by Karin Nordin
Sara made an effort to purposefully soften her expression and gave an exasperated sigh. ‘Are you asking me if I’m having an affair? Really, Tom? Do I look like I have the time to have an affair? I barely have time to brush my teeth or go to the bathroom. An affair?’
She laughed because she didn’t know how else to respond.
‘I know I’m not the man you hoped I would be when we got married,’ he said. Sara opened her mouth to say something, but Tom cut her off before she could speak. ‘I know I’ve been a disappointment this last year. But I’ve been trying. I recognise everything you’ve done for this family. I really do. You’re a miracle worker, Sara. I don’t know how any of us would be able to get by without you. But I want you to know that I’m here to support you. I’m here to help in any way that I can. When we got married I promised to love, honour and protect you. And that’s what I’m doing. I’m protecting you.’
There was something odd about the way Tom was speaking and Sara could feel a pang of doubt and fear creep into her mind. It wasn’t what Tom was saying exactly, but what he wasn’t saying. And she could feel the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.
‘What do you mean protect me?’ she asked.
Tom turned in bed to face her. He wasn’t an attractive man with his protruding ears and his overbite, but then she’d never really considered herself an attractive woman. She’d been drawn to him because of his light-heartedness and his desire to have a family. Family had always been very important to Sara and she’d known from a very young age that she wanted one of her own. So when she met Tom that had been the most attractive quality about him.
Now she had her family and she couldn’t have been more overwhelmed by it. Or, in the case of her brother and his laissez-faire attitude towards his own familial responsibilities, more aggravated by it.
‘In one of the books I’ve been reading, the author talks about making sacrifices to help the important aspects of your life maintain their balance. By maintaining a balance for what’s important a person can then move forward with their own self-discovery. There was an entire questionnaire to determine what those important factors were, but I already knew that you were at the top of the list for me.’ He smiled. Sara supposed it was meant to be encouraging, but it only unnerved her more. ‘There was a part that talked about how if your partner is too stressed or overwhelmed or unbalanced then you’ll never be able to find yourself. There was a term for it, but I can’t remember what it was.’
‘What did you do, Tom?’
Tom cleared his throat. ‘Do you remember last spring when you asked me to watch your dad because you and the kids had dentist appointments?’
Sara nodded. It had been one of the few times she’d asked Tom to look after her father. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Tom, but she knew how absent-minded he could be sometimes. Once he accidentally left Lykke at the ICA supermarket because he was too busy thinking about how he planned to fix the garden shed when he got home. She remembered she hadn’t left Tom with her father for more than a few hours, albeit longer than she expected because the dentist was running late on seeing patients.
‘Well, your dad told me. He told me everything.’
Sara’s face paled and she felt like she had a knot in her stomach. ‘What do you mean?’
‘He told me that he buried the body of a man in the barn.’ Tom scoffed. ‘I mean, I laughed at first, of course. I thought he was just talking crazy. But the more he talked the more I began to realise that it could be true. That your father may have actually murdered someone and then forgotten about it!’
Sara stared at him in disbelief. ‘He told you this last spring? And you’re just now telling me?’
‘I didn’t want to put another thing on your plate. I thought, okay, if it wasn’t true then it wasn’t worth mentioning. And if it was true, well, telling you about it would upset our balance. We wouldn’t be able to get back to the way things used to be.’
‘What are you saying, Tom?’
Tom took a deep breath and exhaled. ‘I’m saying I’m the one who started digging up the body in the barn.’
Sara imagined that the world had just stopped rotating on its axis. Her heart was pounding. The sound echoed in her ears. Tom had dug up the body in the barn. Tom was the suspect Kjeld had chased through the woods. Her Tom. The Tom who once drove the kids to school on a Saturday and didn’t realise his error until he passed the park and saw it full of children. The Tom who enjoyed watching home cooking shows, but could burn a microwave dinner meal. And he’d somehow convinced himself that this was good for their family.
