The Darkest Room

by Johan Theorin

  “Modern times,” said Tilda.

  “Exactly. Right shoes and left shoes.”

  There was silence in the room.

  “Have you been out to the point?” asked Gerlof.

  Tilda nodded. They had finished talking about the Davidsson family now, so she switched off the tape recorder.

  “I was at the house last week,” she said. “Someone drowned.”

  “Yes, I read about it in Ölands-Posten. A young woman. I suppose it was the mother of the family who bought the manor house?”

  “Yes.”

  “So who found her?”

  Tilda hesitated.

  “I shouldn’t really say much.”

  “No, of course not. It’s a police matter, after all. And a tragedy.”

  “Yes. Especially for the husband and children.”

  In the end Tilda told him most of it anyway. How she’d been called out to the scene of the accident. The body being pulled out of the water by the lighthouses.

  “This woman, Katrine Westin, was alone. She had her lunch and put the dishwasher on. Then she walked down to the shore and out along the jetty. And slipped, or threw herself in the water.”

  “And drowned?” said Gerlof.

  “Yes. She drowned straightaway, despite the fact that the water is shallow there.”

  “Not everywhere. It’s deeper out by the jetty; I’ve seen sailing boats moor there. Did anyone see it happen, this accident?”

  Tilda shook her head. “No witnesses have come forward, at any rate. The coast was deserted.”

  “The Öland coast is almost always deserted in the winter,” said Gerlof. “And there was no trace of anyone else at Eel Point? Someone who could have pushed her?”

  “No, she was alone out on the jetty. You have to go across the shore to get onto the jetty, and there were no footprints in the sand.” Tilda looked at the tape recorder. “Shall we talk about Ragnar now?”

  Gerlof didn’t seem to be listening to her. He got up with some difficulty and went over to the desk. He took a black notebook out of one of the drawers.

  “I always make a note of the weather,” he said. He flicked through to the page he wanted. “There was hardly any wind that day. It was blowing at between three and six feet per second.”

  “Yes, I guess it was. It was calm out at Eel Point.”

  “So no waves can have raced up the shore and wiped out any traces,” said Gerlof.

  “No. And the footprints from the woman’s shoes were still there in the sand-I saw them myself.”

  “Was she injured in any way?”

  Tilda hesitated before answering. Pictures she didn’t want to see came into her mind.

  “I only saw her briefly, but she had a small wound on her forehead.”

  “A graze?”

  “Yes… it was probably from the fall, she probably hit her head on the stone jetty when she fell.”

  Gerlof slowly sat down again. “Any enemies?”

  “What?”

  “Did she have any enemies… the woman who drowned?”

  Tilda sighed. “How am I supposed to know that, Gerlof?

  Do mothers with small children usually have mortal enemies here on the island?”

  “I was just thinking that-”

  “We need to change the subject now.” Tilda looked at her elderly relative with a serious expression. “I know you like mulling things over, but I shouldn’t be talking to you about this sort of thing.”

  “No, no, you’re a police officer after all,” said Gerlof.

  “Local police, yes. Not a murder investigator.” She added quickly, “And there is no murder inquiry anyway. There is nothing to suggest a crime has been committed, no motive. Her husband doesn’t seem to believe it was an accident, but even he can’t come up with a reason why anyone would have killed her.”

  “Yes, well, I’m just doing a bit of thinking,” said Gerlof. “I enjoy it, as you said.”

  “Good. But now we need to do a bit more recording.”

  Gerlof was silent.

  “I’m switching the tape recorder on now. Okay?” said Tilda.

  “What about from the sea?” said Gerlof.

  “What?”

  “If someone came along the coast in a boat and moored by the jetty on Eel Point,” said Gerlof. “Then there wouldn’t be any footprints in the sand.”

  Tilda sighed. “Okay, so I’d better start looking for a boat, then.” Tilda looked at him and asked, “Gerlof, are you finding these recordings difficult?”

  Gerlof hesitated.

  “I find it a bit difficult to talk about relatives who have died,” he said eventually. “It feels as if they’re sitting and listening in the walls.”

  “I think they’d be proud.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not,” said Gerlof. “I suppose it depends what I’m saying about them.”

  “It’s mostly Grandfather I want to talk about,” said Tilda.

  “I know.” Gerlof nodded seriously. “But he might be listening too.”

  “Was he hard work as an older brother, Ragnar?”

  Gerlof didn’t speak for a few seconds.

  “He had his moments. He had a long memory. If he felt someone had cheated him, he would never do business with that person again… He never forgot an injustice.”

  “I don’t remember him,” said Tilda. “Dad hardly remembers him either. At any rate, he never talked about him.”

  Silence once again.

  “Ragnar froze to death in a winter storm,” Gerlof went on. “The body was found on the shore to the south of his cottage. Did your dad tell you that?”

  “Oh yes, he was the one who found Grandfather. He was going out fishing, wasn’t he? That’s what Dad said.”

  “He’d been checking his nets on the seabed that day,” said Gerlof, “and then when the wind got up he had gone ashore at Eel Point. He was the watchman, after all, and people had seen him out by the lighthouses. The boat must have broken up in the waves, because Ragnar walked home along the shore… and then the blizzard came. Ragnar died in the snow.”

