The Darkest Day

by Håkan Nesser

  ‘Dad, I’m not saying it’s wrong to move there, I just hope you haven’t rushed into the decision.’

  Karl-Erik gathered up the photographs and put them back in the envelope where he kept them. ‘Ebba, let’s not discuss this now,’ he said doggedly. ‘I don’t have to remind you what happened this autumn. There are situations in life that call for decisive action.’

  ‘But you don’t mind me asking?’ said Ebba.

  ‘Would anyone like a sandwich before bed?’ asked Rosemarie, coming in from the kitchen. ‘Or some fruit?’

  ‘Are you mad, Mum?’ said Ebba. ‘We’ve been eating for five hours solid.’

  ‘I . . .’

  But her voice cracked, so she took a deep breath and tried again.

  ‘I wonder whether we . . . whether we ought to ring the police.’

  ‘Out of the question,’ declared Karl-Erik to his wife once they were alone in the bedroom, fifteen minutes later. ‘Whatever you do, you’re not to contact the police. I forbid it.’

  ‘Forbid?’

  ‘Yes, forbid.’

  His face was a colour Rosemarie could not remember seeing before. Well, on plums and other over-ripe fruit perhaps, but never on her husband.

  ‘But Karl-Erik dear,’ she said tentatively. ‘I was only thinking that—’

  ‘You weren’t thinking at all,’ he broke in angrily. ‘Don’t you see what havoc you would cause? As if what’s already happened isn’t enough! How can he have the gall to come here and disappear on top of everything else, damn him, I can’t bear to think about it . . . Wanker Rob vanishes into thin air in Kymlinge! Can you see the news-stands, Rosemarie? This is your son we’re talking about.’

  Rosemarie swallowed and sank down onto the edge of the bed. She had never seen him so incensed before. Not in forty-five years. If I contradict him now, thrombosis will do for him, she thought.

  ‘Don’t say that word, please,’ she said meekly, and he went off to the bathroom muttering and cursing under his breath.

  In a way he was right of course, she could see that. She dared not think what the papers would write and what people would say, if it came out that Robert really had disappeared. Here in Kymlinge. On the occasion of a birthday party at his parents’ house!

  And if she rang the police, you could be sure it would come out. Half of what you read in the papers and half of all radio and TV coverage was to do with the police. One way or another.

  O Lord, what shall I do? thought Rosemarie Wunderlich Hermansson, putting her hands together in her lap – but the only answer that came was an image projected onto her mind’s eye: it showed Robert, forsaken and frozen to death in a snowdrift. O Lord, help me, she tried again, I can’t go on much longer.

  And she remembered that dream she’d had. About the birds with the strange speech bubbles in their beaks. Saying it was her life or Karl-Erik’s. Let him live, she thought. Take me away instead. If I don’t have to wake up tomorrow morning, I’ll feel nothing but enormous gratitude.

  ‘Sure you don’t want to come?’ asked Jakob Willnius, as he pulled up in front of the faint red shimmer of the entrance to Kymlinge Hotel.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Kristina.

  ‘It’d only take quarter of an hour to run up and pack your things, you know,’ he said.

  Kristina gave a vague nod. His own suitcase was already in the boot, a detail he had taken care of when they left the hotel that morning. With typical Jakob Willnius efficiency. He always thought of everything; tiny details that might lie hours – or days – in the future, but that could usefully be dealt with in advance.

  Does he really want me to come with him? she wondered. Or is he just pretending? To be polite. Domestic political correctness?

  ‘Is it this Robert thing that’s stopping you?’

  ‘Amongst others. It would feel a bit rotten just pushing off. And if he doesn’t turn up, Mum’s certainly going to need . . . well, someone to talk to apart from Ebba.’

  What an incredibly convenient excuse, she thought. Talk about ennobling your base motives. But he bought it, of course.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I can see that. But how will you two get back, if good old Robert doesn’t show up?’

  ‘There are trains,’ said Kristina. ‘But actually, I won’t feel I can simply leave if it turns out he genuinely has gone missing. I mean, in that case something must have happened to him. He can’t have planned this.’

