The Darkest Day

by Håkan Nesser

  During the morning, she makes a phone call to that policeman. She remembers him quite clearly from Kymlinge. A man of young middle age with a slightly melancholy expression. Tall and thin, he made a positive impression on her; perhaps he was intelligent, in fact, but it was hard to tell with quiet people.

  At any event, he hadn’t much to report. The investigation is continuing, but he makes no secret of the fact that not a great deal of energy is going into it. There is something in his voice that inspires confidence, all the same. We’ve looked into everything we can reasonably be expected to, he says, but we’ve got nowhere. He personally has spoken to over a hundred people with some kind of link to Henrik or Robert – but the mystery of what happened in those December days is still as unsolved as it was at the start. This is a matter of regret of course, a matter of great regret, but that’s the way things look. Sometimes one finds oneself in situations like that, but it doesn’t mean one should give up hope. Wheels grind slowly, and he has been involved in cases in which crucial evidence came to light two or five or ten years after the cases were essentially shelved.

  Does that mean you’ve shelved Henrik’s case? Ebba wants to know. Are you just sitting around waiting? Not at all, Inspector Barbarotti assures her. In no way.

  Ebba thanks him and hangs up. She sits very still for a while, looking out of the window. The lawn needs cutting – Kristoffer promised to do it at the weekend but something got in the way. Something always gets in the way when Kristoffer’s involved. But she doesn’t care about that, either. Their plot of land faces onto a narrow strip of forest, and she recalls that Henrik used to be afraid of the trees when he was really little. When he was two or three, the trees and the dark; it’s a memory that pops up all of a sudden, and not particularly representative. Henrik was a plucky little boy, never really afraid the trolls would come and get him; Kristoffer had been the more timid one. The Co-op carrier bags are swinging inside her, it hurts desperately, but she can’t just sit here any longer, a good mother doesn’t sit and wait for her lost son, a good mother sets out and leaves no stone unturned until she finds her son. That’s just the way it is.

  But where to set out to? Where should Ebba Hermansson Grundt go and start her search?

  Kymlinge? Well that would be the most natural starting point of course, if her parental home were still there. But it is not. Karl-Erik and Rosemarie left Allvädersgatan on the first of March and started their new life in Spain; they actually did it. They turned to a new page, in the autumn of their lives. Ebba receives postcards and phone calls once a week, the cards from her mother, the calls from her father. The sun is always shining, they are always sitting on the terrace looking out over the mountains and a strip of sea, they are drinking sweet wine from Málaga with ice in it, yes, they really have embarked on a whole new existence. Were it not for the matter of Robert and Henrik, they would truly be in paradise, Karl-Erik thinks. Whether Rosemarie is of the same opinion is harder for Ebba to fathom, but nor does she care very much. Her mother and her father are sitting down there in the sunshine, sipping wine and trying to forget their children and their Kymlinge and their old lives, that is how it is, but it is certainly a remarkable turn of events. Who could have imagined a year ago that this was how the Hermansson family would look? Last August, everything was still normal, and now . . . now? Ebba asks herself. That’s how fragile life is, that’s how little we know about what can happen from one day to the next. One year to the next.

  Like an egg that falls out of the fridge and smashes on the kitchen floor, that’s how breakable our children are.

  No, she can’t go back and start poking around in Kymlinge, that much is obvious. It would be pointless. And yet, that is what she wants to recreate, when they were all together just before the birthday, when everyone was still there. Because if it really is true, thinks Ebba, if it really is true that things are interconnected, if there is a functioning chain of cause and effect in life, then the germ of what happened afterwards – whatever it was – must have been there that first evening. Perhaps on the second, too, when Robert was already gone, of course, but Henrik was still with them. There must have been something in the air, something you could have seen, if only you’d had any notion of the currents and thoughts and motives in those rooms on those days in December. An attentive observer would have been able to understand it.

  Or would they? What really happened? Did Henrik already know, when they were in the car on their way down to Kymlinge, that he was going to go out that night? Did Robert? Was there a plan? Was there a link? Who was that curious girlfriend Jenny, whom the police had proved unable to locate? Was she just an invention? And if so, why? What was Henrik concealing from his mother; there must have been things in his life that she did not know about. What was it that had happened during his first term in Uppsala? There must have been . . .

