by Ian Giles
Was this crash involving no other cars actually a hit-and-run? It was difficult to condemn the theft itself, given the money had been stolen in the first place, but the cynicism and emotional coolness of robbing someone of six million kronor without being kind enough to call emergency services were indefensible.
But what could Kerstin do about it?
Nothing, as there was no physical evidence of anything except a single-vehicle incident. The theft of stolen goods couldn’t be reported without a long shadow falling on her, since she clearly was aware of and had likely intended to use the stolen money. That was likely to be a crime in itself—something that might put her behind bars, which was an inconceivable future prospect.
So Kerstin remained silent.
32
Jeanette
JUST AS SHE had feared, the days dragged while she awaited her reunion with Peter. During the daytime, she wandered around like a zombie, simply longing for the working day to be over despite the nights being even worse. She would lie there sleeplessly, tossing and turning, her guilty conscience taking a stranglehold on her and refusing to let go.
Six million kronor—was it really worth it? To slip along the walls like a shadow, the bags under her eyes growing darker and darker by the day, afraid of herself and what she was capable of, afraid of her potentially uncontrollable reactions if she were to bump into her forbidden love, her co-conspirator, at the shop or outside.
It wasn’t worth it. She knew now that it wasn’t worth six billion kronor either. If she were faced with the same choice again, if she were able to rewind the tape and experience that confounded afternoon again, she would act differently. She would be awkward, convince Peter that one of the consequences of deeply immoral acts was that you could no longer bear to live with yourself. She would summon the police and paramedics to the scene of the accident right away, and she wouldn’t even see the money.
The damage was already done—she had to adopt a constructive approach to what she had done. There was no shadow cast on Peter—he would have to take responsibility for his own decisions. She had to do something about her completely unsustainable situation.
But what?
She couldn’t very well go to the police. In that case, she would ruin not only her own but also Peter’s and their joint future. And it was for the sake of that future that she had made this sacrifice, as she now tended to regard the whole thing. Since the almost unbearable aftereffects had taken over her life.
She was basically unable to do anything. Her hands and feet were tied out of loyalty to Peter and the promises she had made to him. The relationship with Peter had given her new insights, new hope of a joyous life—even after Charlotte. She didn’t want to deprive herself of those future prospects, although she also wanted to vindicate her existence after the terrible thing she had done to another person. She had to compensate. She just couldn’t work out how.
The only thing that was currently bringing any light at all to her existence was the dreamy warmth of Peter’s embrace on the horizon. With his untroubled manner and his unshakable optimism, he would set her on a happier train of thought, suck the poison from her veins, and help her to forgive herself. All her hopes were invested in this, and that was something. But there still remained many days of suffering in solitude ahead.
Like when the article about the car accident appeared in the local paper. Anxiety dug its sharp claws into her, and this time it wasn’t just the increasingly familiar guilty conscience making its presence known. Something downright physical plunged her into a state of dizziness that almost tipped her off her chair. Her stomach was turning but, leaning on the kitchen counter, she was able to stagger to the sink to throw up the little food she had eaten.
He had been down there in the ravine for four days—four days trapped in a wrecked car, invisible to passersby under the thick blanket of snow. The article didn’t say whether death had been instant, but the whole thing was just awful. For his loved ones, it must have been four days of horrific torture, without any clue as to what had happened—whether he was alive and suffering or had already been torn away from them. And then, when it was over, the burden of the knowledge that a loved one had spent day after day in the cold and darkness without any chance of rescue. Even if he had perished immediately, it was shameful, inhuman for a dead person to spend days on end squashed inside a car covered in snow.
And Jeanette could have alleviated their suffering. Jeanette could have made life easier for his loved ones—in fact, she could have ensured he was saved. She had difficulty taking in the latter point; she didn’t want to believe it, couldn’t let herself believe it. But the thought was there, and she formulated the words, even if they wouldn’t take hold. The man was dead—beyond rescue. He must have been—that was her lifeline, because otherwise she didn’t want to live with herself any longer.
Then a few more days without any improvement, with even worse remorse. The loneliness was monumental, and she brushed up against the idea of suicide. She was exhausted, and her hopes of being able to climb out of this even with Peter’s help were fading away. And a future with Peter felt more and more remote as the days passed. She never saw him—was he still there? Or was he an unattainable dream that would never come true? A figment of her imagination that she could cling to until she went under?
One day she caught sight of the death notice in the newspaper. Unobtrusive but gripping, signed by just one person: his wife. The name of the victim wasn’t familiar to Jeanette, but she had been glancing through the deaths in all the local papers every day since the accident without finding anyone of the right age and with the right death day. But now she was convinced—it had to be him.
No children, no mourning parents or siblings, just a life partner. She could barely imagine what those four days of uncertainty had been like for her—for Kerstin, that was her name. Or what her life looked like now, as a recent widow in the middle of her life.