  She unfastened Kelvin from his child seat. Jakob got out of the car and went round to the passenger side. ‘No need for you to come up,’ said Kristina. ‘I’ll carry Kelvin on one side and my bag on the other. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘The child seat?’ said Jakob. ‘If you get a lift from Robert you might need . . . ?’

  ‘Oh, we can sit in the back, if so. I really don’t fancy lugging it on the train with me.’

  She stood up and heaved Kelvin onto her arm. The boy woke up and looked at his parents with his usual melancholy air. Then he rested his head on Kristina’s shoulder and went back to sleep. Jakob stroked the back of his hand gently down the boy’s cheek, looking at his son and then at his wife.

  ‘Kristina,’ he said, ‘I love you. Don’t forget that. I thought it was so nice when you got back yesterday.’

  She gave him a quick, guilty smile. ‘So did I. And I love you too, Jakob. I’m sorry if I don’t show it enough.’

  She stood on tiptoe and kissed him. ‘Right then, off you go. We’ll ring you tomorrow. Good luck with your American, but first, drive carefully.’

  ‘I promise,’ said Jakob Willnius, brushing her cheek in the same way as he had his son’s. ‘Lucky it’s stopped snowing, I’m sure they’ll have cleared most of it.’

  Then he got into the car and drove away.

  When she got up to her room, it was twenty past twelve. She settled Kelvin in the extra bed in the alcove without disturbing him, got undressed and went for a shower.

  What am I doing, she asked herself. What’s driving me to this? Shouldn’t – shouldn’t Jakob’s love be enough? But now I’m washing away his last touch and preparing myself for someone else.

  It’s shameful, there’s no other word for it.

  Such thoughts were justified, of course, but she also knew that however much she reproached herself, whatever blame she threw in her own direction, it would all just be part of a rhetorical game.

  It’s at moments like this, when people have choices like this, that they ruin their lives, she reflected.

  And the strange thing is that it’s so profoundly human.

  But it was still – at one level – about helping Henrik find his sexuality. That was what had set all this in motion. At any rate, that was what she wanted to persuade herself, and if – if it all ended well, because it actually might, it really ought to – then perhaps they, he and she, nephew and aunt, might laugh at it all one day in the future and think back on it as a good memory. A delicious secret that they shared and could keep hidden in their hearts for the rest of their lives. To take out for inspection at brief and carefully chosen moments.

  I must have read that in three novels and five magazines this past year, she thought, stepping out of the shower and starting to dry herself with the hotel’s bright-red bath towel.

  Then she looked at her naked body in the mirror in the same neutral, mildly accepting way she had done in her own bathroom in Old Enskede the other evening.

  She tried to imagine what it would feel like to have nineteen-year-old Henrik pressing his lanky body against her. Pushing his way into her.

  In an hour’s time, perhaps. An hour and a half?

  She took her mobile and slipped between the pleasantly cool hotel sheets, naked. They had not been changed since yesterday, she noted. She and Jakob had made violent, almost brutal love in this very bed, on this very bed linen, less than twenty-four hours ago. And now . . .

  Her fingers played over the device’s tiny keys, but something held her back. Voices called out inside for her to chang
e her mind. She decided to leave it ten minutes and consider; to try simulating at least some sort of reflection.

  Two things surfaced from the jumble of conflicting feelings. The first was that image of Ebba as a lioness defending her young to the last breath. With the blood trickling between her teeth.

  The other was something else, something she could say with certainty that she had not thought about for quite some years. It was something Jakob’s daughter Liza had said, that time she rang from London.

  That Jakob could be violent. He isn’t as sophisticated and cool-as-a-cucumber as you think, just so you know and don’t get caught out.

  Jakob, violent? She hadn’t believed it then, and there had never been the slightest indication since. Besides, the twins despised both Jakob and herself, they’d made no secret of that. They wouldn’t be above sowing a few false fears.

  So why had it come to mind now?

  The lioness and the violent cucumber?

