by Håkan Nesser
‘That sounds like a load of nonsense,’ I said, but deep inside—deep down in an underdeveloped part of my fourteen-year-old brain—I suspected that people like that did in fact exist.
People who cried over what they did and those to whom they did it.
I didn’t like it. This idea directly contradicted what Henry and I had talked about.
When you have to tell the truth, you have to.
No, I had no desire to think about Edmund’s dad and his sort. As I said, I had decided that long before. Cancer-Treblinka-Love-Fuck-Death.
No further questions.
20
My brother Henry was charged with the murder of Bertil ‘Berra’ Albertsson on Thursday 19 July, and it was in the papers on Friday.
It was also on that Friday that Edmund and I received another visit from Detective Superintendent Verner Lindström. He had arrived by nine in the morning, and had brought a few copies of the Läns newspaper with him. First he had us read about developments in the case, and then he interrogated us.
Henry wasn’t named, he was either called ‘the accused’ or ‘the suspect’ and it wasn’t mentioned that he had gone to the police of his own volition.
And neither was there anything about what had made him a suspect in the first place. All the reports said was that the suspect had had ‘certain relations’ with the victim. The charge was the result of a laborious and fruitful investigation, but the young man hadn’t confessed to anything, Detective Lindström had said during a short press conference on Thursday evening.
There was no more to it.
‘False information has been given about this case,’ Lindström said when we’d finished reading. ‘By you two, for instance. This time I want the truth, gentlemen. The whole truth.’
He sounded much rougher than before. Like sandpaper. Edmund folded the newspaper and pushed it back across the table.
‘And nothing but the truth,’ he said in English.
‘Wait outside for now,’ said Lindström. ‘Stay close. And stick to Swedish from here on in.’
Edmund’s cheeks went a little red, and he left us alone in the kitchen.
Lindström took out the tube of Bronzol but didn’t open it. He just placed it on the table and rolled it back and forth with the index and middle fingers of his right hand. Apparently, he didn’t need a notebook this time around; I didn’t really know how I was supposed to interpret that.
I didn’t know how I was supposed to interpret the silence either, the one he filled with the sound of his breath flowing in and out of his hairy nostrils while he watched me, no more than an arm’s length away. He was like a cold sun lamp; I alternated between staring at the Bronzol and my hands, which I wrung in my lap.
‘You and your brother,’ he finally began.
‘Yes?’ I said.
‘What’s it like between you two?’
‘Good,’ I said.
‘He’s quite a bit older than you.’
That didn’t sound like a question, so I didn’t answer.
‘How much older?’
‘Just over eight years.’
‘Would you say you know him well?’
‘Oh yes,’ I said.
‘You know what he gets up to and so forth?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘What does he do?’
‘Journalism,’ I said. ‘He’s freelance. But he’s taken time off this summer to write a book.’
‘A book?’
‘Yes.’
‘What kind of book?’
‘A novel,’ I said. ‘About life.’
‘Life?’
‘Yes.’
Lindström tapped the tube on the table, but still he didn’t open it.
‘How does he do with the ladies?’
I shrugged and looked disinterested.
‘Well, I suppose.’
‘Who’s Emmy Kaskel?’
‘Emmy? His ex-fiancée.’
‘Ex?’
‘Yes.’
‘And who’s his fiancée now?’
I looked at his blue polka-dot bow tie. Had it been a Christmas present from his wife? Did he even have a wife?
‘No one, I think.’
‘Really?’
I didn’t answer.
‘How does Ewa Kaludis fit in, then?’
‘She was our supply teacher this spring,’ I said.
‘I know she was your supply teacher,’ said Lindström. ‘You told me last time. Now I want to know what kind of relationship she had with your brother Henry.’
‘I think they know each other,’ I said.
‘Aha,’ said Lindström. ‘You think they know each other. How come you didn’t tell me this last time?’
‘You didn’t ask,’ I said.
