The Bucket List

by Peter Mohlin

I know who killed your daughter. How much is that information worth to you? I’ll be in touch.

  Weirdly, he and Mona had somehow gone astray and interpreted the message as an attempt to sell information. The truth was much simpler. The letter was an attempt at blackmail. A witness who wanted payment for their silence. That was why Heimer Bjurwall hadn’t wanted to show it to the police.

  “Hello? John? Are you still there?”

  He heard his mother’s distant voice on the phone.

  “Yes, I’m here.”

  “The thing with the letters was my idea. Billy thought I should tell you—just tell it how it was. But who would’ve believed me? The word of a drunken old woman against his—a Bjurwall. But the money was for Billy—don’t ever think anything else. Every last penny. It was the right thing to do. For the crap he put up with for all these years, with people shouting murderer and rapist at him all around town.”

  She groaned on the final syllable. She needed a higher dosage of painkillers.

  “We were so careful, John,” she continued. “Heimer Bjurwall was never going to find out who was blackmailing him. But I should’ve realized that a guy like him would never drop it. Someone with that much to lose is dangerous.”

  John heard a cautious knock and a second later one of the doors into the library opened. Heimer Bjurwall entered, carrying a tray with a white cup, a small jug of milk, and a bowl of raw sugar cubes on it.

  “Your coffee’s ready,” he said in a whisper, so as not to disturb the conversation.

  John looked at him and felt the first twinge of pain at the back of his head. A second later, it exploded and he saw flashes before his eyes. Instinctively, he let go of the phone, which bounced off the cushion of the sofa on which he was sitting, and onto the gray-hued rug. Everything happened almost noiselessly. The fibers in the thick carpet absorbed the impact.

  “Sorry, did I startle you?”

  “No problem,” John managed to say, as he felt his feet go numb.

  He tried to wriggle his toes inside his shoes, but nothing happened. If he gave in, the numbness would spread rapidly, to the point where his body stopped working altogether. He tried to remind himself that this was not a neurological issue. The doctors in Baltimore had examined him from head to toe. It was all in his head.

  Heimer Bjurwall picked up the phone from the rug and looked at it.

  “You’ve gone a funny color,” he said.

  “Just a migraine attack. They come and go, unfortunately.”

  John held out his hand to take the phone, but his host made no effort to return it.

  “I understand—migraines are the worst,” he said. “Any news about the investigation?”

  John listened for changes to his voice, but it was just as friendly as before. Had Heimer Bjurwall sensed something? Maybe he had been listening to the call from outside the doors. John tried to remember what he’d said on the phone. Granted, it was mostly his mother doing the talking—but at one point he had interrupted her, raised his voice, and asked who she had seen.

  “I’m afraid I can’t discuss it.”

  The pain in the back of his head came in waves; it forced him to close his eyes. The numbness reached his arms and he was no longer sure he could stand up even if he tried.

  Heimer looked at the phone in his hand. Then he put it on the bookcase behind him. That settled it for John. Emelie’s father understood. If not everything, at least enough to realize he was cornered.

  His holster was straining across his chest, but pulling out his service weapon in this state without knowing whether he could control it would be dangerous. At the same time, he had to do something. The back of his head throbbed with such intensity that it almost blotted out his hearing. His legs refused to move for fear of discovering that they were already paralyzed.

  He concentrated on trying to read Heimer Bjurwall’s face. Emelie’s father was no Ganiru. While Heimer had already killed—not just once but twice—he still came from another world. John was an FBI agent, trained for situations just like this. If only he had just a tenth of his usual capacity, this would be settled in no time.

  John waited for the next wave of pain to abate. Then he forced his right arm to obey him. He slipped it inside his jacket, grabbed hold of his pistol, and pulled it from its holster.

