The Darkest Day

by Håkan Nesser

  ‘And then he went?’

  ‘Yes, he must have done. But I don’t know when, because I fell asleep.’

  ‘You fell asleep before he left the house?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who was he going to meet?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Don’t know?’

  ‘No. He said he was going to meet an old friend and I asked if it was a girl.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘And he said that it was.’

  ‘A girl?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Gunnar Barbarotti, and reduced his espresso to a single. Kristoffer Grundt drank a little of his Coke. A few seconds went by, the boy stared down at the tabletop, and Barbarotti had a fleeting vision of how it must feel to be a Catholic priest and hear confession.

  ‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’ he said. ‘You haven’t told me all you know?’

  Kristoffer Grundt nodded.

  ‘There’s a bit more,’ he mumbled.

  ‘You think your brother lied to you?’

  Kristoffer Grundt gave a start. ‘How . . . how do you know that?’

  Gunnar Barbarotti leant back. ‘I’ve been doing this for quite a few years now. You learn to pick up on things. So what else have you got to tell me?’

  ‘I don’t think he was going to meet a girl.’

  ‘Ah. Why not?’

  ‘Because I – because Henrik’s gay.’

  ‘Gay? What makes you think that?’

  ‘Because I borrowed his mobile and happened to see it.’

  ‘Can you see from a person’s mobile whether they’re gay? You’re joking, right?’

  ‘No, of course you can’t.’ Kristoffer Grundt laughed, against his will. ‘I borrowed Henrik’s mobile to send a text. And then I happened to read a message that had come in. And what the message said was pretty . . .’

  ‘Clear?’

  ‘Clear, yes. It was from a guy who – well, I found this bit out from his address book – from a guy called Jens. So I don’t think Henrik was going to meet a girl.’

  ‘And who do you think he was actually going to meet?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Gunnar Barbarotti had expected no other answer, but he still felt a faint stab of disappointment that Kristoffer couldn’t squeeze out a little surprise on this point.

  ‘But if you were to guess?’

  The boy thought for a moment. ‘No idea, honestly. Perhaps it was that Jens, who happened to be in Kymlinge – though it definitely seemed . . . No, I didn’t know what to think. It was . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It was, like, too much all in one go. I’d just found out Henrik was gay, and then he was off out in the middle of the night. Henrik, who’s always been so good and conscientious. It was hard to take it in properly.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ said Gunnar Barbarotti. ‘And Henrik’s homosexuality, nobody knew about it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you didn’t tell him you knew about it?’

  ‘I didn’t have time to. And anyway, I’d borrowed his mobile without permission, so I didn’t want to say anything.’

  ‘I get it. So he had a plan then, Henrik? When did he tell you about it?’

  ‘That evening. An hour or so before we went to bed, no more.’

  ‘Can you repeat to me exactly what he said?’

  ‘I don’t really remember. But I’m sure it was just that he’d be out for a couple of hours during the night and I was to pretend I knew nothing about it. I asked why and he just said he was going to meet someone. And then, er, then I asked that thing about the girl. That was it.’

  ‘Why did you ask if it was a girl, if you knew he wasn’t interested in girls?’

  ‘No idea. I just blurted it out. I mean, he’d invented that Jenny in Uppsala, so he probably didn’t want us to know about it – that is, I assume she doesn’t really exist.’

  ‘All right. Have you told anyone else about this? Your mum and dad, for example?’

  ‘Of course I haven’t. I don’t want them to find out about . . .’

  ‘About your brother being gay?’

  ‘Yes. Not that it’s a bad thing, I mean, it doesn’t bother me, but I’m sure they’d be pretty upset – or sad – on top of him going missing and everything. No, I don’t want them to know about this. That’s why I kept quiet about it, it’s not only because I’d promised.’

  ‘I understand. And you didn’t find out any more about this Jens?’

  ‘No, how could I . . . ?’

  ‘That’s fine. And I can tell you that you were right about it not being him Henrik went out to meet that night.’

  ‘But how – how can you know that?’

