by Håkan Nesser
‘What? What did you say?’
‘I asked you if you hadn’t grasped what he’s after.’
‘Really? No . . . I’ve thought about it, but . . .’
‘The inheritance.’
‘What inheritance?’
The minute she asked the question, it dawned on her what an idiot she was. Robert looked at her, shaking his head with concern. Bloody champagne, she thought. My head is spinning even though I’m sitting down.
Spinning and . . . panic-stricken?
In any event, something dark and sinister was taking hold of her; it was unmistakeable. Damn it.
‘The inheritance I leave when I’m dead,’ Robert spelt it out. ‘I’ll go and put the coffee on. You seem a bit . . .’
‘Thank you. That’s a good idea.’
After he had gone out to the kitchen, she stared into the glowing embers of the fire. Inheritance? Clasping her hands, she tried to calm herself down and hold back the flood of thoughts assailing her like a swarm of hornets. The house? The house. She didn’t know how much there was in the bank, but everything they owned, they owned together – and it was undoubtedly the house, this wonderful house, where they had lived for nine years and which she loved more than anything else, that had the greatest value. No doubt about it; they had purchased it for a million, and today the price was definitely two or three times that. All the mortgages were paid off . . . she had assumed, almost from the day they moved in, that this would be her home for the rest of her life, until her time too was up. And now . . . and now? Bloody hell! Expletives crowded her drunken head. So, did the imposter, that damned caller, that bloody waiter, intend to grab half the inheritance from Robert? Was this his plan? Was this what he had his sights set on?
But . . . he wasn’t Tom. How could he be under the illusion he could carry off such a shameful trick? It was almost laughable . . . but it wasn’t.
Robert came clattering in with the coffee pot and cups on a tray.
‘He can forget that,’ she said. ‘I mean, inheriting from you. Tom’s dead, we both know that. Isn’t that right?’
With a degree of difficulty, he placed the tray on the small glass table and sank into the armchair. When she glanced at him she noticed how tired and wretched he looked. Smaller too, as she had observed at the airport. As if he was going to leave this life by shrivelling away.
What an odd thought. Bloody champagne, again.
‘We know Tom’s dead,’ she repeated, when he said nothing. ‘We know because we killed him.’
He nodded and sighed deeply.
‘There’s a complication.’
TWO
Aarlach, 1973
There is a thunderstorm.
She is standing by the living-room window, looking at the angry sky and thinking that it reflects her inner feelings rather well. It is quarter past eleven at night and neither of them has come home yet.
Neither Robert, nor Tom. Actually, Tom hasn’t been home for the last two or three nights, she has lost count. But there have been glimpses of him during the day, and twice the police have rung and asked for him. A few hours ago Robert got in touch and explained that he had been in contact with the boy: he’s coming in.
Coming in? Like a delayed train or flight. Robert himself is filming out by the lakes around Zingen and has promised to be home about ten, half past at the latest. Three quarters of an hour late so far; it doesn’t surprise her.
The thought of running away has been hovering at the back of her mind for several weeks, maybe longer. Yes, definitely longer; the present situation has not arisen overnight. On the contrary, it is a process that has gone on for years and has slowly and inexorably worn her down to the extent that she is grateful if she gets three hours of continuous sleep a night.
I am thirty-seven, she thinks, and I feel like fifty-seven. If I could get away with murdering Tom, I would.
There is nothing new about this. Would she have felt the same if he had been her own flesh and blood? Good question. But there is no time to formulate an answer before another flash of lightning illuminates the whole area. The crash of thunder that follows after only a few seconds makes the house vibrate. She goes out to the kitchen, where she pours a glass of wine, takes a mouthful and sets in motion the verbal merry-go-round of grievances.
Tom is a failure, a malevolent idiot.
He is due in court in two weeks.
He is not my son. He is on drugs, he is a criminal and he plagues the life out of us.
I will never have children of my own.
My marriage with Robert is going to be destroyed.
Is being destroyed.
If Tom didn’t exist, everything would be all right.
I am worth more than this. Robert is too.
The wine tastes sour. She pours it down the sink and mixes a gin and tonic instead. She takes a cautious sip and decides she needs a slice of lemon. She takes the last lemon out of the fruit bowl and cuts a slice with the large meat knife, the only one that is not in the dishwasher. Just as she is tasting it again, the front door opens and someone falls into the hall.
That same someone slams the door shut, kicks off his shoes, laughs at something and belches.
Tom. She looks at the clock. Twenty minutes to twelve.
And why isn’t his father here to receive him? she thinks. Why should I have to be here alone with an inconsiderate, inebriated slob I am so tired of I can hardly bear the sight of him.
He enters the kitchen.
‘Hello, Judith!’
He has never called her mum, or even mother. He is sniffing and there is something strange about the look in his eyes. Drugged, she thinks. Definitely high, on some cheap trash he has bought down on Klejne Markt with money he has stolen . . . and the way he is looking at her? What the hell is the matter with him?
She soon finds out.
‘Nice dress, Judith. And short. You’re not wearing any knickers either . . . are you?’
