by Kepler, Lars
92
Her eyelids are heavy, but she forces herself to look. The light from the lamp in the ceiling is strangely clouded. The metal door opens and a man in a white coat comes in. It’s the young doctor. He’s got something in his slender hands. The door closes behind him and the lock clicks. She blinks her dry eyes and sees the doctor put two ampoules of yellow oil on the table. Carefully he opens the plastic packaging of a syringe. Saga tries to crawl under the bed, but she’s too slow. The doctor grabs hold of one of her ankles and starts to pull her out. She tries to cling on, and rolls over onto her back. Her bra slides up, uncovering her breasts as he drags her out onto the floor.
‘You look like a princess,’ she hears him whisper.
‘What?’
She looks up and sees his moist gaze, and tries to cover her breasts, but her hands are too weak.
She shuts her eyes again and just lies there waiting.
Suddenly the doctor rolls her over onto her stomach. He pulls her trousers and pants down. She dozes off and is woken by a sharp prick in the top of her right buttock, then another slightly lower down.
Saga wakes up in the darkness on the cold floor and realises that she’s got the blanket on top of her. Her head aches and she has almost no feeling in her hands. She sits up, adjusts her bra and thinks about the microphone in her stomach.
There’s very little time.
She could have been asleep for hours.
She crawls over to the drain in the floor, sticks two fingers down her throat and throws up some acrid liquid. She gulps hard and tries again, her stomach cramps, but nothing comes up.
‘Shit …’
She has to have the microphone tomorrow, so she can put it in position in the dayroom. It mustn’t disappear into her duodenum. She gets up on wobbly legs and drinks some water from the tap in the basin, then kneels down again, leans forward and sticks two fingers down her throat. The water comes back up, but she keeps her fingers where they are. The meagre contents of her stomach trickle down her lower arm. Gasping for breath, she sticks her fingers in deeper, setting off the gag reflex again. She throws up some bile, and her mouth is filled with the bitter taste. She coughs and sticks her fingers down once more, and this time she finally feels the microphone come up through her throat and into her mouth. She catches it in her hand and hides it, even though the room is dark, then stands up, washes it under the tap and tucks it into the lining of her trousers again. She spits out a mixture of bile and slime, rinses her mouth and face, spits again, drinks some water and goes back to the bed.
Her feet and fingertips are cold and numb. She has a vague itch in her toes. As Saga lies down on the bed and adjusts her trousers she realises that her pants are inside out. She isn’t sure if she put them on wrong herself, or if something else has happened. She curls up under the blanket and carefully puts one hand down to her crotch. It isn’t sore or hurt, but it feels strangely numb.
93
Mikael Kohler-Frost is sitting at a table in the dining room of his hospital ward. He has one hand wrapped round a cup of warm tea as he speaks to Magdalena Ronander of the National Criminal Investigation Department. Reidar is too agitated to sit, but he stands by the door and watches his son for a while before going down to the entrance to meet Veronica Klimt.
Magdalena smiles at Mikael, then gets out the bulky interview protocols and puts them on the table. They fill four spiral-bound folders. She leafs through to the marker, then asks if he’s ready to continue.
‘I only ever saw the inside of the capsule,’ Mikael explains, as he’s done so many times before.
‘Can you describe the door again?’ she asks.
‘It’s made of metal, and is completely smooth … at the start you could pick little flakes of paint off it with your fingernails … there’s no keyhole, no handle …’
‘What colour is it?’
‘Grey …’
‘And there was a hatch which—’
She breaks off when she sees him swipe the tears from his cheeks and turn his face away.
‘I can’t tell Dad,’ he says, his lips trembling. ‘But if Felicia doesn’t come back …’
Magdalena gets up and goes round the table, hugs him and repeats that everything is going to be OK.
‘I know,’ he says, ‘I know I’d kill myself.’
