The Last Lullaby

by Carin Gerhardsen

  ‘I’ll call Hadar and describe the situation, and inform Kaj Zetterström about the autopsy and Bella about the crime scene investigation. Your reports can wait until Monday. Have a nice weekend.’

  The gathering of cars and people dispersed. The Tantolunden allotment garden area was once again empty and deserted. The only evidence of the drama that had just played out in the little idyll was the tracks in the snow, but soon they too would be gone. After its late entrance, the sun had already disappeared behind the small cottages and darkness fell quickly.

  Friday Evening

  After watching Mikael Rydin’s repugnant video on the TV in the conference room together, Sandén and Sjöberg sat for a long time staring at the flickering screen. Neither of them could think of any way to start the conversation that was now unavoidable. Finally Sandén went over and turned the TV off.

  ‘The video is evidence,’ he said. ‘It has to be archived.’

  ‘What do you think Einar would have thought about us seeing it?’

  The question was actually directed mostly at himself, but he did not know what to think. Sandén hesitated a little before answering as he sat down again.

  ‘It was good to get to see Einar as the person he really was,’ he replied thoughtfully. ‘And I don’t mean the degradation or the circumstances, I mean the person behind all that. And behind the bitterness, which was all we got to see here at work. We got explanations for a few things, but above all he suddenly became a real human being, with memories and dreams and feelings. Despite the fact that so often during this … confession, or whatever you want to call it, he described himself in negative terms, I think he seems to have been a … pretty amazing human being. Damn it, there’s a lot of shit I regret!’

  His voice broke and for the first time in their lives Sjöberg saw Sandén cry. He himself had had his handkerchief out during the almost hour-long viewing.

  ‘If I hadn’t asked you to wait for me, you would have got there in time,’ Sjöberg said in distress.

  ‘We’ll never know that,’ said Sandén. ‘In any event I don’t think that would have made it better. He didn’t want to go on. What happened was for the best. What was there left for Einar to live for?’

  ‘You can’t think that way,’ Sjöberg objected. ‘He was dehydrated. Physically and mentally broken down. How can we know how he would have felt after a few months? With the right care. And support from those around him, from us, for example.’

  ‘But didn’t you see the joy in his revelation there on the floor? Even though he was lying there half broken, he told his story with a drive, a kind of motivation that I had never seen in Einar before. He seemed … happy. And I’ve both seen and heard that you get like that once you’ve made the decision. He had already decided, Conny. There was nothing we could have done to change that. And to answer your question: I think that Einar both wanted and knew that we would see that video. It was his suicide note. Besides, it contains so much evidence and so many motives that the trial of Mikael Rydin is going to run itself.’

  ‘And how much fun do you think that man’s life has been so far? Unwanted, even in the womb. Born as replacement for something irreplaceable.’

  ‘Most of us wouldn’t execute innocent people right and left for that,’ Sandén pointed out.

  ‘We’ll have to see what he says,’ said Sjöberg, getting up.

  Mikael Rydin looked tired now more than anything else. The mask of self-control he had worn at the arrest was gone. Despite his impressive muscle mass he looked small, sitting alone in handcuffs on the other side of the table during the initial questioning. The two police officers studied him for a while in silence before Sjöberg started to speak.

  ‘Mikael Rydin.’

  Dully Rydin met his gaze. At a guess, the presumed Rohypnol had stopped working. He no longer seemed to consider himself invincible.

  ‘Son of Ingegärd Rydin and Christer Larsson.’

  Rydin suddenly looked panic-stricken. Sandén could not help smiling a little.

  ‘Didn’t Mum tell you?’ he asked in a silken voice.

  Mikael Rydin stared somewhere between them without answering. Sjöberg retook command.

  ‘I saw Ingegärd this morning. She confirmed what I had already worked out with a little simple maths. She probably didn’t hop into bed with a strange man so soon after losing her two boys. They probably tried to stay together for a few difficult months after the accident, but for understandable reasons it didn’t work out. You were conceived during that time, Mikael.’

