by Håkan Nesser
HÅKAN NESSER
INTRIGO
Translated from the Swedish
by Deborah Bragan-Turner
and Paul Norlen
Contents
Foreword
TOM
REIN
DEAR AGNES
THE FLOWER FROM SAMARIA
ALL THE INFORMATION IN THE CASE
Foreword
Intrigo is a cafe located on Keymerstraat in central Maardam.
It is also the collective name of three films directed by Daniel Alfredson, shot in 2017, with international premieres in 2018–19: Death of an Author, Samaria and Dear Agnes. The films are based on some of my stories – the last four in this volume – and have previously been published in Swedish. The novella that opens this collection, Tom, is newly written and is published here for the first time.
A book is a book, a movie is a movie. Stories must often be redirected, find new forms of expression, when transferred from one medium to another. They can even get a whole new ending. In the case of Intrigo, all differences between book and film are both necessary and to the highest degree intentional.
But, of course, the resemblance, the very essence of each story, what it is truly about, is well preserved.
TOM
Translated from the Swedish
by Deborah Bragan-Turner
ONE
Maardam, 1995
The telephone call came a few minutes after half past three one Thursday morning. The number was unknown, evidently foreign, and under normal circumstances she wouldn’t have answered.
Clearly she wouldn’t, but she had just woken with a start from a dream and although it was pitch-dark inside the room and outside the window, where a branch of the huge walnut tree whispered intimately against the glass, she felt wide awake. Maybe it was just the dark, in some kind of mysterious pact with the rudely interrupted dream – the contents of which she was unable to recall, either then or later – that made her lift the receiver and take the call.
‘Hello?’
‘Judith Bendler?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s Tom.’
Silence ensued, apart from a slight interference on the line. A faint thrumming scratch, barely audible, like spent waves breaking on a pebble beach. Afterwards, once she had replaced the receiver, that was what she could picture in her mind. After their long journey, the waves finally coming to rest as silent white foam in a sheltered but stony cove.
Strangely enough, she wasn’t often haunted by images. She didn’t fall for that kind of cheap analogy, or whatever it’s called. She wasn’t religious and she detested poetry.
‘Tom?’ she eventually asked. ‘Which Tom?’
‘Do you know more than one?’
She thought about it. No, there was only one Tom.
Had been.
‘I thought maybe we could meet. It’s been a few years.’
‘Yes . . .’
She felt a shudder sweep through her body and perhaps she even lost consciousness for a moment. Had she tried to stand up, she might well have fainted and hit the floor.
But she didn’t, thank goodness; she lay in the dark on her side of the king-sized bed and when the brief attack was over, she automatically reached her hand out for Robert. It took another second for her to remember he was in London. He had left on Monday and would be back on Friday evening, Saturday afternoon at the latest. It was a film project; he had mentioned the names of various famous actors, but she had forgotten who they were. He had even asked if she fancied going with him, but she had said no. London was not one of her favourite cities.
‘Hello?’
She suppressed a sudden impulse to hang up.
‘Yes?’
‘So what do you say?’
‘About what?’
‘About meeting.’
‘I . . . I don’t quite understand.’
She could hear him drinking something.
‘You know what? Think it over and I’ll get back to you in a few days.’
‘I don’t really think—’
There was a click and the call ended. She put the receiver back and lay on the bed without moving, her hands clasped over her chest. She closed her eyes but then opened them again; there was something she needed to figure out. The slow waves that still seemed to emanate from the darkness must mean something, she thought; they would reveal something to her, and whatever their significance, it involved distance. An inordinately vast distance in both time and space. And not only that, his voice was still there, deep inside this fog, so distant yet so utterly close. Slightly gruff and slightly . . . Well, what? she thought. Ironic? Confident?
Tom?
Think it over?
She counted up and concluded that it had been twenty-two years.
Twenty-two years and two months, to be precise.
The therapist was called Maria Rosenberg. Her rooms were on the second floor in one of the old pommerstone houses on Keymerstraat, and Judith Bendler had been one of her clients for almost a decade. Not endless, heavy sessions, it’s true; but they met once or twice a month, usually on Thursday mornings, when Judith generally had things to do in the centre of Maardam anyway. Afterwards she would enjoy lunch with a friend, take the opportunity to do some shopping and maybe spend some time in one of the galleries in the Deijkstraa district. Or Krantze’s antiquarian bookshop on Kupinski Street, if it happened to be open. The train from Holtenaar took just over half an hour, and with each year that passed she was aware of a slowly mounting reluctance to leave their beautiful house and its even more beautiful garden by the river. Why leave paradise when you had your own place right in the middle of it?
So that absence could make the heart grow fonder, maybe? That had been Robert’s suggestion when she had raised the subject with him. And of course, he had a point. Robert often did; he had a way of putting his finger on the crux of a matter in all sorts of situations, she would give him that.