Reidar Frost has barely left Södermalm Hospital since Mikael came back. He’s been renting a room at the hospital, on the same floor as Mikael, so he can be with his son the whole time.
Even though Reidar knows it wouldn’t do any good, it’s all he can do to stop himself running out to join the search for Felicia. He’s paid for adverts in the national press every day, pleading for information and promising a reward. He’s employed a team of the country’s best private detectives to look for her, but her absence is tearing at him, stopping him sleeping, forcing him to roam the corridors hour after hour.
The only thing that makes him feel calm is watching Mikael get better and stronger with each passing day. Inspector Joona Linna says it’s a huge help if he can stay with his son, letting him talk at his own pace, listening and writing down every memory, every detail.
When Reidar gets down to the entrance Veronica is already waiting for him inside the glass doors that lead to the snow-covered car park.
‘Isn’t it a bit early to be sending Micke home?’ she asks, handing over the bags.
‘They say it’s fine,’ Reidar smiles.
‘I bought a pair of jeans and some softer trousers, shirts, T-shirts, a thick jumper and a few other—’
‘How are things at home?’ Reidar asks.
‘Lots of snow,’ says Veronica, laughing, then she tells him about the last few guests leaving.
‘What, even my cavaliers?’ Reidar asks.
‘No, they’re still there … you’ll see.’
‘What do you mean?’
Veronica just shakes her head and smiles.
‘I told Berzelius that they’re not allowed to come here, but they’re very keen to meet Mikael,’ she replies.
‘Are you coming up?’ Reidar asks, smiling and adjusting her collar.
‘Another time,’ Veronica replies, looking him in the eye.
94
As Reidar drives, Mikael sits there in his new clothes, changing stations on the radio. Suddenly he stops. Satie’s ballet music fills the car like warm summer rain.
‘Dad, isn’t it a bit over the top to live in a manor?’ Mikael smiles.
‘Yes.’
He actually bought the run-down estate because he could no longer bear the neighbours in Tyresö.
Snow-covered fields spread out before them. They turn into the long avenue where Reidar’s three friends have lit torches all along the drive. When they stop and get out of the car, Wille Strandberg, Berzelius and David Sylwan come out onto the steps.
Berzelius takes a step forward, and for a moment it looks as though he doesn’t know whether to embrace or shake hands with the young man. Then he mumbles something and hugs Mikael hard.
Wille wipes some tears away behind his glasses.
‘You’re all grown up, Micke,’ he says. ‘I’ve—’
‘Let’s go inside,’ Reidar interrupts, coming to his son’s rescue. ‘We need to eat.’
David blushes and shrugs his shoulders apologetically:
‘We’ve organised a backwards party.’
‘What’s one of those?’ Reidar asks.
‘You start with dessert and conclude with the starter.’ Sylwan smiles, slightly embarrassed.
Mikael is first through the imposing doorway. The broad oak tiles in the hallway smell as if they’ve recently been scrubbed.
There are balloons hanging from the ceiling of the dining room, and on the table is a large cake decorated with a figure of Spiderman made out of coloured marzipan.
‘We know you’re grown up, but you used to love Spiderman, so we thought …’
‘We got it wrong,’ Wille concludes.
‘I’d love to try some,’ Mikael says kindly.
‘That’s the spirit!’ David laughs.
‘Then there’s pizza … and alphabet soup to finish up with,’ Berzelius says.
They sit down at the huge oval table.
‘I remember one time when you said you had to keep an eye on a cake in the kitchen until the guests arrived,’ Berzelius says, cutting Mikael a large slice. ‘It was completely hollow by the time we came to light the candles …’
Reidar excuses himself, gets up and leaves the table. He tries to smile at the others, but his heart is pounding with angst. He’s missing his daughter so much it hurts, enough to make him want to scream. Seeing Mikael sitting there with that childish cake. As if resurrected from the dead. He takes a few deep breaths and goes out into the hall, remembering the day he buried the children’s empty caskets next to Roseanna’s ashes. Then he went home. Invited everyone to a party, and was never properly sober again.
