The Black Path

by Asa Larsson

  Personally, I feel really bad about being there. A burden to everybody. I can’t paint. Can’t provide for myself. Haven’t got anywhere else to go. And because I don’t want to be there, I keep disappearing. I can’t help it. As my feet walk across two rugs toward Inna, I am two weavers, a man with his tongue stuck in a gap in his teeth the whole time, and a young boy. I brush against a wooden wall panel, and I’m the carpenter with his aching hip, planing the wood. All these hands that have turned and carved, woven and stitched. I get so tired, and I can’t hold myself together. I force myself to hold out my hand to Inna. And I see her. She’s thirteen years old, placing her cheek against her father’s cheek. Everyone says she winds him around her little finger, but her eyes are so thirsty.

  Inna shows us round. There are too many rooms to count. My aunt looks impressed. All the old furniture, polished wood with intricate legs. Urns with a blue Chinese pattern on the floor.

  “What a place,” she whispers to me.

  The only thing she has a problem with are the dogs belonging to Mauri’s wife; they’re allowed to go anywhere they like, and they jump up on the furniture. She has to stop herself grabbing them by the scruff of the neck and heaving them out through the door.

  I don’t reply. She wants me to be happy about coming here. But I don’t know these people. They’re not my family. I’ve been carted off here.

  Suddenly Inna’s telephone rings. When she hangs up, she says I’m going to meet my brother.

  We go into his room, a combined bedroom and study. He’s wearing a suit, although he’s in his own house.

  My aunt shakes hands and thanks him for agreeing to look after me.

  And he smiles at me. And says, “Of course.” Twice he says it, looking me in the eyes.

  And I have to look down, because I feel so happy. And I think that he’s my brother. And that now I have a place here with him.

  And he seizes my wrist and then…

  Then the floor drops away. The thick carpet begins to writhe like a sea snake, trying to throw me off. There is a prickling feeling underneath my feet. I could do with something to hold on to, a heavy piece of furniture. But I’m already up near the ceiling.

  The glass from the windows falls into the room like heavy rain. A black wind sucks the curtains inward and tears them to pieces.

  I have lost myself.

  The room becomes almost completely dark, and shrinks. It’s a different bedroom, long long ago. A bedroom that exists inside Mauri. A fat man is lying on top of a woman in a bed. There is no cover on the mattress, it’s just dirty yellow foam rubber. His back is broad and sweaty, like a big smooth stone by the water’s edge.

  I realize afterwards that the woman is our mother, Mauri’s and mine. The other one. The one who gave birth to me. But this is before I existed.

  Mauri is so small, two or three years old. He’s on the man’s back, hanging round his neck and shouting Mummy, Mummy. Neither of them takes any more notice of him than if he were a mosquito.

  That’s my portrait of Mauri.

  A pale little back, like a shrimp, above that great rock of a back in that dark, enclosed room.

  And then he lets go of my hand and I’m back.

  And then I know that I have to carry him. Neither of us has a place here at Regla. There is only a little time left.

  Ester was doing lunges with the bar over her shoulders. Took a big step forward.

  Mauri smiled at her and tried again:

  “I can pay. There’s plenty of money in portraiture. People who work in industry have egos as big as zeppelins!”

  “You wouldn’t like it,” she replied simply.

  She glanced at him. Could see him trying to choose not to be offended. But what could she say?

  At any rate, she couldn’t bear him rummaging about among her pictures any longer. She bent her knees beneath the bar and he disappeared down the stairs.

  Yes, I do recall a customer wearing an overcoat like that.”

  Anna-Maria Mella and Sven-Erik Stålnacke were at Kiruna airport, talking to a guy on the car rental desk. He was around twenty, frantically chewing gum as he searched through his memory bank. He had quite bad acne on his cheeks and throat. Anna-Maria was trying not to stare at a fully mature pimple, like a white larva on its way out of a red-rimmed lunar crater. She held her cell phone up to show him. It had a built-in digital camera, and was displaying a picture of the overcoat the divers had found beneath the ice of Torneträsk.

  “I remember thinking he was going to be cold.”