  ‘And now you’ve slaughtered your little siblings and their mother,’ Sandén continued. ‘You have nearly battered to death and in the end drove to suicide the person who cared for them and helped them have a good life in this country. You have sent your own father to hospital, possibly with incurable brain damage.’

  ‘I just wanted to avenge my brothers. For Mother’s sake. All the rest … I don’t know about.’

  Gone now was the fury that must have driven the young man. He looked fearfully at Sandén and nervously pulled on his fingers until the knuckles cracked.

  ‘Do you think that Einar and his wife intentionally let your brothers die?’ asked Sjöberg without expecting any response. ‘It was an accident. It was not even negligence, it was sheer bad luck. And do you know who managed best after the catastrophe at the Arboga River? Your mother. She is the only one who managed to live a life after this accident without overwhelming guilt and serious mental harm. Something that you, Mikael, will never get to experience. Because what you’ve done, you have done with the intention of killing and injuring. That’s quite a different thing. However angry and embittered you are, and however much revenge you take, you can’t change what has already happened. And you don’t shake off that guilt easily.’

  ‘I had no fucking idea –’

  ‘You should do your research properly, Mikael,’ said Sandén condescendingly. ‘That’s job number one. But you have a real knack with the hunting knife, I must say. Where do you keep it?’

  ‘In the cottage,’ he answered.

  ‘In Tantolunden?’

  He nodded dejectedly in response.

  ‘That was a nice video you made,’ Sandén continued. ‘When they let you out of prison in about twenty years perhaps that’s what you should take up. But of course, if you’re sent to a secure psychiatric unit, you’ll probably never get out.’

  Mikael Rydin looked at his hands without saying anything.

  Sjöberg suddenly felt that they had nothing to talk about with this man right now. What they were doing was just persecution, exacting revenge for Einar Eriksson and for the Larsson family. What they were doing right now was to carefully make sure that Mikael Rydin would not leave that room without feeling guilt. And suddenly he was convinced that Einar would have wanted to spare him that.

  This entire case had been about guilt, age-old guilt, and that was also what a lot of other things in Sjöberg’s life were about right now. But Einar, who had lived most of his life with a guilt that knew no bounds, would not have wanted his worst enemy to go through the same. Vehemently Sjöberg shoved his chair back and stood up. Sandén looked at him with surprise, but seeing the determination in his superior’s posture he realized that it was best to do the same.

  ‘We’ll break off here,’ said Sjöberg, already on his way towards the door.

  Sandén followed obediently, without really understanding why. Just as they were about to leave the room they suddenly heard Mikael Rydin’s voice behind them.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he said quietly, but Sandén was not in the mood.

  ‘Soon there will be no one left who can forgive you,’ he answered in an ice-cold voice. ‘You’ve killed them all. Mum doesn’t have much time left and your old man … well, it’s doubtful that he’ll recover. And if he does, maybe he won’t be that eager to hang out with you. But chew that over, my friend.’

  By the time he had finished speaking Sjöberg was already far away down the corridor.


  * * *

  It was with some surprise that Eivor Sjöberg let her son in so late on a Friday evening.

  ‘What in the world do you want, Conny? It’s past nine o’clock.’

  He gave her a hug and a quick peck on the cheek.

  ‘We need to talk, Mother. And I don’t intend to leave until you’ve told me what I want to hear.’

  ‘Oh dear, that sounds serious,’ she said with an innocent little smile, even though Sjöberg was sure she knew what he wanted to talk about. ‘Do you want coffee?’

  Actually he would have preferred a whisky, but because he would be driving he said yes to the offer. He sat down on a chair at the kitchen table and hung his jacket over the back. While she busied herself making the coffee with her back to him he told her about his visit to his grandmother. When he mentioned her he noticed his mother stiffen at the counter.

  ‘She was openly hostile,’ said Sjöberg. ‘I only stayed for a short while; it was almost unbearable. I managed to get out of her what I wanted to know anyway. But I think that both you and I would feel better if you, who was there, told me your version.’

