The Viper

by Hakan Ostlundh

“Christ, Emrik. How old is that guy gonna get?” Arvid mumbled.

  Kristina hadn’t even noticed the white-bearded former teacher of theirs at the side of the road; she was preoccupied with other things, plus she was used to the sight of him, unlike Arvid.

  “He can barely walk anymore,” she said absently.

  They reached the sign and Arvid turned off toward the farm. Kristina laid her right hand on the armrest and drew in Arvid’s scent through her nostrils. It was part him and part something unfamiliar, as was always the case when he returned from a trip. It was as if the smell she knew as Arvid had been diluted by something else. She had sat beside him in the car like that many times before and breathed in that smell thinking that very same thought. Yet the part of it that was him had always filled her with a powerful longing that swept away any other questions that had been weighing on her mind. If she had any doubts, they evaporated like dewdrops on a sunny July morning and all she could think about was how it would feel to be in his arms again, for the first time in days, weeks, or months. His naked arms wrapped around her naked body, hungry hands, his manhood throbbing against her belly. How she could take …

  He coughed a few times and slowed down in front of the big house.

  This time she felt none of that. She breathed in and sensed only the smell of alcohol and stale airplane breath. A hint of sweat.

  What did he feel? Did she smell differently to him? Could he scent anything out?

  * * *

  ARVID PULLED UP on the paved driveway in front of the garage. He climbed out and went to get the bags out, but stopped short with the back door half open.

  The place looked different.

  He let go of the door and looked out across the garden in front of the white stone house. It was almost as if he’d parked in the driveway of the wrong house, but it was clearly his home. It was the right house, only it didn’t feel right. Was it that he had been away long enough that the trees and bushes in the garden had had time to grow out? Or was it simply that he had been away for so long that his own house seemed unfamiliar to him?

  “What do you think?”

  Kristina. He heard her faintly, couldn’t really take her in.

  No, something had changed.

  Once he’d worked it out, it was a mystery to him how he couldn’t have picked up on it sooner. A stone footpath ran from the driveway over to the front door, parallel to the house. In the triangle between the path and the driveway bloomed a sea of crimson flowers, densely packed together like a thick carpet.

  “What do you think?”

  Kristina again. This time he heard her. Full of expectation.

  “Well…”

  He turned to look at her, but stopped short. For some reason he couldn’t get the words out, just as his insipient smile stalled and died.

  He turned his gaze toward the footpath and the flowers. There had been a gravel pathway there before. It had run diagonally across the lawn just where the newly planted flower bed shone an angry red.

  “They’re dahlias,” said Kristina.

  But there was something different in her voice now. It sounded more cautious.

  “What’s all this?” he said staring at the flowers.

  She fingered the buttons on her blouse as she answered.

  “I thought it would make a nice change.”

  Her gaze clung to him, trying to convey enthusiasm, but her wan smile was already begging his forgiveness.

  “Change?”

  “Yes?”

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  “I see,” he said and lifted his bags from the car.

  He took a few steps toward the limestone footpath, but stopped abruptly. He stood there completely still for a few seconds, and then, directed by an irresistible impulse, cut across toward the front door just as he would have done if the gravel path had still been there. He felt how it consumed him and controlled him, a combination of stinging disgust and anger. With heavy, resolute, but not overly long strides, he marched right across the flower bed. Stalks and red petals snapped and were crushed beneath his brightly polished black 47s.

  PART TWO

  O Gertrude, Gertrude,

  When sorrows come, they come not single spies,

  But in battalions.

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  Saturday, October 28

  Karolinska University Hospital, Solna

  The man in the white coat bent down over Fredrik Broman and asked if he could tell him his name. Fredrik parted his dry lips, drew air into his lungs, flexed his diaphragm and his larynx in order to push out the necessary amount of air through the appropriate opening in his vocal cords. He shaped his lips. But no sound came out. Not because he couldn’t coordinate all those movements and control his muscles correctly. Not because he was too weak or dazed. He remained silent because he did not know.

