The Root of Evil

by Håkan Nesser

  ‘Maybe they’re harbingers of death,’ I say.

  Gunnar frowns and stares at me intently. It’s only Erik, behind his dark glasses, whose look I can’t read. Henrik leans across the table towards me again. As if all this were between him and me.

  ‘What is it you want?’ he says.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘To go to the police? Is that what you want?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ I say.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m prepared to stick by a collective decision,’ I say. ‘Like last time. But I won’t accept the role of scapegoat.’

  Henrik leans back in his chair. He exchanges a glance with Gunnar. ‘Have you got any suggestions?’ he asks.

  I shake my head.

  ‘He’s out of his mind,’ says Anna. ‘Christ, can’t you see he’s out of his mind?’

  Gunnar stands up. He takes Anna with him and they move away. Not towards the tool shed but in the other direction. Over to the dustbin and the apple tree. Erik asks if he should open another bottle of wine, and Henrik says he might as well. Entirely involuntarily, I find myself thinking about Anna’s face as it looked after the nude swimming session that first evening. I don’t know why that image should have embedded itself in my consciousness with such sharp claws. It keeps flashing up before my eyes.

  Maybe, I think, it’s because I know that if I’d taken her by the hand at that moment, she would have come with me like a shot for sex on the beach. I think Gunnar must be a terrible lover.

  Gunnar and Anna come back to the table. ‘We’ve got to decide what to do,’ says Gunnar.

  ‘Good idea,’ says Erik. ‘We can’t have her lying there when Monsieur Masson comes to cut the grass tomorrow morning.’

  Gunnar ignores this comment. ‘So have you got another bottle of wine or not?’

  Erik goes to get one. Anna takes a seat beside Katarina and lights a cigarette. I can see she’s been ordered to keep quiet from now on. Katarina and Henrik are whispering to each other but I can’t pick up what they’re saying. And they don’t intend me to, either.

  ‘Would you like me to give you all a minute on your own?’ I ask. ‘If you happen to want another conference.’

  ‘There’s no need,’ says Gunnar. ‘I’ve got a proposal.’

  ‘Good,’ says Katarina.

  ‘My idea is this,’ says Gunnar, trying to fix me with a look. ‘We’re prepared to keep quiet again, if you get rid of the body. We won’t go to the police, and if they seek any of us out for any reason, we don’t know anything. About the girl, or about her grandmother. You’re leaving tomorrow morning, and there’s no need for us ever to see each other again.’

  He pauses and exchanges looks with the others. ‘Can we all agree on that?’

  Anna and Katarina nod. Erik, too, and finally Henrik.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Can I have a bit more wine?’ I say.

  Erik gives a sort of start. Then he pours the wine, first for me and then for the others. I twirl the glass in my hand for a minute, watching the red wine dance round and round. It’s not the colour of fresh blood but more like the old, clotted, dried variety. I drink deeply and put the glass down on the table in front of me.

  ‘I accept the proposal,’ I say. ‘But I need somebody to carry the spade.’

  Gunnar carries the spade. I thought that would be Erik’s task, but for some reason it falls to Gunnar. Perhaps because he’s a bit taller and stronger than Erik. You never know.

  But I carry the woman. We don’t say anything, and I walk ahead, with Gunnar two steps behind. First we take a right onto the dirt track and then, after a couple of hundred metres, we go left towards Menez Rouz along the narrow path. It’s the same way as last time, and the woman hangs over my right shoulder just as Troaë did, two days ago. Twice we have to stop, so I can put her down and rest a bit. I feel that I want to bury her close to the girl, not right alongside but within talking distance. It feels important for the girl to have her grandmother within reach even in death. But only within reach, because they clearly didn’t always see eye to eye.

  When we get to the little open area of ground, wanly lit by the hesitant moonlight, I signal to Gunnar to stop. I carefully lay the body down on the path and Gunnar passes me the spade.

  ‘I’ll go back,’ he says. ‘There’s no need for me to stand about waiting.’

  ‘You do that,’ I say. ‘This is going to take a while.’

