The Root of Evil

by Håkan Nesser

  Gunnar Barbarotti gritted his teeth and closed his eyes for a second. Then he clenched his fists and thrust them against the journalist’s chest with all his strength, sending him toppling out onto the landing. Then he closed the door and locked it.

  He went back to the kitchen with another camera flash slowly fading from his retina – and with the sound of a crash as something fell downstairs slowly dying away in his eardrums.

  Stupid, he thought. I didn’t handle that very professionally.

  Then he sat down to his dinner.

  FOUR

  NOTES FROM MOUSTERLIN

  7–8 July 2002

  ‘Can’t you see she’s dead?’

  Katarina Malmgren repeated what she had said and after that I don’t think anybody uttered a word for a full minute or more. We all sat or stood there, packed into the cockpit, young Troaë slumped lifeless at our feet, listened to the rain easing off and felt the waves growing gentler beneath us. The wind was also dying down, as the darkness intensified and seemed to enclose us more fully; sea, sky, coast, they were all the same grey-black impenetrable shade, and the only thing that stood out was a number of little points of light inland, no more than five pinpricks in the blackness, and it was impossible to gauge how far away they were. Perhaps no more than a kilometre, perhaps considerably further. Way over to the left, to what must still have been our west, I discovered a light that came and went, and guessed it must be the lighthouse at Beg-Meil. If so, we had drifted a long way east, which seemed to fit with the wind direction. In retrospect, I just don’t know how I was in any state to make those observations, those meaningless assessments; my body felt totally numb, my head was throbbing dully, and I felt an intermittent stab of pain from my injured foot. This is rock bottom, I remember thinking. Absolute rock bottom.

  The first person to say anything was Anna.

  ‘Dead? She can’t be dead?’

  Henrik, who had been the least active during the rescue efforts, gave a snort. ‘Look at her,’ he said. ‘If she’s not dead, what do you think she is, then?’

  But his voice sounded a good deal more pitiful than the words themselves.

  ‘Be quiet Henrik,’ said Katarina. ‘Oh my God, what shall we do?’

  ‘What shall we do?’ Gunnar repeated stupidly. ‘How the hell could this happen?’

  Anna turned to me. ‘You bloody idiot, it was you who let go of her so she fell overboard.’

  ‘I lost hold,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Sorry?’ said Henrik. ‘Oh, so you’re sorry, are you?’

  ‘What do you want me to say?’ I asked.

  Katarina Malmgren started to cry. Loudly, in a demonstrative sort of way.

  ‘I don’t see why you’re howling,’ said Erik. ‘You’re the one who brought her on this fucking trip.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ said Katarina.

  ‘He’s right,’ said Anna. ‘It was you who dragged her along. So what are you going to do now? What are you going to do now, eh?’

  There was something panicky yet almost triumphant in Anna’s voice, a combination I hadn’t heard before. ‘I nearly drowned too, you know!’ she cried. ‘But nobody cares about that, of course.’

  I recalled that she had in fact fallen in the water in all the chaos, and that she might well be right in what she was saying. Or had had a real scare, at any rate. None of us had bothered about her, we’d all been focused on the girl. Everyone went quiet for a few seconds.

  ‘The storm seems to have died down,’ said Gunnar. ‘We’re probably drifting towards land. Come on, pull yourselves together, let’s go down to the cabin and discuss what the hell we’re going to do.’

  So we did. We left the dead girl up in the cockpit and all six of us squeezed into the benches down in the pitch-black cabin. Katarina asked whether at least one of us ought to stay and keep watch over the body, but no one took any notice of the suggestion.

  ‘Why isn’t there any light?’ complained Anna. ‘Why the hell isn’t there any light on this bloody boat?’

  ‘Calm down Anna,’ said Gunnar. ‘Try to behave as if you’re a grown up for once in your life.’

  ‘Grown up?’ shrieked Anna. ‘You’ve got a cheek to talk about grown up, you perverse pile of shit.’

  I don’t know what Anna was referring to, but maybe Gunnar did, because he gave her a clip round the ear. I don’t think the blow really landed home, she probably had time to put up a hand to fend him off, but the gesture in itself was sufficient to shut her up.

  ‘So, what do we do?’ said Henrik.

  He sounded scared, I noticed. A sort of nervous, slightly muted fear that he wasn’t able to hide.

  ‘Good question,’ said Erik.