  The same questions, the same sterile fumbling, it’s remarkable how easily and rapidly the synapses of her brain have been drugged into disintegration by this virus; this must be how it feels when the end is near, thinks Ebba Hermansson Grundt, exactly how it feels. Futile, bewildered questions and no answers. This is how susceptible we are when our consciousness finally overcooks and falls apart, when our own eggshell also smashes – but it is not her consciousness that matters here. So enough of them, enough of these self-indulgent reflections, it’s Henrik who matters, the Henrik screaming inside her, cut into pieces or not, hanging from— No, stop, her thoughts are running out of control again. Where did she start? What had she made up her mind to do, just now? She looks out over the shaggy lawn again; over the garden, the crumbling sundial that the previous owner of the house, Mr Stefansson, was so mightily proud of, the dark trees, the approaching autumn, and tries to recapture that optimistic train of thought that was hers just a short time ago. What was it?

  Matter in own hands, that was it. Recreate the evening before it happened. Act, do something, act. Yes, that was it. She gets up and goes to the kitchen. The phone rings but she lets it ring. Kristina, she thinks. It’s my sister I must talk to. Kristina, Robert and Henrik sat up talking that evening. Perhaps Kristina detected something . . . No, she would already have told the police, of course, in that case. And the rest of us. But there could have been things that – no, not things, signs – signs that that gifted or maybe merely quiet policeman didn’t manage to unearth . . . signs that only a mother can understand and read, a word, something he said, something in his manner . . . something between Robert and Henrik, even, that might float up to the surface in retrospect – in a conversation between two sisters, two afflicted sisters, why not?

  She must speak to her sister, it was no harder than that. One has to start somewhere and one should start in the simplest, most natural place. That’s how it is.

  Things have never been simple and natural between Ebba and Kristina, but she’s going to overlook that this time.

  Within twenty minutes, she has ordered her train tickets and a hotel room in Stockholm for three nights. The train leaves that afternoon, and of course she would be able to sleep at Kristina and Jakob’s if she asked them, but she doesn’t want it to be like that. She wants to approach Kristina cautiously. They’ve been far too distant, ever since they were little; perhaps this is an opportunity for reconciliation – but best take it gently. Caution is a virtue. She does not phone to let them know she’s coming, either; ringing from the hotel tomorrow morning will be enough. She doesn’t want Kristina to have to go round thinking and planning and choosing her words in advance. If the memory is subjected to too much pressure, those quick flashes of recollection can get locked.

  Finally, thinks Ebba Hermansson Grundt, and goes for a shower. Finally, something.

  Inside her, a voice is calling to tell her nothing good will come of this trip. She and Kristina have never been able to talk to each other, they’ve always been like oil and water, but Ebba turns a deaf ear. She doesn’t listen to just any old voice; it is the trip and the action that make it wo
rth the effort. Of course a pair of sisters must be able to come together in an hour of need. The Co-op carrier bags hang without moving in her internal darkness as she packs a bag, writes a note to Leif and Kristoffer.

  Nothing about her intentions and so on, they wouldn’t understand anyway. Just that she has gone to Stockholm to see her sister.

  An unwelcome shower of autumn rain comes driving in just as she is about to leave for the station. She orders a taxi. It feels as though she will never be coming back.

  26

  About an hour after his conversation with Ebba Hermansson Grundt, Gunnar Barbarotti goes down to the police station cafeteria for two cups of black coffee and a think about life.

  It is his third day back at work after four weeks’ leave, and he cannot remember ever finding it so hard to get going again after a break. He is already caught up in various cases, amongst them a sorry tale involving a Turkish pizzeria owner who got tired of being harassed by a gang of xenophobic youths and killed a nineteen-year-old with a golf club. Two well-aimed blows, one to each temple, a four-iron; as Gunnar Barbarotti understood it, he was going to plead self-defence.

