by Håkan Nesser
We never answer, because it is so obvious that we are not expected to. We simply exchange glances with each other, smile resolutely and conspiratorially.
And it’s not that we do very much damage either. But we do things by ourselves. Swim and fish and play games. Bicycle into the village and get ice cream. Build a hut even though we are actually too big for such things, and one day we construct a raft by using two empty barrels and a lot of boards that we find under a tarp behind the left-hand house.
None of us comment either on the fact that it is Mart and I who belong together. He never kisses me again, but it’s noticeable anyway. It shows by the way we always pair up when we play cards or badminton, when we row out with the boat or bicycle to the village. Or simply walk and talk.
And Henny does not ask that question again. I know that she knows, and she knows that I know. But to talk about it would be letting in something else and admitting defeat, which it would never occur to Henny to do. Nor me either. On the contrary, she and I both act like nothing has happened and she is truly a master at that, Henny. Sometimes I get the idea that she is plotting something, that she lies in her bed at night when Ruth has long since turned off the lamp and started making puffing sounds as she snores – lies there contemplating some sort of plan that I should probably try to ferret out somehow.
But nothing happens. Not until one night in the final week, when the days have got a little shorter and the nights a little darker. It is the middle of August, we have decided to sneak out when the grown-ups have fallen asleep. Take sausages and fizzy drinks with us and row out to Sort’s Island and barbecue.
The island is a round affair ten minutes’ row from land. It is about a hundred metres around and features – strangely enough – a single tree, a large oak, and got its name from a certain Andreas Sort, who rowed out and hung himself in the oak after an unhappy love story in the mid-nineteenth century. The girl in question was named Blanche and is said to have drowned herself shortly after.
To start with the night goes as planned, but for some reason we happen to make the fire a bit too intense and the flames work their way down into, and catch hold of, the kremtenberry thicket under the oak. We try to put it out of course, but soon the fire has spread around the whole island. The only thing we can do is to jump in the boat and set out onto the water.
And then we sit there bobbing while we see Sort’s oak burn down in the mild night. I think that I have never seen anything more intense in my whole life, it’s a full moon too, a big yellow August moon that has glided up over the edge of the forest, but Henny starts crying. Tom takes her in his arms, and then she cries even worse because it isn’t Mart that does it. Instead Mart sneaks his hand in mine under a blanket and we don’t row home again until the whole island is dark and dead.
Mart doesn’t kiss me that night either, but I feel on his warm, pounding hand that he would really like to do that. Other things too, presumably.
When we have breakfast the next morning Ruth says that there must have been a thunderstorm during the night, because lightning struck Sort’s oak and both it and the whole island have burnt up.
But no one heard any thunder, it’s a bit peculiar.
We are rather tired and subdued that day, it’s like it passes by without leaving any impressions, and the following morning the Chocolate King drives us to the bus station in Schwingen. As Henny and I are sliding back and forth on the smooth leather of the back seat, it feels as if we have got closer to each other despite everything. As if the summer taught us quite a bit, both about life and about ourselves.
That perhaps everything isn’t as it ought to be, but that you do best in adapting yourself to the circumstances. Or something along those lines. We don’t talk about it while we are sitting in the Rover of course, it is only the King who holds forth there – and not during the sweaty bus ride back to Grothenburg – but two days later, when we are out in the park watching Benjamin again, Henny says:
‘Do you know what I think, I think that we were actually sisters when we were born.’
‘Is that so?’ I say.
‘But we were separated from each other somehow at the maternity ward. I have never had such a good friend as you.’
I say that I had read that there was a lot of negligence at hospitals – and to be on the safe side, a little later that evening, we mix blood with each other.
To:
Agnes R.
Villa Guarda
Gobshejm
Grothenburg, 27 October
Dear Agnes,
Thanks for your reply. I don’t really know what reaction I expected, but perhaps just this. Despite everything.
I’m afraid, however, that I cannot add much to what I wrote in my last letter. But let me assure you of two things: I am in my right mind and I intend to carry out what I am determined to do. I trust that you feel connected enough to me in any event that you won’t reveal my plans to anyone. If you don’t want to help me that’s your business, but I would be grateful if you let me know as soon as possible if you are at all interested in discussing the matter. Dispassionately and hypothetically, as stated; in no way do you need to feel that you are obligating yourself to anything, I cannot underscore that enough.
Concerning the financial aspect I stand firm by a hundred thousand, I am sure that it is possible to hire a professional hit man for a considerably lower amount, but as you understand I consider myself a bit too good for such a solution.
Anyhow, this letter will have to be brief. You wanted confirmation and now you have it. Be in touch soon, dear Agnes, and let me know what you think.
Your girlfriend, Henny
To:
Henny Delgado
Pelikaanallé 24
Grothenburg
Gobshejm, 30 October
Dear Henny,
Sometimes it is almost comical how things can coincide. Yesterday I got two letters in the mail, the one from you, the other from the law firm of Klinger & Klinger in Munich. After having contacted my own lawyer here in Gobshejm, Herr Pumpermann, and discussed the situation with him for over an hour just this afternoon, it has become clear to me that I really am in a bad way financially. No, don’t get me wrong, naturally I have enough to get by, and more besides – but if I want to keep my dear house, undoubtedly a number of rearrangements are required.
