The Darkest Day

by Håkan Nesser

  ‘Yes, a man.’

  A movement outside the window caught Gunnar Barbarotti’s attention for a moment. He turned his head and caught sight of a magpie as it came flying in and settled on the windowsill. Why are you landing there? he thought in bewilderment. Are you a spy sent by the Devil, or what?

  Gunnar Barbarotti had never been in any doubt about the existence of the Devil. It was only the potential presence of God that was the problem.

  ‘Hrrm, right,’ Eva Backman cleared her throat. ‘So what did you do? I can understand it must have been traumatic for you.’

  ‘It certainly was traumatic,’ admitted Linda Eriksson. ‘I ran to the loo to be sick, then I pulled myself together and rang the police. And while I was waiting for them, I opened another bag – I don’t know why I did it, maybe because I suspected what it might be and wanted to confirm it. Anyway, it was a head. I rushed back to the loo and threw up again, and then I stayed there until the police came.’

  Gunnar Barbarotti sat up straighter in his chair. ‘And you stayed in the flat while they unpacked the rest?’

  ‘I waited in another room while they did it. With a policewoman.’

  ‘And you heard that there were two bodies?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Which your sister was storing in her freezer for some reason?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you any idea why she did it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you get to see them?’

  ‘Yes. The police asked if I was prepared to look and I said I’d try . . . that is, I looked at the heads.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I didn’t recognize either of them. They were in a pretty bad state, but I could see they were both men.’

  ‘I see,’ said Gunnar Barbarotti, glancing back at the magpie, which had clearly seen and heard enough, because it flapped its wings and flew off. He felt pretty much the same way. He had heard enough. He wished for a moment that he, too, had wings. Eva Backman had leant forward and put a hand on Linda Eriksson’s arm again.

  ‘Had your sister shown any violent tendencies while she was alive?’

  Lina Eriksson hesitated. They let her hesitate.

  ‘I don’t quite know how to answer,’ she said finally. ‘As I told you, she did try to kill her family, and I think – I think people . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I think people have to understand Jane was really ill. She ought not to have been allowed out – for her own good and everybody else’s. But you know how it is with mental health provision in this country, I assume? Let all the loonies out onto the streets. They cause a bit of harm and suffering, but they don’t live long. Cheaper for society in the long run.’

  Gunnar Barbarotti agreed with this damning verdict pretty much one hundred per cent, and he knew Eva Backman did, too, but he chose not to make any comment on Linda Eriksson’s analysis.

  ‘It is what it is,’ was all he said. ‘And there are a lot of things that should be organized differently – I mean in healthcare in this country. But for our purposes, we have to focus on getting some clear view of what’s actually happened. We’ll be needing to talk to you a few more times. Where can we reach you?’

  Linda Eriksson started to cry for the first time. Eva Backman passed her a pile of tissues, and she blew her nose and wiped her eyes.

  ‘I’d like to go home to my family in Gothenburg,’ she said faintly. ‘If that’s all right.’

  Barbarotti exchanged another look with Backman and her thumb went up in reply. ‘That’s fine,’ he said. ‘We’ve got your address and phone number. I’m sure we’ll be back in touch with you tomorrow. How will you get to Gothenburg?’

  ‘My husband will come and fetch me if I ask him. It only takes an hour . . . well, two, for him to drive here and back.’

  Gunnar Barbarotti nodded. Eva Backman nodded.

  ‘There’s a rest room next door. You can lie down there and wait for him.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Linda Eriksson and followed Eva Backman out of the door.

  Poor devil, thought Gunnar Barbarotti. And . . . and if only she’d started with the kitchen, she’d have been saved the bother of clearing the rest of the flat.

  ‘So what do you say about this?’ asked Eva Backman half an hour later, sinking down in the visitor’s armchair in his office.

  ‘What do you say?’ asked Gunnar Barbarotti.

  ‘Grotesque,’ said Eva Backman. ‘Utterly grotesque.’

