“No.”
“Was your brother at home last night?”
“No.”
“What time did he come home?”
“I don’t know. Not while I was awake, in any case.”
He turned back to Edmund.
“Did you notice if Henry was home when you were relieving yourself?”
“No idea,” said Edmund.
“You didn’t see if his light was on?”
“I think it was off. Why don’t you ask Henry when he came home yourself, Detective Lindström, sir?”
Lindström didn’t bother to answer. Instead, he trained his eyes on me.
“And there’s nothing else you think we should know about?”
“No.”
He wrote a few words on the pad.
“Tell me what happened this morning,” he said.
Edmund and I took turns retelling how Lasse Side-Smile’s shouts from down on the lawn had woken us. How, together with him and Henry, we’d rushed up to the parking area to see what had happened. How we’d waited there while Side-Smile called the police from the Lundins’.
“Do you know who was on the ground?” Lindström asked.
Edmund and I looked at each other.
“Yes,” I said. “It was Berra Albertsson.”
Lindström nodded.
“You knew that already then? As soon as you saw him.”
“Yes.”
“How come you recognized him?”
“We’d seen him before,” said Edmund.
“Where?” said Lindström.
“Around,” said Edmund. “In Lacka Park.”
“He’s been in the papers, too,” I added. “In Kurren.”
Lindström adjusted his bow tie and made a note. Leaned back and thought for a few seconds.
“Did he pay you a visit?”
“Berra Albertsson?” said Edmund. “No, he didn’t.”
“Never,” I said. “Not while I’ve been home, at least.”
“Do you know if your brother was acquainted with him?”
“No,” I said. “I’m sure he wasn’t.”
“Have you seen him around? In Sjölycke or anywhere around Möckeln?”
We thought about it.
“No,” said Edmund.
“No,” I said.
Lindström took a tube of Bronzol out of his inner pocket and shook out two pastilles. Weighed them in his hand and then tossed them in his mouth with a practiced gesture.
“Are you sure? Are you sure you’ve never seen Berra Albertsson in the area?”
“Absolutely,” said Edmund.
“Only in Lacka Park,” I said.
“And you didn’t hear anything unusual last night?”
We shook our heads. Detective Lindström chewed on the Bronzol pastilles, deep in thought.
“All right then,” he said, and with that the interrogation was over.
Our fathers took the twelve o’clock bus and Laxman picked them up in Åsbro in his yellow taxi.
“You can’t stay here,” said my father.
“It’s out of the question,” said Edmund’s dad.
“Take it easy,” said Henry.
Edmund’s dad took out a handkerchief that was as big as a tent and patted his face and neck.
“Easy?” he snorted. “How the heck can we take it easy? A murder was committed one hundred meters from here. Are you nuts?”
Edmund’s dad looked at Henry, eyes wide, and when Henry didn’t answer he turned to my father. “Is he nuts?”
“You have to go back to town,” my father repeated. “This won’t work. It’s unbelievable. Nothing like this has ever happened before.”
Henry lit a Lucky Strike and got up from the kitchen table.
“Do what you like with the boys,” he retorted. “But I’m staying here.”
“You want to go home, right, boys?” Edmund’s dad asked, using a milder tone. “You do want to get back to town as soon as possible?”
I looked at Edmund. Edmund looked at me.
“Not on your life,” said Edmund.
“Unbelievable,” my father repeated. “I’m speechless.”
“Don’t you understand? A murderer is on the loose!” said Mr. Wester.
They stayed the whole day and spent the night, and the next day Edmund and I agreed to go back to town with them if they promised we could return to Gennesaret the day after, as long as no other act of violence was committed around Möckeln. Edmund went home, and I went with my father to the hospital and sat for an hour with my mother. Her hair had been washed and set in permanent waves, but otherwise she seemed about the same as before. Maybe she was paler. We spoke about Berra Albertsson’s murder the entire time—the newspapers had dedicated several pages to it—or, more precisely, my mother and father talked about it while I mostly sat there, nodding and pretending to agree with everything they said. The results from the doctors’ latest tests weren’t ready yet, so there wasn’t really much else to discuss. It was what it was.
Before we left the hospital my mother clasped my hand between both of hers for a while. She looked at me with a kind of gravity and I thought she might share another one of her strange words of wisdom.
She didn’t.
“Take care of yourself, my boy,” is all she said. “Take care of yourself and take care of Edmund, too.”
We went home on the eight o’clock bus. Then I slept one night at Idrottsgatan and the next day, a Saturday, Henry came and picked Edmund and me up and we went back to Gennesaret.
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16
Even though we were so close to the heart of the action, we found out about the police’s progress with the case in the Kurren and Läns newspapers along with everyone else. On the first day, Police Chief Elmestrand explained that there was a good chance of finding the perpetrator in the near future, and they had no intention of calling in the National Criminal Investigation Department. He had total faith in Detective Lindström and his men, he said, but welcomed any and all tips from the Great Detective Public. It was important that everyone did their part to help solve this brutal crime, this tragedy that had befallen our district and the Swedish sporting community.
