The Darkest Room

by Johan Theorin

  “It’s owned by another family now,” said Gerlof, “but we can go down there and take a look at it. And at my cottage in Stenvik, of course.”

  Tilda left the Marnäs home just after half past four, with the tape recorder in her rucksack.

  When she had fastened her jacket and set off on the road toward the small center of Marnäs, a young lad drove past her on a pale blue puttering scooter heading in the opposite

  direction. She shook her head at him to show what she thought of scooters driving fast, but she didn’t catch his eye. Twenty seconds later he was long gone.

  Once upon a time Tilda had thought that fifteen-year-old boys on scooters were the coolest thing in the world. Nowadays they were more like mosquitoes, she thought-small and irritating.

  She adjusted her rucksack and carried on toward Marnäs. She was intending to call in at work for a while, even though she didn’t officially start until the following day, and then go back to her little apartment and carry on unpacking. And ring Martin.

  The puttering of the scooter behind her hadn’t completely died out, and now it was getting louder again. The young rider had turned around somewhere over by the church and was on his way back into town.

  This time he had to pass Tilda on the sidewalk. He slowed down slightly, but revved the engine menacingly and tried to swing past her. She looked him in the eye and positioned herself directly in his way. The scooter stopped.

  “What?” yelled the boy over the noise of the engine.

  “You’re not allowed to ride a scooter on the sidewalk,” said Tilda just as loudly. “It’s illegal.”

  “Yeah, right.” The boy nodded. “But you can drive faster along here.”

  “You can also run over someone.”

  “Whatever,” said the boy, giving her a bored look. “Are you going to call the cops?”

  Tilda shook her head. “No, I’m not, because-”

  “There aren’t any cops here anymore.” The boy twisted the accelerator on the handle of the scooter. “They shut the cop shop two years ago. There are no cops anywhere in the north of Öland.”

  Tilda was tired of trying to shout over the puttering engine. She leaned quickly forward and pulled the cable out of the ignition. The scooter immediately fell silent.

  “There are now,” she said, quietly and calmly. “I’m a cop and I’m here.”

  “You?”

  “I start today.”

  The boy stared at her. Tilda took her wallet out of her jacket pocket, opened it up, and showed him her ID. He looked at it for a long time, then he looked back at her with a respectful expression.

  People always looked differently at someone when they knew they were a police officer. When Tilda was in uniform, she even looked at herself differently.

  “Name?”

  “Stefan.”

  “Stefan what?”

  “Stefan Ekström.”

  Tilda got out her notebook and wrote down his name.

  “This is just a warning, but next time it’ll be a fine,” she said. “Your scooter has been modified. Have you bored out the cylinder?”

  Stefan nodded.

  “Then you’d better get off and walk home with it,” said Tilda. “Then you can sort out the engine so that it’s legal.”

  Stefan climbed off.

  They walked in silence side by side toward the square in Marnäs.

  “Tell your pals the cops are back in Marnäs,” said Tilda. “The next modified scooter I see will be impounded, and there’ll be a fine.”

  Stefan nodded again. Now he’d been caught he seemed to regard it as something of a coup.

  “You got a gun?” he asked as they arrived in town.

  “Yes,” said Tilda. “Under lock and key.”

  “What kind?”

  “A Sig Sauer.”

  “Have you shot anybody with it?”

  “No,” said Tilda. “And I’m not intending to use it here.”

  “Okay.”

  Stefan looked disappointed.

  She had agreed with Martin that she would call him around six, before he went home from work. Before that she had time to take a look at her future workplace.

  The new police station in Marnäs was on a side street a couple of blocks from the square, the police shield above the door still wrapped in white plastic.

  Tilda took the station keys out of her pocket. She had collected them the previous day down at the police station in Borgholm, but when she got to the front door it was already unlocked. She could hear men’s voices inside.

  The station consisted of just one room, with no reception area. Tilda vaguely remembered that there used to be a candy store here when she visited Marnäs as a child. The walls were bare, there were no curtains, and no rugs on the wooden floor.

  Two burly middle-aged men were standing inside, wearing jackets and outdoor shoes. One of them was in the dark blue police uniform, the other in civilian clothes with a green padded jacket. They fell silent and quickly turned toward Tilda, as if she had interrupted them in the middle of an inappropriate joke.

  Tilda had met one of them before, the one in civilian clothes-Inspector Göte Holmblad, who was in charge of the local police. He had short gray hair and a permanent smile playing around the corners of his mouth, and he seemed to recognize her.

  “Hi there,” he said. “Welcome to the new district.”

  “Thank you.” She shook hands with her boss and turned to the other man, who had thinner black hair, bushy eyebrows, and was in his fifties. “Tilda Davidsson.”

  “Hans Majner.” His handshake was firm, dry, and brief. “I guess the two of us will be working together up here.”

  He didn’t sound completely convinced that this would work out well, thought Tilda. She opened her mouth to say something in agreement, but Majner carried straight on:

  “Of course I won’t be around too much to start with. I’ll look in now and again, but I’ll be working mostly from Borgholm. I’m keeping my desk there.”

