More Bitter Than Death

by Camilla Grebe

I look at the screen again, see the silhouette of the baby, look at Markus. My heart is still pounding, hard and fast, but the fear has abated and is now replaced by something else.

  Hope?

  Markus is sitting in the armchair, which he’s pulled over to the TV, controller in his hand. There’s some kind of virtual battle on the screen. I have a hard time understanding the appeal of this game. Some days I want to call it immature, but I realize that I have many traits that Markus accepts and puts up with and that he too needs space for his interests.

  Several empty moving boxes are leaning against the wall in the living room and I realize that he has brought some of his things from his apartment, that he is beginning to make himself at home. I unlace my knee-high boots and toss the rain-soaked jacket and shawl over a chair in the little entry hall.

  “Let me just finish this round,” Markus says, and keeps shooting away at his virtual enemy on the other side of the screen with great concentration.

  “Sure,” I say, picking up the cardboard boxes filled with food and heading into the kitchen. I start unpacking them and putting things away into the fridge or the freezer. I’m struck by how commonplace and natural everything feels and by the fact that I like this feeling. I hear Markus curse from the living room. The game is over and obviously he lost.

  “Do you want some help?” he asks. Markus comes into the kitchen, walks over, and gives me a light peck on the cheek. The lost battle seems forgotten. He caresses my shoulder.

  Something has changed between us. Markus has grown calmer, less obstinate, maybe because he feels more secure. And when he’s calmer, I don’t feel as claustrophobic. It’s so simple, and yet so hard. I shake my head and put away the last of the groceries. Markus sits down at the kitchen table and puts his head in his hands. He looks worried.

  “How much do you know about kids? About child psychology, I mean?” he asks. He has turned his face toward me and I see that he hasn’t shaved and that his eyes are bloodshot. I know that he’s been working more than usual lately. He’s tangentially involved in the Susanne Olsson murder investigation, but mostly he’s working on two rapes that took place in Hellasgården. I know they were unusually brutal and there is some suspicion of a serial rapist, and I know the investigation is weighing on him.

  “Kids? Are you worried about my ability to raise a child? Do you think I’m going to be a lousy mother?”

  “This isn’t about you at all, honey,” he replies. His smile is weary, and even though I know he’s kidding, I feel guilty. “You know that little girl, Tilda? She’s living full-time with her dad now. She used to spend every other weekend with him and the rest of her time with Susanne. Anyway, the father says Tilda almost never speaks. At all. She just draws. She hasn’t mentioned her mother since the murder, hasn’t asked, hasn’t wondered. It’s as if she just shut down, and he has no idea how to get her to open up again.”

  “Is she in therapy? Is she seeing a psychologist?”

  I think about that little girl who hid under the dining table for several hours as her mother lay dead beside her on the kitchen floor, and about what Markus told me before about the police’s questioning session with her.

  “Yeah, she’s meeting with some psychologist from Pediatric Psychiatric Services. But I don’t know what they’re doing with her. I’m sure you would know better.”

  “I have no idea, actually. I’ve never worked with traumatized children. They might be helping her to express herself, draw, paint . . . uh, I don’t know.”

  When it comes to treating children who have witnessed acts of violence, my expertise is extremely limited. Suddenly I remember a lecture from my undergrad days by a blond woman with big silver hoop earrings and a beautiful pashmina shawl who talked about working with refugee children at a camp north of Stockholm, how they had the children draw pictures of soldiers and then rip them up.

  “Whatever became of the robbery homicide theory, anyway?” I ask.

  “They still think it might be a robbery homicide. That would be so . . . simple, actually. It seems so awfully unnecessary.”

  “And Henrik, where does he fit in, as the robber, or what?” I ask, watching Markus make a face and roll his eyes.

