The Darkest Day

by Håkan Nesser

  Though he did still have dreams about her, nightmares as well as the opposite; hot, arousing dreams that were sometimes so real he thought he could detect the smell of her when he woke.

  But now it was the smell of Kristina lingering in his nostrils. Damn, he thought, I really miss her, crave her. He wished she had come with him. If that bloody Robert hadn’t gone and vanished, she could have been beside him in the car now; they would have travelled together through the night and he would only have had to reach out a hand to . . .

  The bleep of his phone interrupted his fantasies.

  It’s her, he thought. It’s Kristina.

  But it wasn’t. It was Jefferson.

  ‘Jakob, I’m terribly, terribly sorry,’ he began.

  Then he apologized for calling in the middle of the night, but that wasn’t what he was so sorry about. No, things had gone and got infernally complicated in Oslo. Infernally complicated. Were they always so impossible to deal with, the Norwegians? Not really used to the negotiating table, was that it? And state regulations left, right and centre? But what the hell, Jakob could no doubt enlighten him on that another time. The thing now was that he’d had to stay on for an extra day in Oslo, and then fly direct to Paris on Thursday. The meeting they had arranged simply couldn’t be squeezed in. Could they possibly make it the start of January instead? In Stockholm, of course. He just had to pop across the Atlantic to celebrate Christmas and New Year in Vermont first – but then, around 5–6 January, what did Jakob reckon to that?

  Arrogant Harvard poof, thought Jakob.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I can’t see any problem with that.’

  Jefferson thanked him, reiterated that he was terribly, terribly sorry, wished him a Happy Christmas and hung up.

  Jakob Willnius swore and checked the time. It was a quarter to two. He put his mobile back in the breast pocket of his jacket. Glanced at the fuel gauge and saw that he had a bare quarter of a tank left.

  He had another three hours’ driving ahead of him to get to Stockholm, probably three and a half in view of the road conditions. He suddenly felt tired.

  If he turned back, he could be snuggling into bed with his wife in just over an hour.

  Just as he was thinking that – and before he had made up his mind – an all-night petrol station came into view. He turned into the forecourt. At any event, he needed to think and get a cup of coffee down him.

  I’ll call her and see what she thinks, he thought. If she’s like she was yesterday, she won’t say no.

  But as he dipped into his breast pocket for his phone, his fingers made contact with his hotel key, which he had forgotten to leave at reception at Kymlinge Hotel. Why not surprise her, he thought.

  He got out of the car and started filling the tank with highly potent 98-octane fuel.

  Well, why not? Creep in quietly like a thief in the night, peel off his clothes and slip in behind her warm back.

  ‘Fuck you, Mr Bigmouth Shit-talking Jefferson,’ muttered Jakob Willnius when the pump had finished ticking. He went into the shop, paid for his petrol and got a double espresso from the machine. He took it back to the car and set off for Kymlinge.

  14

  When Rosemarie Wunderlich Hermansson woke up on 21 December, it was twenty to six and she had two distinct thoughts in her head.

  Robert’s dead.

  We’re losing the house this afternoon.

  But no birds. And no speech bubbles. She stayed there in bed for a while, staring out into the surrounding darkness and listening to Karl-Erik’s regular breathing as she tried to weigh the two thoughts. Judge the level of truth in them. The first of them she dared not keep in her consciousness for more than brief, abysmal moments. Robert dead? It came and she pushed it away; it came back, and was rebuffed again. Perhaps he was upstairs in bed? Perhaps he had come back overnight? She decided not to go and check. Because if he wasn’t there, if he really had been gone for two nights and one day, it could only mean . . . no, it was too much.

  The other thought, then. The house. This afternoon at four o’clock they would be sitting in Lundgren’s room at the bank. So there it was. They would sit on his birch-veneer office chairs and sell their lives. She and Karl-Erik. For thirty-eight years they had lived in this house. Ebba was two when they moved in, and Robert and Kristina had been born here. They had lived in Kymlinge for almost forty years. This is where I had my existence, she thought. This is where I felt at home. What’s to become of me now? Shall I never again sit out in the arbour and enjoy the first new potatoes of the season? Shall I never again see the plum tree we planted six years ago bear fruit? Shall I . . . shall I sit on a white plastic chair on a bare mountain and meet death? Beneath the red-hot Spanish sun? Is that what it’s all been for? Was this the fate this desolate god carved out for me?

