Behind Blue Eyes

by C S Duffy

  She would hate that, Johan thought dully. Liv wasn’t a neat freak like him, but she didn’t like other people touching her stuff. She used to say it came from being the eldest of five, that she had had a lifetime of younger siblings’ grubby fingers ruining her precious things and she wasn’t putting up with it as an adult. Johan felt a dry sob shudder through him. Her parents and siblings. Someone must have contacted them, but he should talk to them. They would need to hear from him.

  He was hunched over, one arm wrapped around his waist as though physically holding himself together. The hollow feeling wasn’t even there. There was nothing. Johan looked in surprise at the cup of coffee he was holding. He took a sip. It was cold and bitter and his hand was trembling.

  There was a uniformed officer, a young guy with a shaved head, watching him intently as though trying to decipher something. Guarding him? Did a person who had just lost their best friend drink coffee? Johan wondered. Should he be doing something deeper, more impassioned. Howling, screaming, singing a lament of abject grief.

  Just try not to be sad.

  What should I do? The plea rattled around his head. Tell me how I am supposed to be.

  He took another sip of the rancid coffee, grimaced and put it down on the stair. He leaned against the landing, feeling the wall cool against his temple as he stared blindly at the floor. He could hear rasping, gurgling, uneven breathing coming from somewhere, and after a moment he realised it was him.

  Liv.

  Somewhere, in some distant place, memories were playing incessantly, like on an old fashioned projector, flickering through his mind. The first time he saw her, she had been giving a speech to the school about the need to save dolphins from the tuna fishing industry. She’d been so forceful, so passionate, so certain of herself and her convictions. Johan had been dazzled, in awe of her for years.

  The night they kissed at Lasse Beckman’s party. He’d reached out to stroke her hair and she had moved at the last second so he accidentally brushed her breast. He had been mortified, stuttering terrified apologies, swearing he hadn’t meant it. She’d laughed and said he could touch it if he wanted to and Johan had been fairly sure what he felt in that moment was the pinacle of human happiness.

  The day they moved into their first apartment when he’d tried to carry her over the threshold then tripped and they’d both gone flying, collapsing in the hallway in a fit of giggles.

  Liv. Liv was dead. However hard he tried, he couldn’t get the words to mean anything.

  Two plain clothed officers, a dark haired woman and a man with salt and pepper hair stood in Liv’s doorway talking in low voices. Johan recognised them. The detectives. They had come to the island, when Ellie found Sanna’s body.

  And today. He had met them at the police station. Was that just today? When he and Maddie reported Ellie missing.

  Ellie was missing.

  The detectives had questioned Ellie. Last week. And now they were here.

  ‘Liv! What’s happening — let me through — I’m her best friend — Liv!’

  The young officer darted forward to stop Mia as she screamed, flung herself towards Liv’s door, snatching at the crime scene tape blocking her way.

  ‘Nej nej nej nej —’ Mia’s howls echoed around the walls. She fought the young officer, elbowing him in the chest, kicking at his shins, screeching Liv’s name over and over.

  ‘Please, please calm down.’ Johan heard the young officer’s low, gentle voice as he held Mia tightly. ‘Just breathe for a moment. Breathe with me, slowly.’

  After a moment Mia’s wails softened into ragged, gasping sobs.

  That’s how you do it, thought Johan dully. That’s how I am supposed to be. But still he felt only the abyss.

  ‘It’s not true,’ Mia muttered. ‘It’s not true.’

  ‘Just keep breathing,’ the officer said.

  ‘Not her. Not Liv. Please not Liv.’

  Please not Liv, thought Johan.

  ‘Where is Ellie?’ Mia demanded suddenly. Her eyes flew open and she stared accusingly at Johan. ‘Where is Ellie?’

  Johan opened his mouth to say that he didn’t know, and Mia’s face crumpled.

  ‘No — no, it’s not true — it can’t be true. Where is she Johan? What did she do? What did you let her do?’

