He couldn’t cry. Since last Tuesday the grief had invaded him, robbed him, leaving only a hole in his chest.
————
She no longer exists.
She no longer exists.
She no longer exists.
He probably should have sung. The cantor had played something on the organ.
Together they exited the echoing building. Rebecka had poured the soil over the coffin, said what she had to say, hugged him and Agnes, trying to console them but not managing to. Her own grief and anger and frailty had made her rudely push them away, look at them, immediately pull them close and hug them again, and then just leave.
They stood quietly on the gravel path. The sun was like before, still summer outside, the same long summer as when he wandered around here with Grandpa.
Now she would be buried, with the others.
“I’m sorry.”
Behind them, the policemen, the old one who limped and Sundkvist, the one who questioned them. They were dressed in black. He wondered if they had thought of it themselves or if it was police etiquette.
“I don’t have any children so I can’t possibly understand, but I’ve lost someone close and know how that feels.”
The older, limping policeman looked down the path as he spoke. It sounded awkward, bordering on harsh, but Fredrik knew it was for real, that it cost more than it seemed to.
“Thank you.”
They shook hands. Sundkvist said something to Agnes, he didn’t hear what.
They fell silent. A slight wind swirled around them. It had been blowing for a few days now. Maybe rain was coming. It was three weeks since the last rain, and it felt as if everyone had forgotten that anything existed other than this unrelenting heat.
The older one cleared his throat and spoke again.
“I don’t know if it matters to you, but we’ll get him soon. We’ve got a lot of people on the job, hunting.”
Fredrik shrugged.
“You’re right, you don’t know if it matters to us.”
“Does it?”
“No. Our daughter is dead. Nothing you can do can change that.”
The older man nodded slowly.
“I can understand that. I would have felt the same. But it’s our job. It’s about punishing and preventing more crimes.”
Fredrik had just taken Agnes by the hand, preparing to go, so they could mourn alone for a while. Now he turned to the two policemen, looking at the older one.
“What do you mean?”
“Since last Tuesday we’ve been guarding every daycare, every school.”
“Because that’s where you expect to find him?”
“Yeah.”
Fredrik released Agnes’s hand, searched her eyes; she was waiting, but she could wait a while longer.
“Which schools?”
“Here. All around. Many locations, a large area.”
“And you’re guarding them because you think he’ll do it again?”
“We’re guarding them because we’re confident that he will try to do it again.”
“Why?”
“We know how he acted in the past. And we have a clear mental profile of him. He’s been examined by more psychiatrists and psychologists than any other prisoner in this country. He will do it again and again until he decides to commit suicide.”
“And you know that?”
“Just the fact that he let you see him before . . . before this, the psychologists say that means he’s passed whatever limits he had left, the last, when there is nothing left but destruction and self-hate.”
He took Agnes’s hand again. The cemetery seemed large.
He was alone. She was alone.
They would carry on—he maybe with Micaela, Agnes maybe with someone else. But they would always be alone.
————
They had driven from the cemetery to a restaurant in Strängnäs. He’d dropped off Micaela at home first, held her for a long time.
He was going to stay with Agnes, just a little longer.
They’d sat in an ugly courtyard, which was turned into a café in the summer, at a table jammed between a carpet beater and a bike rack, but they were in the shade with a light wind cooling them, and they were alone.
They’d driven to the train after that, but when Agnes was about to buy a ticket in the tobacco shop/ticket booth, they changed their minds. Fredrik offered to drive Agnes home, to Stockholm. They could sit next to each other for an extra hour, not have to say goodbye right here and now. They’d have an extra hundred or so kilometers on a busy highway to try to understand that not only had they lost a child, they’d also lost their relationship to each other. Tomorrow they would be two adults who shared nothing more than grief.
They didn’t say much. There wasn’t much to say. He dropped her off at St. Eriksplan. She was going to buy some groceries. She didn’t want to go directly home to an empty apartment. They held each other. She kissed him lightly on the cheek, and he watched her walk away down the pavement, until she disappeared behind the corner of Birka Street.
He drove aimlessly through the inner city. Summer had scared most people away, only the occasional tourist out sightseeing, an elderly person with a cane too tired to leave the city, or a young person too broke to afford to get away. Otherwise, there was only asphalt and the heat it generated. He bought an ice cream, sat down next to a young woman under an umbrella, and ate it while empty buses and a few cars drove past; stopped later to order mineral water from a bored café owner, and so on and so forth through a city that was slowly heading home, eating supper, going to bed. It never got completely dark. The short nights and the artificial city lights chased away the darkness. He slept finally in the front seat of his car, his head against the window, on a footpath in the green expanse of Royal Djurgården.
————
His clothes were like glue. His light suit was rumpled, and he really should have washed himself. He awoke to the sound of early-rising ducks combined with drunken teenagers on their way home. Stockholm was smiling, and he had to take a short walk to stretch his back, which felt sore after five hours of sleeping in a sitting position.