  ‘The first thing we’ve got to do is calm down,’ said Gunnar. ‘It doesn’t help anybody, shouting and yelling and blaming each other.’

  ‘Oh my God, the girl’s dead, don’t you understand?’ said Katarina for the third or fourth time, as if she were the one finding it hardest to take in. As if she had to keep reminding herself of it. ‘Why didn’t you pull her out?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘Don’t you think we tried?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Katarina Malmgren.

  ‘There were two of us trying,’ I pointed out, ‘and four just standing there shouting.’

  ‘Only one let her fall overboard,’ Henrik added, and I don’t know what he was driving at by saying it.

  ‘Good God, are we just going to leave the girl lying up there?’ said Katarina, her voice scarcely holding. You could hear that panic had her in its grip, and that talking and questioning were very likely her only way of holding it in check.

  Gunnar raised his voice. ‘For Christ’s sake, stop behaving like this!’ he shouted. ‘Don’t you see there’s nothing to be gained by blaming each other? We’re all in the same boat, you know.’

  Erik gave a laugh. ‘Bravo,’ he said. ‘The same boat, fucking clever of you to notice that.’

  Gunnar ignored him. ‘We’ve got to decide together what we’re going to do,’ he declared. ‘We’ve all got to agree to be in on this, whatever we decide.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ said Katarina. ‘What do you mean, going to do?’

  ‘He always goes on like that,’ said Anna. ‘I told you he was perverse, didn’t I?’

  Henrik cleared his throat. ‘Let me remind you we have a dead girl on board,’ he said. ‘I agree with Gunnar, we’ve got to decide.’

  He sounded as though he had summoned up a bit of courage, or was trying to do so, at least.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Gunnar.

  ‘I don’t understand what we’re meant to discuss,’ said Katarina. ‘There’s nothing to discuss, is there?’

  ‘I think there is,’ said Gunnar. ‘And I think some of you realize that, too.’

  ‘We’ve got to . . .’ said Katarina, ‘got to try to reach land, and when we get there we’ve got to find help, of course.’

  ‘Help with what?’ said Henrik.

  ‘That’s obvious, isn’t it? With . . . well, with . . .’ said Katarina, but clearly couldn’t find any way of finishing her sentence.

  Everyone went quiet for a long time. I remember that extremely clearly, and I think it was only then that they all, to the best of their abilities, really tried to understand the situation we had ended up in. Tried to rise above the usual trivial level of their consciousness and actually display the sort of maturity that the moment and the circumstances required.

  But Anna was the first one to open her mouth.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ she said. ‘We took a twelve-year-old girl out to sea without permission and let her drown. If anyone had asked me at the outset, we’d never even have—’

  Erik interrupted her. ‘We need to cover up.’

  ‘What?’ said Katarina. ‘Cover up? What do you mean?’

  ‘We need to get rid of her somehow,’ said Erik.

  ‘Are you out of your mind?’

  ‘Far from i
t,’ said Erik. ‘We’ve got to get rid of the girl and hush the whole thing up, that’s the best solution.’

  ‘That’s the worst thing I’ve ever—’ began Katarina, but Gunnar broke in.

  ‘Can you go on, Erik?’ he said.

  ‘Sure,’ said Erik. ‘What would we gain by dragging her dead body off to the police? How would we explain ourselves? What would they think?’

  ‘Correct,’ said Gunnar, and I suddenly recalled that he was some kind of teacher in daily life. Right now he was behaving pretty much as if he was in a classroom, listening to his pupils report back on their group work. Erik went on.

  ‘We’ve acted like idiots and now here we are with a drowned girl. If we want to carry on acting like idiots, we’ll go to the police, that’s what I think. But if we want to be a bit more sensible, we’ll make sure we dispose of the body smoothly.’

  ‘I feel sick,’ said Katarina.

  ‘Smoothly?’ asked Henrik. ‘If we do that, how’s it going to look if they find us out later on?’

  ‘Why should they find us out?’ asked Gunnar.

  ‘Because . . . because somebody saw us, let’s say,’ said Katarina. ‘With the girl. She’ll be reported missing and there’ll be a search.’

  ‘Of course she’ll be reported missing,’ said Gunnar. ‘But nobody actually knows she came with us today.’

  ‘What?’ said Anna. ‘What the hell are you saying?’

  He repeated what he had said, slowly and pedagogically. ‘All I’m saying is that there’s no one who knows Troaë came out to the islands with us today.’

