Joakim thought about it.
“A little.” That sounded terrible, so he added, “I miss her the way she used to be before… before the drugs. Ethel used to talk a lot, she always had so many plans. She was going to open a hair salon, she was going to be a music teacher… but after a while you just got so tired of it all, because none of the plans involved giving up the drugs. It was like watching someone sitting in a burning house, planning a party in the middle of the flames.”
“So how did it start?” asked Gerlof, sounding almost apologetic. “I know so little about that world…”
“For Ethel it started with hash,” said Joakim. “Weed, as they called it. It was cool to smoke at parties and concerts. And life was a party for Ethel in her teens; she played the piano and the guitar. She taught me to play a little too.”
He smiled to himself.
“It sounds as if you were very fond of her,” said Gerlof.
“Yes, Ethel was happy and funny,” said Joakim. “She was
pretty too, and popular with the boys. And she partied a lot; with amphetamines she could party even more. She must have dropped twenty pounds in weight, although she was already thin. She was away more and more. Then our father died of cancer, and I think it was around then she started with heroin… brown heroin. Her laughter grew harsher and more hoarse.”
He took a sip of his coffee and went on quickly:
“Nobody who smokes heroin thinks they’re a real user. You’re not a junkie. But sooner or later you switch to needles, because it’s cheaper… you need less heroin per dose. But you still need to come up with at least fifteen hundred kronor for supplies every day. That’s a lot of money, particularly when you haven’t got any. So you start stealing. You take your elderly mother’s money, or steal the jewelry she’s inherited.”
Joakim looked at the Advent candles and added:
“On Christmas Eve, when we were sitting in my mother’s house eating ham and meatballs, there was always an empty chair at the table. As usual Ethel had promised to come, but she was in the city center looking for drugs. For her that was routine, just everyday life. And routines are the most difficult thing to break, however terrible they are.”
He was deep into his confession now, not even aware if Gerlof was listening any longer.
“So you know that everything has gone to hell and that your sister is in the middle of the city gathering money for drugs, and her social worker never calls back… but you go off to your teaching job in the morning and have dinner with the family and work on your new house in the evening, and you try not to think and feel so much.” He lowered his eyes. “Either you try to forget, or you try to find her. My father used to go out looking in the evenings, before he got too sick. I did too. On the streets, in the squares, in the subway stations and the emergency psych wards…We soon learned where she might be.”
He fell silent. In his mind he was back in the city, among
the drug users and those sleeping rough, among all the lonely, half-dead souls who spent their nights chasing around out there.
“That must have taken a great deal of strength,” said Gerlof quietly.
“Yes… but I wasn’t out every night. I could have looked for her more often.”
“And you could also have given up.”
Joakim nodded grimly. He had one more thing to tell Gerlof about Ethel, the most difficult thing of all to talk about:
“What was in fact the beginning of the end happened two years ago,” he said. “Ethel had been in rehab that winter, and it had gone well. When she went in, she weighed less than a hundred pounds, her body was covered in bruises, and her cheeks looked completely hollow. But when she came home to Stockholm, she was much healthier. She had been clean for almost three months and had put some weight on… so we let her stay in our guest room. And it worked well. She wasn’t allowed to look after Gabriel, but she used to play a lot with Livia in the evenings, they got on really well.”
He remembered that they had begun to hope again at that time, he and Katrine. They had begun to trust Ethel. Not to the extent that they would dare to invite people to dinner when she was home, but they had started to go for long walks in the evenings, leaving Ethel to look after Livia and Gabriel. And it had gone well every time.
“One evening in March, Katrine and I went to see a movie,” he went on. “When we got back to the house after a couple of hours, it was dark and empty. There was only Gabriel there, sleeping in his cot with a soaking wet diaper. Ethel had gone, and she had taken two things with her: my cell phone and Livia.”
He stopped speaking and closed his eyes.
“I knew where she’d gone, of course,” he continued. “The craving had returned and she had taken the subway into the city to buy heroin. She had done it so many times before.
Bought a tab for five hundred kronor, injected it in some toilet, and rested for a few hours, until the craving came back again… The problem this time was that she had Livia with her.”
The memories of that night came back to Joakim-ice-cold memories of growing panic. He had hurled himself into the car and driven around the areas close to the central station. He had done it before, either alone or with Katrine. But then he had been worried about what could have happened to Ethel.
This time he was terrified for Livia.
“I found Ethel in the end,” he said, looking at Gerlof. “She was lying in the dark graveyard at Klara church. She had curled up next to a tomb and passed out. Livia was sitting beside her in thin clothes, ice cold and apathetic. I called an ambulance and made sure Ethel went into detox. Again. Then I drove home to Bromma with Livia.”
He fell silent.
“Katrine made me choose after that,” he said in a low voice. “And I chose my family.”
“You made the right choice,” said Gerlof.
Joakim nodded, although he would still have preferred not to make that choice.
“After that night I told Ethel not to come near our house anymore… but she did. We didn’t let her in, but in the evenings, two or three times a week, she would stand at our gate in her scruffy denim jacket staring at the Apple House. Sometimes she would open our mail, to see if there was any money or a check in the envelope. And sometimes she had a guy with her… some skeleton standing next to her, shaking.”