He stands in the hall, looking back into the dining room where Mikael is eating cake while Reidar’s friends try to make conversation and cajole him into laughing. Reidar knows he shouldn’t keep doing it, but he gets out his phone and calls Joona Linna.
‘It’s Reidar Frost,’ he says, feeling a faint pressure in his chest.
‘I heard that Mikael was discharged,’ the detective says.
‘But Felicia, I have to know … she’s, she’s so …’
‘I know, Reidar,’ Joona says gently.
‘You’re doing what you can,’ Reidar whispers, feeling that he has to sit down.
He hears the detective ask something, but he still ends the call in the middle of a sentence.
95
Reidar swallows hard, time after time, leans against the wall and feels the texture of the wallpaper under his hand, and notices some dead flies on the dusty base of the standard lamp.
Mikael said that Felicia didn’t think he’d look for her, that she was sure he didn’t care about her going missing.
He was an unfair father, he knew that, but he couldn’t help it.
It wasn’t that he loved the children differently, just that …
The pressure in his chest increases.
Reidar glances towards the corridor where he threw down his coat with the little nitroglycerine spray.
He tries to breathe calmly, takes a few steps, stops and thinks that he ought to turn and face his memories and let himself be overwhelmed by guilt.
Felicia had turned eight that January. There had been a slight thaw in March, but it was about to get colder again.
Mikael was always so sharp and aware, he would look at you attentively and do whatever was expected of him.
Felicia was different.
Reidar had a lot to do back then, he would write all day, answering letters from his readers, giving interviews, having his picture taken, travelling to other countries for book launches. He never had enough time and he hated it when people kept him waiting.
Felicia was always late.
And that day, when the unimaginable happened, the day when the stars were in terrible alignment, the day that God abandoned Reidar, that morning was a perfectly ordinary morning and the sun was shining.
The children started school early. Because Felicia was always slow and unfocused, Roseanna had already put some clothes out for her, but it was Reidar’s job to see that the children got to school on time. Roseanna had left early, she used to drive into Stockholm before the rush-hour traffic made the journey take five times as long.
Mikael was ready to go by the time Felicia sat down at the kitchen table. Reidar buttered toast for her, poured her some cereal, and put out the chocolate powder, milk and a glass. She sat and read the back of a cereal packet, tore off the corner of her toast and rolled it into a buttery lump.
‘We’re in a bit of a rush again,’ Reidar said in a measured tone of voice.
Looking down, she spooned some chocolate powder from the packet without moving it closer to the glass, and managed to spill most of it on the table. Leaning forward on her elbows she started to draw in the spilled powder with her fingers. Reidar told her to wipe the table, but she didn’t answer, just licked the finger she’d been poking at the chocolate powder with.
‘You know we have to be out of the door by ten past eight if we’re to get there on time?’
‘Stop nagging,’ she muttered, then got up from the table.
‘Brush your teeth,’ Reidar said. ‘Mum’s laid your clothes out in your room.’
He decided against telling her off for not putting her glass away or wiping the table.
Reidar stumbles and the standard lamp hits the floor and goes out. His chest feels horribly tight now. Pain is coursing down his arm and he can barely breathe. Mikael and David Sylwan are suddenly there beside him. He tries to tell them to leave him be. Berzelius runs over with his coat, and they hunt through the pockets for his medication.
He takes the bottle and sprays some under his tongue, then lets go of it on the floor as the pressure in his chest eases. In the distance he hears them wondering if they should call an ambulance. Reidar shakes his head and notices that the nitroglycerine spray has triggered a growing headache.
‘Go and eat now,’ he tells them. ‘I’m fine, I just … I need to be alone for a while.’
