The Darkest Room

by Johan Theorin

  He put his ear close to the wall and listened, but heard no whispering.

  Then he picked up a nail that was lying on the floor and

  carefully carved the name katrine westin and her dates into one of the lower planks.

  When he had finished, he stepped back to look at the whole wall.

  The memory of Katrine was preserved here now. It felt good.

  The children loved Rasputin, of course. Gabriel patted him and Livia gave him a saucer of milk. They didn’t want to be separated from the cat for a minute, but the evening after Mirja Rambe’s visit, the family was invited, without the cat, to visit their neighbors at the farm to the south. The older children weren’t at home, but seven-year-old Andreas joined them at the dinner table before he and the Westin children went into the kitchen for some ice cream.

  Joakim stayed in the dining room, drinking coffee with Roger and Maria Carlsson. The topic of conversation was fairly inevitable: looking after and renovating houses by the sea that were exposed to all kinds of weather. But he also had another question, which he eventually asked:

  “I wondered if you’d heard any stories about our place? About Eel Point?”

  “Stories?” said Roger Carlsson.

  “Yes, ghost stories or other tales,” said Joakim. “Katrine said she’d talked to you last summer about… about the fact that it was haunted.”

  That was the first time he had mentioned her name all evening-he took care not to talk too much about his late wife. He didn’t want to seem obsessed, after all. He wasn’t obsessed.

  “She didn’t talk to me about any ghosts,” said Roger.

  “She did talk to me about it when she came over for coffee,” said Maria. “She was just wondering whether Eel Point had a bad reputation.” She looked at her husband. “I mean, when we were little the adults used to talk about a secret

  room at Eel Point that was haunted… do you remember, Roger?”

  Her husband just shook his head-obviously ghosts weren’t one of his major interests-but Joakim leaned forward.

  “Where was this room? Do you know?”

  “No idea,” said Roger, drinking his coffee.

  “No, I don’t know either,” said Maria. “But my grandfather said something about the ghosts haunting this room every Christmas. The dead came back to the manor and gathered in a particular room. And then they took-”

  “That’s just ridiculous nonsense,” said Roger, picking up the coffeepot and offering it to Joakim. “More coffee?”

  15

  Tilda Davidson lay naked and sweaty on her thin mattress.

  “Was that good?” she asked.

  Martin was sitting on the edge of the bed with his back to her.

  “Yes… I suppose it was.”

  As he quickly pulled on his underpants and jeans after getting out of bed that Sunday morning, Tilda should have realized what was coming, but she didn’t.

  He had sat down on the edge of the bed and was looking out of the window.

  “I don’t think we can do this,” he said eventually.

  “Do what?” she asked, still naked under the covers.

  “This… all this. It’s not working.” He was still looking out of the window. “Karin’s asking questions.”

  “About what?”

  Tilda still didn’t realize she was in the process of being dumped. Screwed and then dumped-classic.

  Martin had arrived late on Friday, and everything had seemed just the same as usual. Tilda hadn’t asked what he’d told his wife-she never did. That evening they had stayed in her small apartment; she had made fish stew. Martin had seemed relaxed, telling her about the new cohort of recruits that had started at the police training academy this term, some good and some less suitable.

  “But I expect we’ll knock them into shape,” he said.

  Tilda nodded, thinking back to her early days at the academy; she had been one of twenty recruits. Mostly boys, just a few girls. They had quickly divided their new tutors into three categories: old tutors who were members of the police force, nice but a little fusty; civilian tutors who taught law and hadn’t a clue about real police work; and then the young police tutors who were mainly responsible for the practical work. They came from the field and had exciting stories to tell; they were the role models for the students. Martin Ahlquist was one of them.

  On Saturday they had traveled north in Martin’s car, right up to the most northerly point of the island. Tilda hadn’t been there since she was little, but she remembered the feeling of having reached the end of the world. Now, in November, a bitterly cold wind was blowing off the sea, and there wasn’t a soul in sight around the lighthouses. The chalk-white tower rising above the point, Long Erik, had reminded her of the twin lighthouses at Eel Point. She wanted to discuss the case with Martin, but didn’t bring it up-this was her weekend off.

  They ate a late lunch at the only restaurant in Byxelkrok

  that was open in the winter, then went back to Marnäs and stayed in for the rest of the evening.

  It was after that that Martin became more reserved, Tilda thought, despite the fact that she tried to keep the conversation going.

  They fell asleep in silence, but then in the morning Martin sat down on the edge of the bed and started talking. Without looking at Tilda once, he said he had done a lot of thinking since she moved to Öland. He had thought about the choices in his life. And now he had decided. It felt like the right decision.

  “It’ll be good for you too,” he said. “Good for everyone.”

  “You mean… you’re leaving me?” she said quietly.

  “No. We’re leaving each other.”

  “I moved here for your sake.” Tilda looked at Martin’s naked, hairy back. “I didn’t want to leave Växjö, but I did it for you. I just want you to know that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “People were talking about us. I wanted to put a stop to it.”

  Martin nodded.