  “I don’t believe that robbery homicide business, okay? It just seems wrong. So much anger. They questioned that guy who was handing out flyers, the one who found her. And he did actually steal her wallet, so that makes him a suspect. But, my God, a sixteen-year-old who had absolutely no relationship with the woman? No, I don’t buy it. And Henrik is still missing. The profiler we brought in thinks he’s mostly a danger to himself, is afraid he’ll commit suicide if he realizes what he did. As if that would help. His ex, Kattis, calls several times a day. She’s scared to death that he’s going to come after her and she’s still completely convinced that he killed Susanne Olsson as well. That’s what she says anyway.”

  Markus looks dejected and exhausted, but I see rage in him as well, an emotion Markus almost never shows.

  “And what about this stuff with Malin?” I ask.

  He shakes his head and says, “That would be a weird coincidence, wouldn’t it? For her to be placed in the same support group as Henrik’s ex-girlfriend? I mean, if it is a coincidence. But I think it is, because the murderer was almost certainly a man and, besides, Malin has an alibi. She was running some half marathon in Skåne the day Susanne was murdered.”

  “So it’s just a coincidence?”

  “What do I know? I mean, Gustavsberg isn’t that big. And they aren’t too far apart in age; it really isn’t totally unbelievable for it to just be coincidental.”

  Markus shrugs and massages his temples. “This whole investigation is just such a mess,” he continues. “The press is slaughtering us for not arresting Henrik right away. Everyone has an opinion about what happened and they all want to share it publicly. And everyone is pretty much assuming we’re worthless.”

  We stand there side by side in that little kitchen, with Markus tired and angry, and me worried. I think about Henrik’s confused, violent behavior. The idea that he’s out there somewhere—hiding, biding his time—frightens me, even though I realize that Markus is right. Henrik probably is mostly a danger to himself.

  Then Markus’s cell rings. I feel a rush of resentment. We were supposed to spend the evening together. The call probably means that Markus will have to go somewhere, maybe question a witness, maybe a potential suspect. He answers curtly, says hmm and nods before hanging up. He seems irritated, upset by the information he’s received. He moves into the living room, turns on his laptop, which is on the little desk by the window, and types something. Seconds later a new web page opens in his browser and I see the black headlines on the Aftonbladet home page: “Will She Catch Her Momma’s Killer? The Police’s New Witness in the Olsson Murder: Tilda, Age 5.”

  Patrik’s tears stream down his red, splotchy cheeks like rivers, forming wet stains on his worn skinny jeans. All the hopes, all the confidence he felt the last time we met, gone like the autumn leaves around my cottage. The way he bends his long body down over the yellow cracks in the linoleum floor, defeated and broken. By life, by love.

  As powerless as usual, I slide the Kleenex box across the table and start trying to sort things out.

  “She left,” he says. “I think she’s sleeping with someone else. That no-good useless bitch.” His voice is as limp as his body.

  “Okay, from the beginning now. What happened?” I ask.

  He sighs and then flops back in my armchair like someone with a fever, as if he didn’t have the strength to sit up straight, every muscle exhausted to the breaking point.

  “The day before yesterday, totally unbelievable! When I got home she, she . . . was packing, just like that. And then she just walked out, left me and the kids. Just like that. Goddamn it—”

  His bony body shakes.

  “What did she say?”

  “I. Hate. Her,” he screams, and I know why. It hurts when someone you love disappears
. I really feel for him. I wish I could take that skinny man, that bearded boy, into my arms and just cradle him.

  But that’s not appropriate, of course.

  He’s the client, I’m the therapist.

  Our roles are clearly delineated: he sits in one armchair, I in the other.

  He cries and I pass him the Kleenex.

  He pays and I listen.

  “Okay, okay, okay,” he says. “This is what she said: I helped her, isn’t that great? She’s strong again, blah blah blah. A bunch of bullshit, if you ask me. Now she realizes that she doesn’t love me. And now she’s strong enough to leave me. Thanks to my support. Thanks, thanks a lot!”

  He wipes his face with the Kleenex, cleaning snot from his lip and chin, wads the wet tissue up into a ball that he tosses at the wastepaper basket. He misses and it lands with a dull squish on my clinically clean floor.

  Neither of us responds.