  He leaves me and is soon swallowed up into the gloom. I am alone with the body, the spade and the marsh.

  And the bats. This is starting to feel like a habit.

  By the time I get back to Erik’s it is quarter past two, but they are all still there.

  ‘We’ve been talking it over,’ says Gunnar. ‘And we’ve decided something.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ I say.

  ‘We think it best if you leave now. Henrik and I will give you a lift part of the way, and you can continue by any route you like tomorrow morning. It’ll be light in a couple of hours.’

  I prop the spade against the railing that runs halfway round the terrace. ‘So that’s what you’ve decided, is it?’ I say. ‘Well, perhaps that’s the best solution.’

  ‘Glad you think so,’ says Katarina.

  ‘I’ve just got to clean up a bit first,’ I add.

  ‘Have a shower,’ says Erik. ‘I’ll make coffee for you all in the meantime.’

  ‘Whose car shall we go in?’ I ask.

  ‘You’re welcome to take mine,’ says Erik. ‘No problem, I’ve only just filled up. There’s enough in the tank to get you to Rennes and back if you want.’

  I nod, and leave the others on the terrace while I go in for a shower. I wash the smell of earth and decay from my body.

  We drive towards the dawn. Gunnar is at the wheel and Henrik is beside him in the passenger seat. I am in the back seat, sharing it with my big rucksack. The place names slip past in the thinning darkness. Concarneau. Pont-Aven. Quimperle, where we join the motorway and pick up speed. We say hardly a word, any of us. I wonder about the amount of alcohol in Gunnar’s blood. It would be ironic if we were stopped by a police patrol and got caught for that.

  But the roads are almost empty at this hour. Lorient. Auray. Vannes. They asked me if I preferred Rennes or Nantes. Both of them are a long way from Mousterlin; I realize that they really do want me properly removed. I told them I prefer Nantes. It’s a larger city, and further south than Rennes.

  I don’t know what distance we’ve put behind us, but it is quarter past six when we turn into a motorway service station on the edge of Nantes. I have been dozing for the past forty-five minutes and I think Henrik has, too. Gunnar has black rings under his eyes and there’s something about his look that reminds me of a lemur.

  ‘Right then,’ says Henrik. ‘This is where our ways part.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I say.

  ‘Sometimes things just go wrong,’ says Gunnar, and is overcome by a sudden fit of coughing. I understand that he’s trying to say something universal and a bit conciliatory. About us all being victims of unfortunate circumstances, or something along those lines.

  But the coughing puts paid to that. He brakes and pulls up right outside the cafe entrance. He doesn’t unfasten his seat belt; he evidently doesn’t even want to have a cup of coffee in my company before we part – even though he obviously needs one so he can cope with the journey back.

  But maybe it’s Henrik’s turn to drive. Maybe they’ll find another cafe as soon as they’ve got rid of me. Yes, I expect it’s as simple as that; they don’t want to see me for a second longer than necessary. Another ironic thought strikes me as I’m getting my rucksack out of the car: what if the one who’s driving falls asleep at the wheel and they’re both killed when the car crashes into a wall of rock? What a macabre postscript. I can’t help wondering how the other three would try to explain away what the two men were up to, well over a hundred kilometres from Mousterlin so early in the mornin
g.

  ‘Right, we’re off now,’ says Henrik. ‘No hard feelings.’

  They don’t even get out of the car. I walk round it and shake hands with each of them through the wound-down side windows.

  ‘Drive carefully,’ I say. I swing the rucksack onto one shoulder and go into the cafe.

  I don’t look back.

  I sit at a table by the window, writing. I’m approaching the closing bracket after the latest events in Mousterlin. I’ve had an egg and bacon galette, and now there’s a large cup of black coffee in front of me; I’m the only customer in the desolate place apart from a couple of lorry drivers hunched over vast breakfasts, each at their own window. Perhaps I could ask them for a lift – one or other of them – but I want to sit here for a while. Formulate these closing lines first, and maybe perform some rudimentary morning ablutions. It is still only a few minutes past seven, and I feel anything but ready for a new day.

