The Darkest Room

by Johan Theorin

He falls silent and looks to one side, still thoughtful-then the whole of his upper body jerks in a violent attack of cramp.

  I sit there motionless, staring at him; I don’t say a word. I could ask if he’s not feeling well, but I know the answer: the poison in the glass has finally begun to work.

  “It wasn’t schnapps in that glass, Ragnar,” I say.

  Davidsson is in a lot of pain now, he is leaning against the wall.

  “I put something else in there.”

  Davidsson manages to get to his feet and staggers past me toward the door. This suddenly gives me a burst of fresh energy.

  “Get out of here!” I yell.

  I pick up an empty metal bucket standing in a corner and hit him on the back with it.

  “Out!”

  He does as I say, and I follow him out into the snow and watch him aim for the fence. He manages to find the opening, and heads on down toward the sea.

  The southern lighthouse is flashing blood-red through the falling snow; the northern tower is dark now.

  In the darkness I can see Ragnar’s open motorboat bobbing in the sea out by the jetty. The waves are breaking along the shore with a long drawn-out roaring sound, and I ought to try and stop him, but I stay where I am, just watching as he teeters out along the jetty and loosens the ropes. Then he stops, bends over again, and vomits into the water.

  He drops the rope and the waves begin to play with the boat, nudging it away from the jetty.

  Ragnar seems to be feeling too ill to bother about the boat. He glances out to sea, then begins to stagger inland instead.

  “Ragnar!” I yell.

  If he asks me for help, he can have it, but I don’t think he can hear me. He doesn’t stop when he reaches the shore, but sets off northward. Heading for home. Soon he has disappeared in the darkness and the snow.

  I go back to the outbuilding and Torun. She is still awake, sitting in her chair by the window as usual.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  She doesn’t turn her head, but asks, “Where is Ragnar Davidsson?”

  I go and stand by the fire and sigh. “He’s gone. He was here for a while… but now he’s gone.”

  “Did he throw out the paintings?”

  I hold my breath and turn around. “The paintings?” I say, a lump forming in my throat. “Why do you think he would do that?”

  “Ragnar said he was going to throw them out.”

  “No, Mom,” I say. “Your canvases are still in the storeroom. I can fetch-”

  “He should have done it,” says Torun.

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “I asked Ragnar to throw them in the sea.”

  It takes four or five seconds for me to understand what she’s saying-then it’s as if a membrane breaks inside me and dangerous fluids begin to mingle in my brain. I see myself rushing over to Torun.

  “Fucking sit here, then, you fucking old cow!” I scream. “Sit here till you die! You fucking blind old…”

  I hit her over and over again with the palm of my hand, and Torun can do nothing but take the blows. She doesn’t see them coming.

  I count the blows, six, seven, eight, nine, and I stop hitting her after the twelfth.

  Afterward both Torun and I are breathing loudly, almost wheezing. The mournful howling of the wind can be heard through the windows.

  “Why did you leave me with him?” I ask her. “You should have seen how dirty he was, Mommy, and the stench of him… You shouldn’t have let me go in there, Mommy.”

  I pause for a moment.

  “But you were blind even then.”

  Torun stares rigidly ahead, her cheeks red. I don’t think she has any idea what I’m talking about.

  And that was the end for me at Eel Point. I left and never came back. And I stopped speaking to Torun. I made sure she got a place in a care home, but we never spoke again.

  The next day the news came that the evening ferry between Öland and the mainland had capsized in the waves. Several passengers had died in the icy waters. Markus Landkvist was one of them.

  Another victim of the storm was Ragnar Davidsson, the eel fisherman. He was found dead on the shore a day or so later. I felt no guilt over his death-I felt nothing.

  I don’t think anyone ever lived in the outbuilding again after Torun and me, and I don’t think anyone really lived in the main house again, apart from the odd month in the summer. Sorrow had permeated the walls.

  Six weeks later, when I had moved to Stockholm to start at the art school, I found that I was pregnant.

  Katrine Månstråle Rambe was born the following year, the first of all my children.

  You had your father’s eyes.

  36

  “Hello?” Henrik shouted to the figure down in the snow. “Are you okay?”

  It was a stupid question, because the body below him was lying motionless with a bloody face. The snow had already begun to cover it.

  Henrik blinked in confusion; it had all happened so quickly.

  He thought he had spotted the Serelius brothers outside. When the first of them opened the veranda door, Henrik had thrown his grandfather’s ax as hard as he could, and it had hit the intruder on the head. With the blunt edge-not with the blade, he was sure of that.

  He stayed in the doorway of the veranda. In the glow of the outside light he suddenly saw that it was a woman he had hit.

  A few yards behind her stood a man, as if he were frozen solid in the whirling snow. Then he strode forward and knelt down.

  “Tilda?” he shouted. “Wake up, Tilda!”

  She moved her arms feebly and tried to raise her head.

  Henrik walked out onto the steps, with his back to the warmth of the house and the cold and wind in his face, and discovered that the woman was wearing a dark-colored uniform.

  A cop. She had almost disappeared in a huge billowing drift at the bottom of the steps. A thin stream of dark blood was pouring out of her nose and down around her mouth.