  “Nobody is dead until they are warm and dead,” said Tilda. “People have been found frozen stiff and with no pulse in snowdrifts, but they’ve come back to life when they’ve been brought into the warmth.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Martin.”

  “Martin? Who’s that?”

  “My… boyfriend,” said Tilda.

  She immediately regretted using that word. Martin would not have liked being described as her boyfriend.

  “So you’ve got a boyfriend?”

  “Yes… or whatever you want to call it.”

  “I should think ‘boyfriend’ will do perfectly well. What’s his surname?”

  “His name is Martin Ahlquist.”

  “Nice,” said Gerlof. “Does he live here on the island, your Martin?”

  My Martin, thought Tilda.

  “He lives in Växjö. He’s a teacher.”

  “But perhaps he’ll come and visit you sometimes.”

  “I hope so. He has talked about it.”

  “Nice.” Gerlof smiled. “You look as if you’re in love.”

  “Do I?”

  “Your face lights up when we talk about Martin; it’s lovely.”

  He smiled encouragingly across the table, and Tilda smiled back.

  Everything seemed so simple when she was sitting here with Gerlof talking about Martin, not complicated at all.

  8

  Livia fell asleep each night with Katrine’s red woolen sweater beside her in the bed, and Joakim lay with her nightgown under his pillow. It gave him a feeling of calmness.

  Life at Eel Point went on, at half speed. The children had to be taken into Marnäs and picked up each weekday, and Joakim took care of that job. In between he was alone at the manor for seven hours, but there was no peace. The funeral director called him several times with different questions before the funeral, and he had to contact banks and various companie
s to get Katrine’s name removed from their records. Relatives got in touch, both Katrine’s and Joakim’s, and friends from Stockholm sent flowers. Several of them wanted to come to the funeral.

  What Joakim really wanted was to unplug all the telephones and lock himself in at Eel Point. Shut down.

  Of course, there was a huge amount of renovation to be done inside the house, and in the garden and to the outside

  of the house-but all he really wanted to do was to lie in bed, breathe in the scent of Katrine’s clothes, and stare up at the white ceiling.

  And then there was the police. If he had been able to find the strength, he would have spoken to them to find out who was responsible for internal investigations, if there was such a person-but he just couldn’t do it.

  The only one who got in touch from that particular authority was the young local policewoman from Marnäs, Tilda Davidsson.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I really am very sorry.”

  She didn’t ask how he was feeling, just kept on apologizing for the mix-up over the names. The wrong name was on the note she was reading from, she said-it was a misunderstanding.

  A misunderstanding? Joakim had come home to console his wife, but had found her dead.

  He listened to Davidsson in silence, answered in monosyllables and asked no follow-up questions. The conversation was a short one.

  When it was over, he sat down at the family computer and wrote a letter to Ölands-Posten, giving a brief outline of what had happened after Katrine’s death. In conclusion he wrote:

  For several hours I believed that my daughter had drowned and my wife was alive, when in fact the reverse was true. Is it too much to ask that the police should be able to distinguish between the living and the dead?

  I don’t think it is; that’s what the relatives have to do, after all.

  Joakim Westin, Eel Point

  He hadn’t expected anyone in the police to accept responsibility after that either, and he wasn’t disappointed.

  Two days later he met Åke Högström, the priest in Marnäs who was to bury his wife.

  “How are you sleeping?” the priest asked over coffee after they had gone through the ceremony one last time.

  “Fine,” Joakim replied.

  He tried to remember what they had decided. They had called the cantor to choose which hymns were to be played, he remembered that, but he’d already forgotten what they’d decided on.

  The parish priest from Marnäs was in his fifties, with a gentle smile, a little beard, a black jacket, and a gray polo-neck sweater. The walls in his study at the vicarage were covered with shelves full of books of all kinds, and on the desk stood a picture of the priest holding a gleaming perch up to the camera.

  “The light from the lighthouse doesn’t disturb you?” he asked.

  “The light?” said Joakim.

  “The constant flashing at night, from the lighthouse tower out on Eel Point?”

  Joakim shook his head.

  “I suppose you get used to it,” said Högström. “It’s probably similar to having traffic noise just outside your window. You lived in the middle of Stockholm before you came here, didn’t you?”

  “A little way out,” said Joakim.

  It was only small talk, an attempt to lighten the heavy conversation, but for Joakim it was still a huge effort to find the words.

  “So it’s hymn number 289 to begin with, hymn 256 after the prayers, and hymn 297 to finish off,” said Högström. “That was what we said, wasn’t it?”

  “That’ll be fine.”

  A dozen or so guests from Stockholm arrived the evening before the funeral: Joakim’s mother, his uncle, two cousins, and some close friends of his and Katrine’s. They

  moved cautiously around the house and talked mostly to one another. Livia and Gabriel were excited by all the visitors, but didn’t ask why everyone had come.

