The Darkest Day

by Håkan Nesser

  He wouldn’t turn his mobile on until he’d covered some distance, when the train reached Gävle, say. He would call Leif and say he was on his way. And when he expected to arrive.

  If Leif – contrary to all expectations – had heard anything about a murder in Enskede the previous night, and if he brought it up, Kristoffer could just play the innocent. If Leif said it was Kristina’s husband who had been shot, well, then he would play even more dumb.

  That’s it, thought Kristoffer Grundt. You’ll soon be able to rest in peace, brother. This is going to be as easy as pie.

  He lay there for a bit longer, searching for any lingering doubts and anxieties inside him, but however hard he tried, he found nothing of that kind.

  It really was rather remarkable, and a feeling of elation that almost felt like delight was filling him more and more. It had to fight for space with the beef fillet, Béarnaise sauce and potatoes au gratin.

  He checked the time. Quarter to ten. Perhaps a cup of tea and a few ginger snaps would slip down quite nicely, after all. Perhaps a full stomach was the best way to go.

  Because there was one other detail. One little detail. He had a bit of shooting practice to do tonight. He had to be sure his gun was working. But it would be easy enough to do. He had set his alarm for three. Up out of his bed, throw on his clothes, tramp out into the snow and fire a shot. Maybe two, in swift succession. A few hundred metres from the house – no one would notice a couple of distant shots in the middle of the night. It would be easy as anything.

  But he had to do it. No skimping on the details.

  39

  On Friday, 3 December, it started to snow again. Not with quite the same intensity as the snowfall that had created nationwide chaos earlier in the week, but still enough to cause problems. Amongst other things, public transport in southern and western Sweden suffered significant disruption. Gunnar Barbarotti was glad he had had the foresight to book himself onto a train that left Kymlinge at six in the morning. In normal circumstances, he would have reached Stockholm around ten; in fact he arrived around twelve, and with his previous escapades on domestic flights also still very much in mind, he could not help asking himself if he would just have to give in and drive everywhere in future.

  Though on the other hand, the roads were almost certainly impassable this morning, too – and he still had two hours in hand until his meeting with Kristina Hermansson. He crossed the area in front of the station, then Vasagatan, and checked in at Hotel Terminus – his room was not ready, so he had to leave his bag at reception – before going another hundred metres through the swirling snow to Jensens Bøfhus. His lunch was a Danish take on meat patties with onions.

  As he sat over his meal, he began to feel a growing sense of anticipation for the coming encounter. His scalp was itching, something it generally only did when something out of the ordinary was brewing.

  Either that or his dandruff was coming back. It had been a recurring problem while he was going through the divorce; once he and Helena had separated and were living apart – once all the papers were signed and all the open wounds had started to scab over – his scalp had decided to behave again. His hairdresser, a young lady with an impressive array of perfect teeth and eyes like deep wells, had reckoned it was psychosomatic. She stumbled over the pronunciation of the word, but still. People who felt OK simply didn’t get dandruff, her two and a half years in the profession had taught her that.

  But I do feel OK, thought Gunnar Barbarotti, ordering a double espresso and a slice of cake. I haven’t felt this good since I made out with Veronica at upper secondary.

  So that meant it wasn’t dandruff. It was the impending meeting that was making him itch. It was the anticipation. He looked at the time. Still forty-five minutes to go, but with the Royal Viking diagonally across the street, he could stay where he was if he liked and watch Kristina Hermansson arrive. If she came from the right direction, that was. Though it might be better to sit and wait for her inside the hotel; perhaps it would put him at more of an advantage?

  It was high time to decide on his tactics, at any rate. What on earth was he going to say?

  Er, the thing is, I’ve heard your husband’s a pretty nasty piece of work. Is that correct?

  Not quite like that, he decided. Presumably the situation called for a slightly more subtle attack. Straws you were grasping at could so easily break; his considerably more than two and a half years in the profession had taught him that.

  On the other hand – on the other hand there were those who said Gunnar Barbarotti was one of the best interrogators the country (or west Sweden, anyway) had to offer. He had heard this from a number of different, usually well-informed sources, but there were times when he couldn’t help wondering if they were confusing him with somebody else.

  O Lord, thought Gunnar Barbarotti. Permit me to suggest a little deal.

  And Our Lord listened, albeit a little distractedly.

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Jakob Willnius. ‘Why haven’t you got time?’

  ‘I’m meeting someone,’ said Kristina.

  ‘But I told you Zimmerman was in town and would want to have lunch with us.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I forgot.’

  ‘Who are you meeting?’

  ‘A girlfriend.’

  ‘A girlfriend? Which one?’

  ‘Her name’s Henriette. You don’t know her. She’s from before you and I got together.’

  ‘You know how much Zimmerman means? What time are you seeing this Henriette?’

  ‘Two o’clock.’

  ‘And where?’

  ‘At – at the Royal Viking.’

  ‘Well, there we are then. We’ll have lunch with Zimmerman at Rydbergs at twelve-thirty. You’ll have time to get to the Viking; it’s only five minutes from there. And I’m sure she won’t mind waiting half an hour, if we happen to run on a bit?’