Perhaps there was some quiet pleasure in seeing Maria Rosenberg again as well. Every single time. The world might rage, the human race might wage wars, burn cities to the ground and slaughter its own children, but Maria Rosenberg stayed put. Sitting in her wing chair in the room with the weighty curtains and the thick, blood-patterned rug from Samarkand.
And listening. She had been old when Judith met her the very first time, a week or two after the business with Robert, and she was the same age today. The reason she used to give for her changelessness was that she had reached a juncture on life’s turbulent path when the years no longer touched her. One day she would presumably be dead, but until that final journey, regardless of whether it lay a few months or several years ahead, she had no intention of ageing. Perhaps a little wiser, chastened somewhat by experience; that sort of thing was hard to guard against.
But of course the conversations in that hushed, dark room were not about Maria Rosenberg.
‘Welcome, Judith. I hope your journey here went well.’
‘Thank you. At least I managed to get a seat.’
‘Well then, shall we treat ourselves to a pot of rooibos?’
‘That would be lovely.’
More or less the same opening remarks as always. While Maria Rosenberg made the tea behind a curtain in the kitchenette, Judith took off her coat and shoes and made herself comfortable in the corner of the sofa, the tartan blanket over her legs and a cushion for her back. As she waited she felt the anxiety ticking inside her and there was no doubt as to its cause.
‘I think I can detect a certain disquiet. But correct me if I’m wrong.’
She hadn’t decided if she was going to talk about the telephone call, but when Maria peered at her over the rim of her teacup, the decision was made. If ever there was a look that brooked no resistance, it
was Maria Rosenberg’s. That was the acknowledged situation, and maybe she had already known when she set foot on the train an hour earlier that she would tell.
‘Something’s happened.’
‘Yes?’
‘I received a really odd telephone call.’
Maria Rosenberg nodded, sipped at her tea and put the cup down.
‘Last night. Someone rang at half past three.’
‘Half past three? And you answered?’
‘Yes. For some reason I’d just woken up. Thirty seconds before the phone rang, I’d say. It was strange. And afterwards I found it quite difficult to go back to sleep.’
‘Who was on the phone?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know?’
She drew a deep breath, straightened the blanket and fixed her eye on the painting hanging between the two narrow bookcases, a miniature reproduction of Caspar David Friedrich’s The Monk by the Sea. The figure, turned away, surveying the grey ocean. She had often speculated on why her worldly-wise therapist had chosen to hang that particular painting in her consulting room – it was the only picture there – but up to now, after more than a hundred sessions, she had never asked.
‘He said he was Tom.’
‘Tom? Do you mean . . .?’
She nodded, but her gaze didn’t leave the painting. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Maria Rosenberg take another sip of tea and then fold her hands together on her knee. Waiting.
‘He wanted us to meet.’
The monk on the seashore didn’t move and neither did Maria Rosenberg.
‘But?’ she said.
‘I find it hard to believe it was him.’
She had spoken about Tom, but that was a long time ago. It had come up during the course of one of their earliest meetings. They had returned to the sad story a few times at the beginning, but as far as Judith could remember, they hadn’t discussed him for four or five years. It might have been even longer since his name had been mentioned. There had been no reason to.
Tom was a closed chapter. A bleak, forgotten part of life there was no point in analysing or trying to resolve. She didn’t talk about him with Robert either; even if their agreement was a silent, unwritten one, neither of them broke it. She couldn’t recall the subject of Tom being raised once since they moved out to the house at Holtenaar.
‘I think it would be best if you could recap a little. If you don’t mind. I only remember the gist, but it must be ages since it happened . . .’
‘Twenty-two years,’ Judith answered. ‘Twenty-two years and a few months.’
‘And so then he was . . .?’
‘Seventeen.’
‘Carry on. Or maybe you don’t want to talk about it here? It’s completely up to you. I’m just a listening ear and I respect your confidentiality utterly. But I don’t need to remind you of that.’
Judith sipped her tea, undecided. But the hesitation was a pretence. She had said A, and since that was clearly a decision – either conscious or subconscious – she had obviously already lifted that particular lid. That’s why I’m sitting here, she thought. To talk about B as well. If I don’t raise it now, I’ll dwell on it forever more.
‘Yes, Tom was seventeen when it happened,’ she said. ‘He’d just had his birthday, even though it had been no time for celebration. I remember he’d had a watch from Robert, quite an expensive wristwatch, but by the next day he’d sold it.’
‘He’d sold his birthday present?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Because?’
‘Because he needed money for drugs. Or maybe to pay for drugs he’d already injected. We didn’t know the extent of his debts or the criminal activities he was mixed up in. Perhaps we had a sneaking suspicion, but it wasn’t until later that we got the whole picture. Or the major part of it, at any rate.’
‘A young man in dire circumstances?’
