The Last Lullaby

by Carin Gerhardsen

  Instead of following the streets over to Tvingvägen, where Petra lived, he took a short cut in the dark across the deserted athletics field. An idiotic choice for a solitary walker, but he didn’t care. Whatever might conceivably happen he would deserve it. Or would he? After all, he had done a few things right. He was the one who had discovered Einar’s involvement in the case. And where Petra and Jenny and those videos were concerned, then … Well, perhaps he was not a completely awful person.

  He quickened his pace and was soon back in the glow of the street lights, on Klensmedsvägen. Now he had to pull himself together a little; he could not descend on Petra unannounced after such a long time and be totally depressed himself. He should support her after this terrible day, and after what had happened that Friday evening at the Clarion almost a year and a half ago. He would show her that he was there for her, whatever happened.

  Just as he was about to cross the street and make his way over to number 24, Petra’s building, his attention was caught by a car that was parked right next to him. A dark-red Lexus sedan, more prestigious than you would expect to find on a Friday evening outside an apartment building in Västberga with highway E4 as its nearest neighbour. He knew he recognized it, but at first he could not think whose it was. The wrong person in the wrong place – thoughts were whirling in his head. And then the penny dropped.

  And the recollection that had been chafing in the back of his mind ever since the duel with Petra in the boxing hall came out into the light again. There above him stood Holgersson, about to help him to his feet. In the doorway stood Roland Brandt as if frozen in mid-motion, in the process of bringing his mobile to his ear to answer a call. And there over in the corner leaned Petra, glistening with sweat, with her hands still in the boxing gloves and a broad smile on her face. A triumphant smile? Yes, perhaps – then why? Because she had beaten the shit out of him? Or was it because of something else? Where was her gaze directed? Gunnar Malmberg was leaning over her, blocking her into the corner with his hands on either side of her face. As if to hold her back. Don’t fight any more now, Petra.

  No. That’s not how it had been. She was looking right into Malmberg’s eyes. He was marking territory. Petra’s smile was not triumphant – well, maybe so, but not because she had knocked out Hamad but because she … had knocked out Malmberg. And what had he been whispering to her? ‘Take off the gloves and calm down’ or ‘I’ll swing by on Friday evening’?

  What was it Petra had said when she told him about her latest conquest? That it would not be anything, could not be anything more. And of course that’s how it was. Malmberg had a wife and kid and was deputy police commissioner besides. Of course there could never be anything in it. So what was this?

  But Hamad was not clear about the boxing hall. He tried to recall that perspective, from below, when he had been lying on the mat, aching and dazed. What was it that happened then? Images, sound. The enchantment was broken, Malmberg’s mobile rang. That sound, yes, what was that ringtone? He had only let it ring for a short time before he answered. A single instrument … Guitar. Hamad recognized the tune; he had to remember it now. He knew it was important – why was it important? It didn’t matter; out with it now. Why did he recognize the song, was it something he liked himself? Apparently. Guitar … Could it be Clapton? There it was, it was ‘Layla’. Unplugged.

  And then he had answered. Hamad had no trouble remembering what was said. ‘Talk to Lu– or that new girl. Jenny … Sure. No problem.’ Was that important too? Perhaps. Who was he talking to? Impossible to figure that out. What did what he had said mean? ‘Talk with Lu–’? Lundin, presumably. Lundin and Jenny – what did they have to do with each other? Nothing. Lu-Lu-Lu … No, not like in Lundin, the pronunciation had been different. Skåne dialect? No, why should it be that? English? Lu-Lu-Lu … Lucy? Lucy in the sky … It wasn’t possible. Would Malmberg know about that, and Jenny? How? Had he been on amator6.nu? And why that particular one, when there were thousands of sites to choose from?

  Back to Petra again. The film of the rape. He knew that he had a fragment of a thought somewhere, a thought that he hadn’t yet had the opportunity to follow through. It was close now, he could feel it, achingly close … The camera sweeps across the bodies in the bed and then … pling-plong, off. No! The sound of the camera being turned off would never be heard on the video. It was another sound that he had heard before the film clip finished. Pling-plong – it was two notes from a guitar. Eric Clapton’s guitar. ‘Layla’. Unplugged.

  Hamad cast a furtive glance up towards Petra’s apartment window. A light was shining cosily in there. What were they doing? But that didn’t matter, they would never be a couple. They could not be a couple. For two reasons. One: Malmberg would never give up his career and his family for her sake. And two: he was not interested in being with Petra. He was a rapist; he was punishing her. Without her even knowing it. Rape was about power, not about sex. Petra had put a spanner in the works for him and he could not tolerate that. After having failed to get her fired he had changed tactics. He had conquered her. She had voluntarily given herself to the man who had once raped her. And that gave him power, triumph.

  Hamad did not know at first what he should do. The only thing he was certain of was that under no circumstances whatsoever should he tell Petra. That would kill her. It was not often he agreed that ignorance was bliss, but in this case he was convinced. There would never be anything between Petra and that jerk, and he did not begrudge her living happily not knowing that she had had a short-term relationship with her own rapist.