  He didn’t know his name.

  And yet that wasn’t quite true. He couldn’t hear the words, but he saw them in front of him, not as letters but in a form that was obvious and close enough to touch, but at the same time impossible to translate into sound.

  Then he came to think of the old Conservative Party leader, Gösta Bohman. Why? He was sure he wasn’t Gösta Bohman. He was dead after all. Was his name Gösta? Or Bohman perhaps?

  He had to say something. Had to show that he was with it in there, even if he didn’t manage to transform those clear shapes into the appropriate sounds. He had to show that he was still in there.

  A sinking feeling washed over him as the fantasy scenarios played out in his mind; how the doctors drew the wrong conclusions, decided that there was nothing more to be done and consigned him to a tiny room on some terminal ward where he would quickly be forgotten.

  A fresh attempt. Anything. Diaphragm, vocal cords, lips.

  “Bohman?” he said a little unsteadily.

  The doctor smiled at him and then turned to his left toward the woman with the long, auburn hair, who was his wife.

  “We’re making progress.”

  7.

  Traneus’s farm lay in Levide, right on the border between the parishes of Levide and Gerum, midway between Hemse and Klintehamn in southern Gotland. While most of the farms there were clustered together, Traneus’s stood all by itself, on a few hectares of farmland, surrounded by forest. The rest of the property was scattered throughout the parish, divided into different parcels.

  The main house was made up of two structures, one from the middle of the 1800s, the other from 1911, the latter built so that the older part formed the smaller annex of a single new house. The integrated structure was whitewashed and the roof laid with pantiles in a beautiful orange-red color that could be glimpsed through the verdant foliage of an imposing chestnut tree. Sixty or so yards behind the house stood a large barn and an old stable that had also been built in 1911.

  Amanda Wahlby opened the kitchen door and stepped inside.

  “Hello?” she called out, but wasted no time waiting for an answer.

  She stepped out of her shoes, took out the plastic clogs from the bag she had brought with her and slipped her feet into them, hung up her jacket, and went into the bathroom to change out of her pink T-shirt into a white one with a washed-out print on the front that fit more loosely.

  It was nine o’clock in the morning the first Friday in October. The sky was hidden behind a thin haze, the sun a yellow spot in the vast grayness. Amanda had been cleaning for Traneus for half a year, ever since the last cleaner had gone on sick leave due to some problem with her knees.

  The routine was that she’d ring the doorbell twice. If no one came and opened the door she’d go inside, shout hello, and get started. She had a key, too, in case nobody was home, but she’d only needed to use that once since she started.

  She shouted another hello on the way out to the kitchen. She lifted the vacuum cleaner out of the cleaning cupboard; grabbed some rags, cleaning fluid, a mop, and rubber gloves; filled a red pail with water and splashed two good dollops
of Ajax into it.

  Cleaning for the Traneuses was a good job, never much to tidy up and not much cleaning, either, really. She wondered why Kristina Traneus didn’t just do it herself. It wasn’t as if she had some job that took up all her time and seeing as she kept it so clean anyway … but then it wasn’t Amanda’s problem and she was grateful for the work.

  She picked up the vacuum cleaner in one hand, stuck the mop under her arm, and grabbed the pail with the other hand. She usually started in the living room, vacuumed a few rooms at a time, dusted and wiped the floors, and carried on like that until she’d worked her way through the whole house, saving the kitchen and toilets for last. It usually took four hours. It was easy work but a lot of ground to cover.

  She smelled it before she’d even passed the doorway into the living room. Vaguely sweet and pungent, a little sickening like … well, like what? Whatever it was, it was something that shouldn’t be there. Perhaps just some cut flowers that had been allowed to stand too long in the same water; sometimes that could smell like the worst breath in the world. But it wasn’t like Kristina Traneus to leave vases full of rotten flower water standing around.