The national handball team had been dealt a blow to the solar plexus, as a journalist called Bejman put it in Läns.
As far as the suspect’s identity was concerned, by Saturday the police still didn’t have any answers. They said they had several leads, but it was too soon to direct their suspicions at any one person.
Perhaps it was the work of a madman. Perhaps there were ulterior motives.
According to the reported facts in the papers, it was assumed that Bertil “Berra” Albertsson had met his killer sometime between twelve and two on the night between Wednesday and Thursday. Apparently, the perpetrator had launched his attack just as Albertsson was getting out of his car in the small parking lot where he was later found—next to the gravel road that ran through the forest between Sjölycke’s recreational area and the Fläskhällen beach on Lake Möckeln. They were still in the dark about what Albertsson had been doing there at that time of day. In spite of the information provided by people who had known the deceased—his fiancée Ewa Kaludis, for instance—nothing had surfaced that could shed light on the matter.
The murder itself had been committed with a so-called blunt object, probably a heavy hammer or a small sledgehammer. A single blow was all it took; contact was made with Albertsson’s head from above, cracking through the crown of his skull, deep into his brain. It was assumed that death was instantaneous.
“Right in the noggin,” said Edmund as he set Kurren aside. “How about a swim?”
From the start, Edmund and I seemed to have an understanding. An unspoken understanding that we wouldn’t talk about the murder. Not more than was absolutely nece
ssary. But of course neither of us could stop thinking about it; it overshadowed everything else. The Incident worked its way into every nook and cranny of our minds, and so, to talk about it on top of that would just have been too much.
Far too much. That went without saying.
Edmund and I had a lot of these unspoken understandings. While it felt completely natural, it was also strange. We hadn’t spent more than a couple of months together, and yet we knew where we stood with each other. It was as if we had known each other our entire lives. I remember thinking once that we could have been twins.
But this didn’t apply to Ewa Kaludis. We had to put her on the agenda every so often, that was clear.
“I wonder,” Edmund said. “I wonder what she said to the police about her black eye?”
“She’s probably not feeling too good right now,” I said.
“Must be lonely,” said Edmund. “Without Henry and all that. You don’t think they’re seeing each other?”
“As far as that goes, I don’t think anything about anything,” I said.
The idea of looking her up had already sprouted in the back of my mind. In Edmund’s, too, apparently.
On Sunday, Detective Lindström returned. He didn’t stay more than an hour, but he spoke with all three of us. One after the other, and this time to me and Edmund separately.
“I’m here to go over a couple of details,” he explained when it was my turn.
“Details?” I said.
“Details,” said Lindström. “They might seem insignificant, but the picture always comes together through the details.”
“Only time will tell,” I said.
He furrowed his brow for a moment. Then he turned a page in his notebook and clicked his pen a few times.
“You got a lot of tools out here?”
“Tools?”
“Saws, axes, hammers and so on.”
“Well,” I said. “Some, not many.”
“We’re mainly interested in a large hammer or a small sledgehammer.”
“I see.”
“Do you know if you have one of those.”
I thought about it.
“There’s a hammer in the tool box,” I said. “But it’s not that big.”
“This one?”
He held up a hammer that he’d been hiding under the table. I made a quick assessment.
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
I looked at it more closely. “Yes, that’s the one. We used it when we built the dock; I recognize it.”
“Good,” said Lindström. “Matches up with what your friend said.”
I didn’t say anything.
“What about a bigger one?”
“Yeah, there is,” I said. “I think there’s a small sledgehammer or something out in the shed.”
“Is there?” said Lindström. “Let’s take a look.”
I followed him out to the tumbledown shed next to the outhouse. Unlatched the door and looked in at the mess.
“I don’t really know where it is.”
I poked around.
“Can’t you find it?” Lindström wondered. He had taken out his tube of Bronzol and was rocking from heel to toe.
“Don’t seem to be able to.”
“It doesn’t matter. I don’t think it’s here. Your brother couldn’t find it either. You don’t happen to know where it might have gone?”
I stepped out of the shed and brushed off the dust.
“No,” I said. “I really don’t.”
“Do you remember when you saw it last?”
I shrugged.
“Dunno. A few weeks ago, maybe.”
“You didn’t use it when you were building the dock?”
“No.”
We went back to the kitchen table.
“The other detail,” Lindström said after writing in his notepad. “The other detail concerns one Miss Ewa Kaludis.”
“Oh?”
“Are you acquainted with her?”
“She was a substitute teacher at school,” I said. “In May and June. But only for a few subjects. Our usual teacher had broken her leg.”
