjeld stepped over the boxes and crouched down beside Esme to get a better look.
‘From the looks of it your father had the dimensions of the entire plot, from the logging road all the way up to the national park, measured and confirmed by the local planning board. It’s notarised at the bottom.’ Esme handed the survey to Kjeld.
Kjeld stood up, pacing around the piles of papers as he studied the map of his father’s property. ‘Does it include a geological estimate as well?’
‘I don’t remember this one,’ Stenar said, slipping the Sweetwater record out of the album sleeve and setting it on the turntable. Within seconds the reverberating vocals of Nancy Nevins singing “My Crystal Spider” resounded discontinuously from the fuzzy stereo speakers of the old record cabinet. The needle skipped at regular intervals.
Kjeld winced at the loudness and made his way over to the cabinet to turn down the volume on the speakers. ‘It’s going to scratch the record, Dad.’
‘It’s just a little dusty,’ Stenar said, picking up the pressure arm and blowing off the dust and fluff that had collected on the needle over the years. Then he ran his unsteady finger under the needle. A sharp scratching sound emitted from the speakers.
‘Just let it be, Dad.’
‘Here it is!’ Esme pulled out a document from the bottom of one of the boxes. ‘According to this, the northern tract that borders the park on one side and a parcel labelled N.M.— Is that …?’
‘Norrmalm Industries.’
‘Well, the portion of your father’s land that borders the park and Norrmalm’s south-western tract is estimated to contain a large concentration of uranium with high deposits of silver, lead, iron and copper.’ Esme’s forehead pinched in thought.
The needle skipped and “Rondeau” began playing in the background.
‘Your mother used to listen to this kind of hippy music,’ Stenar said.
‘This is Mum’s hippy music,’ Kjeld replied.
Kjeld set the survey on the coffee table. He unfolded the map that displayed the almost thirty acres that encompassed the Nygaard property, including nearby geological landmarks used by the surveyor to point out the boundaries. He was trying to determine how close that pit had been to his father’s property. He couldn’t have made it as far as the Norrmalm border before he came upon the pit. Could he?
When he realised that Esme hadn’t said anything in a while Kjeld looked up. ‘I’m sorry. What are you thinking?’
‘Eiji always had eclectic taste,’ Stenar said, carrying the album cover back over to his armchair.
Esme blinked, breaking her stare to turn her attention towards Kjeld. ‘The day you found the body you said you chased someone into the woods.’
‘Yeah, and nearly broke my neck in the process.’
‘How far did you get before you fell into the pit?’
Kjeld racked his mind to remember. It had been an uphill trek and the weather made manoeuvrability slower than normal. But he could distinctly recall feeling like he hadn’t gone far enough to reach the park, let alone one of the Varsund mines.
The record scratched and skipped to the next song.
Kjeld used his pinkie finger to measure the distance between the house and the border drawn by the surveyor. ‘It’s not possible for me to have made it as far as the property line. There’s no way. That mine has got to be on my dad’s property.’
‘I prefer jazz,’ Stenar said out loud to himself. ‘Monica Zetterlund was the best jazz singer who ever lived. Her performance with Louis Armstrong was second to none.’
‘Kjeld likes jazz, too.’ Esme offered Stenar an encouraging smile so he didn’t feel ignored.
‘No, I don’t,’ Kjeld replied.
‘But you always have that album playing in your car.’
‘It’s not mine. It’s stuck in the CD player. I can’t get it out.’ The album had belonged to Bengt and got jammed in the CD player back when they were sharing a single car between the two of them. Kjeld hated the album because it reminded him of their last argument. And he would have had it removed, but the vehicle was already on its last leg and rather than replace the entire audio system he was just saving up to buy a new car.
‘I find it relaxing,’ Stenar continued. ‘Helps you think. Like classical music. It’s good for the memory, they say.’
Clearly not good enough.
Kjeld sighed and tried to ignore his father’s disrupting comments so he could focus on making the connection between the documents and the body in the barn.
‘If the mine is on your dad’s property,’ Esme started, ‘then that means Peter Lindqvist breached the contract with your father.’
‘Except that mine was new,’ Kjeld argued. ‘And Peter Lindqvist has been dead for at least five years.’
‘Who owns the company now?’
‘His brother.’
‘I never trusted that man,’ Stenar said, seemingly out of nowhere.
Kjeld fixed his gaze on his father. ‘Who, Dad? Roland Lindqvist?’
‘I don’t like the way he looks at your mother.’ Stenar turned the album cover over in his hands. ‘Or the way he looks at any woman. Like he’s entitled to something simply because he’s got money.’
Kjeld waited for his father to expound upon what he was saying, but Stenar just slouched in his chair and stared at the writing on the back of the album. He looked like he was asleep with his eyes open.
‘We should go out and find the property line,’ Esme said.
‘I’ll go.’ Kjeld folded up the property survey and stuffed it in his back pocket beside the redacted contract he’d found at the bank. Then he crossed the room to get his father’s winter coat from the rack near the door.
‘Don’t forget a hat,’ Stenar said nonchalantly. He’d only been half there all evening. Sara said that the doctors explained how recent events might cause him to be more muddled than usual. Kjeld knew from the fact that he hadn’t mentioned the birds since he’d gotten home that muddled was an understatement. But at least he wasn’t throwing a fit.
‘I’ll go with you,’ Esme said.
‘No, that’s okay. I’ll be fine on my own.’ Kjeld grabbed a knit cap and pulled it over his head until it covered his ea
rs. Then he took a torch from the drawer in the hall. ‘Besides, someone’s gotta stay here with Dad.’
‘I can take care of myself,’ Stenar grumbled.
Kjeld was halfway to the door when Esme called back to him, a joking smile across her face that he knew was meant to alleviate some of his gloominess. ‘Try not to fall off a cliff this time.’
Chapter 43
It was just after six o’clock in the evening, but the opaque blanket of night, interrupted by a waxing gibbous moon and the early twinkling of stars, made it feel like it was much later.
The hard snow crunched beneath Kjeld’s boots as he made his way through the birch and spruce trees that covered the stretch of land north of the barn. He tried to follow the same route he had during the chase, but discovered it was just as difficult to keep his bearings without the heavy snowfall as it had been with it.
Halfway up the hill, which warned him days earlier that he needed to improve his level of fitness, he turned and looked back towards the house. It was barely visible through the thin-stretched trees that broke up his perspective like bars on a prison window. The only sign that he was gazing in the right direction was the dim yellow light on the back porch. A few more paces and even that would be engulfed in darkness.
He continued upwards.
He was careful to step in areas where his boots could gain traction in the snow. Off to the west came a howl. Wolves weren’t uncommon in the forests of Jämtland, but for the most part they steered clear of humans. Kjeld stopped in his tracks, listened for proof that the howling was getting further away from him, and then went on. Eventually the subtle sounds of the forest, unconscionably loud when focused on and barely noticeable when not, became part of the drone in his head as his mind recycled the events of the day.
Sara was annoyed with him when she came by to drop Stenar off, but Kjeld couldn’t tell if it was because he was digging through their father’s old paperwork trying to find proof that the Lindqvists had broken a legal agreement not to mine on their property or because Esme was there. Sara had looked at her with a fair measure of scepticism, showing that she didn’t fully believe that the woman with the mile-long legs and the thick black eyeliner was just a friend. She wasn’t entirely wrong. Kjeld didn’t have to exert much thought to know what his sister was thinking. It was clear she thought that he’d found himself another excuse for avoiding his responsibilities to their family. Maybe she was right.