  He laughed.

  “Foreigners!”

  Anna-Maria and Sven-Erik didn’t say anything. Waited without asking questions. Better if he could remember by himself, rather than being pointed in a particular direction. Anna-Maria nodded encouragingly, and made a note in her memory: “foreigner.”

  “It can’t have been last week, because I was off with flu. Just a minute…”

  He tapped away at the computer, then came back with a form that had been filled in.

  “Here’s the contract.”

  This is crazy, thought Anna-Maria. We’re going to get him.

  She could hardly wait to see the name.

  Sven-Erik pulled on his gloves and asked if he could have the form.

  “A foreigner,” said Anna-Maria, “what language did he speak?”

  “English. That’s the only foreign language I know, so…”

  “Any kind of accent?”

  “Mmm…”

  He shifted the chewing gum around in his mouth. Placed it between his front teeth so that half of it was sticking out, then increased the rate of chewing. It made Anna-Maria think of a sewing machine, rattling its way around a scrap of white fabric.

  “British, actually. Although not that kind of, like, posh English, more sort of…working class.

  “That’s it,” he continued, nodding as if he were agreeing with himself. “Yes, because it didn’t really go with the long trench coat and the shoes. He looked a bit haggard, I thought. Although he was very tanned.”

  “We’ll hang on to the contract,” said Sven-Erik. “We’ll get a copy to you, but don’t talk to any journalists about this, if you don’t mind. And we’ll need all the information you’ve got on the computer, how he paid, anything at all.”

  “And we want the car,” said Anna-Maria. “If it’s out at the moment, you’ll need to get it back. Give the customer a different one.”

  “This is about Inna Wattrang, isn’t it?”

  “Was he wearing the overcoat when he brought the car back?” asked Anna-Maria.

  “Don’t know. I think he left the key in our deposit box.”

  He switched on the computer.

  “Yeah, he probably took the evening flight last Friday. Or maybe early Saturday.”

  Then perhaps one of the flight attendants might have seen him without the coat, thought Anna-Maria.

  “We’ll put out a call for the man on the contract,” Anna-Maria said to Sven-Erik once they were back in the car. “John McNamara. Interpol can help us with the British contacts. Then if the lab can confirm that the blood on the coat is Inna Wattrang’s, and if they can do a DNA analysis on what’s on the coat…”

  “It might not be possible, it’s been in the water.”

  “Then the Rudbeck lab in Uppsala can do it. It has to be possible to link this guy to the coat, it isn’t enough that he happened to rent a car here at the time she was murdered.”

  “Unless we find something in the car.”

  “Forensics will have to go over it.”

  She turned to Sven-Erik with a broad grin. Sven-Erik pressed his feet to the floor of the car, automatically searching for a brake; he preferred it if she looked at the road while she was driving.

  “Bloody hell, but we’ve worked fast,” said Anna-Maria, flooring the accelerator with sheer joy. “And we’ve done it ourselves, without getting Stockholm involved, that’s bloody fantastic.”

  Rebecka had her evening meal with Siv
ving. They were in his boiler room. Rebecka was sitting at the little Formica table watching Sivving prepare the food on the small hotplate. He placed slices of fish pudding in an aluminum pan and warmed them gently with a dash of milk. Almond potatoes were simmering in a pot alongside. On the table stood a basket of crispbread and a tub of extra-salted margarine. The aroma of the food mingled with the smell of freshly washed woolen socks, hanging on the washing line.

  “Quite a party,” said Rebecka. “What do you say, Bella?”

  “Don’t even think about it,” said Sivving quietly to the pointer bitch, who had been sent to her basket beside Sivving’s bed.

  Saliva was dangling from her jaws like two pieces of string. Her brown eyes told a tale of starvation and near death.

  “You can have my leftovers afterwards,” promised Rebecka.

  “Don’t keep chatting to her. She just takes it as permission to get out of her basket.”