Lindström nodded.
“Was she a good teacher?”
“Ah, yes. I guess she was.”
“Did you know she kept company with Berra Albertsson?”
“Yes.”
“Have you seen her at all this summer?”
“No,” I said. “Oh wait, yes. Once in Lacka Park.”
“Lacka Park?”
“Yes.”
“Only there?”
“Yes.”
“Not on any other occasion?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
I thought about it.
“Not that I remember,” I said.
Lindström was silent for a few seconds but didn’t make any notes. Then he stood up.
“I might be stopping by again,” he said. “If you find that sledgehammer, get in touch.”
“I will,” I promised.
We shook hands and then he was on his way.
Once in fourth grade Balthazar Lindblom wet himself. It happened during religious education with a substitute teacher called Rockgård, whom we called Rockhard, because he was. He was incorruptible. It was no use trying to be cheeky or doing things differently from how he’d decided.
Balthazar’s accident happened with about ten minutes of the lesson to go, and because we were silently working from our textbooks, everyone noticed the gushing sound coming from under his desk.
Even Rockhard.
“What in all—” he barked. “What is going on, you ninny?”
Balthazar finished peeing before answering. The puddle kept spreading, and those of us who were sitting near him had to lift our feet off the ground.
“Teacher said so,” Balthazar said.
“What?” Rockhard asked. “What do you mean?”
“Teacher said we had to make sure to visit the toilet during breaktime. That there was no point in asking to go during the lesson.”
It was probably the only time in his teaching career that Rockhard ended his class ten minutes before the bell.
And Balthazar Lindblom is the only person I know who managed to become some sort of hero—if only for a short time—just by wetting his pants.
As time passed, it wasn’t so much the peeing as Rockhard’s response that stuck in my mind. What he said before he ushered us out into the playground, that is.
“Perfect. You handled this perfectly, my boy.”
I thought of Rockhard when Detective Superintendent Lindström left Gennesaret that Sunday afternoon. Not because they were especially alike, neither in their manner nor in their looks, but because they had something in common. Something incorruptible. Something there was no use in trying to influence or oppose.
Was this for better or worse? Who knows.
To be honest, it was the first time that summer Britt Laxman paid Edmund and me any attention. That Monday morning, I mean, when we walked under the ringing bell into the shop in Åsbro.
The first and only time, actually.
“Well, hello there,” she said. Flashing her teeth and losing interest in the gray-haired woman at the counter airing her complaints. “Hi Erik. Hi, Edmund. How’s it going?”
At least she’d learned our names. I looked at Edmund and around the shop. It was unusually crowded. I could tell Britt Laxman wasn’t the only one who knew who we were. I could tell most of them weren’t there just to go shopping. The sudden silence and tongue-tiedness were connected to our arrival, that was crystal clear. On the one hand it was flattering, but it was also threatening, and I’m pretty sure Edmund felt the same.
Three seconds, no longer than that, but i
t was long enough. We looked at each other knowingly. Old Major Casselmiolke cleared his throat and continued the train of thought he’d begun with Moppe Nilsson at the meat counter.
“Tracks!” thundered the military man. “There have to be tracks! Clues, for heaven’s sake! They’re just waiting for the analysis! We live in a scientific age, don’t you forget that!”
“Allow me to disagree,” Moppe countered leisurely while moving the sausages around with his sausage-like fingers. “The perpetrator should be thanking God for the rain.”
“The rain?” said Casselmiolke. “God?”
As if he’d never heard of such things.
“The rain that fell between four and five in the morning,” Moppe explained. “It would have washed away every last clue. That’s what it said in Aftonbladet this Saturday.”
“Aftonbladet?” said Casselmiolke. “I’ve never touched that rag! You don’t happen to have a copy to spare, do you?”
“I’m sorry, no,” Britt Laxman called from across the store. “They sold out in half an hour.” Then she turned to us wide-eyed and with a fresh smile. “What’ll it be?” she asked. “And how are you both doing?”
We went through the shopping list as quickly as we could, but when we were done, she didn’t want to let us go.
“What do you think?” she lowered her voice—so at least not every last person in the shop could hear her. “Who did it?”
Edmund glanced at me.
“A madman,” he then said. “Some nut-job who escaped from a loony bin. Isn’t that obvious?”
And that was the line we continued to toe. The madman line. When people asked us what we thought, which God knows they did—after all we’d seen the body, we lived right by the scene of the crime, we must’ve heard something in the night, and so on—we went with the lunatic theory. A madman. An escaped mental patient. Only someone who was out of his mind could’ve been behind the murder of Bertil “Berra” Albertsson. Of course. Anything else was unthinkable.
We knew in an instant—as soon as we were out on Laxman’s steps, and without having to discuss it—that this had been exactly the right response.
A madman.
Who else?
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The Summer of Kim Novak Page 12