He stepped into the agency’s office with a smile and half an hour later he stepped out with a smile.
He walked along the street with the quiet exhilaration of a person who has just made a life-altering decision—a mixture of reverence, euphoria, and an absolute conviction of having chosen the right path. But despite the light-heartedness, every step, every thought, was of the greatest importance. Even the rain drumming against his umbrella seemed to have a message. For Karsten Haller rain was something good, it made the semidesert bloom and fish that had been lying still, apparently dead, in the mud of the rivers waken to life. But even the absence of rain could be good. Then the animals flocked by the few waterholes. The clouds of dust on the horizon heralded migrating hordes of grass-eaters.
Now he was not stirring up much dust on Fyristorg. It was still raining intensely. He had decided to exchange the bundle of five-hundred-kronor bills from Ohler’s safe. It went more smoothly than he thought.
“Have a nice trip,” the young woman behind the security glass chirped, as she pushed over the yellow packet of money.
He had said something about visiting his relatives in the United States, with a vague sense that he had to justify his transaction. LUDMILLA, as it said on the woman’s name tag, did not think there was anything strange about his wanting to exchange twenty-five thousand kronor to American dollars.
Crime is encouraged, he thought, smiling back, left the premises and headed for the next exchange office, which was in a shopping arcade.
There it went just as smoothly. He quickly stuffed the money in the inside pocket of his jacket and set a course for the exit. When he caught sight of his own mirror image outside a store he did a double take; he looked like he had shoplifted something. He slowed down and looked around. Did someone perhaps think that he was behaving strangely? But no one seemed to take any notice. A teenager bumped into him, but did not apologize, on the contrary he glared at Karsten as if to say “Get out of the way, old man.”
He went into the pharmacy in the next arcade. He was sweating but did not want to unbutton his jacket. Now he realized that the theft was irrevocable.
He picked up aspirin and sunscreen. In the line to the register he suddenly became fretful. He wanted to shove the other customers to the side, throw a couple of hundreds at the clerk, and rush away.
Once out on the street he made the decision that he’d been tossing around ever since the last visit to Ohler: He would return and steal the rest of the bundles in the safe. Why should the rapist have so much, and in a couple of months a few million more in prize money?
He hailed a taxi that was passing. He wanted to get home as quickly as possible, get away from the people, the clamor in the stores, and the noise on the streets.
The taxi driver was black and Karsten took that as a good sign. During the ride he leaned back, closed his eyes, and the images from Namibia came to him. He smiled. Everything was falling into place. The old man would be punished. He would let himself be swallowed up by the interior of Africa. He opened his eyes. The rain was lashing against the windows of the taxi. It’s spring in Etosha now, he thought.
Thirty-one
“Do you remember Evert Gustavsson?”
Agnes was staring at her sister. She did not understand how Greta could make small talk the way she had done most of the time since she came to the house. She shook her head.
“You must. Evert was part of the congregation. Father was lighthouse keeper before he went to sea again. He was torpedoed.”
Now Agnes remembered. Evert had been in love with Anna in that innocent way, surely never expressed but obvious to anyone and everyone. When Aron became increasingly fierce in his attacks against his own daughter Evert left the congregation; the visits became less frequent and then finally stopped completely.
“He died this week,” Greta reported.
Agnes sighed. Death was one of the few things that could really liven up her sister.
“He collapsed. Just like Father.”
They were packing. Greta carefully folded up her sister’s clothes and placed them in garbage bags that she had been sensible enough to buy on the way. She had also brought with her a couple of shopping bags and a suitcase, borrowed from Ronald, and in it Agnes packed small things she had collected over the years.
She was grateful anyway for her sister’s carefree talk. Greta seemed to be taking it lightly that Agnes so unexpectedly and hastily was going to leave Ohler and Uppsala. It made the leaving less troublesome.
Greta had also taken the worst blows with the professor, because at first he refused to believe Agnes when she told him that she was going to leave for good the following day. It was only when Greta showed up that he realized the seriousness and started blustering about breach of contract. Then Agnes chose to go upstairs, although she overheard Greta’s impudent reminder that the Master and Servant Acts had been repealed. The professor’s response consisted of an inarticulate roar, after which they continued to quarrel for quite some time. It did not stop until Birgitta started crying loudly.
Greta surprised her. Agnes would be eternally grateful for her unconditional support.
“What if he’d married Anna?” Greta continued her monologue on Evert Gustavsson. “Then they would have stayed on the island. Evert was a builder later, you know that?”
Agnes stopped. In her hand she was holding a silk cloth she had received once from the old professor’s wife. She sensed that Greta’s talk about Anna was because they were now in the process of ending an era that had been started by their big sister. But it felt unpleasant anyway. Anna had not been heard from in all these years.
She considered herself betrayed, Agnes understood that, but she thought that was unjust. She had only been a child and Greta a teenager, and they had not judged Anna. It was Aron and the congregation that rejected her.
“Why didn’t she ever call or write?” Greta asked, as if she was reading Agnes’s thoughts.
