Black Lies, Red Blood: A Mystery

by Kjell Eriksson

“I know,” she answered.

  She waited awhile for him to continue. Normally he would rattle off a long litany, but he remained silent.

  “He wanted so much to get away from this life,” she said instead, encouraged by his silence.

  “I doubt anyone really believed in that company, other than Bergman, but he was wounded too.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He sits at home dabbing at canvases and daydreaming,” said Bernt.

  “I believed in their company,” said Gunilla. “I know what he could do, what they could do.”

  “That was then,” said Bernt, with sharpness, but still consoling in tone.

  “He deserved a better fate.”

  “You have me,” Bernt repeated.

  They were still lying close together, but none of the customary calm was present. Suddenly he placed his hand on her breast, caressed it carefully, took hold of the nipple between his thumb and index finger and mumbled something she could not interpret.

  She did not want his hand on her breast but against her will the nipple stiffened. She freed herself carefully from his hold by turning over. She felt how he stiffened and how he pressed himself against her back and buttocks. His breathing became heavier. Without wanting to she became damp, and she thought about Bosse as he forced himself inside her.

  * * *

  When in the middle of the night she woke up he was no longer in the bed. He usually got up once during the night, but there was no sound of flushing from the toilet.

  She pulled aside the cover, swung her legs over the side of the bed, and sat that way for a few minutes before she got up, pulled on her bathrobe, went up to the closed bedroom door, and listened. The apartment was quiet.

  The door creaked a little as she opened it. She heard a faint sound from the kitchen and happened to think of a puppy she had as a child. A puppy that never was more than a puppy as he was run over at only three months old, who at night would whine at the foot of her bed, unable to jump up onto it.

  He was sitting at the kitchen table, naked, with his shoulders tensed, his head resting in one hand. In front of him were two bottles of beer. One was empty, the other half empty. Bernt, who would not have a drop for weeks, not even a beer.

  “What’s going on?”

  He started and turned quickly around. In his eyes there was fear. His hairy chest heaved in a deep breath.

  “I woke up,” he said as he exhaled.

  “Were you dreaming?”

  He shook his head. She knew that it would be as good as impossible to get him to talk, but she made an attempt anyway.

  “I liked what you did,” she said, realizing how crazy that sounded. “I mean, it was nice for me too.”

  She guessed it was something like that he wanted to hear.

  He said nothing, raised the bottle, and took a gulp.

  “Won’t you come and lie down?”

  Another shake of the head.

  “I might as well stay up. I’ll be leaving soon.”

  She looked at the clock on the stove. 4:13.

  “You can sleep another hour,” she said.

  At a quarter to six he had to be at Heidenstam Square. He and four workmates met there every morning to carpool down to Jakobsberg. They had done that since March. In the fall there would be a few weeks in town before the commute to Stockholm started up again.

  In that respect they were alike, Bernt and Bosse. It felt good in the morning, like a continuation of her life with Bosse. Bernt was also in construction and always left home early. Bosse had never been exactly talkative in the morning, and Bernt wasn’t either.

  “Why do you have to work on a Saturday?” she said.

  “You know how it is,” he replied.

  She knew. How many weekends hadn’t Bosse worked?

  “Shall I make you a cup?”

  He did not answer and she took that as a yes.

  They drank coffee together. She glanced at him.

  “Aren’t you cold?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  She went for the cover in the bedroom and draped it around him. He looked surprised, but smiled, took a sip of coffee.

  “That was good,” he said. “I needed to warm up.”

  “What are you thinking about?”

  It was as if Bosse’s death made it possible to ask such a question at four thirty in the morning. She did not understand how, but that’s how it was.

  “About us,” he said. “You are so dear to me.”

  She reached her hand across the table and took hold of his. I will never forget this moment, she thought.

  He looked tired. His beard stubble was shiny black.

  “I didn’t mean you any harm,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “With all this,” he said after a long time.

  She still did not understand, but waited for a continuation.

  “Jerker’s not doing well,” he said suddenly.

  “Does he have a cold?”

  “No, it’s his lungs. He has a hard time breathing.”

  Jerker Widén had been Bernt’s workmate for many years.

  “Angina, maybe.”

  “They don’t know. But he’s worried, of course.”

  “What are you worried about?”

  He looked quickly at her.

  “Losing you,” he said.

  Gunilla started crying. She withdrew her hand and hid her face. Bernt started talking with a fervor that at last made him fall silent, embarrassed by his own words.

  “Don’t say that,” she said. “You don’t need to explain everything. I know.”

  “I’m thinking about Bosse too. I didn’t want it to go that way, just that he would disappear from your life. I knew you still cared about him. And then that money.”

  “He needed it,” she said hotly.

  He nodded.

  “I’ll be on my way now,” he said. “I can stop by the storeroom.”

  He got up and left the kitchen. She understood that nothing more would be said, and she was grateful for that.

  As he went past Gunilla he stroked her across the back, and in the doorway he turned around.

  “We need that money too,” he said.

  She nodded, did not want to discuss it.