  And what did He envisage I would take with me? My sixty-three wasted, crumbling years? My distance course in Flemish embroidery? My address book, so I can send weekly postcards to my three . . . wellll, four then . . . women friends and tell them about the blue pool water and the blue seawater and the white plastic chairs?

  No, thought Rosemarie Wunderlich Hermansson. I don’t want to.

  But it sounded so faint inside her, that ‘No’. So hopelessly faint and pitiful. How was she to find the strength to go against Karl-Erik on this? And where? Where should she pitch the tent of her resistance?

  Tent of her resistance? What in heaven’s name was that? There was surely no such phrase . . . But if Robert was dead, they couldn’t trot off to the bank and sign away their lives in those circ—?

  She got out of bed. All at once she felt angry with herself. Why should Robert be dead? Why was she surrendering to such ludicrous, crow-black prophecies? And it was so chronically typical of her, wasn’t it? When the children were little she had been constantly haunted by thoughts of them dying. Being run over by buses, falling through the ice or getting bitten by rabid dogs. Robert was thirty-five years old, he could look after himself. And hadn’t he in fact absented himself for most of his life, anyway? That was his speciality, in truth. Now he was keeping out of the way for a few days again, for some reason or another, and what was so odd about that?

  But why should she go and take her seat opposite Chalk-stripe Lundgren and write off her life like some stupid goose? Why not . . . why not tell her tyrannical pedagogue pine that he could pack his bag and move to Andalusia on his own? Or wherever he liked, for that matter. Simple as that.

  But as for her, she fully intended to stay where she belonged. In Allvädersgatan in Kymlinge, Sweden. You take yourself off to the Costa Geriatrica and imagine yourself a cut above all those other sun-fried oldies! Research on Moorish and Jewish heritage? What rubbish, thought Rosemarie Wunderlich Hermansson. What crap, Karl-Erik Telegraph Pole!

  She went out to the kitchen and put the coffee on. And as she sat there with her elbows rubbing on the kitchen table and waited for the coffee machine to finish gurgling, her courage and drive sank in her like a stone in a well.

  As usual. Exactly as usual.

  I’m nothing but a timid goose, she thought. A fool of a woman, sixty-three years old and with no purpose in life.

  Other than to worry. To dwell on dismal day-to-day prophecies and wait for the next disappointment.

  Misfortunes small and large. Misfortune with a capital ‘M’ today, perhaps. Robert? Was he the doom-laden prophecy that was about to be fulfilled?

  Death? Yes, it really did feel as if that was the dark figure lurking in the reeds this time. Nothing more or less.

  But not her own death. She wasn’t worrying about that at all. I’m far too insignificant for Death to care about me, she thought with resignation. I shall live like a shrinking ball of fluff until the end of time.

  Her coffee was ready.

  The house was still asleep. The small misfortunes were not yet awake.

  Nor the large.

  ‘No honestly, Mummy dear,’ said Ebba Hermansson Grundt, ‘we don’t need lunc
h before we leave as well. We’ve got over 650 kilometres to go, so we’ll stop for a bite to eat on the way. A normal breakfast is all that’s necessary.’

  ‘Yes, but I think—’ Rosemarie tried to object.

  ‘I’ll wake the boys and Leif in half an hour. What a gift men have for sleep, don’t you think, Mum?’

  ‘I heard that,’ said her father, who was at the kitchen worktop blending his morning muesli. ‘What a prejudiced view, sweetie. Remember the alarm clock was invented by a man. Oscar William Willingstone the Elder.’

  ‘Because he couldn’t wake up of his own accord, Daddy dear,’ said Ebba. ‘Now, what about Robert? Is he back?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Rosemarie.

  ‘Don’t know? What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that I don’t know, of course,’ said Rosemarie. ‘I haven’t been up to check.’

  Ebba regarded her mother with a worried frown creasing her brow. She looked as if she were about to offer some mild reproof, too, a simple rebuke from daughter to mother, but whatever it was, she kept it to herself.