  43

  It was the end of winter, around Easter time. Filthy snow was piled everywhere and the slush of melting ice was ankle deep on the pavements. The stink of a whole winter’s worth of dog piss now released by the thaw was everywhere, and I wrapped my scarf over my nose as I splashed through puddles.

  I wasn’t going anywhere in particular. It was too dark and cold to do anything but wander around and see what there was to see. My parents hadn’t even noticed I when I slipped out. They were so engrossed in some stupid game show that they didn’t even look up when I walked past them in full outdoor gear and closed our apartment door behind me.

  Walking around the city by night was my favourite thing to do. Once, I even crossed Slussen into Gamla Stan, but the narrow little alleyways and crooked buildings that looked as though witches might reach out the windows and grab children frightened me, so I had scuttled back through the underpass. Some older kids — almost adults, but not quite, had been hanging about outside that night club and they shouted to me, told me I was too young to be out alone at this time. I ignored them and kept running until I reached Götgatan.

  It wasn’t until I drowned the cat that I felt better.

  It was easy. I walked all the way along Götgatan to the very end, and then to the canal. It had been frozen for some of winter and people had skated on it, but now the ice was all broken up and floating about in chunks.

  I didn’t have to wait very long until a cat came along. It might have been a stray or an adventurous pet, I don’t know. It was friendly, so it was probably used to people. It let me pick it up and it didn’t even yowl until it was mid air, right before it plunged into the water. The stupid thing didn’t realise what was happening when I first threw it.

  It was just a few nights later that I was hanging about Björnsträdgården, watching some drunk idiots play on a broken guitar, when I spotted someone who looked familiar. At first, I thought he was one of the usual drunks, but he looked a little bit more smartly dressed. H clearly had a home to go to, where there was a shower and a change of clothes. Interesting.

  Then I realised he wasn’t just familiar, I actually knew him. I had seen him at my school before. He was the father of one of the kids in my class. That quiet boy who hadn’t known how to tie shoelaces on our first day, and spent most recesses playing football alone. I was intrigued. My own parents never touched alcohol, it hadn’t occurred to me that other parents might. I was curious, so I followed him.

  He went into a pub on Tjärhovsgatan which was quite boring because I couldn’t even see him. I waited a few moments, then I was just about to give up and find something more interesting, when he staggered out again, around the corner towards Folkungagatan. He tried to get into one of the pubs there, but there was a man at the door who pushed him back. They shouted a little, the father of the quiet boy getting quite red faced and angry, but the other man held firm and eventually he walked on.

  When he got to Götgatan, he crossed the road and started to wander towards the entrance of the new tunnel. I had been in the tunnel, in a car with my parents, but I had no idea people could walk in it. I was excited. I could hear the strange, echoing zooms of cars zipping by. There weren’t many at that time of night, but it was a thrilling sound.

  The sidewalk stopped, because maybe people weren’t supposed to walk in there, and the man hesitated as though he had decided it was a bad idea. I was disappointed. To have come so close for him just to turn away like a grown up. It made me angry. It made me hate him.

  Then I thought of something. I bet if I ran down there, he would follow. He was a grown up, a parent, even. That was the sort of thing they did.

  He was already backing aw
ay. There wasn’t much time. I started to run, heard his shout echo in my ear as I raced past him. I risked a glance behind me. To my joy he was chasing me, but he was lumbering and confused, lurching this way and that as I zipped back and forth, keeping just out his grasp.

  He never saw the van coming, but I did. My heart began to beat faster with excitement. I knew what was going to happen. And then it happened.

  The horn and the screech of tires were exciting, the roar of the engine bouncing all around the tunnel as the van sped away was interesting. But I was disappointed by the thud the man’s body made when it slammed onto the tarmac. It wasn’t really anything. I thought it would be much louder, that I would be able to hear bones breaking and things.

  I crept closer. There was a lot of blood around him, and his breathing sounded strange and gurgly, but he opened his eyes.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said. His voice sounded like when I blew milk bubbles through a straw and my mother shouted at me. ‘It’s okay. I’ll be okay. I just need you to go and shout for help, okay? A policeman if you can find one, but any adult. Just go and shout as loud as you can.’