  ‘Surely there must be?’ said Anna.

  ‘Well, who then?’ asked Gunnar. ‘When you all climbed into the boat, the beach was empty, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Anna. ‘Well, maybe it was, actually. But they must have seen her at that restaurant, at any rate. When we were all eating together.’

  ‘That was a week ago,’ said Erik. ‘We’ve no need to deny being with the girl that time. All we’ve got to deny is meeting her today.’

  ‘But was there really no one else there when we set off this morning?’ asked Katarina. ‘Are you all sure about that?’

  I considered the matter. Presumably the others were doing the same. Trying to remember back to how things looked as we stood on the beach, waiting for Henrik and Gunnar to turn up with the boat. As we waded out into the water. As we clambered aboard. Had there been any people nearby? I didn’t think so. A fisherman or two, the odd walker perhaps, all of them some distance away, but I couldn’t remember seeing anyone in the immediate vicinity.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Anna. ‘I really don’t think anyone can have seen us.’

  ‘No,’ admitted Katarina, and her voice was different all of a sudden. Sort of mild and compliant. ‘No, I’m sure there wasn’t anybody near enough to notice the girl.’

  ‘Well then,’ said Erik. ‘There you are.’

  ‘But what about that couple?’ Anna said. ‘The ones who put in at the island for a while.’

  ‘The girl was lying down with her book the whole time they were on the island,’ said Gunnar. ‘I’m completely certain of it. They were at least one hundred and fifty metres away. All they saw were a few inoffensive Swedes on holiday. They certainly couldn’t have counted us and they didn’t stay more than an hour.’

  Erik cleared his throat. ‘There are no witnesses,’ he concluded. ‘We were out at des Glénan today. There were six of us, the whole time. We met a girl a few days ago, who said her name was Troaë, or something like that. Since then we’ve seen no sign of her.’

  Katarina started to say something but broke off. Another silence descended. I could feel Henrik shivering to my right. My headache throbbed against the top and sides of my skull and the boat gave a violent lurch; for the last half hour, since we got the girl out of the water, it had been more of a gentle bobbing, but now the sea was making its presence felt again.

  ‘Erik’s right,’ Gunnar said finally. ‘There are no witnesses. What do you say?’

  I had remained more or less passive throughout this conference, and said nothing now, either. The thought of what might potentially have happened on that walk Erik took with the girl round the island came into my head, but I kept it to myself. Merely registered that it chimed in pretty well with Erik’s unexpectedly active role in the discussion. A twelve year old who was not only dead but had recently been sexually assaulted was naturally something one would be wary of handing over to the police. I wondered whether it would come to a vote in the end, but it was increasingly clear that this would scarcely be necessary.

  ‘I agree,’ said Henrik. ‘Going to the police at this stage would be senseless stupidity.’

  ‘All right,’ said Gunnar. ‘What do the ladies say?’

  This was a democratic invitation to the two women to voice their opinions. I wondered whether it was a conscious decision to save me until last, or if it just happened that way. Neither Anna nor Katarina seemed to want to go first, anyway – maybe neither wanted to be the first to concur with the proposal of getting the body out of the way and setting off down the road of lies and denial. Be that as it may, for a few seconds I had a mental image of the pair of them wrestling with some kind of empathy and female remorse at the prospect of such an option, but when Katarina spoke up, I realized this had been a misjudgement on my part.

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to object. It would be a total disaster for us all if this got out . . . and we’ve still got two weeks’ holiday ahead of us, Henrik and I.’ She paused briefly for thought. ‘Of course it’s terrible that this awful accident happened, but whatever we do, we can’t give the girl her life back.’

  ‘I think the same,’ said Anna. ‘Can’t we try to get that bloody engine going and get ashore now?’

  ‘How, then?’ said Gunnar half an hour later. ‘And where?’

  Cigarettes had been smoked. A bath towel had been draped over Troaë. Anna had peed over the side.

  Other things had happened too. Working together, Erik and Henrik had tried to get the engine going again, but without success. Katarina had found a torch that died after about a minute, and there had been a lot of discussion of whether we should simply dump the girl’s body overboard, but the collective opinion in the end was that this would not be a good idea. There was every chance of her floating ashore and being found the next day, at which point a police investigation would immediately be launched, a development that could easily lead to things taking the wrong turn. Better for the girl to be treated as missing, much better. For a few minutes we considered the possibility of fixing weights to her body, so she would stay safely down in the depths, but we simply couldn’t find any suitable objects on board the Arcadia – and even if we had, it would have been risky, of course, as the owner could well have spotted that some of his equipment was missing.

