Stone Coffin

by Kjell Eriksson

  The process had taken a full week, and the boys had been there the whole time, sanding boards, nailing them down, and screwing in bolts. They had carried stone, and finally at the very front of the dock facing the sea, they had attached a brass plate, engraved with the date and their four names.

  One afternoon they had put on their hockey skates and taken off across the gray ice, skating almost all the way to the mouth of the bay. Edvard had watched after them, happy and proud, but also nervous about the cracks and fragile edges of the ice. They had returned, their cheeks blazing. Edvard had made a fire and grilled hot dogs on the beach. Viola had come down with coffee and hot juice for the boys, just as at the Studenternas stadium when the home team Sirius was playing in town.

  Jens had reminded Edvard about the bandy games, about the times when they had packed grandfather Albert into the car and headed into town. His voice had been like it was before. For the first time in over two years, the boy had spoken unreservedly with Edvard. He had been eager but interrupted himself when he saw his big brother’s face. Jerker had not said anything, just stared out over the ice.

  The boy had given his father a quick glance and stopped. Edvard went over to his older boy, stood very close to him. Victor had kept talking and was putting more wood on the fire, but even he fell silent at the sight of the two of them. Edvard wanted to say something, break two years of isolation. He saw the defiance but also the repressed longing in his son’s pained expression. He knew that he had to take the first step, so he put his arm around the boy.

  They stood like this, completely still, silent. Edvard knew that words could wreck everything and struggled not to break into tears. There had been enough tears. He just wanted to hold his son. If everything was going to hell, at least they had this moment.

  “You’ve grown,” he said and let go.

  They ate several hot dogs. Viola, feeling cold as usual, complained about the wind and stepped closer to the fire.

  “Rubber boots are cold,” Jens said. Viola chuckled and muttered something. Victor had pulled over a large pine stump that he threw onto the blaze. Dusk was sneaking up on them and the temperature fell as it grew darker. They all drew closer to the warmth.

  “We’ll probably see the stars tonight,” Jens said, and Jerker flinched as if he had been hit. It made him think of Edvard’s stargazing in Ramnäs, and he did not want to recall that time for anything in the world. As a first measure after Edvard moved—or rather fled—Marita demolished the old outbuilding that had functioned as the observatory. Jerker hated clear starry evenings and nights as much as Marita had.

  Edvard suggested that they play cards instead, so they did. They had spent the whole week together and had built a dock that was the sturdiest on the entire island, at least according to Victor. One week, and then the boys had come out some weekends during the winter and spring. Slowly but surely they rebuilt their relationship and Edvard could experience some of the old joy with his sons.

  * * *

  This weekend they were headed back to Gräsö Island. Edvard knew that they took the bus out to the island in part just to be nice. Under Jerker’s grumpy exterior and Jens’s sometimes nervous prattle, there was a touching impulse to please. It was Edvard’s life force.

  After Ann left him, he had sunk deep, convinced he would have to live alone, aided only by Viola’s care and his work, which allowed him to sleep heavily at night. But now he had a brighter outlook on life and his own existence. It was as if he had regained his place in the landscape.

  He had also resumed his contact with a couple of his old friends from the time he was a farm laborer, especially his associates from the union. Fredrik Stark, who was the same age as Edvard, politically active, and a landscape gardener, had been out to visit on several occasions. He had stayed a few days, working on his computer and reading several long extracts aloud when Edvard came home. He claimed that he was writing a novel, and Edvard was alternately irritated at and envious of Stark’s confidence.

  * * *

  He had called Ann in a burst of optimism and a sense of hope that she might still be interested. He did not know if they could resume their relationship or if they could live together, but the one thing he had learned during those dark winter nights was that he did not want to live alone forever.

  Would she call him back? And if not, would he try again?

  Five

  The man sitting across from her was scratching his head. He had done this almost incessantly since she had entered his kitchen.

  An old American box clock was ticking on the wall. Lindell’s parents had one just like it. In fact, there was a great deal about Holger Johansson’s kitchen that reminded her of her childhood home in Ödeshög. The smell, the fifties décor, the pattern on the waxed tablecloth, the old cookie tin on the counter, and the embroidered tray cloth.

  They had a great deal on common, but one thing set them apart: death. Holger’s kitchen would never be the same. From this point on, his furniture and household items, the vases, the prints on the walls, and all of the small things that a person collects over the course of a life would lose more and more meaning. They would eventually gain a layer of dust and grease, sadness and old age.

  The objects would lack significance; he would hardly notice them. He had aged fifteen years in one day. Emptiness and sadness had suffocated this man, this father, withering away in front of Lindell’s eyes.

  “She was my only child,” he said.

  Lindell gripped her pen hard and wished she had brought someone with her. She knew from experience that she was more emotional, more easily affected by another’s grief if she was alone. Her mind simply worked less well.

  “Did Josefin and Sven-Erik have a happy marriage?”

  “I think so,” he whispered.

  He stared out the kitchen window.

  “No fights?”

  “Who doesn’t fight?”

  “Were you close?”

  He nodded. His hand fumbled helplessly over the wax tablecloth.

  “What do you think of Sven-Erik?”