  I frowned. Why would I do that? Adults ruined fun things.

  ‘I know you, don’t I? You go to the same school as my Johan. You’re his friend, aren’t you?’

  I didn’t understand why everyone kept talking to me about friends. Why don’t you have any friends? You should make friends. Try not to worry about not having friends. I didn’t even know what a friend was. Why would I want one?

  And now this man was telling me that the boy who couldn’t tie shoelaces was my friend. Maybe that was interesting. At least I knew what to say the next time my mother cried about me not having friends.

  I got bored then, and walked away. I could hear the man’s voice behind me as I ran back up the little road that led back out into the air. ‘That’s it. Well done. Just shout for any adult. You’re doing a great job!’

  When the boy Johan came back to school a few weeks later, I asked him why he was so sad and he told me that his father had died.

  ‘Why does that make you sad?’

  ‘I don’t know. It just does.’

  ‘Well you should just not be sad.’

  ‘I will try.’

  ‘Do you want to play? Do you know about Pokéman?’

  He nodded and we started to play and my mother never cried about my lack of friends again.

  Little did I know then how important the man in the tunnel really was.

  Many, many years later, it was Johan who mentioned he was working on a clinical trial for a new heart medication. I knew immediately that it was too close to my special ingredient, that if the drug was approved it would begin to show up in tests. I went to surprise Johan at work.

  He looked pale and drawn, as though drained of blood. Was he ill? Oh yes — her. Sanna. He was sad again.

  ‘Let me take you to lunch.’

  ‘I’m not really in the mood.’

  ‘Hey. You should try not to be sad.’

  He smiled, a strange, haunted smile. ‘I will try.’

  ‘Come on. My treat.’

  He nodded distractedly and when we were in the corridor I pretended I’d left my phone in the office. It didn’t take me two seconds to alter a couple of results. Barely noticeable, just enough to throw the trial into question and put the drug back years.

  When they accused Johan he didn’t even remember I’d been there that day.

  44

  The sky was as dark as night as the ferry lurched violently from side to side. I’d long given up on pretending I was okay. I sat in the centre aisle, bent double, my nose pressed into my knees, frantically counting to ten backwards and forwards and moaning whenever the wind shrieked.

  It was safe, I told myself, over and over. It had to be. They wouldn’t keep going if it wasn’t.

  A fresh gust of rain battered against the windows and the engine juddered as though something was trapped in it. Terror churned in my guts and I wanted to cry. An older couple were playing cards at the booth next to me, laughing heartily as though we weren’t being tossed about like an empty coke can.

  I knew there was a storm coming. I’d seen it gathering when I talked to Mia. I shouldn’t have run for the last ferry, I should have waited until morning.

  Morning would have been too late.

  The captain made an announcement over the loudspeaker, for all I knew, telling us all we were about to die. That said, we seemed to be rocking ever so slightly less, enough that I forced myself to uncurl to a sitting position and looked around. It was too dark to see much outside, but the rain rattling against the window sounded lighter. Every other passenger was happily going about their business. Playing cards, reading, amusing sleepy children.

  My hands were shaking, pins and needles nipping at my fingers and my heart seemed determined to break free of my rib cage. We had to be nearly there. It couldn’t be much longer.

  I closed my eyes and thought of Johan. The last time we were on this ferry, he’d thought I’d dropped off, had absentmindedly played with my hair while he watched football on his phone. I remembered feeling his breath warm on my hair when he kissed the top of my head, even though he thought I was fast asleep. I’d felt safe.

  The ferry pulled up at the little jetty and I staggered off on shaking legs. It was almost full dark, and a light rain splattered the now mercifully still sea. The moon came out from behind a cloud and I spotted Krister’s boat tied to a post.