  “Besides, it’s totally illogical. I’m the one who should leave her. I’m the one who had to earn all the money, take care of the kids while she was having . . . anxiety, lying on the couch, eating. Like a stupid, fat cow. On drugs. If anyone was going to leave, it should’ve been me, not her. It’s not . . . fair.”

  “And how did it make you feel when she said she wanted to split up?”

  “If you ever ask anything as stupid as that again, I’m going to get up and walk out of here. Do you understand me?” Patrik snarls between his teeth. But it’s an empty threat. He sighs and looks up at the ceiling.

  “Okay, okay. It feels like I’m dying. It feels like I’m dying and she stole my life. I mean, we have a life together, two children. How could she? It’s wrong. It’s . . . it goes against nature. A mother shouldn’t just leave her children.”

  Aina and Sven are arguing outside my office. Aina’s voice is shrill, Sven’s muffled, insistent, not backing down.

  “Like your mother did? I mean, she abandoned you too in a way,” I say.

  “Stop going on about my mother!” Patrik howls. “This isn’t about her. This is about Mia, damn it.”

  “Of course this is about you and Mia, but some of the pain you’re feeling definitely has to do with the experiences you carry with you.”

  Patrik isn’t listening. He’s far away, mumbles something inaudible at the glossy floor.

  “What did you say?” I ask.

  “Love.” He whispers something.

  “Love?” I repeat.

  “Love messes you up.”

  And I can only nod in response.

  Patrik is drawing lines with his wet shoe on the floor, spreading dirty brown water. Like a child, I think. He looks like a child. A sad, abandoned child.

  “And now?” I ask.

  He looks at me blankly with red-rimmed eyes and a furrowed brow, as if I were speaking a foreign language.

  “Now?” he repeats.

  “What happens now? Have you guys talked about that?” I ask.

  He shakes his head, staring out the black window, pursing his lips.

  All I hear is the squeaking sound as he drags the sole of his shoe over the linoleum.

  GUSTAVSBERG

  NOVEMBER

  The town houses are built in the middle of what looks like a field, right at the edge of a spruce forest, which extends all the way down to the sea in the west and to the little downtown area in the east. The yellow wood façades and blue doors have taken on a dishwater-gray hue in the November twilight. Satellite dishes of various sizes sprout off the buildings like mushrooms. A warm, golden light glows from the windows, reflecting in the marshy ground, reaching toward the darkness beyond the neat little yards, toward the woods where no one lives.

  Kent Hallgren is tired, so bone tired.

  More tired than anyone deserves to be, he thinks, pouring a good helping of whiskey into a Duralex glass, no ice. He would have liked ice but wasn’t up to the trek to the freezer, which was on the far side of the kitchen, to get it. His legs feel as though they’re made of stone, his back aches, and his head is exploding. When he brings the glass to his mouth, he smells the acrid odor of his own sweat.

  This last period of time, he thinks, he wishes he could just mark it off the calendar, erase it from the hard drive, as it were.

  Susanne’s death has worn him out. He has been sleeping poorly and hasn’t been able to concentrate at work. He thinks again that he doesn’t deserve this, that he actually deserves a better life—without debts, without a crazy ex-wife who gets murdered, without being saddled with a child.

  It’s not that he doesn’t feel sympathy for Susanne, because he does. They were together for three years, after all, and Lord knows she didn’t deserve to die, even though she’d been a first-class tramp for the last several years. She had her good side, Susanne did. She was a good mother to Tilda, the kind who served healthy food, always made sure Tilda was well dressed, and kept her hair braided. The kind who established a good rapport with the daycare workers and the pediatrician’s office.

  And now it’s all up to him.

  Obviously it’s not fun. Obviously it’s unfair. He’s not prepared to take care of a child full-time, doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know how to braid, doesn’t know what little girls like to play with.

  There’s a pile of pizza boxes and wadded-up wrappers from the shawarma place in the corner next to the cat’s water dish. Tilda has colored on some of the pizza boxes. A face with round eyes and long, sharp teeth smiles at him from the greasy brownish-beige box.