In shock she drops the glass she is holding in her hand; for some reason it doesn’t break when it hits the floor. She desperately pulls at her dress in an effort to make it longer, bringing it to halfway down her thigh, at least.
Anything but this, she thinks. Anything!
‘Tom, go to bed.’
He comes nearer, a broad grin on his face. His eyes glazed, manic. His hands outstretched. His hair sticking to his forehead. He is stronger than me, she thinks. Twenty kilos heavier and twice as powerful . . .
‘Turn round and take your pants off . . . if you’ve got any on. It’s time for you and me to have a fuck, Judith!’
She makes a bid to get past him, but he catches her and throws her against the worktop, her hip rammed into the edge as he pushes hard from behind. They stand like that for a second until he pulls her dress up, rips apart her dainty knickers and forces his hand between her legs. She tries to break free, but he grabs hold of her hair and pushes her face into the fruit bowl, from which she has just taken the last lemon; and somehow he has removed his erect penis from his trousers and is trying to thrust it into her. She clenches her muscles and is about to scream, but she can’t, because with his hefty elbow on her neck, he is pressing her face into the fruit and suddenly she finds it difficult to breathe. He mustn’t come inside me, she thinks. He mustn’t. Anything but that . . . and out of the corner of her eye she sees the carving knife she used to slice the lemon. It is lying where she left it on the chopping board, only half a metre to her right. In a flash she has seized it and in an even quicker movement she stabs at random. It is a clumsy effort, directed backwards at an angle, but thanks to some unknown guardian angel, it has the intended effect.
She feels it hit home, and instead of Tom’s penis thrusting into her, the huge knife penetrates soft flesh. She hears him groan and his hold on her slackens until, with a heavy thud and another moan, he lets go completely and falls to the floor. Her empty gin and tonic glass starts to roll, the slice of lemon still perched on the rim. As she turns round and tries
to straighten her dress, she hears the front door open and close.
Three seconds later Robert is standing in the kitchen. Before either of them has time to say anything, there is another flash of lightning and almost instantaneous thunderclap. The whole house shakes.
The world is falling apart, she thinks.
‘He tried to rape me.’
‘I can see.’
‘You should have come home five minutes earlier.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
Hold me, she thinks, and he does. He takes her into his arms and for several long moments they remain in the embrace, while they contemplate Tom their son, Tom the rapist, lying on his back on the floor, his trousers and underpants pulled down to his knees, his sex exposed, flaccid and harmless now, the carving knife still stuck in his waist right under his ribs. A thin trickle of blood drips onto the kitchen floor, his mouth hangs open, like an idiot, his jaw has dropped and only the whites of his eyes can be seen through the half-open lids.
But his chest is rising and falling.
‘He’s alive,’ she says. ‘But if we just leave him, he’ll die.’
Letting go, Robert stares at her.
But he doesn’t fall on his knees beside his dying son. He doesn’t pull the knife out of his side. He keeps staring at his wife, who stares back without blinking; and during this silent conversation, the rest of their lives is determined. He sees it and so does she. And each of them sees that the other sees it too. Nothing will change it.
He has come home with one of the film company’s vans. A convenient stroke of luck.
It is also a stroke of luck that they live on the ground floor. Robert can reverse the van right up to the tiny patio; it takes less than a minute to carry the body out, wrapped in four sheets, and get it in through the back doors. It is past midnight and all the neighbours’ lights are out. The storm has not abated.
‘Take the sheets off and leave him in the forest. I’ll wait for you.’
Robert nods. Before he shuts the doors she can see that the boy’s chest is still rising and falling, but his vital signs are weaker now.
Tonight we are saving our marriage, she thinks.
She kisses her husband.
He returns her kiss and then drives off into the darkness.
Hours pass. She has mixed a fresh gin and tonic and is sitting at her desk, waiting. In front of her is the new electric typewriter, papers lie strewn all over, and the windowsill serves as a home-made bookshelf for a row of reference books.
This is her most important work to date: a biography of Catherine de’ Medici. She has received an advance so large she has taken leave from the grammar school where she has worked for six years. Her hope is that she will never need to return. This is not an unrealistic hope, as both her previous books have been well-received, but sales didn’t reach expected levels; this time is different. She has moved to a larger, more prestigious publishing house and her publisher has more or less promised her more commissions in future. Her life has taken the direction she wants it to.
On this particular night it is impossible to focus on Catherine de’ Medici. Her husband is out there engaged in an undertaking of almost unfathomable magnitude. He is going to dump their dying son in a forest, after she stabbed him, following his – the son’s – attempt to rape her. If it were a television programme, she would switch off. But if she didn’t, would she understand both parents’ actions, or would she feel sympathy for the son?