  His mother rattled the china as if to drown out her thoughts, to defend herself against the unavoidable.

  ‘First, Mother, I want to say that I think you have been an amazing parent. And you still are. I admire your courage and your persistence. You gave me a very good upbringing and raised me to be a useful and well-balanced person. I’m not accusing you of anything; that’s not what this is about. And I understand what you’ve gone through. Only now do I understand what you’ve gone through. I’ll say it again: I truly think you are an admirable person. I also realize why you haven’t told me anything about this before. It was your way of getting through all the difficult things, and you did what you thought was best for me. But now I need to know, Mother. You have to tell me. The whole story about the awful tragedy that happened that night and what happened later.’

  His mother’s movements had stopped, but she still stood with her back to him. He wondered whether she was crying. He could not remember ever having seen her cry. The coffeemaker emitted a bubbling sound and the comforting smell of coffee permeated the kitchen.

  ‘Come and sit down now, Mother,’ Sjöberg said amiably.

  ‘The coffee is almost ready.’

  ‘Would you like a glass of liqueur with your coffee?’

  ‘No, I really shouldn’t …’

  This was the closest to a yes his mother could get in answer to that type of question, so Sjöberg got up and took down a bottle of orange liqueur he himself had bought on some previous occasion from the cupboard above the fridge. He fetched a liqueur glass from the cabinet in the living room.

  When he sat down at the table again he poured the glass almost full and waited in silence until the coffee was ready at last. His mother served them each a cup and finally sat down across from him at the kitchen table. He set the glass in front of her and carefully sipped the hot coffee.

  ‘Would you like a sandwich?’ she said suddenly, but Sjöberg did not intend to let her off the hook any longer.

  ‘Tell me now, Mother. I know how tough you think it will be and it’s hard for me too, but I’m here with you.’

  He placed his hand over hers and she made no effort to pull it away.

  ‘Tell me about Alice,’ he said gently, looking her right in the eyes.

  This time she did not turn her gaze away and he saw the tears welling up in her eyes. He took hold of her hand more firmly.

  ‘I can’t talk about Alice,’ she said slowly.

  ‘You have to, Mother. I want to get to know my sister.’

  His mother took a deep breath and then it burst. The tears ran down her furrowed cheeks and for the first time she let go of what had held her up for so many years – the silence. Sjöberg could not hold back the tears either during his mother’s story, which struck a familiar chord inside him.

  During the hours that followed they cried together and hugged, while they made their way through the troublesome journey that would come to summarize his mother’s entire adult life and Sjöberg’s childhood. She told him about an August night in 1961 when Eivor Sjöberg was woken in the middle of the night by the strong smell of smoke and unmistakable heat in the bedroom on the top floor. Beside her in the bed was her husband, Christian, and she screamed and shook him, but he would not wake up. She tried to pull him up, but he was unresponsive and very heavy.

  ‘Alice!’ she screamed, but her daughter, almost six years old, who was lying furthest away from her, closest to the window, would not wake up either.

  She rushed up to Alice and shook her. Her curly red hair was spread out like a fan around her small freckled face. The girl twisted in bed and opened her eyes.

  ‘Alice!’ she screamed again. ‘There’s a fire! You have to run down to the yard! I’ll take your little brother!’

  From the ground floor the sound of exploding windowpanes was heard. She rushed back over to the double bed, and using all her strength she managed to prise her husband’s heavy body on to the floor. Then he finally woke up and grunted something incoherent as he raised himself to a sitting position.

  ‘There’s a fire, Christian!’ she yelled, as she tore the blanket off the little boy who was sleeping soundly on a mattress on the floor and picked him up in her arms. ‘Take Alice and get down to the yard!’

  Before she left the room she turned towards her daughter, who had closed her eyes again and rolled over on to her side. But Christian was panting and swearing on his way over to her, crawling on all fours.