He got back in his car, drove over Djurgårds Bridge, past Berwald Hall, stopped in the parking lot outside the Swedish Television building. It had been three years since Vincent left the Daily News for television, started working as a news editor at Newsnight and the Nine O’Clock News. The last time Fredrik visited, Vincent sat at the end of a huge hall, distributing telegrams and short news features to buzzing reporters. He’d moved to the morning news about a year ago, chopping up and reheating last night’s photos for a new soup—that’s how he himself expressed it. From that day on, he’d become a homogenous cog in the huge news machine, and that, along with a wife and child, suited him just fine for the moment.
Fredrik waited at the security desk. He’d asked a guard in a tight uniform to contact Vincent Carlsson and been told it would take ten minutes, that Carlsson would then come down and meet him.
He was the same. He could see him already through the window, friendly and tall and dark, with a kind of gravitas that made women smile at him. He’d seen it many times when they were in journalism school; stopping by a pub on the way home, Vincent would suddenly exchange glances with a woman at the end of the bar and say, I want that one, and would go over to the most gorgeous woman in the place, start talking and laughing and touching, and would leave with her on his arm. He was that type, easy to like and difficult to be angry with, even when he deserved it.
Vincent motioned to the guard from inside to open the locked doors.
“Fredrik, what are you doing here? Do you know what time it is?”
“Five.”
“Quarter past.”
They were walking down an endless corridor with blue linoleum floors and chalky white walls.
“I’d been planning on getting ahold of you. Privately, that is. But I didn’t want to intrude. I didn’t know what the fuck to
say. I have no idea what to say now that wouldn’t sound . . . wrong.”
“We buried Marie yesterday.”
Fredrik saw how difficult it was for Vincent, how few words he had, how lost he felt in the face of something he could never understand.
“You don’t need to say anything. I know you’re trying. I appreciate it, but honestly, fuck it, that’s not what I need right now.”
The never-ending corridor turned into a new corridor.
“What do you need then? You look like shit. You know you can come here or to my home whenever you want, but why now, five o’clock in the morning the day after Marie’s funeral?”
“I need your help. It’s the only help I need right now.”
One floor up. Past the big newsroom.
“I can’t take you in there today. It’s impossible. Half of the room is working on broadcasts about Bernt Lund and you and Marie and the police search. There’d be a lot of questions. Let’s go in here instead. Nobody comes in here before eight.”
Vincent showed him into a smaller office, three desks in three corners, and came right back with two coffee cups.
“Here. I think you need it.”
Fredrik nodded.
“Thanks.”
They drank in silence for a minute, avoided looking at each other.
“We have plenty of time. I asked the other morning editor to take over my work for a while. She’s really good, much better than I am. If her work appears in my box, so much the better.”
Fredrik stretched against one of the desktops.
“Look, found some cigarettes. Do you think I could have one?”
“You don’t smoke anymore.”
“I do today.”
He took out a cigarette, no filter, a brand purchased abroad. He didn’t recognize it.
He exhaled. White smoke surrounded them.
“Do you remember when you helped me last time?”
“Yes. With Agnes.”
“I thought she was fucking that damn economist. I was wrong. But it was thanks to you that I found out who he was.”
Vincent waved away some of the smoke pointedly. Fredrik stubbed it out immediately against the bottom of his cup.
“And now?”
“The same thing.”
“Same thing?”
“Personal information. Anything you can get your hands on.”
“Who?”
“790517-0350.”
“Who?”
Fredrik took a note from the inside pocket of his jacket.
“Bernt Lund.”
They’d raised their voices, arguing for and against, and the battle was won through pity. Now they were close to an agreement.
“I’m not breaking the law. But I’m trampling on everything I’ve believed was friendship.”
“That’s not true.”
“Don’t you understand? If I help you find personal data on your daughter’s killer, I’m basically doing the one thing I shouldn’t do.”
“But this is the only thing I need.”
“You’re on a very unsteady, precarious path.”
“Please don’t talk so fucking much, and just help me.”
Vincent stood up, mostly as emphasis, sat down again, turned on the computer in front of him.
“Well?”
“Yeah?”
“What do you want?”
“Everything. Anything you can get your hands on now.”
Vincent moved the incoming news reports aside and minimized the morning news schedule on the screen. He pressed a few times, a name, a password, then got to the database’s front page. Heading by heading. The Registrar of Companies, the Trade and Organization Registry, Address Registry, Swedish Information Service, Department of Motor Vehicles, the Land Registry.
“The number. The one you said. The social security number.”
“790517-0350.”
The screen blinked. A hit.
“You want to know where he lived. Then we’ll find that out.”
The morning sun streamed through the wall of windows. It was hot, the air still.
“Can I open the window? It’s hard to breathe.”
“Open them.”
Fredrik opened two windows wide. He hadn’t noticed he was sweating through his light suit. Two deep breaths, then Vincent’s arm in the air.
“Bernt Asmodeus Lund. Last entry is a care-of address.”
“Yeah?”