He expresses himself that way, lawyer Pumpermann – rearrangements! – cleverly avoiding mentioning things by their rightful name, which perhaps is some sort of occupational injury. What he means in any event is that money is lacking, in brief. I asked him how much, he frowned and explained seriously that with eighty or ninety thousand everything would without a doubt be in a considerably better light.
So, dear Henny, after having sat in my lovely armchair for a few hours and brooded along with your letters and four (five?) glasses of port – scratched the dogs under their chins, smoked far too many cigarettes and thought about old times – so I write to you now about your specific errand, as you call it, and . . . well, why don’t we let ourselves at least discuss it?
That can’t do any harm, can it?
Signed in all haste,
Your Agnes
Maertens the dentist is dead.
He died one rainy January morning after having been in a coma at the hospital for five days. The cause of the coma was a strange fall on the stairs in our house; he had come to visit my mother one evening, they had eaten and drunk wine, and somehow he stepped wrong and fell headlong when he was on his way down the stairs, which by chance were dark as a sack of coal owing to a glitch with the electricity.
Some investigation was done of the circumstances around the death, but nothing came out except that the dear dentist broke his neck and right thumb.
Towards Easter, which this year falls in the middle of April, my mother seems to be done grieving, a new dentist has taken over the clinic and leaves have come out on the large lime trees outside my window. I feel generally satisfied with existence and my life.
Nowadays I am the best in the class, Henny has lagged behind a little and Adam has been sick for part of the winter and has been unable to really do himself justice. There is something wrong with his lungs and all in all he is a rather sickly boy.
But in the autumn all three of us will start at Weiver’s Upper General Secondary School on Waldemarstrasse. Five others from the class have also been admitted, but we must of course be separated from Marvel. It doesn’t matter. We don’t associate with him much any more, he has started smoking in earnest and most often hangs out with a couple of older boys from the vocational school out in Löhr. I think Marvel will also be going there in the autumn, and from what I understand this is a rather natural development. I have a sense that things are not going to go too well for him in life.
Henny and I talk with each other almost all the time. During breaks at school, in the afternoons when we are doing homework together or go and swim in Genzer Sportpalatz – or in the evenings when we call each other even though our mothers try to forbid us from doing that.
We discuss everything between heaven and earth, as the saying goes. What we will be when we grow up, how boys really think deep down, if it is always ugly to lie and if Miss Butts really has a relationship with the music teacher Fitzsimmons.
We talk about God too. Henny maintains firmly that he exists, personally I am more hesitant. The world wouldn’t look the way it does if there was someone holding the threads, but Henny says that everything will be fine by and by, it is just the way there that is a little crooked.
Do you mean it will be fine in our lifetime? I ask, or must we be dead and wait for Judgement Day for ten thousand years first?
Both, Henny says zealously. Things will go well for both you and me in life, if we continue to be good and humble.
I say that it probably doesn’t hurt to be a bit foresighted and on your guard too, otherwise it is easy to be outwitted by evil. Henny does not really understand what I mean and asks for an example, but I realize that it is best not to give her any.
Regarding our future plans, I want to be an actress or an author, maybe both. Henny changes opinion once a month – in March she wants to study to be a veterinarian, in April she intends to be a fashion designer and in May she aims to marry rich and bring up six children while she cultivates organic roses and paints pale watercolours in a little French fishing village. Her husband will preferably work for the UN and be out travelling quite a bit; in the kitchen she wants to have reddish-black clinker tiles on the floor.
I think Henny is a little naive, and rather too changeable, but we are still inseparable and when in the beginning of June she falls in love with a completely hopeless boy by the name of Dimitri, I really make sure to put a spanner in the works. Afterwards, when she has escaped with honour intact, she also thanks me sincerely for not having wavered. I personally think that I am unusually mature for only being thirteen.
During the summer holidays I go to see my father and brother in Saarbrücken. It is over with Else, and I can again take possession of my old room. I work in the mornings at Goscinski’s bakery, in the evenings I bicycle down to the river and see old friends. The longer summer goes on, the more clearly I realize that I have grown apart from them – I find myself thinking that it was beneficial for my personal development that my father and my mother separated.
Perhaps I have grown apart from my father and brother too; I don’t associate with either of them and when we have meals together it is often strikingly silent around the dining table. My father appears to have got ten years older and if he says anything it always has to do with the weather or the Zenit football team. My brother never tries to beat me up like in the past, but with that all communication between us seems to have ceased.
When Henny and I and 172 others are sitting in the large auditorium at Weiver’s Upper Secondary School on 1 September, I feel a tense expectation about the years that are ahead of us. It seems to me that childhood is over now, and I am quite certain that I am not going to miss it.
To:
Agnes R.
Villa Guarda
Gobshejm
Grothenburg, 11 November
Dear Agnes,
I was so happy when I got your letter, even if naturally I hope that it is not simply the financial aspects that have made you go along with my proposal.