  “He … worked a lot. Josefin sometimes complained. Since he got that new job he was gone even more. Went here and there.”

  “Business travel, you mean.”

  Another nod.

  “He has disappeared, you know. Where do you think he could be?”

  He did not respond.

  “You can’t think of anywhere in particular?”

  “That would be Spain. He always traveled there.”

  “Where in Spain?”

  “I don’t know. He just said Spain.”

  Lindell was quiet for a moment. Holger Johansson’s neighbor could be seen in the garden. It was a woman who was in the house when Lindell arrived. She sensed that they were not simply neighbors and was glad that the man would not be completely alone.

  The woman was busying herself with the summer flowers and looked up at the house from time to time.

  “Can you understand that Emily is dead?”

  He stared at Lindell with a bewildered gaze and she knew what his next sentence would be.

  “A six-year-old. What had she done? If only it had been me in her place. Thank god Inger isn’t alive,” he said, and Lindell knew he meant his wife.

  He fell silent and looked back out the window.

  “Lately something was up. They would come up here, not every day, but often. She would take the stroller. She liked to walk. Then they started to bike. Sometimes they came by every morning. Vera and I have a cup of coffee every day at half past ten.”

  “Did something change recently?”

  “That was my impression. Jossan—Josefin—seemed more distracted, I guess you can say. As if something was weighing on her. I asked her once. She just smiled and said that everything was fine, but a father sees…”

  Holger Johansson huddled over the table. It was as if Vera sensed it because at that moment the front door opened. Without even looking at Lindell, Vera walked up to the man and laid
her arm around him. Lindell fixed her gaze on Vera’s hand resting on his shoulder. She leaned her forehead against his graying head. Her hand was covered in liver spots, and the weeds that she had pulled at so frenetically had left green streaks and stains. Lindell stared at her hand and her thoughts raced between her home in Ödeshög and the little girl in the ditch. There was also Edvard and his old Viola in the house on Gräsö Island.

  She got up very slowly and laid her hand on the woman’s shoulder. Vera looked up, expressionless. When Lindell turned around a last time, she had straightened her back. She was staring out of the window. Lindell followed her gaze. The mock orange shrub in the garden was blooming.

  The man scratched his head and Lindell caught sight of abrasions through the thin, back-combed hair.

  Lindell drove out of the yard and almost ran into one of the fence posts. After fifty meters she braked and came to a halt. Unable to rid herself of the image on her retina, she whimpered silently as she thought of the girl’s mangled body. Inside she was in turmoil. A murdered child—she regarded this as a murder—was worse than anything else. She had seen a child’s corpse only once before. At that point she had been a police trainee, around twenty years old. It was fifteen years ago. That time it was a confused mother who had strangled her baby in a crib. Terrible enough, but this was worse. Was it the summer, the valley idyll, the girl’s delicate limbs sticking out from her dress, and the fact that she had been picking flowers?

  Lindell rolled down the window. She had not eaten anything since her morning coffee and felt miserable. It was six o’clock but still a beautiful day. She took some deep breaths and her nausea receded somewhat.

  She already hated Sven-Erik Cederén. Where was he? She looked around as if he were to be found somewhere nearby. Was he holed up somewhere? Would he be watching the news tonight?

  Why kill his wife and child? There was only one motive and it was jealousy.

  “I’m going to find you, wherever you are,” she said, her teeth clenched, putting the car in gear and starting off down the gravel road.

  Then it struck her that he might not be the guilty one after all. Why assume this? she thought. It only blocks the lines of deductive reasoning. He might also be dead. She drove slowly, crawling along the narrow road. Perhaps he had been a witness to the accident, had found his wife and child along the side of the road, and had become so distraught that he left.

  It sounded unlikely, but nothing could be assumed. Too many mistakes had been made as a result of preconceptions.

  She knew that the meeting was already under way but decided to linger a while longer in Uppsala-Näs. It was unusual for her to be absent. She didn’t like to miss any information and was committed to being a team player, but right now the meeting room seemed like an oppressive bunker, with the same tired faces saying the same things.

  She wanted to think, to be left in peace. She did her best thinking at Café Savoy, because even though she wanted to be alone she also wanted to have people around her. She liked to sit there drinking her coffee, maybe reading the paper, but above all observing the clientele. People were her stock-in-trade, to study and seek to understand. At the café her brain rested but was also working at full capacity. She could recall several times at the café when she had identified connections and had had crucial insights into investigations, with the conversations of the mothers, the loud screeches of the children, the discussions of the tradesmen, and the rustling of newspapers as background.

  Lindell drove in the direction of Villa Cederén. She had a feeling that Fredriksson was still there. Maybe also Berglund. That was all right. Both of these gentlemen would let her walk around as she wished.

  A small group of curious onlookers had gathered on the road outside the house. They tried to look casual, as if it were their habit to congregate there, but their hungry gazes betrayed them. Maybe I’m being unfair, Lindell thought. They might be good friends of Josefin and Emily, and their gathering here a reaction to the shock.

  She swung into the driveway, got out, and spotted something that she had not noticed on her quick visit earlier in the day. Right next to the flagpole, almost hidden behind the lilac bushes, was a doghouse. A bowl with dried food remnants was to one side of it. Lindell crouched down to peek inside. She saw a blanket and some chew toys.