  I briefly consider the fact that in all probability they don’t even know my full name, those holidaying Swedes in Mousterlin. In the eleven days we spent together I never revealed more than my first name. That very fact perhaps says something.

  In some strange way, I am carrying the girl within me. Her grandmother, too, though her presence is not so palpable. I know I was dreaming about Troaë in those brief interludes of sleep I snatched in the car. Her vivacious innocence and intensity that first day on the beach and at Le Grand Large. Her helplessness in the waves. Her even greater helplessness as the earth closed around her body.

  I am not sure I will ever be free of her. She is already eating into me, taking hold, and if there’s anything that worries me about the future, this is it. If I had the chance to pass judgement in some utopian court of law, I would let her live in return for the lives of the other five. The grandmother’s too, actually. I would do this without a second’s hesitation; I am a little sorry that Dr L is not sitting opposite me, because it would certainly be interesting to hear his views on such an equation.

  But I shall round this off now. With the concern I have expressed above. These notes will find their rightful place at the very bottom of my rucksack. Later today, or tomorrow, I will buy a new exercise book to write in.

  I finish my coffee and, deciding to forego the ablutions, I shoulder my rucksack and go out into the parking area. The sun is shining and it’s going to be a hot day.

  I have to move on. I have to head south.

  Commentary, August 2007

  There, now it is done. I had a plan, I followed it, and it succeeded.

  All five are dead. I don’t know if Gunnar has been found yet, and perhaps I will never find out. The only thing that made me slightly uneasy was that Katarina Malmgren floated up to the surface. That wasn’t my intention. I fixed weights to both bodies but somehow the knots must have worked loose on hers. I wanted both of them at the bottom of the sea, where they could lie and reflect on Troaë’s battle with the waves before she died. Those cowards who never left the boat to try to save her. Nor did Erik, in fact he just sat there in the cockpit, so I had to kill him first. I have already commented on the spanner, and that’s now fittingly at rest on the seabed; I would have liked to use it on Gunnar, too, but it wouldn’t have worked. I had to talk to Gunnar before I despatched him to the other side, and for that I needed a gun.

  It proved an interesting conversation. It was particularly satisfying to see him crawling around at my feet, pleading for his life. He shed all his stature like some old, worn-out skin, just as I had hoped. He had already wet himself when I shot him.

  I have stopped dreaming about the grandmother. For a while now I have been dreaming about the girl again instead, but now the dreams are good ones. Above all, I see her there on the beach, painting us with that smile of concentration on her face.

  But I can’t see the picture she painted. I never saw it then, and the people it portrays no longer exist.

  The parenthesis is closed and it is high time for me to move on.

  20–27 AUGUST 2007

  32

  When Inspector Barbarotti came into his office on Monday 20 August, it was almost exactly a week since he had left it.

  It took him a few seconds to register the fact. Last Monday night he had shoved Expressen reporter Persson in the chest, then he had been suspended for three days, spent two up in Närke – plus a Sunday in Kymlinge under a cloud of thoughts, speculations and questions.

  He had read Notes from Mousterlin, those sixty-four closely written pages, twice through, he had spent an hour and a half talking to Inspector Backman on the phone, almost as long to Astor Nilsson and at least twenty minutes to Jonnerblad.

  The others had read the pages too. By nine on Sunday morning, Sorrysen had arrived at Barbarotti’s flat to pick up the manuscript for copying and immediate delivery to the National Laboratory of Forensic Science in Linköping. They had all received a copy: prosecutor Sylvenius and Asunander, Jonnerblad, Tallin, Astor Nilsson, Sorrysen and Backman. And there was one for him, too.

  ‘I’m braced for another sleepless night,’ Astor Nilsson had confided to him around ten last night from Kymlinge Hotel. ‘But at least there’s some reading matter for me to get my teeth into. Bloody hell.’

  Barbarotti hadn’t slept particularly well either. He had been wrestling with a strange dream about combine harvesters sinking in mid-Atlantic, where he was part of a rescue team that failed to save all the distressed passengers from the angry waves. They were searching in particular for a little girl, and when he woke up around six thirty, it was a few moments before he realized his bed was not a raft and the only water around was the rain pattering on the bike shed roof in the courtyard.