  “Everybody likes gossip,” he said. “But now there’s nothing for them to talk about.”

  There wasn’t really anything more to say. Five minutes later Martin was dressed; he picked up his bag from the floor without looking at her.

  “Right then,” he said.

  “So it wasn’t worth it?” she asked.

  “Yes, it was,” he said. “For quite a long time. But not now.”

  “You’re so afraid of conflict,” she said.

  Martin didn’t respond. He opened the front door.

  Tilda suppressed the impulse to send her best wishes to his wife.

  She heard the door close, and footsteps disappearing down the stairs. He would go out to his car in the square and drive home to his family as if nothing had happened.

  Tilda was still in bed, naked.

  Everything was silent. A used condom lay on the floor.

  “Are you good enough?” she asked her blurred reflection in the windowpane.

  No, did you think you were?

  You’re just the Other Woman.

  After sitting there feeling sorry for herself for more than half an hour, and getting over the urge to shave off all her blonde hair, Tilda got up. She had a shower, got dressed, and decided to go over to the home to see Gerlof. Old people without romantic complications were what she needed right now.

  But before she could set off, the telephone rang. It was the duty officer in Borgholm calling her out; there had been a break-in at a vicarage north of Marnäs over the weekend. A retired couple living in the house had surprised the burglars, and the man was in hospital with head injuries and several fractures.

  Work dulled Tilda’s pain.

  She got to the house around two, when the daylight was already beginning to fade over the island.

  The first person she met at the scene was Hans Majner. Unlike her he was dressed in full uniform and was walking around with a roll of blue-and-white tape and signs that said police no entry in his hand.

  “So, where were you yest
erday?” he asked.

  “I wasn’t working,” said Tilda. “Nobody called me out.”

  “You have to check for yourself whether there’s anything going on that you need to know about.”

  Tilda slammed the car door. “Shut your mouth,” she said.

  Majner turned around. “What did you say?”

  “I told you to shut your mouth,” said Tilda. “Stop criticizing me all the time.”

  She had definitely ruined things with Majner now, but she didn’t care.

  He stood there motionless for several seconds, as if he didn’t really understand what she had said.

  “I’m not criticizing you,” he said.

  “Really? Give me the tape.”

  Silently she began to cordon off the back of the vicarage, looking for impressions left by shoes to cover up out in the garden. The crime scene technicians would be over from Kalmar on Monday morning.

  There were in fact several prints left by shoes in the muddy ground around the house. They looked as if they came from men’s boots or shoes with grooves in the soles-and further in among the trees there were traces in the undergrowth indicating that someone had fallen headfirst, then crept along on their hands and knees.

  Tilda looked and counted the tracks. It looked as if there had been three visitors to the vicarage.

  A woman came out from the veranda. It was the lady from next door; she had a key to the house and was keeping an eye on it for the elderly couple who were in the hospital in Kalmar. She asked if they would like to come over to her house for a cup of coffee.

  A coffee break with Majner?

  “I’d rather take a quick look inside, thanks,” said Tilda.

  When she had sent the neighbor home, she went up the stone steps.

  On the floor of the hallway past the veranda lay a mosaic of shards of glass from a mirror that had fallen down. The rug was in a heap and blood had splashed across the doorway and over the wooden floor.

  The door to the large drawing room was half open, and she stepped over the broken glass and looked in.

  It was a mess. The doors of glass-fronted cabinets stood wide open, and every drawer in an old bureau had been pulled out. Tilda could see the marks left on the polished wooden floor by muddy shoes-the technicians would have plenty to work with here.

  When they had finished at the vicarage, the two police officers went their separate ways, without exchanging a single word. Tilda got into her car and drove down to the home where Gerlof lived.

  “A break-in,” said Tilda to explain why she was late.

  “Really?” said Gerlof. “Where?”

  “The vicarage at Hagelby. They beat up the owner.”

  “Badly?”

  “Pretty badly, he was stabbed as well… but I’m sure you’ll be able to read more about it in the paper tomorrow.”

  She sat down at his little coffee table, took out her tape recorder, and thought about Martin. He would be home by now; he would have walked in through the door, hugged his wife, Karin, and the kids, and complained about how dull the police conference in Kalmar had been.

  Gerlof said something.

  “Sorry?”

  Tilda hadn’t been listening. She’d been thinking about how Martin had walked out of the door without looking back.

  “Have you been looking for traces of the people who did it?”

  Tilda nodded, without going into details.

  “The crime scene team will go over the place tomorrow.” She switched on the microphone. “Shall we talk about the family now?”

  Gerlof nodded, but still asked, “So what do you do, then, at the scene of a crime?”

  “Well… the technicians preserve any traces,” said Tilda. “They take photographs and film what’s there. They look for fingerprints and hairs and traces of textiles-fibers from clothing. And for biological traces like blood, of course. And then they make plaster casts of any footprints outdoors. They can preserve prints left inside the house from shoes as well, if they make an electrostatic-”

  “You’re very conscientious,” Gerlof interrupted her.