  ‘Do you think she cut them up in the kitchen?’

  ‘In the bathroom, Wilhelmsson said. There were clear traces.’

  ‘In the bath?’

  ‘On the tiled floor, more likely. The sister had given it all a good scrub, maybe Jane as well. But blood is blood.’

  ‘How long ago?’

  ‘He couldn’t say. But clearly it’s been a while.’

  ‘And we’re pretty sure about one of them?’

  ‘You saw yourself, didn’t you?’

  Gunnar Barbarotti nodded. Even though the face was not in great shape, there was little doubt. One of the heads was that of Robert Hermansson, who had been missing since 20 December the previous year. Eight months, all but a few days.

  ‘And you don’t think we ought to ask her if she knows of any link?’

  ‘Between her sister and the Hermansson family?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No, I don’t. Not until we’re a hundred per cent sure. But if the identity is confirmed before she leaves, I’ll go in and ask a couple more questions. What do you think about the other one?’

  Eva Backman shrugged. ‘We’ll know about that in a couple of hours, too. I’ve no idea. Could be Henrik Grundt, could be somebody else. Wilhelmsson says the body was in a worse state. Especially the head. It seems to have been left to rot for a few days before she packed him up and put him in the freezer.’

  Inspector Barbarotti leant back and clasped his hands at the back of his neck. All at once he felt immense fatigue descend on him. And powerlessness. He took a deep breath to improve his oxygen supply.

  ‘And if it isn’t Henrik Grundt we’re dealing with,’ he said with a kind of understated and perverse thoroughness, ‘then it’s some other poor wretch that has had the pleasure of being killed and cut up by our little friend Jane Almgren. Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘No, that’s what you’re saying,’ observed Eva Backman in roughly the same tone. ‘But basically I agree with you. Either it is Henrik Grundt or it isn’t. In the latter case, we’ve got yet another question to straighten out.’

  Gunnar Barbarotti looked at the time and pondered.

  ‘Borgsen’s started drawing up a list,’ he said. ‘Of people we ought to talk to. Neighbours and social workers and therapists and all sorts . . .’

  ‘The husband?’

  ‘Him too. Assuming we can find him. And the mother and brother. Borgsen was up to fifty-two names an hour ago. Exactly a deck of cards. I wonder . . .’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I wonder whether you fancy sneaking out to the Elk for a beer and a sandwich before it all kicks off? We’ll be working late tonight.’

  Eva Backman sighed. ‘A cold beer before the war,’ she said. ‘Yep, not a bad idea. Better just call home and tell the family first.’

  ‘Good,’ said Barbarotti. ‘I ought to have a quick word with Sara, too.’

  Eva Backman got to her feet to leave, but then stood in the middle of the room for a few moments, looking out of the window with a slightly absent expression. Then she turned her cornflower-blue eyes on her colleague.

  ‘You know what I think, Gunnar?’

  Gunnar Barbarotti made a ‘search me’ gesture with his hands.

  ‘I think this feels totally sick. Good God, imagine how the papers are going to feel when they get hold of a story like this. TV celeb found dead in freezer! Jointed and packaged! Bloody hell, Gunnar, I should have done exactly what they told me. Taken over Dad’s shoe shop and married Rojne Walltin.’

>   ‘Who the hell is Rojne Walltin?’

  ‘Haven’t I told you about Rojne?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘He’s got a chain of shoe shops in Borås and Vänersborg. If we’d paired off we’d have had a virtual monopoly. And he did propose, in fact.’

  ‘Are you and Willy having problems?’

  ‘Not at all. Well, no more than usual.’

  ‘Ah, OK. Go and ring him and say you’re on the late shift tonight. At least you won’t have to play unihockey.’

  Eva Backman nodded and left the room. Gunnar Barbarotti sat there a bit longer with his feet up on the desk, wondering whether he ought to put together an existential prayer to Our Lord. But neither the right words nor the right odds presented themselves, so he left it. For now, God was well above the line, largely thanks to Marianne and Greece – on the basis of which He had made great advances – and deep inside, Gunnar Barbarotti had started to hear a voice, expressing at regular intervals the seductive truth that it was easier to be at ease in this world if there actually was a benevolently inclined higher power.

