The Darkest Day

by Håkan Nesser

  Action and consequence, anyway. Cause and effect. She was still hanging on to her own life, for now, and the ultimate consequences of her own thoughtlessness could not be calculated. But things looked black, very black.

  Be with me tonight Robert, please, she begged. Help me through these hours and give me some words to help me along the way. Robert, my brother.

  To her surprise, she found she had her hands clasped together and was mumbling out loud.

  But there was no answer to be heard, neither from within her nor from the night beyond. She bent over the small circle of light, opened the pile of manuscript pages at random and started to read.

  For it is with life as it is with our tongue, he wrote. In childhood we love sweetness, but it is bitterness we have to learn to accept. Otherwise we will never become fully formed people and our taste buds will remain undeveloped.

  She leant back and pondered this for a while. What odd words he used. She had never heard him speak like that. And the title: why was the book called Man Without Dog? She had read a good hundred pages and had yet to encounter a dog. But perhaps that was the point? That no dog ever appeared. She turned to another page.

  Maria and John (they were evidently main characters of some kind, she had come across them before) decided not to speak to one another for a whole year, and that was how they cracked the shell of their despair. Human speech is the most imperfect of all the soul’s instruments, it is a whore and a usurer and a fairground quack, and when John silently observed his wife from behind, it did not take many months for her to know that look.

  Odder still. Robert, my poor brother, she thought. What is it you have been through? If we were children again tonight, would we be able to find different paths?

  She shook her head. Her own words sounded alien, too. Whores and fairground quacks? Well yes, maybe that was so. Her thoughts went coiling like disorientated snakes inside her, and now the baby was kicking as well.

  I shall have to give them up, she suddenly thought. That’s what will happen. They’ll take my children from me.

  Unless I hide them far away in foreign lands.

  Panic began to dance inside her again. How am I to get through this night? she thought. Am I supposed to sit here and stay awake until dawn? Why haven’t I at least got a sleeping tablet in my sponge bag?

  Dawn, really? There would be no dawn. The plane was due to take off at half past seven, so it would still be pitch-dark winter until they rose above the clouds. Check-in by six at the latest. She went on reading:

  When John was a child, he thought for a long time that he had been misplaced. That he had been swapped somehow, and his mother wasn’t his mother and his father wasn’t his father. There had been a mix-up at the hospital and one day the mistake would be discovered, and John would be taken to where he really belonged. That was a dark, damp place with no real people; it was a region populated by some creatures with long fur and horns but faces that looked quite human. And they were capable of human speech. John often dreamt about them and he loved them. One day, he asked his mother when they would finally come and collect him. Yes, he asked his mother the question, but his father happened to be there and it was he who delivered the box on the ears. It smarted for a long time, and even in adulthood he occasionally felt its slight after-effects in his cheek, especially on dark, damp days.

  She pushed the sheets of paper aside, feeling that this was too much for her on top of everything else. Robert’s words were providing no support. On the contrary, they were causing her to feel a shortness of breath. Something claustrophobic, like a . . . well, like a womb within a womb. Darkness within the darkness.

  She glanced towards the television. The digital numbers informed her that in the real world, the time had advanced to 00.32. Her eyes were feeling tired now, too. She checked she had set the alarm on her mobile for 05.00, then switched off the lamp and went back to bed. She put a gentle hand on Kelvin’s chest.

  Oh God, please grant me a little sleep, she prayed. Let me dream about my brother. Just lie here in my cocoon with my children and dream about Robert for a hundred years. But not about his words.

  Perhaps about Henrik, too. A nice dream about Henrik.

  She had little hope of her prayer being answered, but ten minutes later she was asleep, in spite of everything.

  Gunnar Barbarotti gulped down some more of the lukewarm coffee and stared at his colleague.

  The latter went by the name of Hellgren, or it might have been Hellberg, he had forgotten which; but he had one blue eye and one brown, which meant Barbarotti would have been able to pick him out amongst fifty thousand policemen. If that should ever prove necessary for any reason.

