The Summer of Kim Novak

by Haakan Nesser

  “Such is life,” I said. “Well, you did your best.”

  He chewed and rocked his head slowly from side to side like an old, weary bloodhound. “The outcome,” he said. “I don’t give a damn about all the effort; it’s the outcome that counts. Someone murdered that damn handball player on that damn clearing twenty-five years ago and in two months he’ll get off scot-free.”

  “Someone?” I said. “I thought you’d decided it was my brother. You just weren’t able to lock him up.”

  Verner Lindström sighed.

  “He or she,” he said. “That was the thread we were following. Let me tell you, we spared no expense looking into her either. We spent a good part of that fall interrogating her night and day, but she didn’t crack. Damn fine woman. I wonder what happened to her.”

  “No idea,” I said and shrugged. “She probably moved overseas. She was the type.”

  Lindström looked me over. “I’m mostly interested in knowing if you might be willing to share any new information. Now that you don’t have to protect your brother anymore.”

  “There are two months left,” I pointed out. “You could still put him away.”

  He flashed a smile and gave the Bronzol tube a good shake, presumably to get an idea of how many were left.

  “On my honor,” he said and slipped the tube into his inside breast pocket. “You don’t think that these old retiree’s hands want to dig something up that’s been buried for all these years?” He turned his palms up and looked at them and then at me with an expression of utter innocence. “Anything,” he said. “I’m interested in anything at all. It’s not impossible that you kept a thing or two to yourselves, you and that friend of yours. You were only fourteen, and it’s hard to know what to do in a situation like that.” He paused and hid his hands under the table, as if they weren’t really living up to his expectations. “And it’s possible there was another person at Gennesaret that night.”

  “Another person?” I asked. “You mean Ewa Kaludis?”

  He sighed again.

  “No, the fact of the matter is we were never sure if she was there or not. That, too, remains a mystery. She denied it. Henry denied it. It’s not necessarily more complicated than that. We could never prove she was with him. But in any case there were indications that Henry had company.”

  I thought for a few seconds. Mostly about the word “indications.”

  “Who might that have been?”

  “That’s what I was hoping you could tell me,” said Lindström.

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” I said. “Might be best to contact Edmund. He was awake for a while that night.”

  Lindström picked up a handkerchief and blew his nose. “We’ve already talked,” he explained somewhat impatiently. “Twice.”

  “Did he give you anything?”

  “Hmm,” said Lindström. “Priests are among the worst subjects of interrogation. Lucky that they’re not involved most of the time … Priests and pimps, I can’t tell who I like less.”

  “All right, then,” I said.

  We just sat there a moment. Lindström’s college-ruled notebook was next to his plate, and as he ceremoniously folded his handkerchief, he kept glancing at its pages, deep in thought. He didn’t seem to be any happier for it, or more illuminated. A sense of gloom spread across the table.

  “Most unsolved murders have a number of factors in common,” he finally said and closed the notebook.

  “Really?” I said. “What are they?”

  “First and foremost: simplicity,” said Lindström. “With Berra Albertsson … all the murderer had to do was take two steps and whack him with the hammer. Or the sledgehammer or whatever it was. One single blow, and it was done. Bury the murder weapon and forget about the whole story … Maybe hope for rain during the morning hours, and rain it did.”

  He fell silent and speared a few stray peas with his fork. He studied them on the tines—as if he’d suddenly realized Berra Albertsson’s murderer was hiding inside one of the peas.

  Being a detective your whole life must do a number on you, I thought. Another thirty seconds passed.

  “How did the murderer know that Albertsson was going to be there?” I asked. “It seems odd. I’ve always wondered.”

  “There’s another possible scenario,” said Lindström. “Berra Albertsson could have been hit by a person who was in the car with him. Someone who might have been in the back seat, for example.”

  “Why?” I said. “Who would that have been?”

  “Good question,” Lindström said. “Regardless of who hit him, the motive is problematic.”

  “If it wasn’t Henry?”

  “Or Ewa Kaludis,” Lindström said.

  After giving this some thought, I asked: “How do you know that an unknown person was at Gennesaret that night?”

  Lindström hesitated.

  “An eye-witness account.”

  “An eye-witness account? And who the heck provided that?”

  “I can’t get into it,” Lindström said, with an apologetic shrug. “I’m sorry.”

  Surprised, I took him in for a second. “And the forensic evidence,” I asked. “Clues and murder weapons and whatnot, how did that turn out?”

  “Poorly,” said Lindström. “On all accounts. The rain destroyed all the evidence at the crime scene. We couldn’t even tell which of the cars had arrived first, your brother’s or Berra’s. Even if their positioning suggested that Henry had arrived earlier.”

  “And the weapon?”

  “It was never found,” Lindström stated. “No, it is what it is. As long as no one comes forward, Bertil Albertsson’s assailant will go free. In two months he’d be free in any case … but it would be a bonus to be able to write in my memoirs that the case is solved. And anyway I know who did it. That’s why I’m sitting here. Hmm.”

  He paused. Drank the last drop of wine and wiped his mouth. Collected himself before launching his final attack.

  “And you don’t have anything that might shed some light on the story? Something you held back or only remembered later?”