  And that suggested the aforementioned power perhaps didn’t – in the long run – much appreciate having His existence called into question all the time.

  Content with this bargain-basement analysis, he rang home to have a word with his daughter. She did not answer, but he left a message to say he had to put in some overtime at work and would be late home.

  Like the considerate father he was, he omitted to mention that the work involved a jigsaw puzzle of two people’s frozen body parts.

  28

  Ebba Hermansson Grundt got off the metro at the Skogskyrkogården stop. She went through the underpass beneath Nynäsvägen, following the directions she had been given, and came into Old Enskede. She had never been to visit her younger sister before and was immediately taken aback by the classiness of the area. Leif and the boys had been here once, a couple of years since, but she had had to opt out. Probably a colleague calling in sick, but she couldn’t remember.

  The old wooden villas were larger and more charming than she had imagined, with big gardens and trees weighed down with fruit. Involuntarily comparing all this with her own standard at home in Sundsvall, she registered that Kristina must be several rungs above her on the ladder of social success.

  But it was simply an automatic reaction, not anything that worried or barbed her. There was no room for further barbs after Henrik’s disappearance. As far as she was concerned, she would be prepared to live out the rest of her days in a tiny flat in some suburb, if only her son came back. Or to cut short her own life – why not? – in return for Henrik being able to live.

  But there was a problem with equations like that, of course. They didn’t really exist.

  She turned into Musseronvägen and it struck her that she should have bought flowers. It couldn’t hurt, and hadn’t she passed a florist’s a few minutes ago? At that little square of shops. She stopped and looked at her watch, realized she was early and turned back.

  It struck her then that for one short and terrifying moment, she had forgotten why she had come.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Kristina, somehow contriving to sound genuinely surprised. ‘You needn’t have. And I’m so useless with pot plants.’

  ‘It’s an orchid. It only needs watering once a month.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Kristina. ‘It’ll survive for a month then, at least.’

  ‘Apparently, there are three thousand different kinds,’ said Ebba.

  ‘Really, that many?’ said Kristina.

  It’s a good thing I bought it, thought Ebba. It gave us something to talk about when I got here.

  Kristina went ahead of her to a glazed-in verandah looking out over the garden. Coffee and some kind of cake were waiting on the table; she indicated that Ebba should take a seat in one of the basket chairs. No tour of the house, no ceremony. Nor had she expected anything like that. Only once the coffee had been poured and sampled did Ebba notice her sister was pregnant. She had no bump yet, but there was something about the way she was sitting; her legs somewhat parted and her back straight.

  ‘You’re expecting?’

  Kristina nodded.

  ‘Congratulations. How far gone are you?’

  ‘Twelve weeks.’

  There’s something else as well, thought Ebba suddenly. Her eyes don’t look the way they normally do. She’s anxious about something. And her jaw is tense, she looks as though she’s finding this disagreeable.

  It surprised her that she was in a position to make these observations when she was so wrapped up in her own concerns. But perhaps that’s how it is with sisters, she thought. We read each other with no more than a look. Whether we like it or not, it’s quite natural.

  Though on the other hand it perhaps wasn’t that odd for Kristina to be unenthusiastic about the visit. Ebba could understand that. All her life she had been inferior to her elder sister, or that must have been how it felt, particularly when she was a teenager – but at least she’d had a good relationship with the children. Ebba’s children, that was to say. Henrik’s disappearance had been a blow to her, too. And Robert’s. Kristina and Robert had always been close, Ebba suddenly remembered; she was the one who had distanced herself from the other two. She was the one who had created a boundary line and made sure to maintain it. As she sat there waiting for them to find their way into some kind of conversation, these irrefutable facts ran through her head, and she felt a lump in her throat. Get a grip, she thought with a mixture of irritation and fear, don’t start blubbing, anything but that!