He paused and thought about the fact that this was one of his last memories of his sister: standing by the gate, her face deathly pale, her hair standing on end.
“Ethel used to just stand there yelling,” he said to Gerlof. “She yelled stuff about… about Katrine. Sometimes about me too, but mostly about Katrine. She would roar and bawl until the neighbors started peeping through their curtains, and I would have to go out and give her some money.”
“Did that help?”
“Yes… it worked at the time, but of course it meant that she came back the next time she was broke. It became a vicious cycle. Katrine and I felt… besieged. I would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and hear Ethel shouting by the gate, but when I looked out, the street would be empty.”
“Was Livia at home when your sister turned up?”
“Most of the time, yes.”
“Did she hear Ethel yelling?”
“I think so. She hasn’t talked about it, but I’m sure she did.” Joakim closed his eyes. “Those were dark days… a terrible time. And Katrine started to wish that Ethel would die. She would talk about it late at night, in bed. Ethel might take an overdose, sooner or later. Preferably sooner. I think that’s what we were both hoping for.”
“And that’s what happened?”
“Yes, eventually. The telephone rang at eleven-thirty one night. When it rang so late, we knew it was about Ethel, it always was.”
A year ago, thought Joakim, but it felt like ten.
It was his mother, Ingrid, who told them the news. Ethel had been found drowned in Bromma, just below the area where their house was.
Katrine had even heard her earlier. Ethel ha
d been standing there at the gate as usual at around seven o’clock, yelling, then the screaming had stopped.
When Katrine looked out, she was gone.
“Ethel had gone down to the walkway by the shore,” said Joakim. “She had sat down by a boathouse and pushed the needle in, then she had tumbled into the freezing water. And that was the end of her.”
“Weren’t you home that night?” asked Gerlof.
“I came home later…Livia and I were at a children’s party.”
“That was probably a good thing. For her sake.”
“Yes. And for a while we hoped that everything would settle
down,” said Joakim. “But I kept on waking up at night thinking that I could hear Ethel yelling out in the street. And Katrine just lost all her joy in life…We’d finished renovating the Apple House by that time and it was lovely, but she just couldn’t relax there. So last winter we started talking about moving out to the country, moving south, maybe finding a place here on Öland. And in the end that’s what we did.”
He fell silent and looked at his watch. Twenty past four. It felt as if he had talked more during this last hour than during the whole of the fall.
“I have to go and pick up my children,” he said.
“Did anyone ask how all this made you feel?” said Gerlof.
“Me?” said Joakim, getting up. “I felt terrific, of course.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“No. But we’ve never talked about how we feel in my family. And we never really talked about Ethel’s problems, either.” He looked at Gerlof. “You just don’t tell people that your sister is a junkie. Katrine was the first… you could say I dragged her into all this.”
Gerlof sat there in silence, apparently lost in thought.
“What did Ethel want?” he said. “Why did she keep on coming to your house? Was it just to get the money for drugs?”
Joakim pulled on his jacket without answering.
“Not just that,” he said eventually. “She wanted her daughter back as well.”
“Her daughter?”
Joakim hesitated. This was also difficult to talk about, but in the end he came out with it:
“There was no father… he died of an overdose. Katrine and I were Livia’s godparents, and social services awarded her care to us four years ago. We adopted her last year… Livia is ours now.”
“But she’s Ethel’s child?” said Gerlof.
“No. Not any longer.”
23
Tilda had put in a report on the black van to headquarters in Borgholm, describing it as an “interesting” vehicle worth looking out for. But Öland was a big place and the number of police officers out patrolling the roads was small.
And Gerlof’s talk of a murderer with a boat hook at Eel Point? She hadn’t put in a report on that particular theory. Without any proof that there had in fact been a boat out by the point, it was impossible to instigate a murder investigation-it would take more than a few holes in a top.
“I’ve returned the clothes to Joakim Westin,” said Gerlof the next time he called her.
“Did you tell him about your murder theory?” said Tilda.
“No… it wasn’t the right time. He’s still out of balance; he would probably believe that an apparition had dragged his wife down into the water.”
“An apparition?”
“Westin’s sister… she was a drug addict.”
Gerlof told her the story of Joakim’s sister, Ethel, her heroin addiction and her habit of disturbing the peace.
“So that’s why the family moved from Stockholm,” said Tilda when he finished. “A death drove them away.”
“That was one reason. But Öland might just have tempted them as well.”
Tilda thought about how tired and worn Joakim Westin had looked when they went to see him, and said, “I think he could do with talking to a psychologist. Or maybe a priest.”
“So I’m not up to the job of father confessor?” said Gerlof.
Almost every evening when Tilda passed a mailbox on her way home from work, she was on the point of taking out the letter to Martin’s wife and dropping it in the box, and yet it was still in her purse. It was as if she were carrying an ax around-the letter gave her power over a person she didn’t know.