  Rebecka smiled. She looked at Sivving’s back. He was a wonderful sight. His hair hadn’t thinned, just turned a silky white and somehow lighter, standing out around his head like a fluffy fox’s brush. His combat trousers from the surplus stores stuffed into thick woolen socks. Maj-Lis must have knitted a good stock for him before she died. A flannel shirt covering his big stomach. One of Maj-Lis’s aprons that didn’t quite meet at the back; instead he’d pushed the ties into the back pockets of his trousers to hold it in place.

  Up in the rest of the house, Sivving had dutifully put up Christmas decorations in December; he’d hung the Christmas stars in their respective windows, the orange paper star from the ICA store in the kitchen, the handcrafted straw one in the living room. He’d got out the little Christmas elves and goblins, the Advent candlesticks and Maj-Lis’s embroidered cloths. After Twelfth Night everything had been put back in boxes and carried up into the attic. The cloths hadn’t needed washing. He never ate a meal off them, after all. Nothing got dirty up in the house.

  Down in the boiler room where he lived nowadays, everything had remained the same. No cloths. No little goblins on the cupboard.

  I like that, thought Rebecka. The fact that everything stays the same. The same pans and plates on the shelf on the wall. Everything has a purpose. The bedspread keeps the dog hairs off the sheets when Bella sneaks onto the bed. There’s a rag rug on the floor because the floor is cold, not for decoration. She’d got used to it, she realized. She no longer thought it was strange that he’d moved down here into the cellar.

  “What about all that business with Inna Wattrang?” said Sivving. “It’s all over the papers.”

  Before Rebecka could answer, her cell phone rang. An 08 number. The law firm’s exchange on the display.

  Måns, thought Rebecka, and all of a sudden she was so nervous she stood up quickly.

  Bella seized the opportunity and leapt up as well. In half a second she was over by the stove.

  “Get away,” grumbled Sivving.

  To Rebecka he said, “The potatoes will be ready in five minutes.”

  “One minute,” said Rebecka, and dashed up the stairs. She could hear Sivving’s “In your basket” as she closed the cellar door behind her and answered the phone.

  It wasn’t Måns. It was Maria Taube.

  Maria Taube was still working for Måns. In another life, she and Rebecka had been colleagues.

  “How are things?” asked Rebecka.

  “Disastrous. We’re supposed to be coming up to the Riksgränsen resort to go skiing, the whole office. Hello! What sort of an idea is that? What’s wrong with going somewhere warm, sunbathing and drinking something with an umbrella in it? And I’m so unfit! Okay, so I can at least borrow my sister’s skiing gear, but I look like one of those new sausages they’re advertising: ‘now even thicker,’ you know the kind of thing. And last Christmas I thought, okay, after Christmas I’m going on a diet, and I thought I could lose a pound a week. And because I was going to go on a diet afterwards and get really, really slim, I went a bit mad over Christmas. Then all of a sudden it was New Year’s, then January came and went in the blink of an eye, and I thought, well, I’ll go on a diet in February, and if I lose two pounds a week…”

  Rebecka was laughing.

  “…and now there’s half a week left,” Maria Taube went on. “So do you think I can manage to lose twenty pounds in that time?”

  “Boxers usually go and sit in the sauna.”

  “Mmm, thanks for the tip. No, really. ‘Died in the sauna. Just managed to call The Guinness Book of World Records.’ What are you up to?”

  “Right now or at work?”

  “Right now and at work.”

  “Right now I’m about to have dinner with my neighbor, and at work I’m doing a little bit of checking into Kallis Mining for the police.”

  “Inna Wattrang?”

  “Yes.”

  Rebecka took a deep breath.

  “By the way,” she said, “Måns e-mailed me to say I ought to come up and have a drink when you’re all up this way.”

  “Oh, I think so too! Please say you’ll come!”

  “Mmm…”

  And what do I say now? thought Rebecka. Do you think I’m in with a chance there, or what?

  “How is he?” she asked.

  “Okay, I presume. There was a big hearing in that electricity company case last week. And it went well, so he’s quite human at the moment. Before that he was…well, everybody was just creeping past his door.”

  “Apart from that? How’s everybody else?”

  “How should I know? Nothing happens here. Oh yes, Sonja Berg got engaged last Saturday.”

