End of Summer

by Anders de la Motte

She nods silently. Then stands and watches as the rear lights of his car disappear down the dark driveway.

  Chapter 30

  W

  hat do you do when you’ve done your absolute best but still failed? If you can’t draw a line under it and move on, and find yourself clinging to something or someone for so long that it eventually ends up being the only thing you’ve got left, the only thing that keeps you going? Veronica wishes she had the answers to those questions.

  She’s lying on the bottom bunk of the bed once more. The house is silent and dark. The only light comes from the four flashing zeroes on the clock radio. They make her think of the answerphone in her flat, the message she still hasn’t deleted.

  She doesn’t really know why she can’t let go of Leon. She’d had other relationships before him, with other men. On most occasions she knew in advance that they weren’t going to last more than a few months, sometimes less than that. And when they came to an end, it was always at her initiative. Her relationship with Leon was different. It was her first real attempt at something serious, and she really did try to make it work. Maybe that was why it went so wrong? Because she gave so much of herself that it later became impossible to let go, even though they clearly weren’t good for each other. And another, even more important question: is she on her way to becoming obsessed with the blond man instead of Leon? She feels undeniably drawn to him, and not necessarily in a strictly brother and sister way. Is that was this is all about? A new obsession?

  What she would like to do most of all right now is go back to Stockholm. Put this failed visit behind her and concentrate on more important things instead. Such as keeping her job, and not throwing away the fragile life that she’s made such an effort to construct. But she can’t leave now, not before they’ve marked Mum’s birthday, which means she’s stuck here until after dinner tomorrow evening at the earliest. Dad will say it’s not a good idea to drive at night, that she ought to stay until the following day, but he won’t insist and try to make her. Nor will Mattias, to judge by their conversation earlier. Her big brother has changed, and she wonders if he’s thinking the same about her. If he’s thinking about her at all. If that we of his actually referred to someone other than her.

  She shuts her eyes and takes a deep breath. Her thoughts wander off, and gradually end up somewhere between sleep and wakefulness.

  Keep looking up, Vera. Just look up.

  She’s back on the ladder with Mattias. Him behind her, the vibrations in the warm metal. The colours blur, sounds change. Mattias’s voice becomes Mum’s. Louder, upset.

  ‘Do you realise what you’ve done? You’ve killed the baby birds!’

  ‘Uncle Harald says there’s only room for one hunter in the forest. That a proper hunter doesn’t—’ The palm of Mum’s hand strikes Mattias’s cheek, then the top of his head. Once, twice, three times, more.

  ‘Harald isn’t the one who decides what you do. He’s not your father.’

  Mattias’s sobs get louder. She hunches up, gets ready. But in place of her mum’s agitated breathing she hears a different noise. A long rattling sound that turns into a bang.

  She’s awake in an instant. That last noise wasn’t in her dream, she’s sure of that. She gets cautiously out of bed and goes over to the window. The blue nights you get in early summer have been replaced by deep, black August darkness. The sky is clear and the moon, which is almost full, is spreading a silvery light that makes the tall poplars cast long shadows across the grass and the far end of the garden. The red eyes of the wind giants’ warning lights are flashing above the dark fields.

  Years have passed since she was last down there. Even before Billy went missing she used to avoid that part of the garden. The half-dead, jagged shrubs used to scratch and catch in your hair. And sometimes you found bones on the ground, the skeletal remains of animals that had been buried there long ago.

  The noise that woke her isn’t repeated. She opens the window carefully, but all she can hear is the crickets and the distant cry of a lone owl. Just as she’s about to go back to bed she catches a glimpse of something moving out of the corner of her eye. She turns her head sharply, but all she manages to see is a change in the shadows. An animal, probably. A deer that has snuck in to eat the windfalls. Or one with a red coat, black nose and sharp teeth, one that likes digging for old bones.