  He looked round his office. No one had cleaned up in his absence. He remembered the apple he had eaten the previous Monday afternoon, and the half cheese sandwich he had not finished, but neither object looked truly familiar to him. He had evidently drunk coffee from four different mugs, and there were two open bottles of a blackcurrant drink on the window sill.

  At least the cleaner had emptied the bin – you had to be thankful for small mercies. He sighed and started to clear up, but less than a minute later Inspector Backman put her head round the door to say it was briefing time. Gunnar Barbarotti nodded, opened the little window vent to air the place, and went with her.

  ‘I anticipate this briefing will last until lunchtime at least,’ began Superintendent Jonnerblad. ‘Coffee will be coming about quarter past ten.’

  Barbarotti looked at his watch; he had found an old one in his desk drawer at home, an ancient wind-up model, but so far it had shown every sign of working properly. Just now, for example, it showed nine minutes past nine.

  Everyone looked unusually calm and collected. People often did on a Monday morning, of course – it was a question of keeping your tail up and making an assured impression when Friday was still light years away, there was nothing strange in that. But today there was something extra. We look like a sports team that’s been training for three years for a specific competition, thought Barbarotti. And now we’re there. This is when it matters.

  Why do I get these stupid ideas? was his next thought. I mean, we’ve been on this case nearly a month, and we’re finally getting somewhere. It’s hardly surprising everyone’s determined and expectant.

  ‘We’ve been working on this case for almost a month,’ said Jonnerblad. ‘For the first time, we’ve got some kind of handle on what it’s all about. This is our most important meeting to date and it’s vital that we stay focused today, I’m sure I don’t need to remind you of that. Tallin.’

  Tallin took over. ‘Personally, I’ve read the murderer’s account through twice,’ he started. ‘I know the rest of you have done the same. At least once. It’s a gruesome tale he tells, I’m sure we all agree. He’s clearly convinced we’re never going to catch him. But we, naturally, must work on the opposite assumption. That is, that we’re going to track him down and call him to account. Is there anyone with any immediat
e comment on this?’

  Eva Backman raised a pen in the air.

  ‘His ending?’ she said. ‘Before we go on, I’d like to ask you all what you think about the way he brings it to an end.’

  ‘Same question from me,’ said Astor Nilsson. ‘He writes that none of the people in that painting are alive. Does he include himself in that?’

  ‘Highly possible,’ said Jonnerblad. ‘But we certainly can’t close the investigation just because we think the perpetrator might be dead. If we know he’s dead that’s a different matter, of course.’

  ‘I’ve never said we should close the investigation,’ said Astor Nilsson.

  ‘It could be he’s trying to make us believe he’s dead,’ said Sorrysen.

  ‘But that’s what’s so damned odd,’ said Astor Nilsson. ‘Why is he writing to us at all? First all those letters and now this document. If he’d just killed these five people and gone off somewhere . . . well, why didn’t he settle for that?’

  ‘Significant point,’ said Asunander unexpectedly. Unusually, the chief inspector was sitting with them at the table, not just observing proceedings from the sidelines like some silent, slightly disapproving shadow.

  ‘He apparently feels the need to tell us why he did it,’ said Eva Backman. ‘I get the sense it’s terribly important to him for his motives to be known.’

  Jonnerblad cleared his throat. ‘We’ll go into the perpetrator’s character in more detail this afternoon,’ he announced. ‘Lillieskog is coming over later with a forensic psychiatrist. We’re dealing with an exceptionally tricky individual here, I’m sure we can all agree on that?’

  He looked round the table. Tricky, thought Barbarotti. That was putting it mildly.

  ‘He writes well,’ said Astor Nilsson. ‘You could almost call it literature.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Eva Backman. ‘That struck me, too. But even if we assume he’s feeding us precisely the information he wants us to have, it’s a ghastly story. And he doesn’t portray himself in a particularly good light, either.’