  Stupid to hit him twice when once would have done, reckons Eva Backman. That’s going to mean an extra six years. But it’s good that the immigrants have started playing golf. It’s the quickest route into mercenary Swedish society.

  For his part, Gunnar Barbarotti has never held a golf club, but he has seen fifteen photographs of the youth’s smashed-in skull and he doesn’t know what to think.

  And it’s hot. High summer is as boiling as a forgotten steam iron despite the fact they will soon be past the middle of August, and it feels . . . it just feels unnatural to be at work. Barbarotti spent the first half of his holiday with his three children in a borrowed cottage at Fiskebäckskil on the west coast, the second fortnight in Greece. In Kavala and on the island of Thasos, to be precise, where admittedly it was hotter still, but there was also a vivid blue sea and a woman called Marianne. He met the latter at a taverna on his second evening; she was running away from the ruins of a relationship with a manic-depressive physics teacher, or so she claimed, and for once Gunnar Barbarotti thought yes, why not? It was hard to think that it was only six days since they parted at the airport in Thessaloniki, with an agreement not to get in touch with each other for a month. Then they would see.

  In Kymlinge there is no sea and no Marianne.

  But there is a Chief Inspector Asunander, who is in a particularly foul mood, possibly because his false teeth are an even worse fit in hot weather. He is more curt and angry than ever in this unhealthily sweltering season, and there are those who say his dog had four stillborn puppies during the holidays, too, but nobody dares to ask.

  ‘Hermanssons!’ he snaps, for example, rolling his eyes when Gunnar Barbarotti cautiously brings up the subject. ‘Find a body pronto! Or two! Do it or change job. Lost property needs staff.’

  ‘I just wanted to know whether anything happened while I was on holiday,’ says Gunnar Barbarotti.

  ‘Enough for you not to stick nose in half-cold cas – es!’ bawled the police chief. ‘Two school fires, four rapes, eight ass – aults and hold-up at a mark – damn it! – et garden. And Turk kills man with golf clubs!’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Gunnar Barbarotti. ‘I get the picture.’

  Why would anybody hold up a market garden? he wonders in the lift on the way down. Have the banks run out of money? And it’s a bit rich to dismiss a double disappearance as a cold case after eight months.

  So the Hermansson–Grundt case stands as it ever did. Making his choice between a cinnamon bun and an almond tart, he takes the bun and instantly regrets it. When he thinks about it, the case that is, not the bun – Christ, inserts another voice into his stream of consciousness, there must be something wrong with the canteen air conditioning, it’s like a sauna down here – and he has been thinking about it quite a lot this spring and summer – he reckons the whole thing feels like some notorious brainteaser nobody can solve. Gunnar Barbarotti had a teacher in upper secondary who loved serving up puzzles like that to his pupils, particularly on Friday afternoons, so you had the whole weekend to brood on them. Barbarotti can’t recall ever successfully solving a single one of those ingenious problems; it was always the teacher himself – wasn’t he called Klevefjell? – who would present the elegant solution on the Monday. Not that you always understood it, even then.

  So the brainteaser ran as follows: We have two individuals, an uncle and a nephew. Along with a number of other relatives, they gather a few days before Christmas for a special occasion. The first night, the uncle vanishes into thin air. The second night, the nephew vanishes into thin air. Explain!

  Bloody hell, thinks Gunnar Barbarotti, mopping the sweat from his brow and biting into his cinnamon bun. Asunander’s right, there’s no point putting any more time into this. I’ve never experienced a case in which so many working hours have been poured into achieving such meagre results. But isn’t there . . . yes, there must be, it wouldn’t surprise me if there was styrofoam in this bun. He can feel the dough squeaking against his teeth.

  For some reason, this suspicion throws a bridge over to his ex-wife Helena. By contrast, plenty has happened there. When he went to collect the children for their holiday on the west coast, she informed him of two things. The first was that she had found a new man. The second was that she was moving to Copenhagen with him. He was a yoga instructor there, she said. For various reasons, she hadn’t yet told the boys, Lars and Martin, about the change of direction in their lives, and she made Gunnar promise not to mention it while they were at Fiskebäckskil.