He paused and his breathing filled the silence again as he studied the fingers on his left hand, as though he were checking for dirt under his nails.
‘How old did you say you were?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘So tell me.’
‘Fourteen.’
‘Fourteen? Only fourteen years old, and you think you need to protect your twenty-two-year-old brother?’
‘I’m not trying to protect my brother. I don’t know what you mean.’
Lindström screwed up his mouth.
‘You know very well what I mean,’ he said. ‘You’ve always known that Henry was involved with Ewa Kaludis, and you think that you’re helping him by keeping that to yourself.’
‘That’s not how it is,’ I said.
Lindström ignored my interjection. He was on a roll, and it was starting to feel like a cross-examination.
‘You think that you’re helping Henry by keeping some things to yourself,’ he explained. ‘That’s not correct. You’re on the wrong tack, just like your friend. Henry has told us everything and having his little brother try to pull the wool over our eyes only hurts him.’
‘I said that they knew each other.’
He opened the tube and tossed two pastilles into his mouth.
‘How many times has she been here?’
I shrugged again.
‘A couple. Three, maybe.’
‘At what time?’
‘I don’t remember. Nights, I think.’
‘Nights?’
‘Maybe.’
‘This July?’
I thought about it.
‘Yes, maybe.’
He leaned back and looked out of the window. He seemed tired all of a sudden. I guessed that he hadn’t slept much lately. He probably had a lot on his plate. He chewed the pastilles. Then he continued.
‘So Ewa Kaludis spent a couple or more nights here in the house with your brother Henry at the beginning of July. Are we in agreement on that point?’
I nodded softly.
‘You knew that Ewa Kaludis was Bertil Albertsson’s fiancée?’
‘Yes.’
‘Didn’t you think it was strange that she was sleeping here with your brother instead of with her fiancé?’
‘I didn’t think about it much.’
He studied the nails on his other hand.
‘The eleventh of July,’ he then said. ‘Tell me about the eleventh of July.’
‘What day was it?’ I asked.
‘Wednesday last week. The day before the night that Bertil Albertsson was murdered.’
I thought a good while.
‘I don’t really remember,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t anything special, I think.’
‘You remembered it well the last time we spoke.’
‘I did?’
His fist slammed on the table. It was like a gunshot. I flinched and almost fell backward out of my chair. I caught myself on the table top at the last second and recovered my balance.
‘Enough mucking about,’ Lindström snapped, his voice coarser than sandpaper now. ‘We know that Henry had Ewa Kaludis over that night, and we know that you know. If you want to make things the tiniest bit easier on your brother, you have to tell
us what happened. Everything you’re holding back. The way you’re going, you’re making it worse for him.’
I didn’t reply right away. I counted backward from ten to zero and avoided looking at him.
‘You’re wrong,’ I said. ‘I have no idea if Ewa Kaludis was here that night. We fell asleep early, both Edmund and I, and I didn’t wake once during the night.’
Detective Lindström put the Bronzol tube in his jacket’s inner pocket. Buttoned all three buttons and put his elbows on the table. I met his gaze. Five seconds passed. I aged ten years.
‘Go and get your friend,’ said Lindström.
After I had taken two steps out on to the lawn, he changed his mind.
‘Stop!’ he called. ‘I’ll get him myself.’
‘Of course, detective,’ I said and walked toward the lake.
Edmund looked downhearted when he came and lay beside me on the dock half an hour later.
‘Has he gone?’ I asked.
Edmund nodded.
‘It’s bloody awful,’ he said. ‘They’re thinking of locking him up for it.’
‘He’ll be fine,’ I said.
‘You think?’ said Edmund.
‘Henry always comes out on top.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ said Edmund.
We lay in silence. It’d been a cloudy morning, but now the sun was breaking through and it was getting warmer. The dock swayed slowly and the waves lapped against it.