  ‘I don’t know . . .’

  ‘I’m off now. Make sure you’re there at half twelve at the latest. And put on something low cut, you know what he’s like.’

  ‘Good grief, I’m seven months pregnant, Jakob.’

  ‘So your breasts haven’t shrunk, have they? Half twelve at Rydbergs, Kristina. I’ve had enough of this messing about.’

  As she watched this thorn in her flesh get into the taxi, she felt nausea welling up inside her.

  He had clearly made a good impression, because when it got to two o’clock on Friday afternoon his supervisor Greger Flodberg – whom he had not seen since Monday – came and said he could finish for the day. He also gave him a plastic carrier bag, the standard green-and-white Co-op variety, and told him that since he had worked all week without pay, he was welcome to fill the whole bag with pick ’n’ mix sweets.

  Greger Flodberg had a brother who was a dentist up in Sundsvall, and he was running a bit low on customers.

  He guffawed with laughter, which echoed round the store, and slapped Kristoffer on the back – and Kristoffer did his best to laugh uproariously, too. Then he dutifully filled the carrier with five kilos of loose sweets, said his goodbyes to Urban and Lena and Margareta, who had been his mentors for the week, and handed back his green Co-op jacket.

  He took his bag and his carrier of pick ’n’ mix, and set off.

  He just caught the three o’clock train from Uppsala (it was supposed to have departed twenty minutes earlier, but the morning’s persistent snow had left its mark on the timetable), and within the hour he had stowed all his stuff in a locker at Stockholm Central station – with the exception of his gun, his ammunition and half a kilo of the sweets, which he put in the roomy pockets of his coat. He felt slightly uneasy about the pistol. But only slightly. Things had not gone to plan where the test shooting was concerned; he must have done something wrong when he set the alarm on his mobile. It had failed to go off in the middle of the night – or perhaps he had switched it off in his sleep. It had happened before. Anyway, the upshot was that he had not yet actually fired the Pinchmann, only
pulled the trigger a couple of times with an empty magazine, but for heaven’s sake, he thought, it was bound to work just the same when it was loaded. He didn’t think he would get the chance to test-fire it out at Old Enskede before the real event. The risk of discovery was simply too great – almost a million people lived in this city, after all.

  He bought a packet of Prince cigarettes at the newsagent’s kiosk in the station and went out into the cold, raw December dusk. The snow had eased off, but it was still falling.

  OK, he thought. Time to kill some time before I do the real killing.

  It was a few minutes past three when Kristina Hermansson left the Royal Viking, and she really didn’t know what to think.

  But she was acutely aware of one thing. Her own mental collapse was not far away. What was the name of that Almodóvar film that had been on at the cinema a few years ago? Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown? She had never seen it, but that was how she was feeling now. On the Verge. She climbed into a taxi at Centralplan, gave her address in Old Enskede and started to cry. The driver, a fifty-something immigrant from Iraq, regarded her sympathetically in the rear-view mirror for a moment, but said nothing. He just gave a kindly nod and concentrated on the driving.

  Her tears lasted only half a minute. She fished a couple of tissues out of her handbag, blew her nose on one of them and dried her eyes with the other. She leant her head against the cool headrest and tried to think back over the conversation – and understand what had really been said.

  On the surface and between the lines.

  He had started tactfully. Almost apologetically.

  ‘I didn’t mean to sound brusque on the phone.’

  She had assured him that it didn’t matter. She had had to come into the city centre anyway. For one vertiginously short second she imagined his not actually being a policeman at all, but her secret lover. Imagined them having a drink and then taking the lift up to their room on the eighth floor, where they would lock the door and make love for two whole days. Or two hours, at any rate. Then she caught sight of her belly and her chapped hands and was brought abruptly back to real life.

  ‘I’m finding it hard to let go of this case,’ he said. ‘That’s the way it is in my profession, sometimes.’

  She said she could understand that. A waiter came past and they each ordered a Loka mineral water.

  ‘I thought it was strange from the word go,’ he explained. ‘We spent a long time working on the assumption that the disappearances of Robert Hermansson and Henrik Grundt were linked.’

  ‘It sounds reasonable. Your assumption, I mean.’

  ‘Yes indeed. But when that proved not to be the case, it was a different matter, of course.’

  She cleared her throat cautiously.

  ‘Are you really sure that’s right?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That Robert’s death and Henrik’s disappearance aren’t linked?’

  At this point their bottles of mineral water arrived at the table and he took his time answering. He poured some water and took a drink. Set down his glass. Folded his hands in front of him and regarded her with an expression she could not interpret. But it was not the expression of a lover by any stretch of the imagination. A shiver of distaste ran through her.

  ‘Yes,’ he said eventually. ‘We’re pretty sure about it. Why do you ask, do you take a different view?’

  ‘Me?’ She noted that her voice came out at rather too high a pitch. ‘I’ve no view on the matter at all.’

  He just sat there for a few seconds, as if weighing up her answer.