  ‘Because we’ve checked Jens out. He’s got an alibi. He was almost a thousand kilometres from Kymlinge on the night of the twentieth of December.’

  Kristoffer Grundt’s jaw dropped. Literally. He just sat there with his mouth hanging open and stared at Detective Inspector Barbarotti.

  ‘So you knew . . . ? You’ve known about . . . ?’

  Gunnar Barbarotti fished his mobile out of the breast pocket of his jacket. ‘Let me give you some advice, young man,’ he said. ‘If ever in your life you’re thinking of committing a criminal act, and you want to be sure of getting caught for what you’ve done, make sure you use one of these.’

  ‘What?’ gaped Kristoffer Grundt.

  ‘Now, of course we don’t tap the phones of ordinary, honest citizens,’ Barbarotti went on. ‘But we know who’s ringing who. When they do it, how often they do it, and where they are when they make each individual call. Let’s say, for example, there were two young men in Uppsala who rang and texted each other more than ninety times over a period of two weeks – then, well, we’d draw our conclusions.’

  ‘I see,’ said Kristoffer Grundt.

  ‘Good,’ said Inspector Barbarotti.

  But again, that gets us no further forward, damn it, he thought an hour later as he sank into a window seat on the pleasantly half-empty plane to Arlanda. And what was more, it looked as though it was going to take off on schedule. We’re just jogging on the spot. We’re – we’re worse than our domestic airline.

  The thing that felt most ironic of all, considering what he had advised young Mr Grundt towards the end of their conversation at the Charm Cafe, was that Henrik, of course, had not used his mobile. He had not rung the person he was planning to visit, he had not sent a text to announce ‘I’ll be there in half an hour’; and as Detective Inspector Barbarotti stared out of the minimal cabin window and listened to the de-icing sprays, it seemed to him that this very factor – this absent factor – was the strangest thing in this whole strange case.

  Because what did it mean? If Henrik really had arranged to meet someone during the night, he must have had some method of making that arrangement. How, in short. The police had got into his computer in Karlsrogatan in Uppsala and been through his personal emails with a fine-tooth comb – and in them it was made pretty explicit that he had had homosexual experiences between the end of November and the start of December – but had found nothing about arrangements for a nocturnal encounter down in Kymlinge. Henrik Grundt had not telephoned, at any rate not from his grandparents’ phone; the only thing left, as far as Gunnar Barbarotti could interpret things, was that he had met the person in question and that they had sorted it out face to face, as it were.

  But when? When had they reached their agreement, in that case?

  And of course, the billion-dollar question – who? Who the hell was Henrik Grundt to have met in Kymlinge? It was just as his younger brother had pointed out: he didn’t know a soul there. Could it have been someone he knew from Uppsala? Someone who was down in that neck of the woods for Christmas?

  Another male partner who was not Jens Lindewall?

  Still seemed bloody unlikely. And did it really have some connection to Robert’s disappearance the night before? If two people went missing from th
e same address in a town of scarcely 70,000 inhabitants, just twenty-four hours apart, couldn’t any underachieving lumpfish work out that there must be a link?

  I get so tired of all this, noted Gunnar Barbarotti as he took the little box of juice and plastic-wrapped sandwich proffered by the air stewardess. It’s possible to think of an innumerable number of variants in this affair. But none that seem the least bit credible, and none that have anything to do with facts. Like . . . well, like imaginary maps of an unknown continent, that was how it felt.

  What? His thoughts were in confusion. Imaginary maps of an unknown continent? But it was a rather good image of the whole thing, actually. He’d have to remember to use it to shoot down Eva Backman at some convenient juncture: Now you’re just drawing imaginary maps of unknown continents, dear!

  Not bad.

  But surely they ought to get something, at least something, out of that damned elusive Lindewall when he dropped out of the skies from the jungles of Borneo tomorrow morning?

  They had a right to demand it, in fact.

  Content with these intelligent summations, Inspector Barbarotti opened the little carton and spilt juice on his trousers.

  23

  Typical, thought Gunnar Barbarotti as he checked in at the Radisson at Arlanda SkyCity. When you get a chance to stay at a decent hotel for once, you arrive at ten in the evening and have to be up before six. I could just as well have crashed on a sofa.