Jeanette would have liked to do something for her, to say sorry and perhaps somehow make good on what she had done. But the woman might very well go to the police, and regardless of how they classified the crime, Jeanette knew that they would both be in real trouble—she and Peter. The affair would get out, and everything would have been in vain.
She could at least have given the widow the money—anonymously. Left it outside the door, rung the bell and run away before Kerstin had time to open up. But Peter would never go along with it. She had no idea where he was keeping the cash, and she didn’t want to know—the thought of the money just got her worked up. And the widow probably knew nothing about the money. The kind of crime that earned millions of kronor was very much a man’s sport. She might simply have called the police, who would catch them, and no one would be any happier for that.
But there was something that Jeanette could do. Anonymously. She could give the widow the answers she needed to heal. Jeanette knew from experience that something people needed when they were grief-stricken was the knowledge of the hitherto unknown: concrete facts to hold fast to, to structure existence around.
The widow didn’t know how the accident had happened; she was living under the delusion that her husband had been careless and that his terrible fate had been self-inflicted. But there was a perpetrator responsible for his death: another motorist who had left the scene without checking what the fall-out had been or raising the alarm. When considering why, it was fair to assume that the underlying reasons, if not alcohol-related, were surely at least related to recklessness. In short, a negligent, selfish hit-and-run.
That was knowledge that Jeanette could impart to the grieving wife. The photographs she had taken at the scene of the accident were still saved on her mobile. In a gesture of respect, she had documented not just the crash site but also the other driver’s car. And the deceased’s upper body and face—but she didn’t think that was something that would make the widow feel any better.
So she printed three of the photos and put them in an envelope. T
hen she found out where the bereaved wife lived, addressed the letter accordingly, applied a stamp, and posted it. Without any other message—the pictures told their own story, and for that matter, who was Jeanette to moralise about others? The widow would have to interpret the pictures herself and do whatever she wanted with that information.
It wasn’t much, but in some small way, this unselfish act made Jeanette feel better. At least for the time being.
33
Jan
A FEW DAYS after he had seen Speedy Gonzales’s death notice in the local paper, a handwritten envelope dropped into the letter box. It was unusual, and might indicate some form of celebration was imminent. In other words, some stimulation. Something he really needed right now. That car accident had done something to Jan. He couldn’t shake off the melancholy that had descended on him.
He had a widow—the man in the oncoming vehicle. Jan had noted that with a lump in his throat. Knowing full well that it could easily have been his own death notice, with Gunilla and the kids listed as the bereaved persons. No, he was never going to put himself in that position again. He would have to consider it a lesson learned. Which didn’t change the fact that he felt glum, but simultaneously unable to do anything about it by himself. That was why he had a sliver of hope for diversion as he opened the envelope in the kitchen just before dinner time.
It wasn’t to be. It contained a key, but it didn’t say what it was for. Inside the envelope were three pretty grainy photographs that depicted something he was at first unable to comprehend. But before he had managed to take in the motif in the pictures, he was overcome by horror. Perhaps it was the light, the long shadows of the impending dusk, the ominous feeling of what were otherwise pretty clumsy compositions. It took just a couple of seconds for him to be right back there, at the scene of the accident.
He broke out into a cold sweat and had to sit down on a kitchen chair. Gunilla glanced over at him quizzically, but then resumed her dinner preparations. He hoped she hadn’t attached any importance to his reaction—at least she hadn’t commented on it.
Who the hell had taken these pictures? One of them showed the crashed car from an angle slightly above it. Another—taken from the same angle but closer up—showed the wreck, with the victim clearly visible. He hadn’t seen that before. He had tried to form an impression from up on the road, but it had been too dark, the angle too awkward, and the distance too far. At the time, he had been forced to face facts: the driver was dead. Had to be. But now this unfocused yet morbid photo of the dead man was being thrown in his face and it was shocking.
What was worse was that the third photograph was of his car. There was no question about it: it was his blue Audi parked above the wreck as he took in what had happened and considered how to respond to the situation. On the wrong side of the road, to top it all, which seemed more than ominous.
Inside the envelope there was also a handwritten note, which he now discovered. He mopped the sweat from his brow and tugged the small slip of paper out.
Leave six million kronor in locker number 67 at the ferry terminal in Visby. No later than 10th February at 12:00 p.m.
That was what it said, and it left him completely stunned. Six million kronor—where was he supposed to find that? He had ten days, which was fairly generous, but he wouldn’t be able to pull together six million in ten months. Not even once. Unless he was forced out of house and home and sold both the car and the SUV. And he couldn’t do that.
On the other hand, he couldn’t go to prison either. For that was surely what awaited him if this came to the attention of the police. That he had been at the scene of the accident before the snowfall—in direct connection with the accident itself. That he had been on the wrong side of the road just after the bend, which suggested—even if it didn’t prove it—that he had caused the tragedy. That he had been on the scene when the accident happened, but had failed to call an ambulance or tell the police. They would ask why this was, and dig up old receipts from his visits to the Lindgården Inn. And maybe even an old case about a rape nearby, if such a police report existed and had stumped the investigators.