  ‘Another angle that came and went,’ he continued, ‘was what we might call the family aspect.’

  ‘Family . . . ?’

  ‘Well, call it what you like. It naturally came up for discussion in the various phases of the investigation, but you might say it’s taken on . . . well, renewed topicality, since your brother’s murder was solved in August.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  Those were the only words she could get out. He drank some more of his Loka and took a pen from the breast pocket of his jacket. He twirled the pen for a moment as he pondered, squinting into thin air through half-closed eyes.

  ‘If the case of Henrik’s disappearance happens to have an . . . internal solution, so to speak, then that’s inevitably going to have certain consequences for the investigation.’

  ‘Internal solution?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t think I understand.’

  ‘Apologies for not expressing myself clearly enough. What I’m trying to say is that if Henrik’s been murdered, for example, and it has something to do with the situation in your family, then it could be that someone . . . or several people . . . apart from the murderer . . . are concealing information.’

  Barbarotti’s delivery of this final, choppy statement was exaggeratedly slow, its staccato sound accentuated by little taps of his pen on the table edge. She couldn’t help wondering whether he had practised the whole thing.

  And whether the aim was to break her on the spot. Whether he was sitting there waiting for her to give up and confess. I assume so, she thought, I assume that’s what this is all about. He thinks I’m hiding something, and he thinks he can break me with his perfectly measured insinuations.

  In some strange way, they infused her with strength, these thoughts, and the fact that he appeared to underestimate her; it all provoked her. She sat up straighter and then leant towards him slightly over the table.

  ‘Inspector Barbarotti, I have to admit something.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. And I don’t know why you wanted to see me today. I got the impression there was some new development in Henrik’s case, and that was why I came. But so far—’

  He interrupted her by raising one hand.

  ‘Apologies again. But you have to understand the rules of the game.’

  ‘The rules of the game?’

  ‘Yes. Don’t forget I am a policeman and I am investigating the circumstances of your nephew’s disappearance. I may not want to – or be able to – reveal to you everything that has emerged in the course of the investigation. My job is to get at the truth and the truth is not necessarily served by putting all my cards on the table.’

  She caught herself staring at him. What was he saying? Was he just drivelling or did he really know something? Was he bluffing? Was that why he had happened to use the card game metaphor?

  ‘What on earth are you driving at?’ she said. ‘And what contribution are you expecting from me?’

  ‘Your husband,’ he said, and it felt as if he were suddenly forcing her head under water. All her strength and will to resist suddenly washed away.

  ‘My husband?’ The sense of asphyxiation was very real.

  ‘What’s he actually like?’

  If the electrodes of a lie detector had been attached to her at that moment, she would have given herself away. She could feel her pulse galloping and her temples burning. Why wasn’t I prepared for this? she thought. This particular attack was the only thing I had to fear, after all. Why do I suddenly feel so defenceless?

  ‘I love Jakob,’ she hissed. ‘Why the hell are you asking me about him?’

  She could not determine whether her anger masked her panic adequately. Maybe, maybe not. He was giving her an appraising look.

  ‘Because certain information has reached me,’ he said. ‘Information that I’m afraid I can’t disclose.’

  ‘About Jakob?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And that’s all you’ve got to say?’

  ‘Not entirely. But I have to ask you whether you think your husband would be capable of killing someone?’

  ‘What the hell . . . ?’

  ‘Purely hypothetically. If it came to the crunch? What do you think?’

  She gave no answer. Merely shook her head and drank the last of her water. Asked whether he had any more insinuations to offer her, or whe
ther she was free to go.

  He made it clear that she was at liberty to go, but that he was sorry she had interpreted things the wrong way. She thanked him for his time, stood up and left.

  Interpreted things the wrong way? She thought about this as the taxi passed the Johanneshov ice stadium. How in heaven’s name had he expected her to interpret them?

  And most crucially of all, how would she have reacted if she really had not understood what he was talking about? Exactly as she just had, or in a completely different way?

  The question was impossible to answer, but she knew it was between these lines he was racking his brains for an answer, still sitting in the lobby of the Royal Viking. At any event, the threat of a nervous breakdown seemed to have receded for now. It had merely been swept under the carpet, of course, but presumably that was the best she could hope for. She checked the time and realized that in less than forty-eight hours she would be on the plane to Bangkok. It felt . . . it didn’t really feel real.

  It was only when she had paid the gentle, dark-eyed taxi driver and stepped into the hall in Musseronvägen that the other question surfaced.

  Where on earth had he got that information about Jakob? Surely he hadn’t just invented it?

  40

  Kristoffer Grundt wandered aimlessly round Stockholm city centre. It was half past six in the evening. He had forty-five minutes before the film started at the Rigoletto. The Usual Suspects, he had heard it was good. Or read that it was. Time passed slowly. He had already had a burger at McDonald’s and hung around the shops. The Åhléns and PUB department stores and various shopping malls. He had eaten pick ’n’ mix until he felt sick, and ended up chucking the last few in a bin. If he fancied any later, there were always the other four and a half kilos in the locker at Central station.