  Right now, it didn’t feel necessary at all. It was five to three in the morning, the setting was Stockholm police headquarters on Kungsholmen, and it was a question of sorting the wheat from the chaff.

  ‘What the hell are you saying?’ he asked.

  ‘What I’m saying,’ said Hellgrenberg, ‘is that she’s got a ticket to Bangkok for tomorrow.’

  ‘Bangkok? Well I’ll be damned. So you think . . . ?’

  ‘What do you think yourself?’ said Hellgrenberg with a yawn.

  ‘She and the child, I assume?’

  ‘Nix. She and the husband.’

  ‘Aha? What time?’

  ‘Eleven in the evening.’

  ‘From Arlanda?’

  ‘Yeah, where the hell do you think? Where have you come from?’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Gunnar Barbarotti. ‘I grew up in Manhattan and Rio de Janeiro. Which suburb did you say you lived in?’

  Hellgrenberg didn’t bother to reply. He just scratched the back of his neck and glowered at him.

  ‘But at any rate,’ said Gunnar Barbarotti, ‘er, at any rate, this has to be considered a red-hot lead.’

  ‘That’s what I’m saying,’ said Hellgrenberg. ‘All you’ve got to do is get yourself out to the airport and nick her, I reckon.’

  ‘The child,’ said Barbarotti. ‘She’ll have to take the child with her.’

  ‘It can have the husband’s ticket, I expect,’ said Hellgrenberg. ‘You don’t think he’ll be going with them, then?’

  ‘I’m presuming not,’ said Barbarotti. ‘But can you change a passenger name just like that?’

  His colleague rubbed his brown eye with a balled fist. ‘Dunno,’ he admitted. ‘But if it’s just a little kid, surely that’d be OK?’

  ‘We’ll have to find out,’ said Barbarotti.

  ‘Who’s “we”?’ asked Hellgrenberg.

  ‘All right, I’ll handle it,’ said Gunnar Barbarotti. ‘Have you got the flight number and so on?’

  His colleague handed over a piece of paper. ‘Thai Air,’ he said. ‘23.10. So perhaps I can turn in now?’

  ‘Go ahead,’ said Gunnar Barbarotti. ‘But I’d be grateful if you could get a car to take me back to my hotel first.’

  ‘If I have to,’ said Hellgrenberg.

  It was getting on for half past four when he rang off after his conversation with Arlanda airport. He was so tired it was making him feel ill; he had a buzzing in his temples and eight cups of dreadful coffee were burning his stomach and his gullet – but just as he had put his head on the pillow, a random thought popped into his mind.

  An idea that initially weighed no more than the wingtip of a butterfly – but its fluttering flight through his overexcited head still turned the weathervane just enough to keep him awake.

  Or however one cared to express it.

  Well I’m damned, he muttered, sitting up in bed. I’d never behave like that. Never in my life.

  He grabbed the phone again. He could still remember the number.

  45

  An image went through her mind as she emerged into the departure hall.

  If the hotel room had been a womb, then this was a chicken farm. This must be just what it felt like to hatch out of an egg.

  She was pushing Kelvin’s buggy ahead of her with one hand and pul
ling her suitcase along with the other. It was almost impossible to weave their way through the crowds of people and luggage. It’s six in the morning, she thought. Is this when all the planes leave?

  Ten minutes later she had orientated herself and found the right check-in desk and the right queue. There were at least a dozen passengers in front of her, but at least she was there now. Kelvin was awake but sat there placidly in his buggy, making no fuss as usual. The baby inside her seemed to be asleep. This is going to work, she thought.

  I’m going to get away.

  She instantly feared the presumptuousness of the thought. Don’t count those chickens, she told herself. For God’s sake, don’t count those chickens before they’ve hatched.

  But as she waited there, shuffling slowly towards the spruce young women in uniform, a sense of calm descended on her nonetheless. What could go wrong? she thought. What could actually go wrong? Why should anybody have discovered what had happened?