  “No,” I said. “I’ve thought about this for twenty-five years and I know as little today as I knew back then. A madman who committed a random murder, that’s where I’d put my money. Have you really exhausted that possibility?”

  Lindström didn’t answer.

  “Of course I would have turned to the police if I’d known anything,” I added.

  By now Lindström was starting to look resigned. I didn’t have much left of the respect I’d felt for him in the early sixties. A fourteen-year-old probably isn’t a great judge of character, even if my brother had complimented me about exactly this.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m very sorry, but it looks like this trip of yours to Gothenburg won’t be much of a success.”

  “Don’t say that,” said Lindström. “The food could have been worse and I’ve got another conversation on the schedule.”

  “Oh?” I said. “With whom?”

  He adjusted the Bronzol tube in his breast pocket and looked out the window.

  I never worked out if Verner Lindström really did have another subject to interview during his Gothenburg trip, but two months later the Bertil Albertsson case was statute-barred. It was September 1987, and only afterward did Ewa and I realize that on the night the statute of limitations ran out, we’d happened to have shared a lobster and a bottle of champagne.

  As if we’d known about the date and deemed it worthy of celebration, somehow.

  The real reason was that Karla had gone to visit her dad in Eslöv and for once we had the apartment on Palmstedtsgatan to ourselves.

  -

  24

  The years passed and things slipped into oblivion. Ewa Kaludis and I never had any children: we’d run out of time. She was forty-
seven when we reunited, and both of us thought it was too risky. Her daughter Karla lived with us until about 1990, when she went off to study something or other in Paris, met a dark, wavy-haired Frenchman, and stayed. The frequency of my own children’s visits increased at about the same rate as Ellinor’s ire dissipated, and my eldest son, Frans, lived with us for a few months one autumn during his first semester studying journalism.

  Even though Ewa’s periods stopped a few months after she turned fifty, our love life didn’t go through any corresponding changes. As far as I could tell, from discreet conversations I had with colleagues and others, we had an unusually robust sex life. No one could ever guess that there were ten years between us; I often have a hard time getting my head around it myself.

  I guess that’s how it is. Time leaves no mark on some, and on others you can count the years double or triple.

  The final chapter in the history of Gennesaret—or the Incident, as I liked to call it once upon a time—was written during the spring and summer of 1997.

  One day in early May, my ex-wife, Ellinor, informed me that Father Wester up in Ånge had suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized in Östersund. He was most likely on his deathbed, and because he still had Ellinor’s phone number from the visit twelve years prior, he’d called her asking to speak with me.

  Of course I wasn’t surprised to hear about Edmund’s heart attack, considering his enormous body, and I decided to travel up to Östersund as soon as possible.

  The opportunity arose a few days later, on Ascension Day, and I had four days off. I considered my travel options—plane, train, or automobile—and settled on taking the car. I set off early on Thursday morning and about ten hours later I took my place in a tubular steel chair by Edmund’s side.

  He hadn’t got any smaller since our last meeting; he lay beneath a yellow blanket like a stranded walrus, and a considerable number of tubes were stuck into his arms and legs, pumping nourishment through his tremendous body. His face was grayish purple, like a moldy plum, and it was hard to tell if he’d pull through.

  Whatever the case, he seemed relieved to see me.

  “So, tell me: how did things go with your father?” I said. “Your real one. Did you ever look him up?”

  Edmund gave a quick, strained smile.

  “Yes, I looked him up,” he said. “He was in a home outside Lycksele. Didn’t recognize me. I don’t think he remembered that he had a son—alcoholism and mismanaged diabetes. He died a few months after.”

  I nodded. Of course that’s how it would go. It was typical, somehow. Edmund seemed reluctant to talk about it; he had neither the desire nor the energy. There was a more pressing matter to attend to before it was too late.

  A little over half an hour into our conversation, he grew too weak to continue. When we were done Edmund looked as peaceful as only the dead and severely ailing can. One of the last things he said was:

  “It was still one helluva summer, Erik. In spite of the Incident, it was one helluva summer. I’ll never forget it.”

  “Neither will I,” I promised and patted him between two of the needles. “Not for as long as I live.”

  “Not for as long as I live,” Edmund repeated matter-of-factly.

  And then he fell asleep. I stayed a while and watched him, and suddenly I became aware that he was no longer in the hospital bed, but floating on his back in the lake at Gennesaret that sultry night after watching the pageantry of love through the window.

  And I wished dearly for him to remain there.

  I left with a sense of closure. Checked out of Hotel Zäta and headed south again. During the drive through the forests in Dalarna and Värmland, I decided to commit this whole story to paper. Write it down and try to get it the right way around. If what I read somewhere is true—that every person has a book inside of them—then mine would be the story of the murder of Berra Albertsson.

  But it wasn’t mine alone.

  I started on it as soon as we broke up for summer vacation, and at the end of June—the week after Midsummer—I took a research trip back to the landscape of my childhood. Ewa hummed and hawed for a long time about whether or not to join me, but in the end she decided to stay at home, because Karla had spontaneously and gleefully announced that she was thinking of coming for a visit with her Frenchman.