Fucking hell! That was what he wanted to shout. But he didn’t, because Jan was a problem solver and the only one who kept his calm when everyone else was running around like a headless chicken. It had to be possible to get himself out of this tight corner. All it demanded was a little imagination and a dash of luck.
The question remained: who had taken those bloody photos?
Thanks to the impending heavy snow, there had been hardly any traffic out on the roads at the time of the accident—especially not on that country lane out in the wilds where there was probably never much traffic at any time. Was there someone other than the driver in the crashed vehicle? Someone who had been thrown clear of the car as it plunged downward, or had managed to climb the steep slope before Jan had been able to bring his own car to a halt and reverse?
Not likely. That person would have called emergency services, or at least the widow, and wouldn’t have left the body there like an icicle for four days.
Someone else must have been on the road without Jan noticing. That was entirely possible, given that he was fully occupied by his own problems and those of the victim. He hadn’t checked his rearview mirror. If the witness had approached on foot, Jan would also not have heard anything.
“Dinner in a minute!” Gunilla shouted to him as he got up and left the kitchen.
“Be right back,” he said, taking the photographs into the study.
He spread them out in front of him on the desk, switched on the desk lamp, and pulled the magnifying glass out of one of the drawers. He couldn’t stop himself from glancing at the deceased first—and it wasn’t a pretty sight. It really wasn’t, even though the picture was unfocused. A shudder passed through his body; he felt sick and he had to take several deep gulps.
He moved the lens to his own car and noted that he was not personally visible in the photo, but unfortunately his rear registration plate was perfectly clear. There was no mistaking that it was Jan’s car. But from what angle had the picture actually been taken? Not directly from behind, which would have been the case if the photographer had approached from the same bend in the road as he had. No, slightly diagonally to the right, as if the witness was peering out of the woods on the ravine side.
Wasn’t there some nondescript track leading off there for forestry workers and the like? Now it occurred to him. One of those roads that was nothing more than two tire tracks with weeds in between them? Yes, he was pretty certain. And not only that—out of the mists of his memories of that unfortunate afternoon, a memory of the journey in the opposite direction emerged. A very hasty reflection of his made on the way home with the girl with all her bargain buys from the sales. She had been gritting her teeth for the last few kilometres—clearly anxious, he had noted with mild amusement, given there was nothing to worry about. That meant he had been concentrating more on driving and her reactions than on what had been rushing by on the side of the road. But just up there in the woods on the small track he had seen something fleetingly. He had noticed a car among the bare trees and wondered whether they had engine trouble or something. Something he would most respectfully not have given a shit about, given he had recognised the yellow car and its decal as belonging to a guy in the same hunting club as him. Norling was his name, and he was a self-righteous idiot. Jan couldn’t have cared less about any problems that guy might have.
How much time had he spent at the house of the whisky girl—half an hour, perhaps? If Norling had run out of petrol and had been waiting for help, he might very well still have been in the car when the accident happened.
In all likelihood, that bastard was behind the blackmail attempt. Was he in dire straits financially? Six million wasn’t exactly chicken feed, but was pretty much exactly what Jan could scrape together if he sold everything he owned.
Which he had no intention of doing. This would have to be solved by other mea
ns, he thought to himself as he put the photographs back in the envelope. He heard steps behind him and turned to face his wife with a forced smile.
“Just coming, darling,” he said, shutting the unpleasant correspondence in his desk drawer.
34
Jeanette
SHE WAS STANDING waiting, amid concrete, corrugated metal, cars covered in the grime of winter roads and wet asphalt. In the rain and wind and February chill, still expectant. The weeks of eternity without Peter were finally over.
Jeanette had received a text message from an untraceable number. Maybe he had a secret number, or maybe he’d picked up a burner. The message was crystal clear: he was heading south and would pick her up outside the Bilcity store, just before the roundabout leading onto Toftavägen. On the day exactly two weeks after the accident.
Jeanette interpreted this to mean that he felt the same eagerness she did. During this difficult time, she had been worrying, among so many other things, that he would delay the whole thing. That he would extend the waiting period by several weeks—maybe even months—just to be on the safe side. And that in the meantime, interest on his part would cool off. That she would eventually give up before they had a chance to talk.
When she had received the message, there had been four days left till the meeting. Four never-endingly long days going through the now-familiar torments: sleeplessness and feeling like she was sleepwalking, shame, guilt, anaemia, nervousness, lost appetite, and basically the loss of her will to live. However, the assurance that Peter would be taking care of her in just a few days’ time had helped her to get back on an even keel—it was a light in the pitch darkness. The assurance that he would touch her.