  He kept his promise, and he hasn’t heard a word more on the subject since. Maybe the removal van is already en route. Lars and Martin, wonders Gunnar Barbarotti. How are you going to get on? Will you be talking Danish to me in five years’ time?

  He takes another bite of his styrofoam. When sons no longer speak the same language as their fathers, where are we heading?

  It’s a notion he finds hard to assess. Perhaps it’s just his prejudice, and this sort of thing is a matter of course for a lot of people. Nothing to trouble himself about on a day like this, anyway. It must be over thirty degrees in the canteen. He is just on his way to get cup number two and a glass of water when Inspector Backman comes tearing in.

  ‘So this is where you are!’ she declares, putting her hands on her hips. ‘We’ve just had a report of two bodies in a freezer. Do you want to come?’

  Gunnar Barbarotti considers this for half a second. Thinking about life can wait for another time, and to be quite honest, a freezer is pretty much what he needs on a day like this.

  Ebba resisted the temptation to get off the train at Uppsala, and carried on to Stockholm. A young man and a young woman boarded and sat down opposite her. They both had short dark hair and glasses; clearly they were students, and they immediately set about studying their course material, muttering and underlining. She watched them surreptitiously and could not help toying with the idea that they were actually fellow students of Henrik’s. Of course, term would not be starting for a week or so yet, but still. She closed her eyes and tried to conjure up Henrik in her mind. Expose him to her maternal eye, but it didn’t really work as she had hoped, he appeared momentarily but then vanished; when she tried again he came back, but only for that rapidly fading second. It was exasperating, but that was how it had been of late. Henrik had grown evasive. Ever more elusive. Am I starting to forget my son? she thought in dismay. Why can’t you stay with me any longer, Henrik? Why is it only in this jointed state in the Co-op bags that you actually seem real? A shudder ran through her and she understood that she had got away on this trip in the nick of time. There was no doubt about it.

  She had rung Leif from her mobile, but had only talked to him for half a minute because she lost the signal. He did not sound particularly surprised, but then he never did, in actual fact. He confined himself to saying they were both fine, he and Kr
istoffer, and asking how long she planned to be away.

  A few days, she said, but she couldn’t be sure whether he had heard that bit. Oh well, she thought. He’ll have to ring me if he’s interested.

  The train stopped at Knivsta. It came back to her that she had once done supply teaching in a school there for a couple of weeks. It was in the January of the second – or possibly fourth? – term of her medical degree and she had passed one of the modules early and taken the chance to earn a bit of money; maths and biology, but what she remembered most vividly was the menacing number of hostile young people and the sense of being at the mercy of forces she could not control. She had really had to psyche herself up to get through each lesson, and when it was all over – it couldn’t have amounted to more than eight or ten days all told – and she could go back to her medical studies, she had felt a wave of gratitude that she had not followed in her father’s footsteps and chosen teaching as a profession.

  She must only have been twenty or twenty-one at the time; good grief, there had been pupils who were only five years younger than she was.

  Though what struck her as strange now was that the school must be there, somewhere beyond the train window. Those classrooms she had taught in, that pine-coloured staff room with its rigid leather sofas and dusty, wilting pot plants – and those teachers, or at any rate the younger ones . . . and all of that still existed, and had existed the whole time, all those days and all those hours of those almost twenty years since then, while she had been entirely absorbed in her life, her family and her career. For some reason she found this insight utterly appalling, almost obscene, and told herself that if she scrambled off the train and located that school and went in – if she were able to find her way to that classroom with the big damp patch on the ceiling, for example, and the unimaginably foul green blackout curtains, then in fact her life would change track and she would have a chance of starting from back then. The mid-eighties, twenty years ago, yes, it must have been 1985, the year Leif Grundt would turn up in her life, before she had had her children, before things had embarked on that implacable course which led to the terrible events of her fortieth birthday . . . but if she leapt off the train this very moment and rushed out into the town of Knivsta, then time would turn on its own axis like a Möbius strip, and she would get the chance to restart her life and steer it in an entirely different direction, where she would never have to lose her beloved son and have him hanging in the black void in two green and white—