  Kristina gave a laugh. She had no intention of leaving herself vulnerable to either. But the laugh caught in her throat and died. She weighed her mobile in her hand. They hadn’t made an arrangement, but she had his mobile number. Perhaps he was waiting for the go-ahead.

  I daren’t, she thought suddenly.

  But her fingers on the tiny keys seemed to be controlling things. Once she had brought up the number, five little keystrokes were all it would take.

  Come.

  And then Send. Yes or No?

  She deleted it. Let it be up to him.

  13

  Kristoffer Grundt had hardly spared a thought for Linda Granberg all day, but when he looked down at his cock as he took a pee before he went to bed in the WUR (World’s Ugliest Room, as the brothers had decided to call it), he found that he was.

  He wondered how that fitted together. The fact that he happened to think of Linda as he stood there with his cock in his hand.

  But rather than trekking any further along this Freudian track (oh yes, Kristoffer Grundt knew what sort of character Sigmund Freud was, even at fourteen), he stashed away Little Willy (as his mother had always called his magnificent organ when he was younger) in his underpants and thought what a wimp he was. A nerd, a fool, a clown with an inflated opinion of himself, you name it. Linda Granberg would never encounter Little Willy and it was just as well, really. She’d probably laugh herself to death.

  But when he was in bed, five minutes later, there she was in his head again, and it was only then it struck him that she must have replied in some way to the cheeky text he’d sent yesterday.

  He wished he knew how she’d done it. He also wished he hadn’t just said she should turn up to Birger’s burger stall, but had the sense to ask her to get in touch with him somehow. But how? Again, how?

  Maybe he could send her another text? Ask straight out if he could borrow Henrik’s mobile; their relative positions had shifted a bit since yesterday, after all. Maybe Henrik would say yes? Even if he didn’t yet realize the full extent of their new positions.

  He sighed. It was bloody annoying that he’d lost his mobile. Living without a phone in this day and age was like being a dinosaur in the Stone Age, thought Kristoffer Grundt. Doomed to extinction.

  On the other hand, he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know. What if Linda was pissed off with him and wanted him to go to hell? In that case, he’d rather wait a couple of days to find out about it.

  And on further consideration, it seemed stupid to put pressure on Henrik. Stupid to be cocky and hint you were holding an undreamt-of trump card. There was bound to be a better time to make use of it later on. If Linda happened to answer a follow-up text, say, he would really need his brother’s mobile. And that was asking a lot. It was half past twelve; if she got a text from him now, she might not answer until the morning. And even if the answer arrived during the night, he could hardly expect Henrik to leave his phone behind when he was off to meet Jens.

  Jens? Presumably it was him?

  Who else could it be? Kristoffer surreptitiously watched his brother, who was just coming into the WUR, and wondered if he was hiding anything else. Perhaps it really was just an old friend he was meeting, after all, and he’d said it was a girl to wind him up? It wasn’t impossible.

  I couldn’t care less, Kristoffer decided. And I couldn’t care less about his phone, either.

  But he regretted that he hadn’t asked to borrow it earlier in the day. Or somebody else’s. His mum and dad had both left theirs at home; Leif because he hated mobile phones (even if he accepted that he had to have one for work), Ebba because she wanted to escape the ten calls a day from colleagues in urgent need of advice before they went into the operating theatre.

  Because it would have been great to lie here and imagine Linda missing him, thought Kristoffer. Really great.

  Henrik got into bed in a T-shirt, keeping his pants and socks on.

  ‘So, when are you off?’ Kristoffer asked him.

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Henrik. ‘The main thing is for you to keep quiet. And who knows, I might not even be going.’

  ‘How will you find out whether you’re going?’

  ‘Kristoffer, please. Go to sleep and think about something else. If I do go, it won’t be for half an hour or more.’

  Kristoffer switched off his lamp and thought for a while.

  ‘OK bro,’ he said. ‘Have a good time, anyway. You can rely on me.’

  ‘Thanks, I’ll remember that,’ said Henrik, and switched off his light, too.