  Then she hears another noise. A faint creak she recognises from earlier. The hinges on the gate to the rose garden. She shifts position, trying to get a better view. Only a small portion of the white wall is visible from the window where she’s standing. In Billy’s or – even better – Mum’s room she’d have a far better view of the garden, so just to be sure she goes and checks the doors, even though she knows they’re locked. She stands on the landing for a few moments. The clock on the wall says it’s quarter past two.

  Without switching on any of the lights, she goes downstairs and knocks gently on the door to the study. There’s no light coming from beneath it.

  ‘Dad, are you awake?’

  No answer. She tries again, a bit louder.

  ‘Dad, I think there’s someone in the rose garden.’ Still no answer. She knocks a third time, tries to open the door, and discovers to her surprise that it too is locked. There’s no sound from within. Her dad’s probably taken one of his pills, sleeping so soundly that he can’t hear her. But why has he locked the door? She thinks back to the frightened look on his face earlier. The front door had been locked when she arrived, which was unusual, and now the door to the study as well.

  She creeps into the kitchen, trying to find a window from which she can get a better view of the wall of the rose garden. It takes a few moments for her eyes to get used to the odd brightness outside. And then she realises that the gate to the garden is standing open.

  Her heart is thudding hard. There’s someone out there, someone who’s just snuck into the rose garden. An intruder, just like in her flat. The feeling from the day before is back. Impotence, a sense of not being able to defend herself. She feels like running back upstairs, calling Mattias and locking herself in the bedroom. Hiding under the covers until all danger is past, just like when she was little. But what could she do if the intruder decided to come inside the house?

  Suddenly she thinks of an answer to that question. She runs lightly into the hall and opens the cupboard under the stairs. She lifts the loose plank in the panelling aside and sticks her arm into the hole. At first she can’t find anything, and feels vulnerable standing there with her back to the dark hall.

  She reaches her arm further into the cavity, so far that she feels the tendons creak. Her nose picks up a faint smell of gun oil, and then to her relief her fingers touch wood and cold metal.

  She pulls the shotgun out from its hiding place and breaks it open with a practised gesture. The gun isn’t loaded, but she finds two shotgun cartridges wrapped in yellow waxed paper on a ledge in the cupboard. The cartridges are homemade, by her grandfather, and one of them sticks a little and she has to force it in. The gun belonged to her mum, which is why her dad leaves it undisturbed. He hates guns, anyway. He can’t even bring himself to touch them.

  She snaps it shut, puts the butt against her shoulder and aims it along the hall, trying it out. Her fear is fading now, replaced by a different emotion. A feeling of security and power. Control. Uncle Harald taught her how to handle a gun. How to breathe, how to squeeze – not pull – the trigger. She wishes she’d had the gun the previous evening. Then she’d never have allowed herself to be frightened away from her own home. No way!

  She lowers the shotgun, makes sure the safety catch is on. Then she creeps back to the study door and knocks once more. The door remains closed and locked.

  As quietly as possible she goes back into the kitchen, then stops to listen. The gate to the rose garden is still open.

  A different feeling is growing inside her now, and her temples are starting to throb. Anger. There’s someone out there in the rose garden, someone who’s
broken into her dad’s property. Maybe it’s happened before, which would explain why he keeps all the doors locked now. And has to take pills to get to sleep. He’s frightened.

  Her anger grows stronger. Usually she would think of her therapist now and use one of the techniques slightly-too-tall Bengt has taught her to control her moods. Instead she decides to use the anger to her advantage.

  She takes a deep breath, opens the door to the terrace and sneaks out. The night air is moist, full of the smells of late summer. She’s only wearing pyjama bottoms and a vest, so she ought to be feeling cold. But the adrenalin is warming her blood and sharpening her senses.

  She imagines she can hear a faint sound from the other side of the wall of the rose garden. There’s someone in there, she’s sure of that. But this time she’s the hunter, she’s the one in control, for the first time in a very long while.