  When he had slipped between the cool, freshly mangled sheets and put out the light, he prayed an existence prayer.

  O great God, if you really exist – which at this moment you actually do, though not by much, I’d just like to remind you – make the plane from Bangkok tomorrow be about four or five hours late, so a poor, hard-working plainclothes cop has time for a proper hotel breakfast this one time in his dull life! I naturally can’t offer more than one point for such a trifle, but I would still be more grateful than you, even you, o great God, can imagine. Good night, good night, I’ve asked for an alarm call at quarter to six, and I shall check with arrivals the minute I open my eyes.

  The plane from Bangkok landed five minutes ahead of schedule.

  Detective Inspector Barbarotti had time for a shower and a cup of coffee, that was all. He sat waiting with cup number two on the table in front of him in one of the airport police interview rooms. He had the feeling that if Jens Lindewall didn’t have the sense to behave, he would chop off his ears and lock him up for an indefinite stretch.

  Next to Barbarotti sat a blonde female police assistant, filing her nails. If Lindewall didn’t show up within the next two minutes, Barbarotti felt he would snatch the file out of her hand, throw it to perdition and tell her that manicures were outlawed in police interview rooms according to the Swedish Penal Code, chapter four, paragraph seven, section three, subsection four.

  He also had the feeling he was being a bit too touchy.

  Jens Lindewall looked tanned and healthy. If a little anxious. He was tall, blond and well-toned, and was wearing khaki, with heavy boots and a rucksack. More or less as you might expect a younger brother of Bruce Chatwin to look, after a month at the equator. Two-day stubble. A twisted blue scarf tied round his neck. Gunnar Barbarotti registered, reluctantly and with a slight feeling of queasiness, that this young man could readily find someone of either sex to share his bed with very little effort.

  ‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘My name is Detective Inspector Gunnar Barbarotti. Welcome home.’

  The young man stared at him and a muscle in one of his cheeks twitched a couple of times. But no words came out of his mouth. He put down his rucksack, pulled out a chair and sat down. Barbarotti regarded him evenly. The assistant put away her nail file.

  ‘What’s this all about?’ said Jens Lindewall eventually.

  ‘Is it correct that you have had a sexual relationship with a young man named Henrik Grundt?’

  ‘Henrik . . . ?’ said Jens Lindewall.

  ‘Henrik Grundt, yes. You had a relationship in December; we’ve been trying to get hold of you since Christmas. Henrik Grundt is missing.’

  ‘Missing?’

  ‘Just so. Why have you been keeping out of the way?’

  ‘I haven’t . . .’ He loosened the knot of his scarf and crossed his arms on his chest. He seemed to be deciding not to take this lying down. ‘I haven’t been keeping out of the way. Or . . . well, maybe I have. But it’s what I usually do: go away for a few weeks each winter and stay incommunicado; I didn’t know it was against the law. It’s part of my life cycle; you experience everything where you are much more intensely that way, Inspector, if you get what I mean.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ said Gunnar Barbarotti. ‘And if your parents happen to get run over by a timber lorry while you’re away, they can just go ahead and bury each other? That’s right lad, scruples are for Mr and Mrs Average and lowlifes like them.’

  Having delivered this inventive retort, he felt very clearly that his sadistic streak had had enough of an airing for one misbegotten morning. ‘Now, please be so good as to answer my questions and stop faffing about,’ he couldn’t help adding.

  ‘Yes . . . sure. But what is it you . . . ?’

  ‘You had a relationship with Henrik Grundt from November to December. Do you admit that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In Uppsala?’

  ‘Yes, I live in Uppsala.’

  ‘We know. And you flew to south-east Asia on the evening of twenty-second December?’

  ‘Er . . . yes, that’s right. But Henrik’s missing, you say? Is that why you’re—’

  ‘For more than three weeks now, yes. You spent the days immediately prior to your departure at your parents’ in Hammerdal?’

  ‘That’s right, but how . . . ?’