  The funeral took place at eleven o’clock on a Thursday in the Marnäs church. The children weren’t there-Joakim had dropped them off as usual at eight o’clock, without saying anything. For them today was like any other, but Joakim had driven home, put on his black suit, and lay down on the double bed again.

  The wall clock was ticking out in the corridor, and Joakim remembered that it was his wife who had wound it up. It shouldn’t be ticking now she was gone, but it was.

  He had stared at the bedroom ceiling thinking about all that was left of Katrine in and around the house. Inside his head he could hear her calling to him.

  An hour later Joakim was sitting on an uncomfortable wooden pew, his eyes fixed on a large mural. It showed a man of his own age nailed to a Roman instrument of torture. A cross.

  The church in Marnäs was high and filled with echoes. The sound of quiet weeping hovered beneath the vaulted stone ceiling.

  Joakim was sitting right at the front next to his mother, who was wearing a black veil and weeping with small, careful sniffles, her head bowed. He himself knew he wasn’t going to cry at all, just as he hadn’t shed a single tear at Ethel’s funeral last year. The tears always came later, late at night.

  It was two minutes to eleven when the church door opened and a tall, broad-shouldered woman strode in. She was wearing a black coat and a black veil that concealed her eyes, but her lips were painted with bright red lipstick. Her heels echoed on the stone floor, and many heads turned in the church. The woman marched up and sat down in the pew

  at the front on the right, next to Katrine’s four half sisters and brothers.

  She was their mother and Katrine’s mother: Mirja Rambe, Joakim’s mother-in-law, the artist and singer. He hadn’t seen Mirja since their wedding seven years earlier. In contrast to that particular day, she appeared to be sober now. Just as Mirja sat down, the bells began to toll up in the church tower.

  Less than forty-five minutes later it was all over, and Joakim could hardly remember anything about what Pastor Högström had said, or what hymns they had sung in the church. His head had been filled with images and sounds of crashing waves and running water.

  Afterward, when they had crossed the bitterly cold churchyard and gathered in the community hall, lots of people came over to talk to him.

  “I’m so sorry, Joakim,” said a bearded man, patting him on the shoulder. “We were very fond of her.”

  Joakim focused his gaze and suddenly recognized the man-it was his uncle from Stockholm.

  “Thank you… thank you very much.”

  There wasn’t much else to say.

  Several other people wanted to stroke his back or give him a stiff embrace. He let them carry on; he was everybody’s pet.

  “It’s so awful… I was only talking to her a few days ago,” said a weeping girl aged about twenty-five.

  He recognized her behind the handkerchief she was using to wipe her eyes; it was Katrine’s younger sister. Her name was Solros-Sunrose, he recalled. Mirja had given all five of her children unusual second names; Katrine’s was Månstråle, Moonbeam, but she’d hated it.

  “And she’d been so much happier lately,” Solros went on.

  “I know… she was glad we’d moved down here.”

  “Yes, and she was pleased she’d found out about her father as well.”

  Joakim looked at her.

  “Her father?” he said. “Katrine never had any contact with her father.”

  “I know,” said Solros. “But Mom’s written a book and revealed who he was.”

  The tears came again; she hugged him and went off to join her brothers and sisters.

  Joakim stayed where he was and saw Albin and Viktoria Malm, friends from the center of Stockholm, sitting at a table with the Hesslin family, their neighbors from Bromma.

  He also saw his mother, sitting alone at another table with a cup of coffee, but didn’t go over to her.

  When he turned around, Pastor Högström was talking to a small gray-haired woman on the other side of the room. He went to join them.

  Högström turned his kindly ga
ze in his direction. “Joakim,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

  Joakim just nodded, several times. It was an appropriate response, it could mean anything. The little elderly lady smiled up at him expectantly and nodded as well, but didn’t seem to know what to say either. Then she took two tentative steps backward and disappeared.

  That’s the thing about the bereaved, thought Joakim, they smell of death and are best avoided.

  “I’ve been thinking something over,” he said seriously to Högström.

  “Oh yes?”

  “If you hear someone calling for help here on the island, when you yourself are on the mainland, miles and miles away, what does that mean?”

  The priest looked at him blankly. “Miles and miles away… how could you possibly hear that?”

  Joakim shook his head. “But that’s what happened,” he said. “I heard my wife… Katrine, when she died. I was in

  Stockholm at the time, but I heard her when she drowned. She called out to me.”

  The priest looked down into his coffee cup. “Perhaps you heard someone else?” He had lowered his voice, as if they were talking about forbidden matters.

  “No,” said Joakim. “It was Katrine’s voice.”

  “I understand.”

  “I know I heard her,” said Joakim. “So what does it mean?”

  “Who knows, who knows,” was all Högström said, patting him gently on the shoulder. “Get some rest now, Joakim. We can talk again in a few days.”

  Then he left.

  Joakim stood there staring at a poster on the wall advertising a charity collection for those affected by radiation in Chernobyl. Ten years had passed since the catastrophe.

  OUR DAILY BREAD FOR THE VICTIMS OF THE RADIATION, said the heading on the poster.

  Our daily Chernobyl, thought Joakim.

  Finally it was evening again and he was back at Eel Point. This long day was coming to an end.