“She couldn’t bear to,” Agnes maintained. “The wound was too deep. It never healed.”
“We’ll never know,” said Greta sadly.
“We’ll never know,” repeated Agnes, who thought that the wound still persisted. The time when Anna lived with Viola was the period that they could remember with a certain measure of joy. Anna had been happy the times the little sisters defied their father’s prohibition and sneaked over to Viola. But then, when Anna disappeared from the island, all contact ended.
They looked at each other. This unexpected openness between them, airing a mystery they had actually never discussed, filled Agnes with a number of conflicting thoughts. She realized that they only had each other, and her sister had surely realized the same thing. Hence her support and involvement in the move.
She threw the cloth in the garbage bag.
“Are you going to throw it away?”
“I got it from Lydia,” said Agnes.
“I know, I got one like it. She must have found some excess inventory.”
Agnes smiled mournfully. Perhaps Anna got a cloth too? she thought, turning around to hide her emotion.
Packing Agnes’s belongings did not take long. They made the revolutionary decision not to clean the bedroom and drawing room, Birgitta could just as well do that, Greta thought.
Instead they sat down in front of the TV. They were both waiting for Birgitta to show up. The professor would never humble himself to knock on the door. He had not, as far as Agnes could remember, set foot in the drawing room since it was transformed into her living room.
Birgitta came after half an hour. Quite certainly she had listened through the door and heard that the TV was on. She knocked and opened the door at the same moment. Her attempt to look unconcerned made an almost comic impression, or else she had been tricked by the sound of the TV, thought they had canceled the plans for retirement and now were staring at TV. But when she caught sight of the suitcase and the garbage bags Birgitta turned pale and the mask fell.
“Is this the
thanks we get, Agnes?” she whimpered in a broken voice.
The crushed expression and the outstretched arms—Agnes happened to think of a biblical figure depicted in the illustrated scriptures of her childhood—completed the spectacle of a theatrical composition, presented to create a bad conscience, nothing else. Birgitta no doubt understood at that moment that Operation Persuasion was meaningless. If nothing else Greta’s discouraging expression and posture vouched for that. The sister was also the one who answered.
“Thanks for what?”
Birgitta took a few quick steps into the room. Agnes knew what was coming. The spitting image of Papa Bertram. Now the heavy artillery is waiting.
But she did not have her father’s perseverance, because after only a couple of minutes she fell silent, apparently drained. The final argument was that she was really the one who had arranged that Agnes got access to the drawing room.
“And how many domestic servants can live so regally?” she concluded the tirade.
Agnes stared at Birgitta. She remembered a ten-year-old girl who came running into the kitchen to seek shelter or consolation, or was simply eager to tell something, perhaps with a schoolbook or a drawing in hand. She remembered their chat in the kitchen only a few days ago.
Neither of the sisters commented on Birgitta’s outburst, which was followed by increasingly loud and uncontrolled sobbing. Agnes withstood the impulse to get up, but said something to the effect that it would surely work out. Greta glowered. Clearly she had firmly decided not to lift so much as a little finger for Birgitta.
At the same moment Liisa Lehtonen stepped into the drawing room, which reinforced the image of a scene where yet another actor made an entrance. But she had no lines, only gave the sisters a furious look before she placed her arm around Birgitta’s shoulders and led her out of the room. If the Finnish woman had had a pistol in her hand they would have been shot, thought Agnes.
“That was one round,” Greta commented, getting up, going over to the door, and closing it with a bang.
Agnes saw that she was very content, presumably because they had stood up so well. She herself was shaken. She wanted to cry but did not really understand why. Preferably she would have left the house immediately, disappeared, but Ronald was not coming until the next morning. How she would be able to make her way down the stairs, through the hall, and out the front door she did not know. Would she say goodbye to the professor? After all, they had shared a roof for more than half a century. Would he shake her hand and thank her for the time that had passed or would he just make a fuss? Would she look around with a sense of loss? There were so many questions, so many emotions tumbling over one another that she could simply hide her face and sob.
“We’ll soon be out of here,” said Greta. “You know that gratitude has never been the Ohlers’ strong suit. We don’t need to feel ashamed. We’ve done what’s been asked of us, and then some.”
Agnes straightened her back a little and removed her hands from her face. Of course that’s how it was. All three of them, Anna, Greta, and herself, had done good work. Still she felt a guilty conscience. She was deserting. Should she have waited perhaps until after the Nobel Prize ceremony? The professor’s heart was not strong. Perhaps he would die of fury before he was able to receive the prize. Then she would be blamed for his death. And rightly so.
“Greta,” she said. “Maybe—”
“Never!” her sister exclaimed. “We are not moving from this spot. Now we’ll sit here like two old ladies who can’t move. Then we’ll go to bed. Ronald is coming at eight sharp.”
Agnes did not reply. She peered at the garbage bags and happened to think about the gardener at Lundquist’s. He had also carried black bags around. Now he was gone too, probably for good.