‘Why?’ She didn’t mean to yell, but the words came out instinctually loud, exasperated. ‘Why on earth would you do something like that?’
‘Because your brother showed up!’ Tom replied. ‘I know how he is. You always say he’s like a dog with a bone. He won’t let things go. I knew that once Stenar told him there was a body buried in the barn that he would dig up the entire place himself just to prove it was or wasn’t true. And if he found out what Stenar did then you would be upset. You’d never be able to forgive Kjeld or your father. And I didn’t want that for you. I want you to be happy. I don’t want the memories of your family to be tarnished any more than they already are.’
Sara didn’t know what to say. She felt like she was in shock. She felt sick. Her heart was racing and her thoughts were in overdrive. How was she supposed to resolve this? Tom had just implicated himself in a crime. And now she was an accessory.
She reached out and took her husband’s hand. When she finally spoke, her tone was gentle but firm. She didn’t want Tom to mistake anything she was about to say.
‘Promise me you’ll never talk about this again.’ Sara gripped his hand tighter. ‘Promise me you’ll never tell anyone what you just told me.’
Chapter 47
The words hit Roland like a freight train and even though he believed them, he’d suspected as much all along, he couldn’t get over the initial shock that he’d actually heard them spoken aloud. When he finally came to from his thirty-second lapse of consciousness, wherein he saw his entire world and all his hard work shatter before his eyes, he turned his gaze on his son as though he hadn’t quite heard him correctly.
‘You did what?’
David sat on the edge of the sofa in the living room of the Lindqvist estate. He was huffing and puffing as though he’d just finished a half-marathon. And he was sopping wet. The melted snow dripped off his clothes and onto the floor, pooling a soggy stain on an antique burgundy-coloured Persian rug that had been in the home since his grandfather built it. His teeth chattered and he looked up at his father like he was in a dream. Perhaps a nightmare.
‘I killed a man.’
The phrase repeated itself in Roland’s mind, but all he could think of was I know. Because he did. He was unwaveringly certain that David was behind his brother’s death. And while he had very little evidence to support this belief, while it was mostly a gut feeling, he knew that David killed his brother. Perhaps not directly. Perhaps he’d hired someone else to do it for him, being that David was a coward and a sickly coward at that. But somehow he was still responsible.
Roland couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment he knew, but when the realisation came to him it seemed so clear. It was as if everything had finally fallen into place. He’d been livid, of course. Devastated. He may not have ever wanted to fill his brother’s shoes – such a feat was near impossible – but he had loved Peter. Some siblings didn’t get along, but that had never been the case with the Lindqvist boys. Sure, they’d bickered on occasion. Had their jealous spats from time to time. But in the end they’d had a deep love for each other. The kind of love that only two young men born into extravagance and expected to excel despite the fear that it would be impossible to outdo the successes of their forefathers could have for each other. And realising his own son would be the one to come between them hurt Roland deeper than the knowledge that he would never see Peter again
.
But David was still his son. And if there was one thing the Lindqvists had always prided themselves on it was an unwavering allegiance to family. Line of succession was still important to Roland. Of course, Inger would inherit part of Norrmalm Industries as well, but Roland had never had hopes that she would actually do something with her share of the profits besides improve her tan on some exotic beach somewhere. In a way David was equally as incompetent, but there was still a longstanding belief in their family, severely outdated in its misogyny, that the Lindqvist sons would make something of themselves. As much as Roland loathed to admit that David would probably amount to nothing other than a rich philanderer who pissed his money away, he was still a male heir. Roland had to hope that would one day mean something.
‘Did you hear me?’ David grimaced. His face was pale and his cheek scratched. Dried blood marked where someone’s nails had dug into his skin.
If Roland hadn’t known better, he would have assumed it was another rough night for David and one of his many whores. The contorted look on David’s face, however, torn between fear and frenzy, told him otherwise.