  He smiled at the local police chief.

  “Right,” said Tilda, suddenly realizing that she was going to be more alone as a police officer on northern Öland than she had thought. “Are you working on a particular project?”

  “You could say that,” said Majner, looking out of the window at the street, as if he could see something suspicious out there. “Drugs, of course. That kind of crap comes onto the island, just like everywhere else.”

  “This is your desk, Tilda,” said Holmblad from over by the window. “We’ll be getting computers installed, of course, fax machines… and a police radio unit over here. For the time being, you’ll just have to manage with the telephone.”

  “Okay.”

  “In any case, you’re not going to be sitting around in the office much; quite the opposite, in fact,” said Holmblad. “That’s the idea of the local policing reforms: you need to be out there, a visible presence on the streets. The focus is traffic offenses, criminal damage, petty theft, and break-ins. The less complex investigations. And youth crime, of course.”

  “Suits me,” said Tilda. “I stopped a modified scooter on the way here.”

  “Good, good.” Her boss nodded. “So you’ve shown that there’s a police presence here again. And next week is the official opening ceremony. The press have been invited. Newspapers, local radio… You’ll be available then?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good, good. And I expect your work here will be… well, I know you’ve just come from Växjö, and here on the island you’re bound to be working more independently. For

  better or worse. More freedom to organize your working day as you wish, but also more responsibility… I mean, it takes half an hour to get here from Borgholm, and the station there isn’t manned all the time. So if anything happens, it could take a while before you get any help.”

  Tilda nodded. “At the police training academy we often practiced situations where backup was delayed. My tutors were very keen on-”

>   Majner snorted over by his desk. “The tutors at the training academy haven’t got a clue about the reality of the situation,” he said. “It’s a long time since they were out on the job.”

  “They were very competent in Växjö,” said Tilda quickly.

  This was like sitting right at the back in the police van as a new recruit-you were expected to keep your mouth shut and let the older ones do the talking. Tilda had hated it.

  Holmblad looked at her and said, “All I’m saying is that it’s important for you to bear in mind the long distances here on the island before you go into a problematic situation alone.”

  She nodded. “I hope I’ll be able to deal with any problems that arise.”

  The police chief opened his mouth again, possibly to continue his lecture-but at that moment the telephone on the wall rang.

  “I’ll get that,” he said, striding over to the desk. “It might be from Kalmar.”

  He picked up the phone.

  “Marnäs police station, Holmblad.”

  Then he listened.

  “Where?” he said.

  He was silent again.

  “Right,” he said eventually. “We’d better get out there.”

  He put the phone down.

  “That was Borgholm. The emergency number has had a call about an accidental death on northern Öland.”

  Majner got up from his empty desk. “Local?”

  “By the lighthouses off Eel Point,” said Holmblad. “Anyone know where that is?”

  “Eel Point is south of here,” said Majner. “Four or five miles, maybe.”

  “Okay, we need to take the car,” said the chief of police. “The ambulance is already on its way… evidently it’s an accidental drowning.”

  Once the two lighthouses had been built, there was a sense of security around Eel Point, for both ships and people. At least that’s what the men who built them believed, they believed that life on the coast was safe and secure for all time. The women knew this was not always the case.

  Death was closer in those days, it came into the houses.

  In the hayloft of the old barn there is a woman’s name, hastily carved into the wall: BELOVED CAROLINA 1868. Carolina has been dead for more than a hundred and twenty years, but she has whispered to me through the wall about what could happen at Eel Point-in what is sometimes referred to as the good old days.

  – MIRJA RAMBE

  WINTER 1868

  The manor house is large, so large. Kerstin goes from room to room, searching for Carolina, but there are so many places to look. Too many places on Eel Point, too many rooms in the house.

  And the blizzard is on its way, it feels like a weight in the air outside, and Kerstin knows there isn’t much time.

  The manor house is solidly built and will not suffer in the storm, but the question is how the people will be affected. A blizzard makes everyone gather around the stoves like lost birds, waiting for it to pass.

  A difficult summer with poor harvests on the island has been followed by a harsh winter. It is the first week in February, and so bitterly cold on the coast that no one goes outside unless they have to. But the lighthouse keepers and the ironworkers still have to do their shifts over in the towers, and today every fit man except Karlsson, the master lighthouse

  keeper, is out on the point getting the lighthouses ready for the snowstorm.

  The women have remained in the house, but Carolina is nowhere to be found. Kerstin has searched every room on both floors, and has been up among the beams in the attic. She cannot talk to any of the other maids or the wives of the lighthouse keepers, because they are not aware of Carolina’s condition. They may have their suspicions, but they do not know for certain.

  Carolina is eighteen, two years younger than Kerstin. They are both housemaids working for Sven Karlsson, the master lighthouse keeper. Kerstin regards herself as the one who thinks things through and is more careful. Carolina is more lively and more trusting-in some ways she is just as adventurous as Kerstin’s older sister Fina, who went to America last year-and that means she sometimes has problems. Recently Carolina’s troubles have increased, and she has told only Kerstin about them.