  53

  Heimer looked at the weapon being aimed at him from the sofa. He felt surprisingly calm. His heart might have been pounding in his chest, and his brain was probably doling out masses of chemicals to sharpen his senses, but something had happened when he had killed Billy Nerman. He’d stood there with his hands around his throat in that disgusting kitchen that smelled of cooked food, pushing his fingers into the cartilage until Billy stopped breathing. Then he had dragged the heavy body into the workshop and after much effort managed to get it into the noose hanging from the ceiling.

  The anguish he had expected to feel in the car on the way home had failed to materialize. Instead, he felt relieved. Somewhere down inside, he knew that Emelie understood what he had done. He loved her so deeply, and no one—least of all a moronic car mechanic—was going to ruin their love.

  The story Billy Nerman had threatened to divulge was about a father who had killed his daughter and then buried her. It was essentially true. But all the assumptions that would follow would be lies. Heimer would be portrayed as a monster lacking all human feeling, when in fact he was the one who loved Emelie the most. A life in prison with that story written on the walls would be unbearable, which was why he had decided to do something about it.

  The staged suicide was the proof that he’d finally learned to control his anger. He hadn’t acted on impulse and gone straight to Billy Nerman’s when the homeless man had shown him the photo on his phone. Instead, he thought it through carefully and made a plan.

  The car mechanic couldn’t be allowed to hold this over him. He’d burn through the money and then ask for more. Or even worse, get drunk and run off at the mouth. Heimer had distilled the rage and let the adrenaline flow at the crucial moment. In the future, if anyone implied that he was Sissela Bjurwall’s insignificant appendage, he would think about the moment when the life had gone out of Billy Nerman’s eyes. They had gone white and swiveled in their sockets.

  Heimer continued to look at the weapon being aimed at him. When he’d heard the buzzer and the voice with the American accent on the intercom, he thought it was all over. Only after quite a bit of conversation did he realize that the solitary man wasn’t there to arrest him. But then the detective’s phone rang and he disappeared into the library. Heimer stood outside and heard enough to know that the floodgates were open after all. Someone had given him away.

  He shifted his gaze from the muzzle of the pistol to the dark face, waiting for the man to say something. But no words came. Instead, he staggered when he got up from the sofa and had to support himself on a bookcase. His breathing was rapid and shallow. His eyes were glassy and focused on one point across the room. Perhaps on the spot where the phone was.

  Heimer thought he recognized the symptoms. The man appeared to be having some form of panic attack. The trembling in his legs only got worse and before long his muscles couldn’t hold out anymore. He collapsed on the floor and landed shoulder-first on the thick carpet. The weapon fell out of his hand and slid across the floor.

  Heimer considered what to do. He had the chance to escape now. But the detective would soon come to and immediately contact the police. It wouldn’t be long before he was arrested.

  He contemplated the humiliation ahead of him. Sissela and the Bjurwall family casting him to the wolves and depicting him as mentally ill. Then the gauntlet of the media, the trial, and finally the long prison sentence. He wouldn’t survive it.

  It might be better to end it all. Perhaps the pistol had ended up at his feet for precisely that reason. At the same time, Heimer knew that suicide wasn’t an option. The thought had flashed through his mind so many times and he had never gotten further than Googlin
g various methods.

  The man on the floor appeared to be regaining control of his body. He’d spotted the weapon on the floor and was laboriously reaching out for it. Heimer reacted instinctively. Using his foot, he kicked the gun away from the outstretched arm and then picked it up himself a few meters away.

  He hefted it in his hand, feeling the weight of the metal. It was the first time he had held a firearm since his military service. He looked for the safety and saw that the catch had already been released. It was just luck that it hadn’t gone off.

  “Give me the weapon,” said the detective from his position on the floor.

  His voice was weak and lacked authority. It was an entreaty, not an order.

  Heimer shook his head. Instead, he took a step closer, raised the weapon, and aimed at the man’s shaven head. He was surprised to feel an almost euphoric sense of power. For once, he was in charge.

  “Who were you talking to on the phone?” he said.