  ‘Your itinerary took you via Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur, then on to Kota Kinabalu and to Sandakan on the north-east side of Borneo. And the same route back. Is that right?’

  ‘How can you know all that . . . ?’

  ‘I just know. Doesn’t matter how I found out. Well?’

  Jens Lindewall sighed. ‘Yeah, it was like you said. I set off from Sandakan . . . it must be forty-eight hours ago. So I’m actually a bit tired, you’ll have to excuse me.’

  ‘I’ve been in the air a fair bit myself these past few days,’ countered Gunnar Barbarotti. ‘Can you tell me something about your relationship?’

  ‘Mine and Henrik’s?’

  ‘Spot on. Let’s leave your others aside for now.’

  ‘What is it you want to know?’

  ‘I want to know everything,’ said Gunnar Barbarotti.

  He didn’t, of course – and mercifully he didn’t have to – but when he let the young man leave the interview room forty-five minutes later, he still felt he had found out more than enough.

  Jens Lindewall was twenty-six years old. He worked for an advertising company in Uppsala and had been gay for as long as he had been sexual, basically. He had been in a long-lasting relationship (eleven months) that had ended last autumn, in September, and it was in the wake of that shipwreck that Henrik Grundt had come floating up. They met at the Katalin music pub behind the main station one Friday in November, ended up at the same table and started to talk. Henrik Grundt was not really aware of his own sexual orientation, but that all changed that night – to cut a short story even shorter. Then they were together for about a month, and they always met in Jens’s little flat on Prästgårdsgatan, never in Henrik’s student room in the Triangle. Jens confessed unashamedly to having fallen instantly and fiercely in love with the young law student, and he got the impression it was mutual. But he admitted that Henrik Grundt had had some difficulty when it came to accepting his homosexuality; he had had a few pretty desultory experiences of the opposite sex previously, the way he described it, and if Jens were to venture an estimate, he would say Henrik stood at around 65–35 on the homo–hetero rating scale – which, if Barbarotti understood correctly, meant that in an ideal world, one sex
ual encounter in three would be with a woman, the rest with men. It was the first time Barbarotti had ever come across such a scale, but he nonetheless entered it carefully in his notebook. You learn something new every day, he thought.

  The last time Jens and Henrik met was 17 December, the day before they were both off to their parents’ homes in Hammerdal and Sundsvall respectively. They had spoken on the phone a few times after that date, and exchanged a number of texts. Jens Lindewall’s last four messages, sent on 21 and 22 December, had gone unanswered. Gunnar Barbarotti could not help asking how his love life had been while he was away, and Jens Lindewall said, very frankly, that it had been good.

  ‘So you weren’t a couple, as it were, you and Henrik?’

  ‘We gave each other freedom,’ replied Jens Lindewall. ‘That’s the greatest of gifts.’

  When Barbarotti asked if he wasn’t concerned about Henrik’s disappearance, the answer came that of course he was, but that he would be bound to turn up. People just needed to be alone sometimes, especially young people, Jens Lindewall had learnt that from experience.

  After his interview with the good-looking young globetrotter, Detective Inspector Barbarotti hurried back to the breakfast buffet at the Radisson; he had an hour and a half before his flight left for Landvetter and he was as hungry as a wolf.

  The plane was only half an hour late, but he still had plenty of time to sum up the case in his head. Or cases. He still could not decide whether they were dealing with one or two, but as the investigation had not, however you looked at it, made more than tiny advances on either track, it didn’t really matter.

  At any event, neither of his sessions with Kristoffer Grundt and Jens Lindewall had shed much light on anything. What had happened in the course of those twenty-four hours in Allvädersgatan remained a mystery. When Henrik went out into the night on 20 December, it seemed to have been a highly conscious and pre-planned act – he had asked his brother to keep quiet about it – but why he left his grandparents’ house, and where he was going, well, they had not learnt a single jot about that.

  And Jens Lindewall had merely confirmed what they had already concluded. No more and no less. He and Henrik Grundt had had a relationship lasting a few weeks in November and December. Henrik had vanished, Jens had gone off to south-east Asia, and these two things had nothing to do with each other.