“Twelve Skeppar Street, care of Håkan Axelsson. In Östermalm. But that was a few years ago. He’s probably been serving time since then. But no other address is specified. Skeppar Street is the last official address.”
Fredrik stood behind Vincent. His back was still sore from last night, and the fresh air passing through the open windows felt good.
“Any other addresses?”
“Two earlier ones. Before Skeppar Street, there was Three Kungs Street in Enköping. Before Enköping, there was Nelsons Street in Piteå.”
“Is that all?”
“That’s what I can see here. If you want even older information you may have to call the local tax authorities in Piteå.”
“That’s enough. But I want more facts. Other facts.”
Fredrik waited behind Vincent for almost an hour. He took notes on a piece of blank Swedish Television letterhead from the same desk that he’d grabbed the pack of cigarettes from, and he summarized points from each directory entry.
A property in Vetlanda registered to Bernt Lund; an apartment building with oddly high taxes, at an address just outside the city. From his credit history, a long list of unpaid debts, overdue tax accounts, overdue student loans, several failed asset-seizing attempts.
A suspended driver’s license.
Two dormant limited companies for trading stock. Four previous board memberships in sports clubs.
Lund’s life before prison was difficult to follow. He’d moved often, had constant financial problems, he occasionally made obvious attempts to connect with people. Fredrik wrote it all down, trying to figure out what it was he needed, trying to read what he couldn’t see.
Vincent turned around, looked at Fredrik.
“I wish you’d forget about this.”
Fredrik didn’t answer. He clenched his jaw, stared at his friend, and said nothing.
“You can glare at me as much as you want. I think what I think.”
He took the two cups of coffee and went out into the corridor. Fredrik watched him go, then he leaned over to pick up one of the desk’s two telephones. He dialed her number.
“Hello. It’s me.”
He’d woken her up.
“Fredrik?”
“Yes.”
“I’m too tired. I took a sleeping pill.”
“I just want to know one thing. Where did you put those two duffel bags that we packed up when we cleaned out your father’s apartment?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I just want to know.”
“I didn’t take them. They’re still in the storage room upstairs. In Strängnäs.”
Vincent came back into the room, full cups in his hands. Fredrik hung up.
“Agnes. It’s tough.”
“How’s she doing?”
“Terrible.”
Vincent nodded, gave Fredrik his cup, lifted his to his mouth.
“Let’s finish this now. Then I have to go back to the news desk. It’s a little crazy out there, a plane crash outside Moscow.”
He searched for the screen, the main menu, Companies Registration: partnerships and sole proprietorships. He filled two rectangular boxes with Lund’s social security number, the key to all the public records of Sweden. How strange, he thought, the right to chart another person’s life with only a number, so convenient and so unbelievably strange.
“B. Lund Taxi.”
Fredrik heard, but asked anyway.
“What did you say?”
“A taxi company. Registered as B. Lund Taxi. It hasn’t been unregister
ed.”
He walked over to the desk, sat down next to Vincent to read for himself.
“When?”
“Formed in 2002.”
Fredrik laughed abruptly. Vincent looked up from the screen.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re laughing at nothing? Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?”
Fredrik laughed again.
“Absolutely nothing.”
“Nothing? Come on. You’re sitting here less than a day after burying your daughter, your funeral suit still on, laughing. At what? Nothing? Shut up.”
“Calm down.”
“Calm down? What the hell? That’s rich. That’s fucking rich. Anything more you want? The company’s finances?”
“I’m satisfied.”
“Signatories? Reference numbers?”
“I’m good for now.”
————
It was raining outside.
Three weeks without precipitation and suddenly drops fell on his head. He opened the door and sat down in his car. The windshield wipers slid across the front window. It took no more than a few wipes to move all the rain aside.
He drove through the city fast. It was still early Saturday morning, and there was no traffic. Out through Hornstull, over Liljeholms Bridge, toward Strängnäs. He put his handwritten notes on the dashboard, glancing cautiously at them as he drove.
An apartment building in Småland. Failed asset-seizing attempts. Addresses in Piteå, Enköping, and Östermalm. He skipped them. That wasn’t where he’d find his lead. It was further down, in the trade registry, in B. Lund Taxi. A company that had existed for several years.
Fredrik leaned forward, put his hand under the driver’s seat, rooting in the basket there. He wanted to listen to music. From the ugly suburbs of Stockholm to Strängnäs. He wanted to listen to Creedence and “Proud Mary” and sing loudly and forget that grief refused to sing along.
————
It was pouring when he arrived. As if someone was slowly peeling away the membrane that lay above humanity, buildings, life. It was a delivery and a joy, and although water washed over the city, he saw no umbrellas, no one running for shelter. The man and woman in front of him both walked slowly, their clothes getting soaked, while smiling and looking up. Fredrik could feel his suit coming loose from his body, could feel himself getting lighter, the air more rich in oxygen. He walked from the car to the house, lingering on every step, letting the rainfall wash away three weeks of heat and sand.
Pen 33 Page 13