  John managed to lift his upper body using his forearms before turning around so that he was sitting on the floor with his back leaning against the sofa. Heimer brought the weapon closer to his face.

  “I asked who you were talking to.”

  Still no answer. Heimer was unsure whether it was because the man didn’t want to say anything or because he was physically incapable of speaking. Regardless, it was infuriating. He couldn’t very well kill him until he found out who had been on the other end of that call.

  Who? Who did you see?

  That was what the detective said when Heimer was listening through the door. He had silenced Billy Nerman—and unless the bastard was calling from the mortuary, there had to be another witness.

  Heimer remembered the headlights from the car that had appeared out of nowhere on the narrow road. He had just put the shovel in the trunk and closed it. But before he’d had time to hide in the woods, he was blinded by the lights and had to screw his eyes shut. The person or persons who passed by had presumably seen his face while he was too shocked to notice what make of car it was or the license number.

  “Why?” said the man on the floor, suddenly. “She was your daughter.”

  The words came out in fits and starts, and he ran his tongue over his lips in the most unappealing way—as if he needed to moisten them to speak.

  “It was an accident,” Heimer hissed. “That goes without saying. Everyone knows I loved Emelie.”

  The detective cleared his throat several times to check whether his voice would work.

  “If it was an accident, I’m sure people will understand,” he said.

  Heimer realized that the man was just trying to ingratiate himself and buy time. But it still felt good to hear him say it. At least someone was trying to understand.

  Heimer had come close to telling Sissela several times over the years, on the occasions when he’d felt a connection between the two of them—when he thought that she might understand and see her own role in what had happened. But the ice had always seemed too thin for him to take the first step. Deep down, he knew that it would give way under his weight—he would crash through it alone into the cold water and she wouldn’t reach out to him with her hand.

  His thoughts returned once again to that night ten years ago. After Björkbacken, Emelie had promised to quit the drugs. Despite that, he had found the empty bag in the desk drawer in her bedroom. He could see his daughter’s defiant face that morning when Sissela had interrogated her about her poor exam results. It was the last breakfast they ate together, and it had ended in chaos. Emelie had leapt out of her chair, run away, and never come back. Heimer remembered that he had wanted to search for her later that evening, but Sissela had stopped him. Eventually, his wife fell asleep and he went out anyway.

  He had walked toward the Tynäs promontory and noticed that Hugo Aglin’s house was full of young people partying. From the hedge by the road, he had looked for Emelie but hadn’t seen her either through the large windows or on the terrace. After a while, he continued toward the promontory and that was where he found her.

  She had been sitting on a rock, staring out across the water. When she heard him coming, she turned around. He saw right away that she was under the influence. Her eyes were glassy and her pupils bigger than usual.

  “What are you doing, Emelie? Why are you so determined to ruin your life with this junk?”

  She had given her usual response, that he was pathetic and had no right to have opinions on her life. He had been about to make her empty her pockets when he saw her bloodied arm and the smashed beer bottle on the slab of rock beside her.

  “What have you done to yourself?” he’d said.

  She showed him the tick carved into the final tattooed box on her forearm. The wound was fresh and still bleeding.

  “Isn’t my bucket list beautiful?”

  “What the hell is wrong with you? Why have you cut yourself?”

  “That’s none of your fucking business, Daddy!” she said, reaching for the smashed bottle neck.

  She let it rest in her hand, as if considering whether to use it on her own body again.

  Heimer leaned forward and tore the bottle from her grasp. It hadn’t been the first time she had provoked him, and he’d usually been able to take it. But she was different that night. Coarser and more brutal. As if she enjoyed hurting him.

  She’d said he was so fucking worthless he couldn’t even satisfy his wife in bed. That she knew her mother was screwing someone else and that she could understand why. That he was so weak it was disgusting, and that the worst thing was she had inherited it from him. It was his wretched sperm that had made her dyslexic and so dumb she couldn’t even pass the easiest exams. She wanted to be more like her mother, but every time she tried, something went wrong and it was all his fault. His horrible genes that couldn’t be washed away, no matter how much she scrubbed.