  Sonja Berg was the secretary who’d been with Meijer & Ditzinger the longest. She was divorced with grown-up children, and over the past year the firm had enjoyed watching her being seriously courted by a man whose top-of-the-range car and expensive watch matched those of the partners. He was an agent selling calendars and stationery. Sonja referred to him as her “traveling salesman with papier-mâché balls.”

  “Ooh, tell me everything,” said Rebecka attentively.

  “What can I say. Dinner at the French restaurant in the Grand Hotel. As for the size of the stone, well, you can imagine—she practically needed her arm in a sling. Are you coming up to the hotel?”

  “Maybe.”

  Maria Taube was good. She knew it wasn’t about her. But about Rebecka. They’d met twice since Rebecka had come out of hospital. It was when Rebecka was down in Stockholm selling her apartment. Maria had invited her round to dinner.

  “I’ll just do something simple,” she’d said. “And if you don’t feel up to seeing people, or me, or if you just feel you want to stay at home and stub cigarettes out on your arms instead, just ring and cancel. That’s absolutely fine.”

  Rebecka had laughed.

  “You’re crazy, you’re not supposed to joke with me like that—I’m on the edge, you know! You have to be really, really nice and kind to me.”

  They’d had dinner. And the evening before Rebecka went back up to Kiruna, they’d gone to Sturehof for a few drinks.

  “You don’t fancy coming up to the office to say goodbye?” Maria had asked.

  Rebecka had shaken her head. She was fine with Maria Taube. Things were always fine with her. But the idea of exposing herself to the entire office was totally out of the question. And she hadn’t wanted to meet Måns either, not in that state. The scar running from her lip to her nose was still so obvious. Red and shiny. Her top lip had been pulled up a fraction, so it looked as if she’d just taken a pinch of snuff, or as if she were slightly harelipped. They might operate on her, a decision hadn’t been taken yet. And she’d lost a lot of her hair.

  “Promise me we’ll keep in touch,” Maria Taube had said, taking hold of both of Rebecka’s hands.

  And they had. Maria Taube rang from time to time. Rebecka was always pleased when that happened, but never rang herself. And that seemed to be okay. Maria didn’t stop calling because it was Rebecka’s turn.

&n
bsp; Rebecka ended the conversation and ran back down to the boiler room. Sivving had just placed the food on the table.

  They ate, allowing the food to silence them.

  She thought about Måns Wenngren. The way his laugh sounded. How slender his hips were. How curly his dark hair was. How blue his eyes were.

  If she’d been a babe, someone who wasn’t socially crippled and crazy, she’d have taken him by storm a long time ago.

  I’d never choose anyone else, she thought.

  She wanted to go up and meet him. But what would she wear? Her wardrobe was full of smart suits for work. But this called for something else. Jeans, of course. She’d have to buy some new ones. And what would she wear with them? She’d have to get her hair cut too.

  She carried on thinking about it all after she’d gone to bed that night.

  It mustn’t look as if I’ve made an effort, she thought. But it has to look good. I want him to like what he sees.

  WEDNESDAY MARCH 19, 2005

  As usual, Anna-Maria Mella was woken by Gustav kicking her in the back.

  She looked at the clock. Ten to six. It would soon be time to get up. She pulled him close, nuzzling his hair. Gustav turned to her. He was awake.

  “Hello, Mummy,” he said.

  On the other side of the boy, Robert grunted and pulled the covers over his head in a vain attempt to steal a few extra minutes’ sleep.

  “Hello, little one,” said Anna-Maria, completely besotted.

  How could anybody be so cute? She stroked his soft hair. She kissed him on the forehead and the lips.

  “I love you,” she said. “You’re the best thing in the whole wide world.”

  He stroked her hair in return. Then he suddenly looked very serious, and patted the area around her eyes very carefully; he said anxiously, “Mummy, your face is all cracked.”

  From beneath the covers on the far side of the bed came a muffled shout of laughter, and she could see Robert’s body heaving up and down.

  Anna-Maria tried to kick her husband, but it was difficult with Gustav between them like a protective wall.