  So Gunnar’s questions were justified.

  ‘How?’ said Erik. ‘I don’t know. But I suppose burying her somewhere would be the best thing.’

  ‘With our bare hands?’ said Anna. ‘Great idea.’

  ‘But surely there must be a spade at one of our houses?’ said Katarina.

  ‘Assuming we come ashore anywhere near the houses,’ said Anna.

  ‘Are there any alternatives?’ asked Gunnar.

  ‘What?’ said Anna.

  ‘To burying her,’ said Gunnar. ‘If we’re definitely getting rid of the body.’

  ‘Well we can’t fucking chop her up,’ said Anna. ‘Or burn her. You’ll have to bury her, that’s pretty obvious.’

  ‘Who’s “you”?’ queried Erik.

  ‘Well I’m not doing it,’ said Anna.

  ‘Nor me,’ said Katarina.

  ‘You’ll have to muck in together,’ said Anna. ‘You guys who didn’t save her.’

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ said Henrik.

  ‘Eh?’ said Anna. ‘Are you on the phone?’

  ‘Be quiet, Anna!�
�� said Gunnar. ‘I don’t want to give you another slap.’

  ‘You perverse fucker,’ said Anna.

  ‘What I wanted to say is that I have a suggestion,’ said Henrik.

  ‘Let’s hear it,’ said Gunnar.

  Henrik cleared his throat in a slightly ostentatious way. ‘It’s just that I think it’s unnecessary for all of us to risk getting caught. Better for one person to do it on their own.’

  A few seconds passed in silence. ‘I don’t really know . . .’ began Erik, but then evidently changed his mind.

  ‘And I think it’s pretty obvious which of us it ought to be,’ Henrik went on. He had acquired a new sort of authority in the past few minutes. As he gradually sobered up, presumably.

  ‘Pretty obvious,’ he repeated.

  ‘I get what you mean,’ Katarina put in. They were operating as husband and wife again, and it only took a slight hint for them to understand each other. Henrik turned to me.

  ‘You were the one who messed it all up,’ he said. ‘You were the one who made the girl drown. Weren’t you? I think it’s your goddamned duty to see that we get through this. There are no two ways about it.’

  I looked around me. Tried to detect the others’ expressions in the dark cabin now that my eyes had adjusted somewhat to the lack of light, but it was impossible to make out any details. I could hear their breathing, feel the oppressive presence of their bodies, the smell of stale alcohol emanating from their pores, but I couldn’t read their thoughts with my own eyes. And none of them was saying anything. Nobody uttered a single word after Henrik made his proposal. Ten to fifteen seconds passed, the boat was barely rocking and I wondered if we might possibly be very close to land, in a bay or inlet perhaps, it almost felt that way. I thought of Dr L and all the money I still had in my travel kitty.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘I assume I’ve no choice.’

  When we were only a hundred metres or so offshore – as far as one could judge, we were coming into a curving little bay with just a few lights showing – Gunnar unexpectedly got the engine started. This earned him some acclamation, but the girl’s body, now wrapped in two bath towels, naturally muted the elation. Erik and Henrik asked me if I felt like going ashore to bury her somewhere on this unfamiliar stretch of coastline, but I instantly rejected the idea. I told them I needed a spade and would prefer to find a place somewhere in the wetlands between Mousterlin and Beg-Meil. Henrik said he thought that was a wise decision and offered me a cigarette; I’m not a habitual smoker, but I accepted because I recognized it as some kind of gesture of reconciliation and acknowledgement. By this time it was almost half past eleven, and we slowly made our way along the coast, never more than fifty to a hundred metres from land in case the engine gave up again. And so as not to lose our sense of direction, of course. After about fifteen minutes, having rounded a couple of points, the last of which must have been Cap-Coz, we saw the lighthouse in Beg-Meil. We passed it just as the moon broke through the clouds for the first time, giving those of us who happened to be up in the cockpit – Katarina, Gunnar and I – a chance to see each other’s faces for a brief moment. But none of us felt inclined to make much use of the opportunity, lowering our eyes, and within a few seconds the moon was behind dark clouds again.