  ‘Alice!’ she howled again and again, unable to decide what would be the best thing to do, but rather than not do anything at all she made her way down the stairs with her son in her arms.

  The lowest part of the stairs, like the entire lower floor, was already on fire, and the flames were licking the dry beams in the ceiling. It could only be a matter of minutes before the fire spread to the top floor. She ran out into the farmyard and set the boy, who had been woken by the noise, down at a safe distance from the burning building. Then she ran back to the house, but the sheet of flames she encountered now was impenetrable. She would have been burned in a few seconds if she had tried to run through the fire in her nightgown with her hair loose. From the door she could see the burning stairs, and there was no chance she could make her way up them and then down again. Instead she screamed her husband’s and her daughter’s names again and again, rushed back out to the yard and stood where she could see the bedroom window.

  ‘Alice! Christian!’ she bellowed at the top of her lungs, and then looked around on the ground for something she could throw at the window.

  She found a log that she heaved up towards the window, which smashed to pieces.

  ‘Alice!’ she screamed again. ‘You have to jump through the window! I’ll catch you. Alice! Alice!’

  A few steps behind her stood the boy, witnessing in silence his mother’s impotent struggle against time and fire. And suddenly the little girl actually appeared in the window. Alice was stumbling around behind the broken window and now their eyes met. With a look almost of surprise on her face she looked from her mother to her brother and the scream that was forced up from her mother’s throat cut through the air like a knife, her scream at the sight of her daughter’s hair suddenly flaring up and the fire standing like broom bristles around her startled face. A face that was twisted in torment before she fell back and disappeared from view, out of their lives and out of her little brother’s memory.

  The mother took the boy and ran. Their nearest neighbours lived several hundred metres away, but she ran. She ran like she had never run before, with her child in her arms and with bare feet in the darkness on the gravel road. At last she got there and the news spread from house to house that the Sjöbergs’ cottage was in flames, and everyone who could went there and helped try to put out the fire. The girl was beyond all help, but the husband, the father, they found lying on the floor
and managed to get him out to the farmyard before it was too late.

  Eventually, after he had been transported to the big hospital in the capital, he regained consciousness, but with the horrific burns he had incurred it would have been better if he had died. Eivor Sjöberg never let her son see the unrecognizable remnants of his father while he was still alive, and she did not let him attend the funeral either.

  The loss of her daughter was too much for Eivor to even mention during the difficult months that followed, with her husband in hospital and her in-laws on the warpath. They could never reconcile themselves to the fact that she had managed to save herself but not her husband – their son. And they were never able to accept her reasoning when she rushed down to the yard without first making sure that everyone in the family was on their feet. They did not leave her in peace with her sorrow until she escaped out of their sight, away from the countryside where she had grown up, taking the painful little likeness of their beloved son with her.

  Naturally enough she ended up in Stockholm, where Christian was being treated, and that was the beginning of the life Sjöberg remembered as his childhood. What had brought them there was never spoken of, and what was there really that could have been said?

  But many tears, many cups of coffee and many glasses of liqueur later Sjöberg had a feeling that together he and his mother now had a new, better future ahead of them.

  * * *

  It all felt unreal. Hamad was sitting on the red line of the metro and did not recognize himself. It was as if he was observing himself from outside. He was not in his body, not part of the grey crowd around him either. Hovering above, outside. Nothing hurt, nothing had any significance. He leaned back in the seat with his legs outstretched, with no consideration for the other passengers who were sitting packed together. He said to hell with everything and everyone, taking a much-needed momentary holiday from sense and etiquette.

  At Telefonplan he got off the train and was brought back to reality by the chilly evening air. The image of Einar’s body just cut down from the ceiling beam came to him again, and with it also came the bad conscience. Weak sense of self, he thought. And then, Peer pressure. Which he immediately rejected as an evasion. He himself bore complete responsibility for his own actions and the way he had treated Einar Eriksson. Likewise his blinkered attitude during the whole investigation.