  It had all been too much to hear from his own daughter. More than he could bear. Anger boiled over and he’d pushed her. For a split second he had been surprised by the wound on Emelie’s neck. Then he had looked down at his hands and saw he was still holding the broken bottle.

  He’d looked back at his daughter again and saw how she was losing her balance. He remembered her smiling before she fell backward. As if she’d finally gotten him where she wanted him. Uncontrolled rage.

  The distance to the next rock hadn’t been more than a couple of meters, but it had been far enough for her to crack her head. He would never forget the sound of her head striking the rock. The way she ended up on her back with the dark red pool under her blonde hair just growing and growing.

  At first, Heimer had meant to call an ambulance, but then he realized it was too late. Emelie was already dead—there was nothing he or anyone else could have done. And what would he have said? That she had fallen? That it was an accident? That lie would have been seen through as soon as they had found the wound on her neck.

  He couldn’t bear the thought of being remembered as the man who had killed his own daughter. So instead of calling someone, he carried her to a thicket and hid her there while he went home to get the car.

  Once he was back at the promontory, he put her in the trunk and washed the blood off the rocks as best he could. Once he finished, he drove around aimlessly for more than an hour. He threw the shards of glass into the water from a bridge, but it was harder to part with Emelie. He knew he had to get rid of the body—but it had also felt so final, so irreversible.

  Eventually, he’d settled on a forest clearing along Hallerudsleden. It was an area not many people passed through. Everything had gone according to plan until the moment when that damn car had blinded him on the verge as it passed by.

  It was odd, he thought to himself, that so many crucial moments in life happened by chance. If that car had come by a minute later, he never would’ve been discovered and he wouldn’t have had to kill Billy Nerman or the detective he was now aiming a pistol at.

  “You won’t get away with it—surely yo
u realize that?”

  The man on the floor forced out the words. Heimer looked at him contemptuously. He could get away with anything. All he had to do was take control of the situation and dare to act.

  It had been different in the early days after he had buried Emelie. He had imagined that both the police and Sissela could see right through him. Not a day passed by without him thinking he’d be found out.

  But then the semen had been found on the rock next to Emelie’s blood.

  The multitude of twists in the investigation had been confusing to him. First there had been the surprising arrest of Billy Nerman. In the many years that followed, Heimer had learned to play the role of the grieving father with a carefully suppressed level of aggression toward the young man who had killed his daughter. Then had come the discovery of the body and Primer’s involvement in the whole affair. Heimer was still unable to think about that fat pig without feeling sick.

  Initially, Heimer had imagined that it was the former lead detective who had seen him on the rocks with Emelie and later sent the blackmail letters.

  But then he met Primer in custody. The plan had been to slash at Primer’s throat as many times as he could before the police intervened. He would prefer to be convicted as the father who took revenge on his daughter’s murderer, rather than being uncovered as the true perpetrator. But at the last moment he stopped himself. He looked into Primer’s eyes and realized he knew nothing.

  Heimer was pleased with the way he had eventually figured out that it was Billy Nerman behind the blackmail and eliminated that threat once and for all. At any rate, he had thought he’d done that, until just a little while ago. But now he knew there was another person out there somewhere who knew his secret.

  He raised the weapon again so that the muzzle grazed the detective’s temple.

  “For the last time: who called you?”

  No reply this time either. Just two wide-open eyes and sweat running down the coward’s brow. Heimer stopped to think and saw there might be an easier way to find out what he wanted to know. He turned around to the bookcase and picked up the man’s phone. Then he bent down and put the immobilized man’s thumb to the fingerprint scanner. It worked. The screen lit up and Heimer navigated to the list of recent calls. At the top was a 054 number that he pressed.