  I hadn’t set foot in the town on the plain since we’d moved away in the early sixties, and when the beautiful jasmine-scented summer night came rolling into my car as I drove along Stenevägen, I felt myself sinking down into the well of time.

  So much had changed, but even more was just the same as ever. The exterior of the house on Idrottsgatan had been renovated, but the colors were the same and in the kitchen window facing the street were two pelargoniums, just like there used to be. I parked the car, walked out through the stretch of woodland and found the cement pipe in the ditch.

  No one had touched it for thirty-five years. I had to crouch to fit, but never mind; I lit a cigarette, a Lucky Strike I’d bought at the railway station kiosk in Hallsberg. I shut my eyes and sat inside, smiling and close to tears.

  What is a life? I thought. What is a goddamn life?

  I thought about Benny and Benny’s mom; about Enok and Balthazar Lindblom and Edmund.

  About my mother and father.

  And Henry.

  About the day a thousand years ago that Ewa Kaludis came riding into Stava School on her red Puch. Kim Novak.

  And about my father’s words: We’re looking at a rough summer, boy. Let’s face it.

  My mother’s limp hair and dying eyes in the hospital. What is a life?

  The pattern of tiles in the bathroom. The tiny scars on Edmund’s feet, proof he’d once had twelve toes.

  Ewa Kaludis. Her warm, strong hands on my shoulders, and her naked body.

  She’s all I have left.

  All I have managed to keep, I thought, is Ewa’s beautiful body.

  It could have been worse.

  On the way out of town, I took Mossbanegatan south. Karlesson’s shop was where it always was, although the gum dispenser was no longer there. However, the business had been extended as a corner cafe; it was called Gullan’s Grill now and I didn’t feel like stopping.

  The Kleva hill was as steep as ever, even if it was less noticeable sitting in the comfort of the car. I could still identify the place where Edmund had lain down and vomited after his valiant effort to conquer it all in one go, and the road through the forest to Åsbro was the same down to every last bend. In the village itself they’d added a gas station, but overall it was as I remembered it. I stopped outside Laxman’s. I went in and bought a Ramlösa and an evening paper. The heavy-set woman at the till was in her fifties and had blooms of sweat under her arms, and there was nothing that spoke against her being Britt Laxman.

  A number of new summer houses had been built along Sjölyckevägen, but when I reentered the forest I still knew every twist and dip of the winding gravel path. The Levis’ house looked boarded up, but it had back then, too. I remembered the incantation as I drove past. Cancer-Treblinka-Love-Fuck-Death. I thought of Edmund’s real dad sitting at the edge of his bed and crying for himself and for his abused boy, and then the memories came flooding back, and I didn’t realize I’d arrived at the parking area until I was standing on it.

  The clearing seemed to have shrunk. Weeds and brushwood had encroached on its edges; maybe this was temporary but it seemed to be disused. I climbed out of the car and took in the start of both paths: the left down to the Lundins’ was nearly overgrown; the right to Gennesaret looked trodden on and used. After a moment’s hesitation I followed it down to the lake.

  Gennesaret was where it had been, too. The same warped little hovel, but repainted and with a new roof. A garden shed out on the lawn and white garden furniture instead of our old rickety brown set. An outdoor grill and a TV antenna.
/>   Nineties versus sixties. Forty-nine instead of fourteen.

  Both the door and the kitchen window were open, so I knew there was someone home. I didn’t want to have to explain my errand, so I stayed on the path. Looked at everything through a lens thirty-five years thick; both the outhouse and the old shed were still there, and—above all—the pontoon dock. I was startled by my lingering pride and before the tears started to fall, I turned on my heels and went right back up the path to the parking spot.

  I took the spade out of the trunk of the car, walked straight across the road, measured between the trees, and had no trouble finding the small mossy hollow.

  I drove the spade into the earth and dug out a few shovels’ worth. By the third dig, I hit the shaft. I wedged the blade underneath and soon I was standing there with the sledgehammer in my hands.

  It was lighter than I’d remembered, but less ravaged by time than anything else I’d seen that day. Otherwise it was exactly as I recalled. I gingerly brushed the shaft and the head clean. When the earth and muck were gone, it could just as well have been lying among the other tools in the shed all this time. It could even have been manufactured as recently as a few years ago.

  That is to say: If not for a brownish-black, dried-up blotch on one end of the sledgehammer’s head. It’s incredible how some things endure. Sink their teeth in and endure.

  I shunted the mounds of earth back into the hole and covered them with moss. Stuffed the sledgehammer in a black plastic bag. Tossed it into the footwell of the car on the passenger’s side and drove away.

  Two hours later I watched the bag sink to the bottom of a dark and muddy lake in the woods of Skara. The sun had started to set and the midges buzzed around my head, but I stood there a long while, eyes fixed on the place where the sledgehammer had broken through the water’s surface. When there was no trace of it left, I shrugged and started the journey back home to Gothenburg.

  A few days later Ewa and I were awake one night after making love. The window was propped wide open; it was one of those rare summer nights that only comes two or three times a year in Sweden. Music and laughter were spilling in from some sort of garden party the neighbors were having.