I wondered what Detective Lindström had asked Edmund about, and what Edmund had said, but I didn’t want to talk about it.
‘Should we take a trip to Seagull Shit Island?’ I asked instead. ‘While we still can.’
Edmund sat up and dipped his feet in the water.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Let’s. They’re going to collect us any minute now, don’t you think?’
‘Probably,’ I said. ‘It probably won’t be long.’
Edmund sighed and squinted at the lake.
‘One last boat trip,’ he said. ‘It’s just too sad. It was such a damn good summer.’
‘It was,’ I said. ‘Yes, it was.’
Our fathers were waiting for us as we rowed back. They had been there for over an hour and our things were out on the lawn, packed and ready to go.
‘You’re coming with us,’ said my father. ‘It’s enough now.’
Albin Wester said nothing, and it looked as though he had sold all the prisoners at the Grey Giant and then lost the money. Edmund and I changed into our clothes and ten minutes later we left Gennesaret. This time my dad had borrowed an old Citroën from the Bergmans, who lived two houses down on Idrottsgatan. It was rusty and knackered, and even though it was only twenty-five kilometres to town, we had to stop twice because the water in the radiator was boiling.
‘We could have taken our bikes,’ said Edmund.
‘We’ll get the bikes later,’ Edmund’s dad said crossly. ‘You know there are more important things to think about right now, don’t you?’
‘French cars aren’t built for the Swedish summer heat,’ said my father. Then he burned himself on the radiator cap.
21
The days after Henry was taken into custody were strange. Although the world was topsy-turvy and it felt like all sorts of things were happening, it was still monotonous.
Almost every day my father and I drove Killer into Örebro. First we visited Henry at the police station, then my mother at the hospital. The very fact that my father, not Henry, was driving Killer was a sure sign that things were off-kilter. My father probably didn’t fit in anywhere, but he stuck out like a sore thumb behind the wheel of the black VW. Under normal circumstances, he was a terrible driver; in Killer his driving was catastrophic; more than once I thought: ‘Here it comes,’ and, ‘The last thing we need now is a car accident. On top of everything else.’
Still, we got through each day with our skin intact. Off to Örebro in the morning and back again in the evening. Neither of us had much to say when we visited Henry in his pale yellow cell in the basement of the police station, not me nor my father nor my brother. There was a bed attached to the wall, a small table, two chairs and a lamp. Henry usually lay on his bed, while my father and I sat on the chairs. Every day my father brought a copy of Kurren with him and a pack of Lucky Strikes and every day Henry had a hole in his sock close to his right big toe. I started to wonder if he ever changed his socks, but I didn’t want to ask.
‘How can they be allowed to treat honest people this way? They should be ashamed of themselves,’ my father would say.
Or: ‘This time tomorrow, you’ll be out of here, you’ll see.’
Henry rarely commented. Usually he’d start reading Kurren as soon as we’d sat down, smoking ardently, as if he’d gone without cigarettes for days.
After our visit to the slammer, we’d go to the bakery. Three Roses or New Pomona on Rudbecksgatan. My father would drink coffee with his cinnamon bun, I’d have a Pommac and a rosette or a Pommac and a Mazarin tart.
‘I’ve taken some extra holiday,’ my father would explain halfway through his cinnamon bun each day. ‘I thought it was best until this sorts itself out.’
‘It’s been a difficult summer,’ I would reply.
At the hospital everything was the same except for two things: my mother looked much worse, and my father had started to cry at her bedside.
When I saw it coming, I often made a point of going to the loo. It was quite a pleasant one—large and spacious. The walls were adorned with small not-quite-square tiles and while I sat there with my trousers and pants pushed down around my ankles, I tried to play noughts and crosses against myself in my head. It was very hard, considering the tiles weren’t quite square, and I never really liked the idea of beating myself at the game.
‘You’re taking care of yourself, Erik?’ my mother would ask before we left her.
‘Yes, indeed,’ I would often promise.