Of course it would depend on how the director wanted to present it all. But if his intention was to keep to the truth, to the material facts – how Tom had terrorized his mother and father over a number of years, what a selfish, delinquent, arrogant, drug-taking brute he had been, what trouble he had caused them – then sympathies would no doubt lie with the right people. The stabbing had been an act of self-defence and desperation, and in all probability she would have been acquitted in court. But to go through a trial, regardless of whether Tom’s life was saved or not – with the publicity, humiliation, shame – would have been impossible. This was the truth that she and Robert read in each other’s eyes out there in the kitchen a few hours earlier and this has become the cornerstone of their new alliance. For their marriage to continue, it is the only way out.
When she hears him return, a few minutes past four, she goes to meet him in the hall and hugs him. He is unimaginably wet and dirty and immediately bursts into tears. Violent, unstoppable sobs rack his body and when they don’t subside she guides him into the bathroom. She undresses him, puts the clothes in the washing machine and her husband in the bath. After a while she slides in with him and there, in the warm embrace of the water and his wife, he finally begins to talk.
‘I buried him,’ he says. ‘He was dead by the time I reached Zingen. I didn’t want anyone to find him.’
‘Zingen?’
‘Not at any of the places we’re filming, obviously, but there’s lots of forest out there. I put a spade in the van, but it wasn’t easy to dig. This weather as well, I nearly . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘. . . I nearly broke down. What have we done?’
‘He tried to rape me,’ she reminds him. ‘Tom was going to destroy our lives, Robert.’
Trying to stifle the sobs, he nods. ‘I know. He’d already destroyed his own.’
They remain in the bathroom for several hours. In the morning Robert rings his assistant director to say he has suddenly been laid low by an upset stomach and has to stay at home.
They spend the whole day scrubbing the kitchen and cleaning the van. They wait for two days before calling the police to report that their son has gone missing. He left the house on the night of the storm, very upset, probably under the influence of drugs, and they haven’t heard from him since. They have settled on this account, in view of the fact there could be witnesses. One of the neighbours might have seen Tom come home just after half past eleven that night.
They will have to assume that no one observed a van belonging to the FFF film company drive off into the night forty-five minutes later.
Over the next few months the police make a half-hearted search for the missing seventeen-year-old, but find no trace of him. Robert finishes his eighth film, The Woman in the Forest, and Judith completes her book on Catherine de’ Medici.
THREE
Maardam, 1995
Judith sat in silence, waiting.
There has to be something else. You can’t utter the word complication and then neglect to clarify of what the complication consists.
Not even Robert. Not even Robert in his present condition.
She took a gulp of the strong, sweet espresso and looked at him again. He reminded her a little of Humphrey Bogart, she suddenly noticed, but even shorter and more like a rodent. A dying rodent, an endangered species, perhaps. Not a rat, he was cuter; and forlorn. It might have roused her maternal instincts, had she possessed any.
‘Well?’ she said finally.
Robert straightened up in the armchair, bent forward and threw a log onto the fire.
‘About the inheritance . . .’
‘Inheritance?’
‘Yes, if that’s what he’s after. In any case, I think it’s a possibility we have to allow for.’
She considered this for a moment. Tried to consider it, but the champagne bubbles were still in action.
‘I hadn’t thought it through. But maybe you’re right . . . though if that is the case, why would there be a complication?’
Robert cleared his throat. ‘Err, well, if it’s a question of establishing his identity. He is, I mean, he never was my . . . Tom, that is.’
Confused, she drained the rest of the coffee.
‘What are you saying? I don’t really follow.’
‘Tom had a different father.’
‘What?’
‘Minna and I tried for years to have children. When nothing happened, we went to a doctor. I’m sorry, Judith, that I never told you this, but I was . . .’
‘Carry on. What are you saying, Robert?’
He sighed heavily, exhausted.
‘I – I was afraid you wouldn’t want me if you knew. You were so young and I assumed you wanted children.’
‘I did.’
‘But we had Tom, and Minna was dead.’
‘Your sperm are good for nothing, is that what you’re saying?’
He nodded. ‘I’m sorry . . .’
The five seconds that passed seemed like five years.
‘Why the hell are you telling me now?’
‘Because . . . if there’s a paternity test. On the basis that Tom and I should have the same set of genes . . . but we haven’t. We didn’t have, I mean.’
‘Wait, can you be quiet for a second. I need to think.’
Which indeed she did. She leant back in the armchair and gazed into the fire. Why does everything have to happen at once? she asked herself. Why?
Because this was the situation, more or less. A fraudster starts to harass her, claiming to be Tom. Robert comes back from Geneva and informs her he is dying. Then he tells her he is not Tom’s father at all and therefore there can be no question of a paternity test . . . But wait a minute. What did that actually mean? In the worst-case scenario? Didn’t it mean . . .?
‘Who knows about this?’ she asked.
Robert shrugged. ‘Nobody.’
‘So the whole world thinks that Tom is your rightful son, produced with the aid of your excellent sperm?’
Sorry, she thought. That was below the belt. But she didn’t say it.
‘I took on fatherhood,’ Robert said. ‘In the same way you took on motherhood a few years later. That means he should have inherited from both of us.’
‘If he’d been alive.’
‘If he’d been alive.’
She tried to concentrate. In the coffee’s battle with the champagne, the coffee won a meagre victory.