96
Reidar is sitting on the floor with his back against the wall. He wipes his mouth with a trembling hand, and forces himself to confront his memories again. It was eight o’clock when he went into Felicia’s room. She was sitting on the floor reading. Her hair was a mess and she had chocolate round her mouth and smeared across one cheek. To make herself more comfortable she had crumpled up her freshly ironed blouse and skirt to form a cushion to sit on. She had one leg in her woolly tights and was still sucking her sticky fingers.
‘You need to be on your bicycle in nine minutes,’ he told her. ‘Your teacher has said you mustn’t be late any more this term.’
‘I know,’ she said in a monotone, without looking up from her book.
‘And wash your face, it’s filthy.’
‘Stop nagging,’ she muttered.
‘I’m not nagging,’ he tried to say. ‘I just don’t want you to be late. Can’t you understand that?’
‘You’re nagging so much it’s making me sick,’ she said to the book.
He must have felt stressed by his writing and the journalists who wouldn’t leave him alone, because he suddenly exploded. He’d had enough. He grabbed her arm hard and dragged her into the bathroom, turned the tap on and scrubbed her face roughly.
‘What’s wrong with you, Felicia? Why can’t you ever do anything properly?’ he yelled. ‘Your brother’s ready, he’s waiting for you, he’s going to be late because of you. But you don’t get it, you’re just a filthy little monster, not fit to be in a nice, tidy home …’
She started to cry, which only made him more angry.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ he went on, grabbing hold of a brush. ‘You’re completely useless.’
‘Stop it!’ she sobbed. ‘You’re horrid, Daddy!’
‘I’m horrid? You’re behaving like an idiot! Are you an idiot?’
He started tugging at her hair, his hands rough with rage. She screamed and swore at him, and he stopped.
‘What did you say?’
‘Nothing,’ she muttered.
‘It sounded like something.’
‘Maybe there’s something wrong with your ears,’ she whispered.
He dragged her out of the bathroom, opened the front door and shoved her out so hard that she fell over on the path.
Mikael was standing by the garage door, waiting with both bicycles. Reidar realised that he had refused to ride off without his sister.
Reidar is sitting on the floor in the hall of the manor, his hands over his face. Felicia had been just a child, and had been acting like a child. Timing and messy hair really hadn’t mattered to her.
He remembers the way Felicia had stood in
the drive in her underwear. Her right knee was bleeding, her eyes were red and wet from crying, and she still had a bit of chocolate powder on her neck. Reidar was shaking with anger. He went back inside and got her blouse, skirt and jacket, and threw them on the ground in front of her.
‘What have I done?’ she sobbed.
‘You’re ruining this family,’ he said.
‘But I …’
‘Say you’re sorry, say you’re sorry this instant.’
‘Sorry,’ she wept. ‘I’m sorry.’
She looked at him with tears streaming down her cheeks and dripping off her chin.
‘Just make sure you change,’ he replied.
He watched her get dressed, shoulders heaving as she cried, he watched as she wiped the tears from her cheeks and climbed on her bicycle, blouse half tucked in and coat open. He stood there as his rage subsided and heard his little daughter cry as she cycled off to school.
He wrote all day, and felt pleased. He hadn’t bothered to get dressed, just sat in front of the computer in his dressing gown, he hadn’t brushed his teeth or shaved, he hadn’t even made the beds or cleared away the breakfast things. He thought he’d say all this to Felicia, and explain that he was just like her, but he never got the chance.
He was out late, having dinner with his German publisher, and by the time he got home that evening the children had already gone to bed. It was the following morning when they discovered their empty beds. There’s nothing in his life that he regrets more than the unfair way he treated Felicia.
It’s unbearable to think of her sitting alone in that terrible room, believing that he doesn’t care about her, and that he’d only bother to look for Mikael.
97
Saga is woken the next morning when the light in the ceiling comes on. Her head feels heavy and she can’t focus properly. She’s still lying under the blanket, and feels with her numb fingertips to make sure the microphone is safe in her trousers.