  Tilda nodded. “We try to work methodically. We’re assuming they came in a car or a van. But we don’t have much to go on at the moment.”

  “And of course it’s important that you find these villains.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Could you get me a piece of paper from the desk?”

  Tilda did as he asked and looked on silently as Gerlof wrote a few short lines on the piece of paper. Then he handed it to her.

  There were three names, in Gerlof’s neat handwriting:

  John Hagman

  Dagmar Karlsson

  Edla Gustafsson

  Tilda read through them and looked up at Gerlof.

  “Okay,” she said. “Are these the thieves?”

  “No. They’re old friends of mine.”

  “Right…”

  “They can help you,” said Gerlof.

  “How?”

  “They see things.”

  “Okay…”

  “They all live near the road, and they keep an eye on the traffic,” said Gerlof. “For John and Edla and Dagmar a car is still a big event, particularly at this time of year, in the winter. Edla and Dagmar drop whatever they’re doing to look out and see who’s driving past.”

  “Okay. Then I’d better have a chat with them,” said Tilda. “We’re grateful for any information.”

  “Quite. Start with John down in Stenvik, we’re friends… Say hi from me.”

  “And ask about strange cars,” said Tilda.

  “Exactly. John’s bound to have seen a few driving along the coast…Then you can go over to Dagmar, she lives by

  the turning for Altorp, and ask her the same thing. And Edla Gustafsson, Edla in Hultet, is also worth talking to. She lives on the main road, near Speteby on the way to Borgholm.”

  Tilda looked at the list of names.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll call in if I’m in the neighborhood.”

  Then she pressed Record.

  “Gerlof… when you think about your brother, Ragnar, what comes into your mind?”

  Gerlof was silent, mulling the question over.

  “Eels,” he said eventually. “He liked to be out in his little motorboat checking his nets on the seabed in the fall. He liked to dupe the eels as well… to try out different kinds of bait to lure the females into the nets at night and get them into the pots.”

  “The females?”

  “You only catch female eels.” Gerlof smiled at her. “Nobody wants the males, they’re too small and feeble.”

  “So are a lot of men,” said Tilda.

  16

  “When will it be Christmas Eve, Daddy?” asked Livia one evening when Joakim was putting her to bed.

  “Soon… in a month.”

  “How many days?”

  “In…” Joakim looked at the Pippi Longstocking calendar above her bed and counted, “twenty-eight days.”

  Livia nodded and looked thoughtful.

  “What are you puzzling out?” he asked. “Are you thinking about Christmas presents?”

  “No,” said Livia. “But Mommy will be home then, won’t she?”

  Joakim didn’t say anything at first.

  “I’m not so sure about that,” he said slowly.

  “She will.”

  “No, I don’t think we should get our hopes-”

  “She will,” said Livia more loudly. “Mommy will come back then.”

  Then she pulled the coverlet up to her nose and refused to talk anymore.

  Livia had developed a new sleep pattern-Joakim had discovered this after just a couple of weeks at Eel Point. She would sleep peacefully for two nights, but on the third she would become restless and start calling out for him.

  “Daddy?”

  It would usually start an hour or so after midnight, and however deeply Joakim was sleeping, he was instantly wide awake.

  Livia’s cries also woke th
e cat, Rasputin. He would jump up onto a windowsill and stare out into the darkness, as if he could see something moving between the buildings.

  “Da-dee?”

  At least there was some progress, thought Joakim as he went toward his daughter’s room. She no longer called out for Katrine.

  This Thursday night he sat down on the edge of Livia’s bed and stroked her back. She didn’t wake up, just turned to face the wall and slowly relaxed again.

  Joakim stayed where he was, waiting for her to start talking. After a couple of minutes she began, in a calm and slightly monotonous voice.

  “Daddy?”

  “Yes?” he answered quietly. “Can you see anyone, Livia?”

  She was still lying with her back to him.

  “Mommy,” she said.

  He was prepared now. But he was still unsure if she was really asleep, or simply in some kind of half-awake trance-and he was just as unsure if this conversation was really any good for her. Or for him.

  “Where is she?” he asked. “Where’s Mommy?”

  Joakim watched her lift her right hand from the coverlet and wave it feebly. He turned his head, but of course saw nothing in the shadows.

  He looked down at his daughter again.

  “Can Katrine… does Mommy want to say anything to me?”

  No reply. When he asked longer questions, there was hardly ever a reply.

  “Where is she?” he asked again. “Where’s Mommy, Livia?”

  Still no reply.

  Joakim thought for a moment, then asked slowly, “What was Mommy doing on the jetty? Why did she go down to the sea?”

  “She wanted to… find out.”

  “Find out what?”

  “The truth.”

  “The truth? Who from?”

  Livia was silent.

  “Where’s Mommy now?” he asked.

  “Close.”

  “Has she… is she in the house?”

  Livia didn’t respond. Joakim could feel that Katrine was not in the house. She was staying away.

  “Can you talk to her now?” he asked. “Is she listening?”

  “She’s watching.”

  “Can she see us?”

  “Maybe.”