  ‘Any more operations to do before Christmas?’ enquired Karl-Erik, sitting down at the table with his bowl.

  ‘Eight,’ said Ebba in a neutral tone, ‘though not especially complicated ones. Five tomorrow, three on Friday. But after that I get a few days off for Christmas. All right Mum, I’ll go up and check.’

  She got to her feet and went out. Rosemarie looked at the clock. It was a few minutes after seven-thirty. She wondered whether to have her third cup of coffee but decided on a glass of Samarin instead. A stitch in time . . . Karl-Erik was browsing through the newspaper. Is he really as unconcerned as he seems, she asked herself. Or is he just trying to give that impression? He would certainly be astonished if she stabbed him between the shoulder blades with the big carving knife. Would he manage to get a word out, or would he just crumple and hit the floor like a sack of potatoes, she wondered.

  Perhaps he wouldn’t even have time to be surprised?

  I will never know, she thought wearily. She stirred the Samarin into a glass of water. Downed it in three deep draughts and started unloading the dishwasher. Karl-Erik sat in silence. She wondered how many times she had done precisely this. Unloaded everything from the dishwasher. This was their third one. It had been working faultlessly for . . . what was it now? Four years? No, more, at least five . . . she tried to work it out as she dried off the saucepans with a tea towel – that was the only function she found slightly less than satisfactory, the drying – yes, it was almost six years in fact. Once, sometimes even twice a day for six years, what did that add up to? A lot, though Karl-Erik did occasionally lend a hand, she had to give him that . . .

  ‘Are they coming round for breakfast?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Kristina and that lot. They’ll drop in for a sandwich before they head off, won’t they?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ was Rosemarie’s honest reply. ‘Er, yes, I think that’s what we agreed.’

  ‘You think?’ said Karl-Erik.

  ‘I don’t remember,’ said Rosemarie. ‘With all this Robert business, it’s hard to keep track . . . of other things.’

  Karl-Erik did not reply. He carried on reading the paper.

  In three days’ time it’s meant to be Christmas Eve, thought Rosemarie jadedly. And in three months’ time I’m meant to find my way to a supermercado whenever I want to go shopping. What are the dishwashers like in Spain? If Ebba comes back and tells me Robert’s upstairs in bed, she suddenly thought, I promise to go with Karl-Erik without a single grumble. To the bank and to Spain.

  What strange sort of deal was that? she then wondered. That was the right word, wasn’t it? The English word deal? Horse-trading, as it used to be known, and that was a word she felt she could relate to. They called it Kuhhandel in German. But why should she need to trade Robert for Spain? What were these idiotic voices inside her, asserting that she had to choose one or the other? Making out that it was some kind of equation of hope: Robert’s life or the house in Kymlinge. That it would be presumptuous to imagine both could be sorted out. That she had to . . .

  Ebba returned.

  ‘Nix,’ she said. ‘Little brother isn’t back home today, either.’

  Everything started to go black and for one brief second Rosemarie was sure she would faint.

  But she hung on tight to the worktop and recovered. She closed the front of the dishwasher, even though she hadn’t completely emptied it. Straightened up and looked at her daughter and husband, both sitting there at the kitchen table, safely nestled in their hundred and five years, in their innate hereditary concord – not appearing the least bit anxious. She took a deep breath.

  ‘The police,’ she said. ‘Will you please now go and ring the police, Karl-Erik Hermansson?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ replied Karl-Erik, not even raising his eyes from the newspaper. ‘And I also forbid you to do it. As discussed.’

  ‘Dad, I really think you ought to listen to Mum in this case,’ said Ebba.

  Kristoffer woke up and stared into a dark wall.

  Where am I? was his first thought.

  It took him a few seconds to realize. A weird dream about hyenas quickly receded and vanished into his subconscious. Hyenas running around laughing scornfully in something that looked like an old quarry. Why was he dreaming about hyenas? He’d never even seen one, had he? Not in real life, anyway.

  Nor that many quarries, either.

  He looked at the luminous face of his watch. It was quarter to eight. He turned over and put on the light. The green stripes of the wallpaper returned. Henrik was already up. Damn it, thought Kristoffer. I must have slept like a log last night. I didn’t notice whether he went out or not.