  He thinks absentmindedly that the face doesn’t look pleasant, that it’s an evil face. Why did she draw that? Is that a picture of the . . . murderer? Should he bring the pizza box to the police? How much did she see, actually? Did she see . . . ? No, he can’t think about that. He has to keep it together now. He decides not to take the box to the police; there isn’t much to the phantom drawing.

  Tilda is sitting at the kitchen table stringing wooden beads onto some fishing line. He didn’t have any other thread, because Tilda doesn’t usually spend that much time at his place. She doesn’t normally stay for so long anyway, not so long that she needs a bunch of toys. An episode of Bolibompa on TV and a sketchpad are usually plenty. But now he went and bought her beads from the toy store downtown. They thought that would be perfect for a five-year-old girl, and it seems that they were right, because she’s been sitting there playing with them for almost an hour.

  He sips his whiskey, which is lukewarm and smoky and makes him shudder when he swallows. He thinks about what the police said, how they don’t know who the murderer was yet, that Henrik couldn’t be tied to the murder, that he actually has an alibi. But the police must suspect him, right? You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to see that something’s wrong with him. All those muscles . . . You don’t get muscles like that from lifting scrap metal. Henrik must be taking something. How could Susanne fall for him? And then supposedly shooting is a hobby of his? A person wouldn’t enjoy a hobby like that if they didn’t have aggressive tendencies to begin with. And besides, not that it was any of his business, but there was a rumor that Henrik gambled away everything he earned on the horses.

  And now here he was, saddled with a five-year-old. This wasn’t in his plan. Obviously he had to cancel his trip to Phuket with the guys.

  He takes a big gulp of the warm liquid and the alcohol fumes sting his eyes.

  Everyone was very understanding when he canceled. They all thought that what happened to Susanne was ghastly. And he’d actually become something of a celebrity in his circle, a person who was being afforded extra respect and attention, someone people sought out contact with. That actually felt really nice.

  Then suddenly she’s standing there in front of him, slipping her small, skinny arms around his jeans-clad leg and looking at him with those big, blue eyes—the eyes that were also Susanne’s eyes. And he feels something soft spreading through him, a feeling he doesn’t know the name of, and also doesn’t know what to do with.

  “Little la
dy, Papa’s little lady,” he says, and bends down to kiss her on the cheek.

  “Ugh, Papa, you smell like Teacher,” Tilda says.

  “Like Teacher?” he asks, confused.

  “Yeah, like Teacher when she puts that gooey blue stuff on her hands.”

  “Gooey blue stuff?”

  Then he remembers. There’s a big pump bottle of alcohol gel in the daycare bathroom that the staff use when they wash their hands. Apparently that helps prevent the flu. Does he smell like that, like hand cleaner? He puts down his whiskey glass and picks her up onto his lap.

  “Time for bed, missy,” he says.

  She nods seriously and he is struck yet again by how obedient she is, wonders if that’s going to last, or if that’s a phase she’s going through, wonders if she’s traumatized, and if she is, how she would express that.

  * * *

  He lifts her up into the bed and buries his nose in her brown hair, inhaling the scent of food and soap.

  He says, “Good night, Papa’s princess.”

  “You have to brush my teeth, Papa. It’s important to brush your teeth,” Tilda says, staring up at him with those blue eyes wide, giving him that serious look again, and he sighs.

  “Whoops, Papa forgot. I’ll go get your toothbrush, okay?”

  She nods.

  He goes to the bathroom, searching through the clutter on top of the washing machine for the little toothbrush that looks like a giraffe. He finally finds it under a tin of snuff but can’t find her toothpaste, the one that tastes like candy. He puts a little glob of Colgate on the brush instead and walks back out to her makeshift bedroom. He thinks he should tidy it up for her, paint the walls a happier color, yellow maybe? Get some smaller, kid-sized furniture—Ikea has things that are cheap and good, he’s seen that on the Internet—and get rid of all the hockey sticks and video games.

  Cautiously he brushes her small, perfect teeth while she obediently holds her mouth open.

  “There. Now you can go to sleep,” he says.