“Time lives a life of its own,” she said.
Greta stared at her but said nothing and turned her attention to the TV.
Thirty-two
The house was silent and dark. It was approaching midnight. Karsten Haller guessed that Ohler and the old housekeeper were sound asleep.
Third time’s a charm, he thought as he slipped in through the cellar entrance. He felt exhilarated, not anxious at all like on the previous occasions. There was a routine to it all. He was no ordinary villain, no simple burglar, and because his motives were complex and elevated he did not doubt that for a moment. In reality he was doing justice a service by partly correcting an irregularity. He was claiming a sort of disinterested damages, if you will. Another interpretation could be that he was improving his mother’s inheritance somewhat. And as a side effect he would get a few years in the landscape he appreciated most of all, the dry savanna.
But above all he wanted to create the most possible confusion in the Ohler home and inflict the most possible injury. Karsten Heller had never been a bloodthirsty or revengeful person, but the thought that the old man should have to suffer for the assaults he had committed had taken a firm hold.
The keys to the safe were in their place, no one seemed to have moved the ring since his last visit. He now moved deftly in the cellar, did not need to hesitate, made his way up the stairs, turned off the flashlight, and carefully opened the door. It was dark. Like at Melongo, that time when nature seemed to be holding its breath. He and Christian. Stock-still. Then came the scream. Both of them jumped. Christian had then shown his white teeth in a broad smile.
The house smelled different. It took awhile before he realized that they had been wallpapering and repainting. He turned on the flashlight a moment to quickly survey the hall; he did not want to stumble on a can of paint.
The door to the corridor that led to the billiard room was closed. He knew from the last time that it creaked. From his pocket he took out an oil can and sprayed the hinge. When he then pushed down the handle the door glided open soundlessly. He smiled to himself in the darkness. He was starting to get really good at the break-in game.
The floor creaked. The window at the end of the corridor was letting in a faint light that fell in across the runner. He opened the door to the billiard room, waited a moment but it was still dead silent in the house.
Karsten became unexpectedly and suddenly afraid. The previous certainty and feeling of being invincible gave way to a pulsating worry. He wanted to leave immediately but stopped to think. He was so close to the goal. With shaking hands he took out the key ring. The door of the safe glided open. A puff of closed-in air struck him.
Suddenly the room was lit up by the headlights from a passing car. Karsten checked the time: twenty minutes to one. Five minutes had passed.
The box with the money was there. He had actually not expected anything else, but still heaved a sigh of relief. Quickly he took out the bundles, stuffed them in his pockets, swept the flashlight one last time to see if he had missed anything, and locked the safe. Then he left the room, many hundred thousand kronor richer.
The tension, the weight of the money, made him giggle. He took the same way back, quickly managed the corridor and hall, carefully opened the door to the cellar. Now it can’t go wrong, he thought, turned on the flashlight again, went quickly down the stairs and over to the paint can, threw back the keys, and headed for the door out to freedom. Now he wanted to get out of the house! He wanted to go home, open a beer, and count the money. He giggled again.
At the same moment the cellar was bathed in light.
In front of him was a woman with a raised gun in her hand, probably a pistol. She had been standing hidden in the darkness. The barrel was aimed at him. She stood in the middle of the cellar, partly hidden behind a pillar, with a good view in all directions. A good position, he thought.
“Who are you?”
He turned around. On the stairs stood another woman. He recognized her from the garden. In her hands she had one of the spears he had seen in the library.
“That doesn’t matter,” he said.
“What are you doing here?”
“Administering a little justice,” he answered.
“My name is Karsten, and who are you?”
“Birgitta von Ohler.”
“The daughter of the house?”
The woman nodded. He felt calmer at once. The hands that held the spear were shaking. He turned his head. The pistol on the other hand was not shaking a millimeter.
“Right when you opened the door to the cellar I looked out the window,” said the woman with the pistol. “Bad luck for you.”
He looked toward the door where he had come into the cellar.
“If you move I’ll shoot you,” said the woman.
“I certainly believe that,” he said.
Once before he had had a gun aimed at him. That was in Johannesburg, and he had escaped. True, he lost a good deal of money and a watch, but no more than that.
“And I don’t miss,” said the woman. “I have three medals from the Olympics and the world championships.”
“I understand,” said Karsten, smiling, but was struck by the suspicion that the woman was slightly crazy.
“Liisa, he’s the gardener from Lundquist’s, I recognize him now.”
“That’s right,” he said.
“And Liisa is a competitive shooter.”
“Then that’s clarified,” he said. “But now I have to leave.”
He saw a quick smile from the shooter.
“Leave?” she said. “You’ve broken in and then you think you can just trot off, after having been introduced?”
“Yes, you have every reason in the world to let me go.”
“And that would be?” asked Birgitta.
“Your father’s posthumous reputation,” said Karsten Haller, turning halfway around and looking at her. “The Nobel Prize winner, the renowned professor.”
Open Grave: A Mystery (Ann Lindell Mysteries) Page 22