  Oh well, he thought, switching the lamp off again. Suppose I’ll have to ask him how it went. I’ll just lie here for a bit. He might be in the bathroom, in which case he’ll be back any minute.

  Or had their mother already come in to wake them? He tried to remember the sequence of events, but it felt futile. She had woken him so many times, so many mornings in so many different tones of voice, that it was impossible to distinguish one from another. Maybe she’d been in, maybe not.

  Today was Wednesday at any rate, he remembered. This evening he’d be back home in Sundsvall. And tomorrow . . .

  Linda Granberg. Birger’s burger stall. Kristoffer turned over and switched on the light for a second time. Pointless to lie there when he was so wide awake. And a bit hungry, actually, though he wasn’t normally in the mornings. Might as well get up, he decided. Have a shower and go down for some breakfast.

  Standing in the cramped shower cubicle as the water gushed over him, he thought about Henrik. What a transformation! What a complete turnaround had taken place in just a few days. From the perfect, infallible Super Henrik to the . . . what was the word? Promiscuous? . . . to the promiscuous Henrik, who had hooked up with a guy called Jens and went cruising about in secret in the middle of the night, for shady assignations.

  Assuming Henrik really had gone out last night. He couldn’t be sure. But in some way he felt this had brought him and his brother closer. Even though Henrik still didn’t know that he knew. Because Henrik wasn’t unblemished, that was the novelty of it. He had his dark sides, just like anybody else. Like Kristoffer himself. He was . . . well, human, quite simply.

  Good news, thought Kristoffer. Exceedingly good news.

  Then he turned the heat up a degree and moved on to reflect on Uncle Robert. In his case, the promiscuity (difficult word, thought Kristoffer, but good) was well-documented, and had been for a long time. He’d been the black sheep of the family long before he beat all records on Fucking Island. He’d never been amongst the favoured topics of conversation round the dinner table in Stockrosvägen up in Sundsvall.

  And now he’d gone missing. Or had he come back during the night? Kristoffer caught himself wishing he hadn’t. It was cool just to vanish into thin air like that. Several
of the others, especially Granny, seemed worried about him, but not Kristoffer. It was probably just as Dad said. Robert had found a woman, and instead of enduring the agony of an exceptionally tedious birthday party, he’d decided to spend the time with her. He didn’t give a shit what people thought and said. Kristoffer hoped he could aspire to that state one day. A state in which you decided your own fate and actions, and weren’t dependent on . . . on your mum, to put it bluntly.

  Because that was the way it was. It wasn’t on Dad’s account Henrik had asked him to keep quiet about his nocturnal escapades, that was obvious. Leif had reacted to Kristoffer’s transgressions last Saturday exactly the way a good dad should react. By being bloody furious with him and telling him to damn well pull his socks up and think about what he was doing – but not burdening him with a load of guilt. That was the way it should be between parents and children. Straightforward and simple, not all that beating about the bush. A good dressing down and then everything was all right again.

  But how would he react if he found out Henrik was homosexual? Well, that would be a different kettle of fish, as he would put it. A completely different kettle of fish, thought Kristoffer, turning off the shower. He heard a knocking on the door.

  ‘Henrik?’

  It was Mum.

  ‘No it’s me, Kristoffer.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re up. Come down and have some breakfast when you’re ready.’

  ‘Sure,’ replied Kristoffer, and started to inspect his face in the mirror.

  No more than four or five spots; bearing in mind the way he’d stuffed himself with chocolate these past few days, he had every reason to feel satisfied. If he restrained himself today, he should be pretty presentable at Birger’s burger stall in . . . in about thirty-seven hours’ time.

  ‘Rosemarie, you’ve got to try to be a bit realistic here,’ said Karl-Erik at that slow, emphatic, pedantic, schoolmasterly pace which meant he did not intend to repeat what he was about to say. ‘There’s nothing to point to anything having happened to Robert. You and I – and Ebba – know his character. There’s no need for me to give examples. He evidently felt somewhat under pressure, being here – perhaps he felt ashamed, to put it plainly – and he had every reason to. So he rang up some old contact here in town. Rud . . . what was that schoolfriend of his called? Rudström?’