Of course, she had power over Martin too. He had continued to call her from time to time, trying to make small talk. Tilda didn’t know what she would say if he asked if he could come and see her again.
Over two weeks had passed without a single reported break-in in northern Öland. But one morning the telephone rang in the police station. The call came from Stenvik on the west coast of the island; the man on the other end of the line spoke quietly, with a strong local dialect, and said that his name was John Hagman. She recognized the name-Hagman was one of Gerlof’s friends.
“I hear you’re looking for people who’ve been breaking into houses,” he said.
“We are,” said Tilda. “I was intending to call you…”
“Yes, Gerlof told me.”
“Have you seen anyone breaking in?”
“No.”
Hagman didn’t say any more. Tilda waited, then asked, “Have you perhaps seen any trace of someone breaking in?”
“Yes. They’ve been here in the village.”
“Recently?”
“I don’t know… sometime in the fall. They appear to have been in several houses.”
“I’ll come down and take a look,” said Tilda. “How will I find you in the village?”
“I’m the only one here right now.”
Tilda got out of the police car on a gravel track in the middle of a row of closed-up summer cottages, a hundred yards or so above the sound. She looked around in the cold wind, and thought about her family. They came from Stenvik; they had somehow managed to survive in this stony landscape.
A short, elderly man in dark blue dungarees and a brown cap came over to the car.
“Hagman,” he said. He nodded briefly and pointed to a dark brown one-story house with wide windows. “There,” he said. “I noticed it had blown open. Same thing next door.”
One of the windows at the back of the house was ajar. When Tilda went closer, she could see that the frame was split and broken open near the catch.
There were no footprints on the veranda below the window. Tilda went over and pulled it wide open. The room inside was a mess, with clothes and tools just thrown on the stone floor.
“Have you got a key to this house, John?”
“No.”
“In that case I’ll climb in.”
Tilda grabbed hold of both sides of the frame with her gloved hands and hauled herself into the darkness inside.
She jumped down onto the floor of a small storeroom
and flicked a switch, but no light came on. The power was turned off.
The traces left by the thieves were clearly visible, however-all the storage boxes had been pulled out and emptied onto the floor. And when she moved through into the main room, she saw fragments of broken glass, just as in the vicarage at Hagelby.
Tilda went over for a closer look. Small pieces of wood lay among the glass, and it was a while before she realized it was a ship in a bottle that had been smashed on the floor.
A few minutes later she heaved herself back out through the window. Hagman was still standing on the grass.
“They’ve been in there,” she said, “and they’ve made a real mess… smashed things.”
She held out a clear plastic bag and showed him the bits of wood she had collected-the remains of the model ship.
“Is it one of Gerlof’s?”
Hagman looked sadly at the bits and nodded. “Gerlof has a cottage here in the village… he’s sold ships in bottles and model boats to plenty of the summer visitors.”
Tilda pushed the bag into her jacket pocket. “And you haven’t heard or seen anything at night from these cottages?”
Hagman shook his head.
�
�No unusual traffic in the area?”
“No,” said Hagman. “I mean, the owners go home to the city in August every year. In September there was a firm out here replacing some floors. But since then there hasn’t…”
Tilda looked at him. “A flooring company?”
“Yes… they worked in these houses for several days. But they made sure everything was properly locked up when they’d finished.”
“It wasn’t a plumbing firm?” said Tilda. “Kalmar Pipes and Welding?”
Hagman shook his head. “They were laying floors,” he said. “Young lads. Several of them.”
“Laying floors…” said Tilda.
She remembered the newly polished floor at the vicarage in Hagelby, and wondered if she’d found a pattern.
“Did you talk to them?”
“No.”
Tilda went around the other cottages nearby with Hagman, and made a note of which ones had broken window frames.
“We need to get in touch with the owners,” she said as they walked back toward the police car. “Have you got contact details for them, John?”
“For some of them, yes,” said Hagman. “Those who have decent manners.”
When Tilda got back to the station, she called a dozen or so owners of cottages on Öland or in the Kalmar area who had reported break-ins during the fall.
Four of the owners she managed to get hold of either had floors sanded or replaced in their summer cottages earlier in the year. They had used a local firm in northern Öland: Marnäs Fine Flooring.
She also called the vicarage in Hagelby; the owners were now home from the hospital. Gunnar Edberg still had his hand in a cast, but he was feeling better. They had also used the firm in Marnäs to lay a new floor.
“It went really well,” said Edberg. “They were here for five days early on in the summer… but we never saw them, we were in Norway at the time.”
“So you lent them the keys,” said Tilda, “even though you didn’t know who they were?”
“It’s a reliable firm,” said Edberg. “We know the owner, he lives in Marnäs.”
“Have you got his number?”
Tilda had the bit between her teeth now, and she called the owner of Marnäs Fine Flooring as soon as she finished talking to Gunnar Edberg. She quickly spelled out the purpose of her call: to find out the names of the men who had been working in northern Öland laying floors over the past year. She stressed that they weren’t suspected of any crime, and that the police would appreciate it if the owner didn’t mention her call to his employees.
The Darkest Room Page 25