  There was no reason to fear that they had. There really wasn’t. And nobody would see anything strange in her being out of touch for the next two weeks. They were going to Thailand, everyone knew that. The fact that she was actually going to Málaga, and half a day earlier, well, who would suspect that? She had even pulled off the conversation with the childminder. Explained that they had decided to take Kelvin with them. At the last minute, yes, but there had been space on the plane.

  So she could certainly count on a fortnight’s grace, and after that . . . well, she had coped so far, so she would be sure to think of something.

  Cometh the hour, cometh the inspiration.

  Assuming there was a need to carry on living, that is. The main thing was for the children to get away. Her nocturnal thoughts were still with her, and of course she would have to give birth to the new baby, too. She had at least six weeks to go, so the fortnight would have to be extended somewhat, of course, when she came to think about it . . . How had she overlooked that in her calculations? Why did she find herself forgetting her as yet unborn child every now and then? How could you ignore something like that?

  To be fair, she had scarcely had time for any calculations at all, and the fear of her own presumption returned, waving its red flag. It was so easy to imagine the whole tunnel was illuminated, just because you had glimpsed a candle flame at the far end. Yes, it was all too easy to count your chickens.

  No more plans until we’re in the air, she decided. No plans then either, in fact. Thinking a couple of hours ahead, a day at most, was definitely sufficient . . . definitely enough.

  In front of her there was an old couple, standing hand in hand. Well-tanned, even in mid-December. They must be Swedish expats, she thought. They’d probably been home for a week to visit the family, and now they were on the way back to their paradise on the Costa del Sol. The man was wearing a slightly crumpled cream-coloured linen suit and the woman was in trousers and a sea-green tunic. She felt a stab of envy. Just think of being that old, they must have been approaching eighty, but still standing lovingly hand in hand at an airport. That will never be me, she thought. And I can’t look at them without feeling envious, I haven’t even learnt that much.

  The snake thoughts began to writhe inside her again, and suddenly she remembered what she had been dreaming. It had not been about Robert, her first choice, but about Henrik. Not the pleasant dream she had asked for, but a dream of that night, those first hours – no, that single hour, that was all it had amounted to – when they were able to be together, before everything was shattered.

  She had dreamt of his shyness. Of his awkwardness and his young, unused body. The dream had actually played out in that hotel room, but she had not been Kristina. That was the strange thing. Instead she had been someone else, standing outside the window, seeing them in bed in there, watching as they made love – and it took a very long time for her to understand that she was Jakob. She stood there staring at herself and Henrik through Jakob’s eyes, and when she finally realized, she let out a howl and threw herself through the window to tear the two lovers apart and . . . but before reaching the bed, she had woken up.

  Woken up and not remembered a single thing about the dream. Not until now, an hour and a half later. It was remarkable. Could sunken dreams suddenly resurface like that? Why? What did it mean? She felt a droplet of sweat leave her armpit and trickle down the side of her body – and at the same moment, a note began to sound inside her head. A low, barely audible note, more like a vibration. What’s up with me, she thought in dismay. What’s happening to me? Am I losing control after all?

  It was the old couple’s turn to check in. She stepped forward to the yellow line. Took a deep breath and clenched her hands.

  She kept it together. Once again, she kept it together. Ten minutes later, the buggy and the case had been safely checked in. All that remained was security control and an hour’s wait at gate 15. She hoisted Kelvin onto her arm and headed for the entrance to the security area. Showed her boarding pass to a short-haired young man in a white shirt and dark tie. He gave her an accommodating nod but did not return her pass.

  ‘Just a moment please,’ he said, and nodded to a fellow staff member.

  His colleague emerged from the shadows and looked at the boarding passes, both hers and Kelvin’s. Then smiled at them both and asked them to come with him a different way, through a door.

  ‘But why?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s to do with your pregnancy,’ he explained kindly, showing her into a little room in which there were two small tables, each with two chairs. ‘As I’m sure you know, flying in pregnancy does involve certain risks, and we need you to fill in a couple of forms. It’s just a formality. Please have a seat.’