  Then she saw it. She dropped the bucket of soapy water. And then she vomited over one of the gray-velvet club chairs, unable to hold back.

  8.

  Thwack! Fredrik’s foot misconnected with the ball, sending it veering sharply off to the right instead of in toward the goal as he had intended. His colleagues on the opposing team grinned with schadenfreude.

  “Take it down, Broman. You’ve gotta take the ball down, get control of it before you take a shot,” grunted Ove Gahnström who had run in behind the left back with flushed cheeks expecting a cross pass.

  Stick it up your ass, thought Fredrik, but put on a brave face.

  Ove seemed to have already forgotten his screwup and was backpedaling toward his end of the field just as enthusiastically as when he’d been on offense, with the sweat glittering in his freshly cropped hair.

  Some soccer nut had come up with the idea that they should start every Friday with a game of soccer as an alternative to playing floorball over at the old P18 garrison. Soccer wasn’t Fredrik’s favorite sport. He had never really been much of a fan, never played in any organized clubs like many of his colleagues, just kicked a ball around during recess at school. In fact, soccer was pretty far down on his list. When TV4 had run a commercial for a camera cell phone with David Beckham, Fredrik hadn’t even recognized him, and had completely misunderstood the message, thought that it was some kind of gay joke he didn’t get.

  Fredrik wasn’t much for team sports. He preferred track and field, tennis even. Team sports mostly just made him want to kick someone really hard in the shins.

  They played on a dusty dirt field between Lyckåker school and the light-colored apartment buildings at Gråbo. Fredrik glanced at his watch. Fifteen minutes to go.

  Simon had only recently started playing soccer at school. Despite his own lack of enthusiasm for the sport, Fredrik was glad that his son had started playing. Apart from the fact that it forced him to move around a bit it would also give him a natural rapport with the other boys. For a nine-year-old kid, the only way to gain acceptance was through soccer and a firm grasp of trivia about teams and all-star players. It seemed an inescapable fact of life.

  Ove fired off a shot above the crossbar that crashed into the fence behind the goal.

  Ten minutes left. He would have to pick up the pace a bit if he wanted to escape any more carping from Ove. Sara Oskarsson had the ball and was charging along his flank at high speed. She looked like a real pro in her shiny green soccer jersey and her black hair held firmly in place by two equally black rubber bands. She was really too fast for him, but he made a desperate rush and managed to take the ball away. He turned around in order to pass it to Gustav Wallin only to discover that Gustav was standing there talking on his cell phone. Someone had to be on call. They couldn’t all put away their phones.

  A second’s hesitation was all that Sara needed. A sharp intake of air and a whiff of sweat shot past him, and then she was gone, along with the ball, but a moment later the game was over anyway. Gustav had raised his hand in the air like a soccer referee about to blow the whistle for a free kick and before he’d even said a word you could tell from looking at him that something serious had happened.

  “Work!” he shouted.

  Fredrik walked over toward Gustav panting. His lungs were still burning from his sprint. Gustav waited until everyone had gathered around before he gave them the details.

  “Two dead bodies at a farm in Levide. It’s murder, no question about it.”

  The other officers were still panting and catching their breath around Fredrik. Sara leaned forward and spit into the dirt.

  “Just get changed and go,” said Ove.

  9.

  “Is she the one who called it in, too?” asked Ove. He stood on the creaking strip parquet floor in the farm’s ample living room and nodded out toward the patrol car parked in the forecourt.

  Amanda Wahlby was sitting in the backseat and staring into the backrest in front of her. A uniformed officer was leaning in through the open door trying to speak to her.

  “Yeah,” said Fredrik, “She called from her cell phone, was standing over a hundred yards further down the road when the first officer arrived on the scene. Was too scared to stay up by the house, she said.”

  “No, well,” said Ove, “that’s understandable.”