  Holding the shotgun tighter against her shoulder, she lets her thumb slide over the safety catch, and keeps her eyes focused above the barrel, the way Uncle Harald had taught her. She’s barefoot, and moves almost silently down the little flight of steps from the terrace, then across the gravel path towards the gate to the rose garden.

  Chapter 31

  Summer 1983

  T

  he city cops had fooled him, Månsson realised that now. When the court remanded Tommy Rooth in custody the previous week, he should really have been kept in the city prison rather than transferred back out here. What Månsson had interpreted as a polite gesture towards him and his officers was in fact a way for Bure and Borg to protect their own backs. This wasn’t about who was going to get the glory for solving the case, but who was going to be able to avoid any of the blame in the unlikely event that they failed to secure enough evidence to raise the level of the charges against Rooth.

  And now Månsson was sitting here alone, with a whole acid bath in his stomach and the unlucky Old Maid card locked away in a cell a dozen or so metres from his office. He tore open two sachets of antacid powder and tipped the contents into the glass of water on the desk.

  He’d had nightmares about the pump house for the past few nights. Tommy Rooth had taken Billy Nilsson there, held him captive on that disgusting bed, he was absolutely certain of that. But even though they had spent a whole week looking out there, using four different police tracker dogs, conducting a meticulous search of first the forest, then the surrounding area, they hadn’t found any trace of the boy. The Northern Forest and the ridge it straddled was over fifteen square kilometres in area. It contained ravines carved out by water, steep drops and patches of bog, as well as forest so dense that sunlight never reached the ground. Rooth knew it as well as the back of his hand. And knew where you could hide a body where it would never be found again.

  The bloodstains found in the pump house and the back of Rooth’s Amazon hadn’t provided any clear answers. They were an unholy mix of various types of animal blood, and the lab technicians hadn’t been able either to confirm or rule out that they might contain traces of human blood. Laila, who had seen Rooth try to lure Billy out of the car at the petrol station, was standing by her story, but she had only seen them from a distance and the prosecutor was sounding increasingly doubtful that a court would believe that it really was Tommy Rooth she had seen.

  Just like the city cops and evidently also the courts, Senior Prosecutor Hammarlund didn’t seem to appreciate that people out here were used to seeing each other from a distance. That you identified someone by posture, gait, clothing and the vehicle they drove, not just from faces. Not that it was worth trying to explain that. The incident at the petrol station was only supporting evidence, after all, not conclusive proof of Rooth’s guilt.

  Rooth himself denied touching the boy, but was saying very little apart from that, even though Borg and Bure had been grilling him for several hours each day. The two detectives got louder and louder, sweatier and sweatier, inside the interview room while Rooth sat silently on his chair with his lawyer beside him and that arrogant smirk on his lips. The fear that had been visible during that first interview, and later when Aronsson had peered into his cell, had vanished. And with good reason.

  The last time they met, Rooth’s lawyer – appointed by the court – had pointed out the deficiencies in the police’s case with admirable clarity: no body, no forensic evidence, no witnesses. Nothing that supported raising the level of suspicion or would persuade the court to extend Rooth’s time in custody.

  The telex that Britt from reception put on Månsson’s desk a short while ago indicated that the prosecutor shared that evaluation:

  At 17.12 today Senior Prosecutor J. Hammarlund decided that Tommy Rooth, d.o.b. 21/10/1947, should be released from custody immediately and without delay.

  Månsson gulped down the antacid solution, splashing some on the shirt of his uniform. He wished the glass had contained something much stronger.

  This was his case, Borg and Bure had made that very clear. And now he was the one who was going to have to release a child killer. Rooth would remain a suspect, and the preliminary investigation would continue, formally at least, for several more weeks or months. They would carry on working on all leads without prejudice, and that was what he was going to have to tell both the boy’s family and the media. He knew he was unlikely to sound particularly convincing. Everyone involved already had a good idea how this was going to turn out. Tommy Rooth would walk free and the Nilsson family would never find out what happened to their little boy.