  For a few seconds everything stood still, except for the falling snow.

  The pains in his belly came back.

  “Hello?” he said again. “Are you okay?”

  Neither one replied, but the man picked up the ax and came over to the steps.

  “Drop it!” he yelled at Henrik.

  Behind the man the woman suddenly coughed and started vomiting violently in the snow.

  “What?” said Henrik.

  “Drop it now!”

  The man was talking about the kitchen knife, Henrik realized. He was still clutching it in his hand.

  He didn’t want to drop it. The Serelius brothers were around somewhere; he needed to be able to defend himself.

  The woman had stopped vomiting. She put her hand to her face, felt cautiously at her nose. The snowflakes were landing on her shoulders and her nose, and the blood had congealed into black patches on her face.

  “What’s your name?” asked the man on the steps.

  The woman raised her head and shouted something to Henrik through the howling wind, the same thing over and over again, and eventually he was able to make out what it was. His own name.

  “Henrik!” she was shouting. “Henrik Jansson!”

  “Drop the knife, Henrik,” said the man. “Then we can talk.”

  “Talk?”

  “You’re under arrest for robbery with violence, Henrik,” the woman went on from her snowdrift. “And breaking and entering… and criminal damage.”

  Henrik heard what she said but didn’t reply; he was too tired. He took a step backwards, shaking his head.

  “All that stuff… that was Tommy and Freddy,” he said quietly.

  “What?” said the man.

  “It was those fucking brothers,” said Henrik. “I just went along with them. But it was much better with Mogge, I never thought-”

  There was a sudden tinkling noise, just a couple of inches from his right ear. A short, solid sound in the wind.

  Henrik turned his head and saw that a black, un
even hole had appeared in one of the small panes of glass in the veranda windows.

  Was it the storm? Perhaps the storm had smashed the glass. Henrik’s second confused thought was that the pistol had been fired at him, despite the fact that the cop was no longer holding it.

  But when he looked out through the whirling snow, over toward the barn, he discovered that there was someone else there.

  A dark figure had stepped out of the half-open door of the barn and was standing there in the snow, legs apart. In the glow from the outside light Henrik could see that the figure was holding a slender stick in its hands.

  No, not a stick. It was a gun, of course. Henrik couldn’t make it out properly, but he thought it was an old Mauser.

  A man in a black hood. Tommy. He shouted something across the courtyard, then the gun in his hands jerked. Once. Twice.

  No panes of glass broke this time-but the face of the man in front of Henrik contorted suddenly, and he went down.

  37

  Tilda saw it all so clearly when Martin was shot.

  It was after the ax had hit her. She almost wished she had lost consciousness then, but her brain remained awake, registering everything. The pain, the fall, and the pistol spinning out of her hand.

  When she landed on her back, the snow received her like a soft bed.

  She stayed where she was. Her nose was broken, warm blood was pouring down into her mouth, and she was completely exhausted after the trek through the storm.

  I’ve done my bit tonight, she thought. Enough.

  “Tilda!”

  Martin was calling her name, bending over her. Behind him she saw a man step out from the veranda and look down at her. He was holding a big knife in his hand and shouting something, but she couldn’t make out a word.

  Everything stopped for a little while. Tilda sank down into

  a warm drowsiness before the nausea hit her, and the vomiting. She turned her head to the side and threw up into the snow.

  Tilda coughed, raised her head, and tried to pull herself together. She saw Martin go over to the man and shout to him to drop the knife.

  It was Henrik Jansson up there on the steps, the man responsible for the break-ins, the man she’d been looking for.

  “Henrik?”

  Tilda called his name several times, her voice thick, while at the same time trying to recall all the things he was suspected of.

  She didn’t hear his reply-she did, however, hear the gunshot.

  It came from the barn on the other side of the courtyard and sounded like a dull bang with no echo. The bullet hit the veranda; a pane of glass broke next to Henrik.

  He turned his head and looked at the hole in confusion.

  Martin continued on up the steps toward him. He was moving calmly and speaking firmly to the perpetrator, like the police instructor he was. Henrik backed away.

  Neither of them had heard the shot, Tilda realized.

  As she opened her mouth to warn them, there were several more bangs.

  She saw Martin jerk up on the steps. His upper body contorted, his legs gave way. He collapsed and landed heavily in the snow just a few yards from Tilda.

  “Martin!”

  He was lying there with his back to her, and she began to crawl toward him, keeping her head down. She could hear a faint moaning sound through the wind.

  “Martin?”

  Breathing, bleeding, shock. That was the list she had learned to check in cases of stabbing or gunshot wounds.

  Breathing? It was difficult to see in the storm, but Martin hardly seemed to be breathing.

  She dragged his upper body into the recovery position, ripped open his jacket and bloodstained sweater, and finally found the small entry hole-high up and just to the left of the spine. The hole looked deep and the blood was still flowing. Had the bullet hit the main artery?

  He shouldn’t be left out here, but there was no way Tilda could get him into the house. There was no time.

  She unbuttoned her right jacket pocket and took out a pressure bandage pack.