Sorry, which made you want to discuss the matter, I mean of course. In no way do I want to guide or dominate the course of events that lies ahead of us; on the contrary, I think it is important that both you and I, dearest Agnes, are in complete agreement about every step, each ever-so-little detail in the execution. We must plan everything minutely and make an effort not to take any unnecessary risks. When all is said and done it should not be particularly remarkable for two women of our calibre to murder a single man and get away with it. Don’t you think, Agnes?
No, when I think about it I am convinced that we – if we decide on it – are going to find a method where we do not leave anything to chance and where the police are going to be crestfallen and left with not so much as a clue about who – and what forces – took David’s life.
The first thing we must keep in mind – at least as far as I can see – is of course that I have a hundred per cent alibi. The wife of a murdered man is by definition the first person the police suspect. They are going to do so in this case too, regardless of whether they have knowledge of David’s infidelity or not – regardless of whether they know about my knowledge of it or not. Thus we must not be careless on this point, the first requirement and the first condition is that under no circumstances can it have been possible for me to commit the murder.
The prerequisites for ensuring this condition – excuse me for sounding so formal and technical, dear Agnes, I notice it myself and it undoubtedly feels a trifle strange, but I think it would be a disadvantage for us if we start getting emotional – the prerequisites for my certain alibi are of course partly that it is possible to establish the time for David’s death fairly exactly, partly that I myself at this time have demonstrably been somewhere else. So far away from the scene of the crime that simply based on this fact I can be removed from the list of suspects. Demonstrably, as stated; a witness or two should be required in this connection, don’t you think, Agnes?
Oh, well, to make a long argument short, I imagine that there are two variants: either you kill my husband in our home while I am somewhere else – or else you kill him somewhere else while I am at home.
After having thought about and weighed both of these alternatives against each other, I decide that I prefer the latter. I want us to let it happen elsewhere, simply; I feel that I must consider the girls as much as possible, and without a doubt it would be unnecessarily distressing and traumatic for them if they had to have their dead father so close to them – and even if naturally it would be possible to arrange it so that they were gone somehow during the night of the murder (I seem to assume that it should happen at night, isn’t that strange, Agnes?), they would surely have a hard time afterwards adjusting in an apartment where their father had been put to death.
My basic idea is thus – and I actually do not want to go further than this before I have obtained your viewpoints – that we let the murder take place at a safe distance from Grothenburg. Perhaps a hotel room in Munich or Berlin or Hamburg. David is out on trips and spends the night elsewhere at least two or three times a month, so it should not be difficult to find an opportunity.
Concerning the method, it really makes no difference to me how you conduct yourself; I definitely think you should choose what suits your temperament best. Personally I would prefer cutting his throat, but perhaps that is too risky. And extremely bloody of course. A bullet through the head seems more certain in many ways, but then of course we also have to address the question of how you acquire a gun.
Obviously there are also other methods, but here your voice must weigh heaviest, Agnes. Perhaps you have preferences in this murky area, both aesthetic and rational, it wou
ld not surprise me. Concerning the time aspect there is of course no immediate urgency, but I would probably prefer to see that we bring the project ashore within the reasonably near future. Two or three months at most; considering the planning of the girls’ summer vacation and all that sort of thing it would undeniably be nice if he were in the ground before Easter at least.
Anyway, dear Agnes, be in touch soon with viewpoints, I feel that I would really like to see you again, but we must obviously avoid all contact until we have put an end to David. Some six-month safety margin beyond that too, I assume.
But more on all that sort of thing further along.
Promises
Your devoted Henny
To:
Henny Delgado
Pelikaanallé 24
Grothenburg
Gobshejm, 17 November
Dear Henny,
Thanks for your letter. I must admit that I felt strangely disturbed after I read it – as if we already found ourselves far away down a cruel road without hope of return – but now, after two glasses of wine this evening, I have my nerves under control, and my head is as clear as a hungry nun. Do you remember that lecturer Klimke at Weiver’s always used that expression, I have always wondered where he got it from. Hungry nun?
My preliminary assessment is that I agree with you on all the points you bring up. I absolutely prefer setting to work at an anonymous hotel, in preference to having to visit your apartment on such a sinister errand as this. Although I cannot help thinking about whether it really is sufficient that you stay home with the girls. Don’t you need a stronger alibi? Their statements probably wouldn’t count in a trial, they must be viewed as partial – if it is even allowed for them to testify for or against their parents in a court? At least those are the conclusions I draw after having seen a courtroom drama or two on TV.
Oh well, this is of course only a detail that will be possible to work out rather easily; you can always invite some friends to dinner, for example, and make sure that they stay until rather late. I am in complete agreement with you that I ought to strike during the night, that is probably when most murders take place, I assume. The most satisfactory would probably be if he was asleep and I could send him off to the Twilight Land without him even managing to wake up first. Does he sleep heavily or does he wake up at the slightest sound? Well, of course there are a number of small questions that you will need to answer for me by and by, but we can come back to that once we have come a bit further in the planning.