‘Hold on to your courage,’ she might say. ‘It’ll be too heavy to pick back up once you’ve dropped it.’
And then my father and I would nod earnestly.
Truer words were never spoken.
I think it was Wednesday when an ‘R.L.’ byline first appeared in conjunction with an article in Kurren about the Berra Albertsson murder.
He didn’t name Henry, but he wrote about Gennesaret and about Ewa Kaludis, and that the perpetrator who was now in police custody in Örebro was most likely a former reporter for the newspaper. It also said that the motive behind the gruesome deed had been established and that it had been a so-called ‘crime of passion’.
And that it was only a matter of time before Detective Lindström and his capable men would break down the accused and extract a confession.
A confession to his infamous deed.
As Henry read Rogga Lundberg’s article, he laughed out loud several times, so hard that my father and I wondered if he was okay.
Was the pressure wearing him down? Was he going to crack, just as Rogga Lundberg had predicted?
‘Pressure?’ said Henry when my father asked him with a worried face about how he was doing. ‘As if I’d take what that arch-cretin was writing seriously. What do you take me for? I thought we were related?’
I didn’t know what an ‘arch-cretin’ was, but it was something of a relief to hear Henry talking like that.
It seemed my father thought so too, because that day he didn’t cry at the hospital and in the car on the way home he said: ‘What a lad, Erik. You can’t keep him down.’
Soon after he said that, he overtook a car for the first time in five days.
Edmund and I met only one other time that summer: when Lasse Crook-mouth’s dad had driven his Ford van to the town square to deliver our bikes the Sunday after we left Gennesaret. I asked Edmund if he wanted to come to Idrottsgatan for a bit, but he explained that he had to hurry home and pack. His dad had arranged for him to spend the rest of the holidays at his cousin’s in Mora.
Edmund had told m
e about his cousins once when we rowed to Laxman’s, and he’d described them as two deaf-mute bed-wetters with underbites. Now it seemed as though they had grown into themselves; Edmund said that he’d probably have quite a good time up there.
‘They have rabbits and everything.’
‘Rabbits?’ I said.
‘And everything,’ said Edmund, fidgeting.
We said ‘See you later’ and wished each other luck.
About a week after Henry was taken into custody, my father and I went back to Gennesaret to pick up the rest of our bits and bobs. Clothes and groceries and so on. It was raining cats and dogs the entire time we were there and we stayed no longer than necessary. When my father looked through the shed, he noticed that the sledgehammer was missing. He called me over and asked if we had used it.
‘Not that I recall,’ I said. ‘Maybe when we were building the dock?’
‘Take a look around and see if you can find it,’ said my father.
I went out in the rain and looked for it, then I explained that I couldn’t find it and I didn’t know where it could have got to. My father had a strange look in his eyes, but he didn’t say anything. He just stood there, staring at me as if he’d never seen anything like me before.
As if I were a jigsaw puzzle—yes, that’s what came to mind as we stood in the kitchen at Gennesaret that rainy day. I was a jigsaw puzzle that my dad had been trying to solve my whole life and now he was getting close. Maybe all people were jigsaw puzzles to each other, and some of us were jigsaw puzzles to ourselves.
It didn’t take much time. We locked up, jogged up the path to the parking spot with our luggage and our grocery bags, loaded them into Killer, and drove away. Somewhere around the halfway mark to Hallsberg, my father asked: ‘You don’t have to answer. You absolutely don’t have to answer, but do you think he did it?’
I considered his question and said: ‘How could you possibly think that your own son is a murderer?’
Henry’s typewriter and his stack of typed pages were among the things we brought home from Gennesaret. That evening I counted the sheets of paper in the pile: there were eighty-five pages. There were quite a few strike-throughs and additions, made in biro. No wonder Brylle and the others at Stava School used to complain about my spidery scrawl; my brother, who was eight years older, had barely decipherable handwriting.