  Perhaps Kristina picked up on how brittle her sister was – read her with that sisterly reflex – because suddenly she did something unusual. Ebba could not remember anything like that happening before. Kristina leant forward in her chair and stroked her arm.

  Simply that.

  It was a gesture that only took a second but it bore witness to . . . something beyond words, thought Ebba. She felt a sudden light-headedness. Blinked it away and looked into Kristina’s eyes. Saw that anxiety there again, that tense look, which did not fit at all with the stroking of her arm. Got to start now, she thought. Got to start talking, silence has its limitations.

  ‘I don’t know why I’m here,’ she said. ‘Not really.’

  ‘Nor do I,’ said Kristina.

  ‘Maybe it’s just because I can’t stand doing nothing.’

  ‘You’ve never been good at doing nothing,’ said Kristina.

  Ebba cleared her throat. Whatever that constriction was, it didn’t want to shift.

  ‘I’m finding it so difficult to bear, Kristina. I thought I might gradually get used to it, but I’m not. It’s just getting worse and worse.’

  Kristina made no reply. She chewed her lower lip, her eyes fixed on some point above and behind Ebba’s head.

  ‘It gets worse every day. I’ve got to find out what happened to Henrik.’

  Kristina raised her eyebrows a millimetre. ‘I don’t quite understand.’

  ‘What don’t you understand?’

  ‘What it would achieve.’

  ‘I don’t know what it would achieve, either, but all this hanging about waiting is driving me crazy.’

  ‘Crazy?’

  ‘Yes, it really is. The doing nothing is turning me crazy. There must . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘There must have been something about Henrik, those days we were there. Something that . . . well, that I didn’t notice.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean he did actually make the decision to go out that night.’

  ‘Yes, it seems that way.’

  ‘Perhaps he decided a long time in advance. And – and since you talked to him a fair bit, well, perhaps you noticed something? That was what I was wondering.’

  ‘I didn’t notice anything special, Ebba,’ said Kristina, with her eyes still fixed on that point. ‘And I’ve told you so a hundred times already.’

  ‘I know you
have. But looking back on it now, is there really nothing that comes to mind?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But there ought—’

  ‘Ebba, please, do you think I haven’t thought about this? I’ve done scarcely anything else since it happened. I’ve asked myself about it day and night.’

  ‘I understand that. But what did you talk about?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘What did you and Henrik talk about?’

  ‘We talked about all sorts of things.’

  ‘All sorts of things?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like Uppsala. I don’t like you interrogating me, Ebba.’

  The lump in her throat was suddenly threatening to burst. ‘Yes, but what am I supposed to do then, Kristina? Tell me that. You’re not helping.’

  Kristina hesitated for a moment. Lowered her gaze and looked her sister in the eyes. ‘I’m not helping, because I can’t help,’ she said slowly, almost as if she were addressing a child. ‘There really is nothing Henrik said or did that could explain what happened. Why would I keep anything quiet, Ebba, please can you tell me that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Ebba. ‘No, of course you’re not keeping anything quiet. Did you talk about – about me?’

  ‘About you?’

  ‘Yes. Or family relations in general? Maybe you touched on things that you think might be too sensitive for me to hear? In that case I beg you, Kristina, to stop making allowances of that sort. It’s totally immaterial what—’

  ‘We didn’t talk about you, Ebba. Nor about the family.’

  Ebba briefly fumbled with her coffee cup. She put it back on its saucer without drinking any.

  ‘Uppsala? What did the two of you say about Uppsala, then?’

  ‘Henrik told me a bit about his course. And his accommodation and so on.’

  ‘And Jenny?’

  ‘Yes, he mentioned her.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I didn’t get the impression it was anything all that serious.’

  ‘Do you know the police never tracked her down?’

  ‘Yes . . . no . . . what do you mean?’

  ‘They haven’t located that Jenny.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘It’s a bit odd, isn’t it?’