  Månsson closed his eyes and swallowed hard, feeling the antacid collide with his heartburn halfway down his chest. Fucking hell!

  He got stiffly to his feet and opened the door. He glanced towards the reception desk. It was past closing time, but instead of packing up and going home, the two receptionists were talking in whispers to two uniformed officers. Judging from their body language and the looks on their faces, Britt had already shared the contents of the telex. Månsson turned and began to walk towards the custody unit, feeling their stares on the back of his neck.

  Chapter 32

  A

  shotgun isn’t a complicated weapon. Two barrels, the same number of cartridges. You hardly need to aim, just point and fire. If the target is within ten metres of you, there’s more chance of you hitting it than not. And, unlike a weapon that fires bullets, it doesn’t matter where on the body you hit. The collapse in blood pressure caused by the hail of shot makes the heart stop, and your prey dies of shock rather than the injury itself.

  Uncle Harald’s words echo through her head as Veronica cautiously peers through the crack in the open gate. The sound she heard before is clearer now, but the crack is too narrow for her to be able to figure out where it’s coming from.

  She takes a deep breath and slips through the gap, taking care not to touch the gate and make the hinges creak. Once she’s inside she presses her back against the wall and makes a sweep of the rose garden with the shotgun. Everything is quiet. The only movement she can detect is from the windchime hanging from one of the beams of the summerhouse, making sporadic metallic tingling sounds. With the exception of the deep shadows beneath the larger bushes, the summerhouse, covered in its Magdalena rose, is the only part of the garden she can’t quite see. She knows there’s a bench in there. A good hiding place, and possibly the only one in the entire garden.

  She moves forward very slowly. The Öland stone beneath her feet is cool and rough. The slabs have a reddish, almost pink tone, but they look white in the moonlight.

  The sound of the windchime changes, becomes weaker, more irregular, and just as she’s about to step round the corner of the summerhouse some clouds pass in front of the moon. The garden is left in almost total darkness. She stops, trying to get her eyes used to the change. But before her sight has time to adapt the clouds are gone and the garden is bathed in white light once more. The bench is only a couple of metres from the end of the barrels. The summerhouse is empty. There’s no one here.

  She lowers the shotg
un slightly, and starts to wonder if she’s imagined it all, if it’s all just a consequence of everything she’s been through, and that the noise she heard was actually just the windchime.

  She almost manages to convince herself of that before she suddenly realises that something isn’t right. The windchime is almost silent now, but the little metal bars are still swaying gently, making the occasional little sound. Apart from that, the rose garden is perfectly still, as are the trees beyond. There’s no wind at all.

  Something moves behind her and she spins round, then hears the gate slam shut, followed by steps running on the gravel outside.

  Shit!

  She rushes along the path and pushes the wood with her shoulder. It opens a crack, then stops. She sees through the gap that the catch is on. She’s shut in. She swears loudly again and looks around for a way out. She spots a wooden stepladder in the corner by the cold frames.

  The ladder doesn’t reach the top of the wall, but it’s still tall enough for her to be able to swing one leg over the wall and sit astride it. The garden is empty, but she sees the lowest branches of the fruit trees swaying.

  Without thinking she swings her other leg over the wall and jumps down onto the gravel path with the shotgun in one hand. She lands heavily and the sharp stones cut into her feet, making her gasp. She loses her balance and puts her free hand out to steady herself, cutting her palm in the process. She still manages to get up quickly, and her feet feel wet on the grass. She hopes it’s just the dew, but isn’t sure.

  She hears branches scratching against fabric and runs towards the sound as fast as she can with the shotgun raised ready to fire. She passes the sundial and the gnarled old fruit trees and carries on into the bushes. For the second time tonight her muscle memory kicks in. She knows how to move through dense undergrowth, she’s done it plenty of times with Uncle Harald. Make yourself small. Move sideways on, arms and weapons close to your body. Sharp twigs scratch red lines across her bare shoulders and arms but she hardly notices the pain.