‘I heard you,’ Roland said, pacing the room in languid steps. He had to think.
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’ David pressed his face into his hands. ‘I’m going to go to prison.’
‘You’re not going to go to prison.’ Roland wasn’t naive enough to think that money could buy loyalty, but there was a lot that went on in Varsund that never reached official channels. This came from the combination of being isolated from the larger cities and the general willingness of people to do just about anything in the north in order to survive. Living in the middle of nowhere was convenient on occasion. Convenient for business, pleasure, and the occasional wrongdoing.
‘I can’t go to prison. I just can’t.’
‘Quit your moaning. I have to think.’
Roland stopped in front of the mantel above the fireplace and glanced up at the oil portrait of his grandfather. He was a lithe but rugged-looking man with a bushy red beard that stretched well below his chin; a reminder of the days when hard work and manual labour actually produced results. Of a time when children accepted their obligation to continue on the family business without complaint and didn’t beg their parents for help when circumstances didn’t go their way. It wasn’t perfect. Everything seemed ideal in retrospect. Roland remembered his father telling him a story of how his grandfather once allowed a mine to cave in on nine men in order to save the lives of fifty. Production was halted for four hours in a feeble attempt to dig beneath the rubble to those who were trapped inside. When those four hours resulted in nothing, the mine reopened. The business must continue to profit, his father would say. We profit or we die.
But carry the burden of an idiot son whose actions threatened to undermine everything the Lindqvists had strived to achieve over the last four generations? Even Peter would tell him it was his obligation to their legacy to protect the family and its future. It was his duty as a Lindqvist.
David began to sob into his hands.
‘I need you to tell me everything,’ Roland said. ‘Then I’m calling Gunnar Ek.’
David groaned in protest. ‘But he’s the police!’
Roland looked away from his grandfather’s portrait and turned that same steely-eyed stare on his son. ‘He’s also the only one who can make this disappear.’
Chapter 48
Fredag | Friday
Kjeld hadn’t slept for more than an hour over the course of the night. When the throbbing at the back of his head, which he was fairly certain was a small concussion, didn’t keep him awake the thoughts of the week’s events did. He lay in bed, listening to the sounds of the house, and tried to focus his thoughts on the previous night’s discoveries. The more he thought about it, however, the more restless he became. Eventually he snuck downstairs for a cigarette and sat on the back porch, wrapped in dusty old quilts that his grandmother had made, waiting for the sun to come up. It was eerily quiet in that last hour before dawn broke through the trees, illuminating the freshly fallen snow in a dull glimmer. Even the ravens were at rest.
When he went back into the house, cold and groggy, Esme was gone. She’d left a note on the kitchen table saying that she was going to drive down to the local planning office and make sure no new surveys had been done on his father’s property since the one in 1979. It was a smart idea and Kjeld cursed himself for not having thought of that sooner. Along with a register of local property surveys, Varsund Kommun would also have permits on file for any industrial projects that involved changes to the regional landscape. Which meant that if the mining pit on his father’s land was legal there would be a record of it.
Stenar shuffled into the kitchen wearing one slipper. He didn’t seem to notice that the other was missing. Nor did he notice that his robe was untied and he was exposing himself. He was thin and the skin around his sides and chest hung in loose wrinkled flaps.
Kjeld gave an inward sigh.
‘Let me help you with that,’ Kjeld said, crossing the kitchen to pull the robe around his father’s torso and tie the belt in a double knot so it wouldn’t come undone. Just like he would do with Tove’s shoelaces when she spent the weekend with him.
Stenar looked down at the belt and immediately began untying it.
‘Don’t, Dad. Leave it alone. No one needs to see that.’
‘I have to get dressed. I have to go to work.’
‘You’re retired. Sit down. I’ll make some coffee. You can get dressed later.’
Stenar dragged his feet over to the refrigerator. ‘Where’s Sara?’