  Ove was a sturdy man at five-ten and 187 pounds. He had weighed almost as much back when he was still an avid hockey player thirty-one years ago, but back then his pounds had a slightly different consistency and had been concentrated in other areas.

  He looked at the two lacerated bodies, the woman on the floor by the couch, and the man way at the back in the far corner of the room, next to a toppled side table and a shattered lamp of frosted glass.

  The room was accessed through a dining room that looked capable of accommodating twenty or more people. Immediately to the right as you entered the room, stood two gray armchairs next to a low, round table with four pillar-like legs, and a rosewood inlay in the top depicting two stags. Further inside the room stood two couches and two armchairs, all in the same light-colored fabric, placed around a brightly polished table with a white porcelain bowl as the only ornament.

  “A lot of blood,” said Fredrik.

  “Yeah. He must be completely drained,” said Ove and pointed at the body in the corner.

  The man’s head, which hung at an odd angle because of the partially severed throat, was completely ripped to shreds. His eyes were gone and what was left of his face was just a mass of blood and deep gashes. The hands were sliced halfway through and the rest of the body was covered in long, deep cuts. Portions of the man’s entrails were hanging out from the gaping abdomen. Fredrik thought he could make out a sliver of the liver on the spilled-out peritoneum, but it wasn’t easy to determine what was what. The body lay in an almost unbelievably large pool of dried blood, the trousers had become soaked a deep red.

  The woman’s body, on the other hand, just had a single deep cut, right across the chest, just under the heart. She had also bled heavily. Most of the blood had been soaked up by the large Persian carpet that looked like it had been passed down through generations.

  The room smelled of vomit and rotten flesh. The haze outside had thickened, the day had become gray and bleak.

  Ove was wearing a green windbreaker and a pair of worn-out jeans. Fredrik had left his jacket in the car, and was only wearing a dark-blue T-shirt and jeans, just as threadbare as Ove’s, his service weapon attached to his right hip. Both had light-blue shoe covers on their feet.

  As always, when Fredrik stood in front of dead people, he was struck by how gray and sunken they looked. All attempts at simulating death in movies and on TV were positively bursting with life by comparison. Real dead people looked more like discarded scraps. That sounded disrespectful, but that
was what went through his head: refuse. All the life was gone. The bodies lying there on the floor bore little resemblance to anything human. It was a depressing thought, but it was also that very quality that made it bearable to stand there and look at them.

  Fredrik raised his gaze from the two victims and gazed out through the window that faced the back of the house. He saw a well-grazed pasture with high fences beyond the beds of rhododendron and deadheaded late summer flowers that lay in desiccated piles next to a pair of garden shears with bright-red handles. The lawn was a trim and lush, deep green.

  “A lot of blood and a lot of money,” said Ove.

  One didn’t need to have read many glossy interior design magazines to realize that the Traneus family was well off. The house was big and it was obvious that someone had invested a lot of time and effort, as well as a whole lot of money, into furnishing the rooms, at least the ones Fredrik and Ove had had a chance to see. Everything was color matched and carefully considered down to the smallest detail. No sign of any Allen screws hinting at Ikea and DIY handiness.

  “You think it’s a robbery-killing?” asked Fredrik.

  “Could be,” said Ove a little lingeringly, “but I don’t know how that fits in with it.”

  He pointed once again at the lacerated man.

  Ove was right. The woman was one thing, she just had a single wound to the chest, but how could that explain the rage that had been directed at the man?

  “Unexpected resistance, an unbalanced burglar,” suggested Fredrik.

  “Unbalanced,” said Ove drumming his palm against his chest, “I don’t know, he’d have to be pretty damn unbalanced if you ask me.”

  They heard rustling footsteps moving across the parquet floor as Gustav Wallin entered the room. A slightly comical entrance in a well-tailored, dark-brown suit with a discrete black pattern, that clashed badly with the light-blue shoe covers.

  “Do you think the horses might need water? I mean, if those two have been lying here for a few…”