  And what could he do himself? Not much. The Other Man had never left anything behind that could be used as evidence in a prosecution, so it was not possible to put him away for anything. And this was only circumstantial evidence. In an unofficial investigation. But Hamad would keep watching him, would have Malmberg in mind if anything turned up. But first of all he would get the confirmation he needed, for the sake of his own peace of mind.

  He turned back towards the metro to go back to the police station. In his mind’s eye he saw an empty Ramlösa bottle standing on his desk. And ringing in his ears was a name that Petra had mentioned when she told him about everything that had happened: Håkan Carlberg at the national crime laboratory in Linköping.

  * * *

  Before Sjöberg could start his weekend there was one more thing he had to do. During the conversation with his mother it had slowly dawned on him what he had been doing over the past six months. He felt both loathing and relief when the revelation came to him that the woman he had seen in Margit Olofsson’s lively green eyes and billowing curly red hair was none other than his own sister, Alice.

  It was with Alice he had sought consolation when life felt hardest, and it was in Alice’s arms he rested when a longing for something unknown, something he could not put into words, got too great. The constantly recurring dream of the woman in the window was simply his final terrifying memory of his sister, and her image had aged with him. Actually it was an almost six-year-old girl who stood up there in the window swaying while the fire consumed her from behind, but in the dream his subconscious had reinterpreted the inconceivable as something more comprehensible. The little girl had assumed a woman’s proportions and the woman had gradually taken the form of someone he knew, someone he liked. The patient, warm, nurturing Margit Olofsson had unknowingly filled the almost fifty-year-old vacuum of his big sister, and in a completely wrong way at that. The little boy’s boundless love for his older sister had been transformed into the middle-aged man’s yearning for the female body. It was time to end what never should have begun.

  ‘I’m going to tell you the truth, Margit. The truth about who I am. It’s not flattering for you and even less flattering for me, but I still believe it must be best to know the truth.’

  She looked at him with her big, green eyes and he saw that she was frightened by the seriousness in his voice. A slightly worried smile fluttered across her lips and Sjöberg made his own inter
pretation.

  I don’t want to hear, I don’t want to know. But I must to be able to go on. Satisfy my curiosity.

  Sjöberg said, ‘You’re not going to want to see me any more after this, and that’s good. Good for you and good for me. Maybe you’ll forgive me some day, but do so in that case for your own sake.’

  She put her hand over his and he took hold of it. Now she was just a person to him. A fine, loving person he felt the deepest respect for. Never more would he cry in her arms, never more would he make her dance to his tune.

  They sat in his car on the driveway outside her house. Margit’s husband was not at home. She had asked Sjöberg to come in, but that would have been wrong. Her house was her home; it should not be their meeting place.

  ‘I’ve had a dream,’ said Sjöberg. ‘The same dream, over and over again.’

  Then he told her about a woman in a window, about grass wet with dew and bright-red hair. Sweat and desperation.

  Margit did not say anything. She looked searchingly at him, but she did not want to interrupt with questions that could not be answered anyway. He squeezed her hand hard and continued talking.

  ‘I didn’t know what that dream meant. But I know that when I met you there at the hospital last autumn it was so obvious to me that that woman in the window was you. I could not resist the temptation. It was wrong, but I wanted so much to get to know the woman in the dream.’

  Margit still made no effort to pull back her hand. He caressed it gently with his free hand, not to reassure her but as a final sign of the tenderness he nonetheless felt for her.

  ‘I visited my mother today,’ he continued.

  Then he told her about the fire, about the night when Eivor Sjöberg’s life had fallen apart and his own had changed completely, without him knowing it.

  ‘I stood down in the yard and through the window I saw my sister burning inside. How her beautiful red hair caught fire.’

  Margit pulled her hand out of his grasp and put both hands in front of her mouth.

  ‘I’ve mistaken you for my sister, Margit. I’m so sorry. Something in you gave me something that I have longed for all these years. Something … I didn’t know what it was. But it was not physical love I needed. The whole thing is a terrible misunderstanding. My life is a confused search for a lost sister. I’m a dirty old man who sees a little girl, my own sister no less, in an amazing woman. In you. But I want you to know anyway that I never would have done it if I’d known all this. There are limits for me too.’

  She took her hands from her mouth and to his surprise he saw that she was smiling. A friendly, sympathetic smile, and she stroked him carefully across the cheek with the back of her hand.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said with sincere warmth in her voice. ‘Not because it’s over, but for what your family has been through. I hope you can stop having that dream. I’ll go now.’

  She opened the car door and stepped out into the cold night. Her breath came like smoke out of her mouth as she leaned forward and looked at him, her green eyes glistening in the light from inside the car.

  ‘There is nothing to forgive, Conny,’ she said with a little frown between her eyebrows, which Sjöberg recognized as a sign of candour. ‘And you’ll have to work on your own conscience. I was reconciled with mine many years ago.’

  THE BEGINNING

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  First published in Sweden as Vyssan lull 2010

  This translation first published in Great Britain in Penguin Books 2015

  Text copyright © Carin Gerhardsen, 2010

  This translation copyright © Paul Norlén, 2014

  Cover design © www.alisongroom.com

  Cover image © Steve Allsopp / Arcangel Images

  The moral right of the author and translator has been asserted

  ISBN: 978-1-405-91410-9