  45

  Something was screaming in Johan’s head and he couldn’t figure it out. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. Of course it was — Liv was dead. But it wasn’t that. Johan saw his hand move and for a second he was surprised it was still there. He felt so detached from everything, even himself. He didn’t know if he was hot or cold or hungry or full.

  He just knew that everything was wrong.

  ‘Some jealousy is natural of course, but —’ Mia hesitated, glanced over at him with regret in her eyes. She reached over to touch Johan’s arm, but he didn’t move. ‘I’m so sorry, I hate saying this, but I don’t think Ellie’s behaviour has been normal.’

  ‘Can you be more specific?’ The female detective, Nadja, leaned forward, her pen poised. The odd thought flickered across Johan’s mind that she didn’t seem to like Mia, but that didn’t make sense. Henrik, the other detective, was sitting back in his seat, watching the exchange.

  They were in the coffee shop below Liv’s apartment building. Police cars lined the street outside, crime scene tape blocked off the entrance to the building. Irritated pedestrians were stepping into the street to pass without crossing the road, and Johan could just see a woman he recognised as Liv’s neighbour argue with the tall police officer guarding the door.

  ‘Ellie came to Sanna’s funeral, though of course she didn’t know her. They had never even met. She claimed that it was out of respect, because she was the one who found the body, but then she wouldn’t stop asking questions, about who everyone was, how well they knew Sanna. It felt like more than just curiosity, but I couldn’t understand it. Then she started asking about Johan and Sanna, whether they were happy, why they split up.’

  ‘What did you tell her?’ Henrik asked.

  Mia shrugged. ‘I said I didn’t really know. That’s not the sort of thing Johan and I talk about it. And Krister wouldn’t break his confidence, not even to me.’

  ‘Was Ellie satisfied with this response?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Mia said with a sigh. ‘I’ve been hearing for weeks how she has been going around all of our friends asking neverending questions. I’ve tried to reassure people as much as I can, but to be honest, they are finding her disturbing.’

  ‘Could you write down the names of these other friends she spoke to?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Linda Andersson was one, and of course you know about Gustav Lindström. I was there with her that night. I saw the way she stared at him in the bar. She must have approached him when I
left her.’

  Mia’s words pierced through the fog cloaking Johan’s mind. ‘No, wait — you and Ellie had a drink together? When was this?’ He couldn’t quite grasp what Mia was saying. Something about Ellie talking to his friends. What was wrong with that? Nothing made sense in a world without Liv.

  ‘I’m sorry Johan, I hate having to tell you this, but I can’t protect her any more, when —’

  A sob overcame Mia and her face crumpled. Johan automatically reached out and put his arm around her. The detectives waited until Mia had composed herself.

  ‘Ellie told Johan that she was meeting some friends from her newcomers to Sweden club,’ she said finally, in a low voice, ‘but instead she met me, at Ugglan. I thought she wanted to talk to me, just to get to know me better, or maybe talk about Johan, the usual stuff, you know — but it became clear it was only a cover for her to watch Gustav. After I read about his death I noticed that he had accepted a new friend the day he died. Look —’ She handed her phone to Nadja. ‘She looks very different, but I’m sure that is Ellie.’

  The two detectives glanced at Mia’s phone then exchanged a look. ‘Why do you think she might have set up a fake account to connect with Gustav Lindström?’ Nadja asked.

  ‘She was obsessed with your past, Johan. It was frightening. We all get a little bit curious about our partner’s previous life, but Ellie has taken it so much further — do you know she visited our old school?’

  ‘Our school? Why?’

  ‘She had a meeting with Josefin Beckmann.’

  Johan stared at her, trying to make sense of what she was saying. Ellie had met his high school history teacher?

  ‘Johan, I think you have suspected—’ Mia reached out, covered his hand with hers.

  Johan shook his head, pulled his hand away. ‘No — of course, I —’

  ‘Why else did you not tell her the truth about you and Liv? I know it’s difficult, but I think you know, deep down.’

  ‘I — I was just worried —’

  ‘You were worried she would go crazy,’ Mia said gently. ‘You knew she wouldn’t be able to handle it.’