  “Jerker wants to sell his boat,” he said.

  She stared at him.

  “Should we buy a boat?”

  “We need to get out a little,” he said, unusually defensive.

  “A boat?” she repeated, looking like he had suggested they should sail around the world.

  “It’s in Skarholmen,” he said, nodded and disappeared. The lock clicked as he carefully closed the outside door behind him.

  Gunilla shook her head. He had never mentioned being interested in the sea or boats. Was it Jerker who put that idea in his head? They were like clay and straw. Of course they had discussed her loan to Bosse, and now that it was no longer relevant, the money could be plowed into a boat project.

  “We need to get out a little,” he said, and in principle she agreed, but she would never literally throw her money into the sea.

  She had heard Jerker talk about his boat, but did not even know if it was a motorboat or a sailboat. It didn’t matter. A boat was just not going to happen!

  Fourteen

  “Why did you lie?”

  Andreas Davidsson had not once looked Ann Lindell in the eyes, but instead continued stubbornly staring down between his feet. Sometimes he made a movement with one foot; Lindell did not see it, but heard the scraping sound of the sole against the pavestones.

  They were sitting, like before, on the terrace. Lindell invited his mother to sit with them, but Andreas refused. Then he would not say a word, he explained. His mother did not put up a fight, on the contrary she sneaked off immediately. Did she have any idea that she too would be questioned? Lindell suspected more and more that she suffered from some defect, which made her incapable of fully understanding the consequences of their family
lie.

  Lindell had explained to both of them that she would tape the conversation. Andreas was over the age of fifteen and therefore liable for a criminal offense.

  “I don’t know,” he forced out.

  “If you can speak louder, that would be nice,” said Lindell, moving the tape recorder a little closer to the boy. “Okay, this is how it looks: Klara Lovisa disappeared on her sixteenth birthday. You and your mother have maintained the whole time that on that Saturday you were in Gävle visiting your grandmother. Your grandmother supported that version. Until yesterday, when I visited her. Then she was clearly having a pretty good day. You know she’s often confused, that’s not news to anyone in your family, is it?”

  “Naw.”

  “She was angry at you, do you know that? Because you didn’t come that Saturday. It was not only Klara Lovisa’s birthday, but also your grandfather’s. She was angry because you stayed home.”

  “She’s so screwy,” said Andreas.

  “Yes, sometimes she’s a little confused, we know that, but the problem for you is that your aunt, who I didn’t even know about until yesterday, confirmed your grandmother’s latest version, the true version. She was also there at the cemetery and at dinner. She is definitely not confused. I talked with her too. She remembers the dinner very well and that your grandmother quarreled with your mother because you weren’t there. You were still in Uppsala, weren’t you?”

  He did not answer.

  “Can you stop scraping your feet and answer the question instead!”

  He shook his head.

  “What does that headshaking mean?”

  “I was at home.”

  “Good, now we don’t have to argue about that,” said Lindell. “It’s nice when you say what really happened.”

  The next question was a given, but she chose to wait in silence. After a while, no more than half a minute, Andreas looked at her for the first time, a momentary glance. Lindell nodded and tried to look encouraging.

  “What did you do on Saturday the twenty-eighth of April?”

  “I was at home, like I said.”

  “The whole day?”

  “Yes.”

  “A Saturday? It was a beautiful spring day. You didn’t go outside even once?”

  “No.”

  “Did you have any visitors?”

  “No.”

  “Did anyone call?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Were you waiting for someone to call?”

  The answer was delayed, and came in the form of another shake of the head.

  “Perhaps you thought that Klara Lovisa would be in touch?”

  “Lay off! Haven’t you understood that it was over?”

  “It was her birthday.”

  “I know that!”

  “Did you send an SMS to wish her happy birthday, perhaps?”

  Suddenly Lindell felt sorry for the boy. He was suffering all the torments of hell before her eyes. She understood now why he stayed at home. He had been waiting for a response from her. He must have sent her a text message, maybe said something about wanting to see her.

  “You didn’t go to her house, did you?”

  “No.”

  “When did you find out that she had disappeared, did you see it in the newspaper?”

  “I knew it before. Klovisa’s mom called here.”

  “On Saturday evening?”

  “Yes, she wondered if I’d seen her.”

  “And then your mom decided that you should lie, that you had been in Gävle?”

  “We didn’t know anything.”

  “So the lie came about when you read in the paper that she had disappeared,” Lindell observed. “But you had no reason to pretend. You were home the whole day and had no contact with her, so why this song and dance?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You did have contact with her, didn’t you? Think now, before you tell another lie. They often crack. I know that, I’m a police officer, I’ve questioned hundreds like you. The truth almost always creeps out.”

  “I texted her,” he said at last.

  “When was that?”

  Andreas pulled out his cell phone. Lindell understood that he had saved his message and she felt a stab in her heart.

  “Nine twenty-two,” he said.

  “What did you write?”

  “‘Happy sixteenth birthday. Can we meet?’” he read from the display.

  “You got no answer.”