  No one had mentioned a dog. She remained standing outside the kennel. The voices of the neighbors on the road could be heard, and Lindell decided to get to the bottom of this immediately.

  A waft of scents of the early summer struck her as she walked out onto the road. She steered her course toward a man who was standing with a packet of mail in his hand.

  “My name is Lindell. I’m with the Uppsala police.”

  The man shook her hand. “A terrible thing.”

  “Are you a neighbor?”

  The man nodded, dropping a newspaper and a couple of letters at the same time. Embarrassed, he quickly picked these up, glancing at Lindell.

  “Do you know if they have a dog?”

  “Yes, a pointer. Isabella.”

  “He takes it along sometimes,” a woman interrupted.

  The man took a step closer to Lindell, as if to shield her from the woman, and told her eagerly about the dog and the Cederén family’s routines.

  It turned out that the dog was difficult. Josefin Cederén had never taken to it and it was a source of annoyance for the neighborhood. Outside, alone in its house, it would howl mournfully and long. Inside, the pointer chewed everything—rugs, curtains, and flowers. As a result, Sven-Erik Cederén often brought it to work. He was the only one who appeared to be able to handle the animal.

  I should take the time to stay and listen, she thought, but her urgent need to be alone drove her to politely deflect the questions of the curious neighbors.

  She returned to the yard. Fredriksson’s car was parked in front of the main entrance. He had returned and was now starting to resume his old form. After a heavy fall and the winter’s murder hunt, he had taken sick leave. No one believed that Fredriksson would return to the unit, but he reappeared in time for a complicated gang rape. Even Ottosson had looked astonished.

  Fredriksson’s presence at the morning meeting had set off an unusual silence in the room, as if a dead man had returned. Ottosson had coughed and stood up. A collective smile spread among the assembled officers. Sammy had pulled out Fredriksson’s old chair.

  Now he was reviewing a pile of papers in the living room. He looked up quickly and with an expression akin to relief. Perhaps he thought it was Riis who was coming back.

  “How is it going?”

  “There’s plenty of papers.”

  “What are they?”

  “Old documents, the kind one ends up accumulating.”

  Fredriksson leaned back in the sofa and rubbed his eyes. “I think I’ll have to get a pair of reading glasses.”

  Lindell sat down across from him.

  “We’ll have to put out a search for Isabella,” she said, and walked once around the room.

  “Who is that?”

  “The dog.”

  Fredriksson made an effort to return his attention to the papers, but then sank back on the couch.

  “If you look around, what impression do you get of the Cederén family?”

  “Wealth,” she said simply.

  “Yes, wealth, but something else too. It’s messy and not a little dirty. Behind all the artistic glass pieces, there is a ton of dust, there’s dirt under the rugs, the kitchen is sticky, and the bathtub is grimy.”

  “So?” Lindell said.

  “A house of almost two hundred square meters—neglected. We know that Josefin was a stay-at-home mom. She had been home since the girl was born. Whatever she was doing all day, it wasn’t cleaning.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know. People are different. I wouldn’t have been able to stand this mess for a single day.”

  Lindell was quiet. His observation gave her no ideas.<
br />
  “I think she was unhappy,” Fredriksson said. “She allowed one of the finest houses in Uppsala-Näs to go to the dogs.”

  “She had other priorities,” Lindell said tartly.

  She didn’t like Fredriksson speaking ill of the dead. Tossed in the ditch at the side of the road, on her way to her mother’s grave with her daughter, though separated from her by several meters at the moment of death. Josefin Cederén had not even had the chance to give her daughter a final hug. An untidy house, yes, but now she was dead.

  “I don’t think she was happy here,” Fredriksson resumed. “That tells us something.”

  “But it may not have anything to do with her death,” Lindell objected.

  “That’s true, but it’s a question mark.”

  “There are many question marks in people’s lives,” Lindell said. “We happened to be dropped into this.”

  She got up and walked out to the kitchen. Fredriksson’s observations were correct: The kitchen was sticky. There was a large open space with a freestanding island, the massive beech top of which was covered with kitchen utensils, a couple of plates with dried yogurt on them, an open tub of margarine, and bread crumbs. She must have been planning to clear this away after visiting the grave, Lindell thought, but the fact was, the kitchen verged on disgusting.

  Who would clean now? Her father?

  Lindell walked upstairs. The girl’s room was full of stuffed animals. The double bed in the master bedroom was unmade. A white pajama top had been thrown on the floor. A couple of slippers peeked out from under the bed.

  She walked over to one of the bedside tables and picked up a book. An American novel. On the other table there was a folder full of notes that Lindell assumed had to do with MedForsk. She flipped through the pages. Tables of explanatory text—some in English, some in Spanish. Occasionally in the margin there were hasty notes, scribbled in pencil in a difficult-to-read hand—a question here and there, a couple of exclamation points.

  Everything had to be examined, page by page, in the hopes that there would be something that would explain why he had slain his family. Or was he lying dead somewhere too? Was there a third party that had slaughtered the entire family?