‘She’s at home with her kids. It’s just me.’
Kjeld poured a few scoopfuls of coffee grounds into the pot and turned it on. His stomach growled, but he wasn’t hungry. In fact, the thought of eating made him sick to his stomach. Hopefully he’d be able to keep a cup of coffee down. Maybe that would be enough.
Stenar sniffed Kjeld’s shirt sleeve. ‘Have you been smoking in the house?’
‘No, Dad. I have not been smoking in the house.’
‘I know you try to hide it from me, but you’re no good at it. I’m not an idiot. I know you think you’re clever, but you’re not.’ Stenar closed the refrigerator door and shuffled to the kitchen table, nearly losing his slipper as he sat down.
‘How are you feeling?’ Kjeld took two mugs out of the cabinet. ‘Did you take your medicine?’
‘What medicine? What are you talking about?’ Stenar fidgeted with the knot on his belt, arthritic fingers struggling to untie it. ‘Where’s Sara? She should be here by now.’
The coffee pot rattled on the countertop and Kjeld wondered if he’d accidentally used too much water. He missed instant coffee.
‘Sara isn’t coming today. It’s just you and me.’
Stenar gave a scornful laugh. ‘You and me.’
A sore twinge travelled from the back of Kjeld’s skull to his forehead. He clenched his eyes shut until the pressure around his sinuses made him forget about the pounding ache just above his neck.
The coffee maker began to leak onto the countertop and Kjeld removed the pot. The machine steamed and hissed as excess vapour released before it was ready. The liquid in the pot didn’t look quite done, but it was good enough. He filled both mugs and set them on the table.
Stenar took a sip and spat it back out in the cup. ‘This tastes like shit.’
‘It can’t be that bad.’ Kjeld took a sip. His dad was right. He spat it in the kitchen sink and washed his mouth out with water from the tap.
‘Valle was here. Did he fix the roof?’
‘No, Dad. He didn’t fix the roof.’
‘Are you going to fix it?’
Kjeld watched him unsteadily, searching for any sign that his father was purposefully bringing the roof up in order to start an argument. But he didn’t see any recollection in his father’s eyes. Had he forgotten? Or was this an attempt at pretending their argument twelve years ago had neve
r happened?
The doorbell rang. The chime echoed through the house and turned that dull ache in Kjeld’s head into a digging pang.
Stenar perked up. ‘It’s Sara.’
‘Don’t hold your breath.’
Kjeld made his way to the front of the house and pulled open the door without peeking through the curtains. He felt light-headed as he stared through the screen to the man on the other side, but his expression must have lacked recognition because the caller sent him an equally perplexed look back. No, not perplexed. Surprised. Like he’d just seen a ghost.
‘Kjeld?’ Gunnar asked.
‘Were you expecting someone else?’
‘I— No, but I thought. That is, I heard—’ Gunnar stopped his stuttering and blinked. Slow and consciously. It made him look dim-witted. It reminded Kjeld of those old black-and-white police comedies where the simple-minded deputy was always the last to figure out the mystery that everyone else had already solved. The wheels in Gunnar’s head were turning. Kjeld wondered if it hurt the man to think so hard. Gunnar held back a question and replaced it with another. ‘Is your father home?’
‘Why?’
Gunnar took another step forward and pulled open the screen door. Kjeld placed his arm between Gunnar and the house, blocking his path.
‘I need to talk to him about the Lindqvists.’
‘What about the Lindqvists?’
Kjeld’s vision blurred. He thought that Gunnar had given his hair an extra side part, but then realised he was seeing double. Kjeld pressed his weight against the doorframe.
Gunnar frowned. ‘Are you all right? You don’t look good.’
‘I’m fine,’ Kjeld insisted. He wrapped his fingers around the doorknob for balance, gaze darting between the two sets of eyes in front of him. ‘Tell me about the Lindqvists.’
‘Can I come in?’
‘Not until you tell me what this is about.’