  “No.”

  She could imagine his anguish, first before he sent it, then afterward, while he waited for a possible reply from Klara Lovisa.

  They sat in silence. Lindell peeked at her watch. In an hour she should pick up Erik, who was at a birthday party on Botvidsgatan. A playmate at preschool was turning seven.

  She guessed that the boy spoke the truth where the SMS was concerned, and sensed that he had not seen her that Saturday. In April they had already asked all the neighbors around the Davidsson house if they might have seen Klara Lovisa, but no one had seen or heard anything.

  “Where you did usually meet?”

  “Here or at her house,” said Andreas.

  “But when you wanted to be by yourselves?”

  “By the crematorium, behind there kind of. There’s a place where they pile up old gravestones, so they can use them again. Recycling, kind of.”

  Lindell could not keep from smiling at his word choice, but it didn’t seem to be the most romantic place for a date. At that moment she remembered that the first time she saw an erect penis was at a cemetery in Ödeshög.

  “May I borrow your cell phone?”

  “Why? That’s what it says.”

  “I just want to check,” said Lindell, reaching out her hand.

  After a slight hesitation he handed over the phone. She read the message. He had left out an “XOX” at the end. She went back a step and checked incoming texts. If he had gotten a reply from her, she guessed he would have saved that too. But there was no SMS from Klara Lovisa.

  She handed back the phone.

  “Thanks,” she said. “It’s good that this came out, isn’t it?”

  He nodded.

  “Will I be punished?” he asked.

  “No,” said Lindell, and turned off the recorder.

  The one who should be punished is his mother, she thought.

  Andreas sat with the phone in his hand. Wonder how many times he’s read his message, wondered Lindell, more gloomy than content at having cracked his alibi.

  “One thing, and now the tape recorder is no longer running,” she emphasized. “When I asked you whether you had slept with each other, you said that Klara Lovisa wanted to wait. Wait until when?”

  “Until she turned sixteen,” said Andreas.

  * * *

  Back in the car she wondered about the significance of Andreas’s final statement. Certainly he had hoped that he would be the first. An SMS could create contact, that was his obvious thought.

  Lindell did not believe that Andreas had any part in her disappearance, but obviously that could not be ruled out. She looked at her watch again. Erik would not like her arriving late, and she saw that she still had time to take a look at the area around the crematorium and cemetery.

  She headed in that direction, and when an elderly woman came walking along Berthågavägen she braked to ask about the place where the church stored old gravestones. The woman looked perplexed at first, and then nodded encouragingly, as if she thought Lindell was going to choose a gravestone, and pointed out the way.

  Lindell got out of the car. The woman’s face made her think about her parents, that one day, perhaps in the not too distant future, she would have to choose a stone.

  The area was an open yard where stones in all forms were laid out like on parade. She read some of the stones. Some of the inscriptions were almost worn away by the teeth of time.

  She strolled around, turning in behind a wooden fence and surveying the ground. Weeds were grow
ing luxuriantly between piles of gravel and chunks of concrete. Had Klara Lovisa and Andreas, despite everything, seen each other here on her birthday? Perhaps Klara Lovisa was happy that he remembered her birthday, even if she rejected his overture to resume the relationship. Could Klara Lovisa be buried here?

  Andreas seemed to be a careful guy, but Lindell knew the problems that raging hormones in combination with disappointment could create.

  She left the place with a sense of oppression, as if she had trespassed. The same feeling as when you are witness to a stranger’s sorrow.

  She understood that it was this place, so lacking in finesse, that she would associate with Klara Lovisa. This would be her resting place, until they found her.

  Fifteen

  Itaberaba—Portal da Chapada, it said on the wall of the bus station. Gateway to the inferno might be more like it, thought Anders Brant.

  For an hour he had fought with flies, stared blankly at the blaring TV, had a cup of overly sweet coffee, and turned down several taxi drivers.

  He should have taken the first offer, but indecisively lingered at the station. The trip had taken four and a half hours, and once at his destination he felt mostly like getting on the first available bus back.

  He was sweaty and strangely irritated at the people around him. He found himself looking for faults: one was too fat, another had ridiculously ugly clothes, and the third was talking nonsense. This behavior was quite unlike him.

  He was usually not easily annoyed. If anything he was tolerant of people’s ideas and ingenuity, but now he felt as if the whole city, the bus station anyway, was one big taunt.

  He had been in Chapada before, stayed at a hippie-influenced guest house in Lençóis and from there went out on various adventures, hiked in the mountains, rode a spavined horse during a three-day tour with a guide who talked about sex most of the time, and rafted down a river together with three Dutch women, all of it pleasurable and exciting. He liked Chapada, but not this time.

  Now there were no outdoor arrangements waiting. The anguish made him sweat even more. He had a second cup of coffee. The man behind the counter asked what bus he was waiting for.

  Anders Brant only shook his head and pretended not to understand, but realized that as a gringo he stood out, all the more so as he did not seem to be on his way anywhere, but hung around like a homeless person trying to pass the time.