  If Carolina has left the manor and gone out into the forest or off toward the peat bog, Kerstin will not be able to find her. Carolina knew there was a blizzard on the way-is she still so desperate?

  Kerstin goes outside. In the snow-covered inner courtyard the wind comes sweeping down from the sky, whirling between the buildings, unable to make its escape. The blizzard is approaching; this is just a premonition.

  She hears a scream that quickly falls silent. That wasn’t the wind.

  It was a woman screaming.

  The wind tears at Kerstin’s kerchief and pinafore, making her lean forward. She forces open the door of the barn and steps inside.

  The cows moo and move uneasily as she searches among them. Nothing. Then she climbs the steep staircase up to the big hayloft. The air is freezing cold up here.

  Something is moving over by one of the walls, below

  the big mound of hay. Faint movements in the dust and the shadows.

  It is Carolina. She is lying on the hay-covered floor, her legs immobile beneath a dirty blanket. Her breathing is weak and wheezing as Kerstin comes closer; her expression is one of shame.

  “Kerstin… I think it just happened,” she says. “I think it came out.”

  Kerstin walks over to the blanket, full of foreboding, and kneels down.

  “Is there anything there?” whispers Carolina. “Or is it just blood?”

  The blanket over Carolina’s knees is sticky and wet. But Kerstin lifts one corner and nods.

  “Yes,” she says, “it’s come out.”

  “Is it alive?”

  “No… it’s not… complete.”

  Kerstin leans over her friend’s pale face.

  “How are you feeling?”

  Carolina’s eyes are flickering all over the place.

  “It died without being baptized,” she mumbles. “We have to… we have to bury it in consecrated ground so that it won’t walk again… It will be a lost soul if we don’t bury it.”

  “We can’t,” says Kerstin. “The blizzard is here… we’ll die if we go out on the road.”

  “We have to hide it,” whispers Carolina, struggling to breathe. “They’ll think I’ve been whoring… that I tried to get rid of it.”

  “It doesn’t matter what they think.” Kerstin places her hand on Carolina’s burning forehead and says quietly, “I’ve had another letter from my sister. She wants me to go to America, to Chicago.”

  Carolina doesn’t seem to be listening any longer, she is just panting faintly, but Kerstin goes on anyway:

  “I’m going to go across the Atlantic to New York, then travel on from there. She’s even deposited the money for the

  ticket in Gothenburg.” She leans closer. “And you can come with me, Carolina. Would you like to do that?”

  Carolina does not reply. She is no longer struggling to breathe. The air is simply seeping out of her, barely audible.

  In the end she is lying there motionless in the hay, her eyes wide open. Everything is silent in the barn.

  “I’ll be back soon,” whispers Kerstin, her voice full of tears.

  She pushes the thing lying in the hay into the blanket, then folds it over several times to hide the marks of the blood and the birth fluid. Then she stands up and takes the bundle in her arms.

  She goes out into the courtyard, where the wind is still increasing in strength, and battles her way back to the main house, pressed against the stone wall of the barn. She goes straight to her little room, packs her few possessions and Carolina’s, then puts on layer after layer of clothes, ready for the difficult journey that awaits her when the blizzard has abated.

  Then Kerstin walks without hesitation to the large drawing room, where oil lamps and the tiled stove spread warmth and light through the winter darkness. Master lighthouse keeper S
ven Karlsson is sitting in an armchair by the table in the center of the room, his black uniform straining at the seams over his belly.

  As a servant of the crown, Karlsson is one of the privileged members of the parish. He has almost half the rooms in the manor house at his disposal, and has his own pew in the church over in Rörby. Beside him his wife, Anna, is enthroned on a fine chair. A few maids are hovering in the background, waiting for the blizzard to pass, and in a dark corner sits Old Sara, who came from the poorhouse in Rörby after the master lighthouse keeper put in the lowest bid at the auction to establish who would take care of her.

  “Where have you been?” says Anna when she sees Kerstin.

  Her voice is always loud and sharp, but now it is shriller than usual in order to be heard above the howling wind.

  Kerstin curtsies, positions herself in silence in front of the table, and waits until everyone’s eyes are on her. She thinks about her older sister over in America.

  Then she places the bundle she has brought with her on the table, right in front of Sven Karlsson.

  “Good evening, sir,” says Kerstin loudly, unfolding the blanket. “I have something here… something you appear to have lost.”

  4

  Joakim’s third morning in the manor house at Eel Point was the beginning of his last completely happy day for many years-perhaps ever.

  Unfortunately, he was too stressed to register how good he felt.

  He and Katrine had had a late night. Once the children had gone to sleep, they had walked through the south-facing rooms on the ground floor, pondering how their different personalities could best be brought out in their choice of colors. White would of course be the base color throughout the whole of the ground floor, both on the walls and ceiling, while the wooden details like cornices and doorframes could vary from room to room.

  They had gone to bed at half past eleven. The house had been silent then, but a couple of hours later Livia had started calling out again. Katrine had merely sighed and got out of bed without a word.

  The whole family got up just after six. The horizon in the east was still pitch black.

  The great winter darkness was drawing closer, Joakim realized. Only two months to go until Christmas.