  She sat down at one of the tables and put Kelvin on her knee.

  ‘Why didn’t they say anything at check-in?’ she asked. ‘Or when I bought my ticket?’

  He didn’t answer. Instead, another door opened.

  She didn’t recognize him immediately. She couldn’t – for the first fractions of the first second – understand what he was doing there.

  But then she understood. Everything.

  He cleared his throat.

  ‘Kristina Hermansson,’ he said. ‘Your husband was found dead yesterday in your home at 5 Musseronvägen in Old Enskede. I have to inform you that you are under arrest on suspicion of his murder.’

  She closed her eyes for a second. Opened them again.

  ‘I see,’ she said. ‘And yes, you are quite correct. I’m sorry I had to lie to you.’

  ‘No need to apologize,’ he said.

  46

  Ebba Hermansson Grundt leant forward over the kitchen table. She gravely regarded her son and then her husband, one after the other.

  ‘I’ve realized something these past few days,’ she said.

  ‘It’s been hard,’ said Leif Grundt. ‘For us all.’

  ‘I’ve realized we have to consider Henrik dead. He is dead. We can’t go on living if we keep imagining anything else.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that, too,’ said Leif. ‘I reckon you’re absolutely right.’

  ‘I think the same,’ said Kristoffer.

  Ebba Hermansson Grundt clasped her hands round the teacup in front of her and carried on looking at them a while longer. ‘It’s been a horrible year. But from now on, we must try to remember the brightest and best things about Henrik.’

  ‘That sounds good,’ said Leif Grundt. ‘What do you think, Kristoffer?’

  ‘Yes, that sounds good,’ said Kristoffer, pushing his long fringe aside so he could look at both his mother and his father. A few silent seconds passed. Leif Grundt gave a sigh.

  ‘Well that’s decided then,’ said Ebba. ‘You need a haircut, Kristoffer. So, you enjoyed your work experience down in Uppsala, did you?’

  Kristoffer gave his father a look. ‘Yes, thanks. But it’s nice to be back home, actually.’

  ‘I think so too,’ said Ebba. ‘We’ve got to try to look forward a bit now.
’

  ‘I reckon that would do us no harm at all,’ said Leif Grundt.

  ‘By all means go into a bit more detail,’ suggested Eva Backman.

  ‘I know you think I should,’ said Gunnar Barbarotti. ‘But I haven’t slept for over twenty-four hours, so unless you’ve anything—’

  ‘Knife, you said?’

  ‘Knife, yes. Stabbed him nine times in the back, the last six when he was already on the ground.’

  ‘And she confessed straight away?’

  ‘Didn’t even have to ask her any questions.’

  ‘And he . . . ?’

  ‘Killed Henrik Grundt, yes.’

  ‘Did she tell you why?’

  ‘I’ve got to think it over.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I said I’ve got to think it over.’

  ‘I heard you. And what the hell does that mean? That you’ve got to think over whether he . . . ?’

  ‘It’s rather a tricky one, this. I’ve got all the information I need on Henrik Grundt’s death and on Jakob Willnius’s. But there’s some excess information, too. The sort of thing there’s no point making public. Or including in my final report . . . I’ve got to think it over. As I said.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘No, you don’t. But let me say one thing: truth can sometimes be an overrated jewel.’

  ‘You must have read that in . . . well, the Mickey Mouse Pocket Compendium or some of that other reading matter you like to get your nose into.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Backman, why do you always have to be like this? Imagine if you were to congratulate me on having cleared this case up, instead.’

  ‘Oh yes, you’d love that,’ said Eva Backman, and hung up.

  Before he went off to sleep he lay there thinking for a while.

  It had required so little, he thought. A minute – that was as long as it had taken to dig out the overrated jewel of truth.

  ‘But don’t you see?’ he had asked. ‘Don’t you see that I can’t make do with just this? If you can’t tell me why your husband killed Henrik Grundt, I might start to suspect that you killed him, too. That you did it together. You’ve got to give me a reason.’