  It felt good, thought Kristoffer. Henrik thanking him. That rarely happened – and to be honest, it was because he rarely had cause to. Now, I must stay awake without him realizing and check whether he goes or not, thought Kristoffer, turning over the ridiculously large and hard pillow.

  But when Henrik Grundt tiptoed carefully out of the room, twenty minutes later, Kristoffer was already asleep, dreaming he was out for a tandem ride with Linda Granberg. She was in front, with him behind; her naked bum wobbled and danced before his eyes and it was wonderful to be alive.

  ‘There’s something up with Henrik,’ said Ebba. ‘I can sense it.’

  ‘Henrik?’ mumbled Leif from his cramped half of the bed. ‘Don’t you mean Kristoffer?’

  ‘No,’ said Ebba. ‘When I say Henrik, I mean Henrik.’

  ‘Correct,’ said Leif. ‘So what do you think it is, then?’

  ‘I don’t know. But something isn’t right. He’s not himself. I wonder whether something happened in Uppsala that he’s not telling us about. Haven’t you noticed . . . well, that something’s going on?’

  ‘No,’ said Leif truthfully. ‘It’s passed me by, I’m afraid. But I did notice that Robert’s fallen off his perch.’

  This was met with silence, and Leif briefly wondered whether it was worth putting a hand on her hip. He didn’t think so. She was almost entirely sober, and irritated to boot. As for him, he was a bit drunk and a bit tired.

  And they’d already made love once this December.

  ‘Shall we put the light on,’ he asked, without knowing why he was making the suggestion. To shed some light on Henrik, perhaps? Or on Robert, or on everything?

  ‘Why would we want to put the light on? It’s almost one o’clock.’

  ‘I know,’ said Leif Grundt. ‘I take back the suggestion. So where do you think Robert’s got to, then?’

  It was a few seconds before Ebba replied.

  ‘I think you were right there,’ she said.

  ‘Eh?’ said Leif in genuine surprise. ‘You’ve lost me now.’

  ‘A woman,’ sighed Ebba. ‘You had a theory that he’d met a woman. I agree with you, it seems pretty likely. I’m sure he’s got some old flame in this town, too.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Leif Grundt, placing his right hand cautiously on her hip.

  But it proved just as futile as he had predicted.

  Two correct theories in one day then, he thought happily, and gave a little titter in the darkness.

&nbs
p; ‘What are you laughing at?’ demanded Ebba. ‘If there’s anything to laugh about in all these problems, I’d love you to share it with me.’

  ‘A problem shared is a problem halved,’ said Leif and turned his back on her. ‘No, it was nothing, just a tickle in my nose. Let’s sleep on it.’

  I’m married to an idiot, thought Ebba Hermansson Grundt. But I chose him myself.

  Or did I?

  The roads proved not to be as easily passable as Jakob Willnius had expected, and it took him over an hour to do the first seventy kilometres. He met two oncoming snowploughs and overtook one going in his direction.

  Not that it really mattered much. He liked being alone in the car, especially at night; the Mercedes purred like a cat and he had a Thelonious Monk album spinning in the CD player. He thought of Kristina, and realized he had been a bit concerned about their relationship recently, but it felt good now. It had been a few weeks since they’d last made love, but she’d had her period and he knew it wasn’t anything to worry about. And their embraces last night had been wonderful. Why am I using an archaic word like ‘embraces’, he wondered, although, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. She had focused on her own satisfaction in a way he hadn’t seen since before Kelvin was born. And what’s more, on leaving her outside the hotel, he had felt that she would have been happy to do it all over again tonight.

  And she had said that she loved him – in that way that meant she really did.

  You’re a lucky man, Jakob Willnius, he thought. Bloody lucky, you just remember that.

  He knew it to be so. He had indisputably been lucky. Far luckier than he deserved. Things could have ended disastrously with Annica, they really could, but he had escaped unscathed. The worst-case scenario would have been a court case and a scandal, but mercifully he had had money. Annica and her lawyer had accepted a financial settlement, on condition that she had custody of both daughters and never had to see him again.

  But Annica was a different story, he thought, that had been acted out in a different chapter of his life. He had learnt that much.