‘To say the least. He’d had a tough time ever since puberty. Well, actually, it went further back than that. School had never really worked out. He was always getting into trouble with his classmates and teachers. They’d done tests and I don’t know how many diagnoses he’d had. And of course, when drugs were part of the picture, it all went rapidly downhill. His father once used the expression he’s racing headlong towards the abyss, when we were talking to some kind of social worker, and it was quite a good description of how things were.’
‘He was Robert’s son from a previous marriage, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes. His mum died when the boy was only two. I came on the scene a few years later. Robert and I got married the year before Tom started school.’
‘And you adopted him?’
‘Yes. I signed a document assuming full parental responsibility. Robert wanted it to be that way . . . and I did too, of course.’
‘Of course?’
‘Yes.’
Maria Rosenberg raised an eyebrow but made no comment. There was a pause while a motorbike sputtered past down in the street. Otherwise very little noise from the city made its way into the room; the building was old and built well and the window behind the heavy curtains had thick double glazing. The therapist had actually alluded to this once at the beginning: while most of the time it was desirable for conversations to be wreathed in silence, it didn’t do any harm to be reminded of the existence of the outside world now and again. Judith cleared her throat and tried to straighten the delicate question mark that seemed to be hovering in the room.
‘I really didn’t have any doubts,’ she explained. ‘Not at the beginning. I wanted to be Tom’s mum. His real mum was dead and I don’t think he had any memory of her. But naturally, I did start to wonder when he grew up the way he did.’
‘Several years later?’
‘Yes. But it didn’t make any difference. I suppose I might have had other feelings about the boy if he’d been my actual birth child. I haven’t discussed this with Robert though, obviously not. It was . . . well, a bit too sensitive, really.’
‘Quite understandably. Certain things are better suited for a therapist’s ears; it’s worth remembering that. Your husband is how many years older than you? Is it ten, or am I wrong?’
‘Nearly eleven. He’ll be seventy this summer. He’s not in the best of health – we’ve already talked about that – but getting him to stop working is out of the question. He reckons film-makers are at their peak between seventy and eighty. I don’t know how much truth there is in that.’
Maria Rosenberg laughed. ‘It’s exactly the same with therapists. We reach our zenith just before we turn up our toes. But what happened to that poor, aimless seventeen-year-old? He disappeared without trace, if I remember correctly?’
Judith sighed. ‘Absolutely right. He melted into thin air.’
‘Hmm. And there was a proper search for him?’
‘We searched high and low. And not just Robert and I. The police had more than one cause to look for Tom. Not only because they thought there might be criminal involvement in his disappearance, but also because he was suspected of a number of offences. If he hadn’t disappeared, he’d probably have been looking at a few years in a young offender institution. They actually showed us a list of the things he’d been mixed up in, and it didn’t make happy reading, I can assure you.’
Maria Rosenberg nodded again. ‘What do you think happened to Tom? I remember what you said last time, but opinions can change.’
‘I haven’t changed my opinion. I’m convinced Tom’s dead. Either someone murdered him . . . bumped him off, stuck a knife in him, whatever. Or he did it himself.’
‘Without leaving any clues?’
‘These things happen.’
‘Undoubtedly. What’s the current situation? Has he been officially declared dead by the authorities? Doesn’t that usually happen after someone’s been missing for ten to fifteen years?’
Judith shook her head. ‘No, he’s not been declared dead.’
‘Why not?’
&n
bsp; ‘Because Robert’s against it. As long as there are close relatives still living, it’s up to them to submit an application.’
‘Yes, I know that. But why won’t your husband take that step? It is because he still has hope?’
‘I suppose so. But we don’t talk about it any more. And a declaration of presumed death would just be a formality in any event. Tom had no possessions, Robert and I would be his only heirs . . . but won’t it happen sooner or later anyway? I’m sure society has its efficient procedures even for this kind of thing.’
‘Let’s assume so,’ Maria Rosenberg agreed, leaning forward and adopting her gentle but rather insistent smile. ‘But then here comes a telephone call from someone purporting to be your son . . . in the middle of the night. A son who has been missing for more than twenty years. I must say you appear more composed than most people would be in your situation.’
Judith Bendler gazed at the monk for a few seconds before she replied.
‘I’m not composed at all. I threw up my breakfast this morning and got off at Zwille station instead of Keymer Plejn. That’s why I arrived five minutes late.’
The therapist maintained her discreet smile. ‘I didn’t say that you were composed. I said you appeared composed. So what do you think, then?’
‘About the call?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t just think. I know.’
‘Know what?’
‘That it was an imposter.’
‘And what would he be after? Imposters are usually in pursuit of some kind of gain.’
Judith shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I actually have no idea.’
‘But he’s going to ring back?’
‘So he said.’
Maria Rosenberg leant back in the armchair and thought about it for a moment.
‘Forgive me for asking, but have you considered the possibility you dreamt the whole thing?’
Not only had she considered the possibility, she had been expecting the question.
‘Oh yes. But I looked at the telephone before I left the house this morning. We’ve got caller ID and the number was still there.’