  “Martin?” she called again, at the same time pressing the bandage against the bullet hole as firmly as she could.

  No reply. His eyes were open, unblinking in the snow-he had gone into shock.

  Tilda couldn’t find a pulse.

  She pushed his body onto its back again, leaned over him, and began pressing on his chest with both hands. One firm push, wait. Then a firm push again.

  It didn’t help. He no longer seemed to be breathing, and when she shook him his body was completely lifeless. The snow was landing in his eyes.

  “Martin…”

  Tilda gave up. She sank down beside him in the snow, sniveling blood up her nose.

  Everything had gone completely wrong. Martin wasn’t even supposed to be here; he shouldn’t have come with her to Eel Point.

  Suddenly she heard two more bangs from the direction of the barn. Tilda kept her head down.

  The pistol? She had dropped it when she fell in the snow.

  The Sig Sauer was made of black steel-she ought to be able to see it in all this whiteness, and she began to feel around with her hands. At the same time she peeped cautiously over the drifts.

  A figure was moving through the snow. He had a black hood over his head and a gun in his hands.

  The man clambered over a snowdrift, and when he realized

  that Tilda had seen him, he shouted something into the wind.

  She didn’t answer. Her hand was still burrowing in the snow-and suddenly it felt something hard and heavy down there. At first the object just slid away, but then she managed to get hold of it.

  She pulled the gun out of the snow.

  She banged the barrel a couple of times to get the snow out of it, undid the safety catch, and aimed in the direction of the barn.

  “Police!” she yelled.

  The masked man said something in reply, but the wind ripped his words to shreds.

  “Ubba… ubba,” it sounded like.

  He slowed down and stooped slightly, but kept on coming toward her through the snowdrifts.

  “Stand still and drop the gun!” Tilda’s voice became shrill and small, she could hear how weak it sounded, but still she went on: “I’ll fire!”

  And she did actually fire, a warning shot straight up into the night. The bang sounded almost as weak as her voice.

  The man stopped, but didn’t drop the gun. He dropped to his knees between two snowdrifts, less than ten yards away. He raised the gun and aimed it at her again, and Tilda fired two shots at him in rapid succession.

  Then she ducked back behind the drifts, and at almost the same moment the light went out. The lamps in the windows and the lantern in the inner courtyard went out at the same time. Everything went black.

  The blizzard had caused a power outage at Eel Point.

  38

  So Ethel went down the dark paths, down among the trees by the walkway along the shore. Down to the water, where the lights of the houses and streets of Stockholm glittered in the blackness.

  There she sat down obediently in the shadow of a boat-house and got her reward. Then she just had to do the usual: heat up the yellow-brown powder in the spoon, draw it up into the syringe, and insert it into her arm.

  Peace.

  The murderer waited patiently until Ethel’s head was drooping and she was just beginning to doze off… then went over and gave the unresisting body a hard shove. Straight down into the winter water.

  Joakim was still sitting slumped on the bench, motionless. There was no light in the prayer room, and yet it

  wasn’t completely dark. He could make out the wooden walls, the window, and the drawing of Jesus’ empty tomb. There was a faint, pale glow around him, as if from a distant moon.

  The storm continued to howl over the roof.

  He was not alone.

  His wife, Katrine, was sitting beside him. He could see her pale face out of the corner of his eye.

  And the benches behind him
had filled up with visitors. Joakim could hear the faint sound of creaking, just like when the congregation in a church is impatiently waiting to go up and take Communion.

  They started to get up.

  When Joakim heard this, he stood up too, with the unpleasant feeling of being in the wrong place on the wrong night. Soon he would be discovered-or unmasked.

  “Come on,” he whispered. “Trust me.”

  He pulled at Katrine’s cold hand and tried to get her to stand up, and in the end she obeyed him.

  He heard creaking steps approaching. The figures behind him had begun to move out into the narrow aisle.

  There were so many of them when they were gathered together. More and more shadows seemed to fill the room.

  Joakim couldn’t get past them. All he could do was stay where he was in front of the bench-there was nowhere to go now. He stood completely still, not letting go of Katrine’s hand.

  The air grew colder around them, and Joakim shivered. He could hear the rustling sound of old fabric, and the floor creaked faintly as the chapel’s visitors spread out around him.

  They wanted so much warmth that he was unable to give them. They wanted to take Communion. Joakim was freezing now, but still they pressed forward to reach him. Their jerky movements were like a slow dance in the narrow room, and he was drawn along with them.

  “Katrine!” he whispered.

  But she was no longer with him. Her hand slipped from his grip and they were separated by all the movement in the room.

  “Katrine?”

  She was gone. Joakim turned around and tried to push his way through the crowd to find her again. But no one helped him, everyone was standing in his way.

  Then suddenly he heard something more than the wind through the cracks in the barn: someone shouting, then several dull bangs. It sounded as if someone were shooting with a rifle or a pistol-like a volley of shots somewhere down below the hayloft.

  Joakim stiffened and listened. He could no longer hear any other sounds, no voices or movements inside the room.

  The pale light that had been seeping through the wall from the bulb in the loft suddenly went out.

  The electricity had gone out, Joakim realized.