by Hans Koppel
Calle shook his head.
‘You don’t give up, do you?’ he said.
‘It’s strange,’ Mike said. ‘I almost think more about Dad than I do about Ylva. All the old stuff bubbling to the surface.’
He was in Gösta Lundin’s office on the fourth floor of Helsingborg hospital. Mike felt at ease in this setting and he had absolute confidence in his doctor.
‘Do you mean, what could you have done differently?’ Gösta asked him.
Mike cocked his head and pulled a face.
‘It’s not so much that, it’s the feeling.’
‘The feeling?’
‘Just after it happened, a lot of attention was focused on my mother and me. Family, friends, Dad’s funeral and all the details. Daily life was dramatic, heightened in some way. Maybe it sounds daft, but it was really exciting, a bit like the first day at school, or falling in love. Life was full of meaning, despite all the grief and helplessness. I presume that I … I don’t know, felt important or something. God, I sound awful.’
‘Not at all.’
‘Because that’s not what I mean.’
‘I understand. Carry on.’
Mike gathered his thoughts, tried to formulate what he wanted to say.
‘The other stuff came later,’ he said.
‘What other stuff ?’
‘The shame, the embarrassment, the looking away. People don’t know how to deal with grief. There are so few who actually understand what you really need.’
‘And what is that?’ Gösta queried.
‘Company,’ Mike said, and looked at him. ‘Or, at least, I think it is. Someone who asks you round for tea and is just friendly, normal, who calls and asks if you want to go to the cinema with them, who asks you to give them a hand with something. Whatever, just something to help the time go by.’
Mike smiled at his doctor.
‘After all the rituals and stuff were out of the way, when everyday life had started to catch up and people expected you to be over it all, at that time, I would have appreciated even an inappropriate joke, anything, just not distance and silence.’
Mike laughed, looked at his hands and then raised his eyes again.
‘I sound like some old talk-show presenter going on about his troubled childhood,’ he said. ‘And I assume that most people who sit in this chair do the same. You must think that we’re a sorry bunch of moaning muppets.’
Gösta shook his head. He leaned forward and folded his hands on the desk.
‘Your father,’ he said in a friendly voice. ‘Are you afraid that … well, that it’s hereditary, shall we say? His depression, I mean.’
Mike shook his head and leaned back.
‘Mum thinks it was the alcohol that killed Dad. It was a vicious circle. In the end she didn’t know whether he was drinking because he was depressed or whether he was depressed because he was drinking. I’m pretty careful with alcohol, take after my mother in that regard. And as long as I’ve got Sanna, I would never even contemplate anything like that, never. Even though I must say I can understand Dad in a way, now. I mean, the pain was deep and the future was bleak. I understand why people commit suicide, I just don’t want it to be those who are close to me.’
‘What do you think happened to Ylva? Do you think she committed suicide?’
‘No.’
‘What do you think happened?’
‘I think …’
He turned his face and looked at the wall.
‘I think she was murdered. Possibly by accident. It might have been a sex game with the wrong person, a sexual assault, I don’t know.’
‘So you don’t think she’s alive?’
‘No, I don’t,’ he said, after a while.
‘You don’t have any hopes left?’
Mike shook his head.
‘I’d lose my mind then,’ he said.
‘Both the scenarios you mentioned involve sex,’ Gösta pointed out.
‘We’ve talked about that,’ Mike said, curtly.
‘Was she excessively flirtatious?’
‘Yes.’
Mike had to strain himself to control his voice.
‘And do you think that led her into the arms of the wrong person?’
‘I have no idea any more. Ylva has gone, and she’s never coming back. I actually don’t want to think too much about what might have happened.’
‘I’m sorry, I apologise,’ Gösta said.
Mike pulled himself together and calmed down.
‘Have you ever lost anyone close to you?’ he asked, eventually, and locked eyes with the doctor.
‘I had a daughter,’ Gösta told him.
Mike’s face shifted from angry to apologetic in a split second. Gösta held his gaze.
‘It was twenty years ago. She was sixteen.’
‘Cancer?’
Gösta didn’t say anything for a long time.
‘I’d rather not talk about it,’ he said in the end. ‘Not any more, and not with you. You’re my patient, not the other way round.’
41
It wasn’t good. Short contracts and the odd bit of freelancing. The only constant in Calle Collin’s life was the bills. He expended more time and effort on picking up work than he did on doing it. He needed a steady job, regular pages to fill, someone to commission him to write a series of articles.
He logged on to the Internet and surfed in the hope of finding ideas. Death and misery, never anything else. That was basically all the news consisted of these days: unusual ways to die.
Which celebrities were hot? What was on TV?
What was it the old actor had said? That he beat others up so they wouldn’t beat him. And of course he hadn’t wanted the only interesting thing he’d revealed in the whole interview to be published in the magazine. Calle would have got more out of interviewing the actor’s former classmates and writing about their recollections of him. Schooldays, childhood. You never got away from the past. Hence Jörgen Petersson’s fixation with the Gang of Four.
The Gang of Four – three of the four were dead. Only Ylva was still alive. As far as Calle knew, anyway. Maybe he should interview her? Under the headline: My Friends Die Young!
She wouldn’t have many friends left after an article like that.
On the other hand, it touched everyone. Who didn’t know someone who’d died prematurely? Perhaps it wasn’t such a bad idea. A series of articles about people who had died young and left family and friends bereft and mourning. What would it be called?
Out of the Blue. No, no, no. It needed to be something poignant. She Danced One Summer? Perhaps not. So a Day Passes, Never to Return? A Moment in Time? The Lord Giveth and the Lord Taketh? In Your Shadow? Garden of Remembrance? Left Behind? The Days are Numbered? Seize the Day? It Happened Suddenly …?
Shit, come on.
Then the Game Was Over.
Calle mumbled the words to himself. Sounded good. Fatalistic, but still positive.
Then the Game Was Over.
Totally fucking perfect.
*
Future with no hope
A woman who succeeds in escaping from her captor has only a small chance of returning to her old life. It is of little consequence that she was forced into the situation; in most societies, it is still thought the woman has no one but herself to blame. She has brought dishonour on her family and often only a handful of her family and friends will be prepared to make the sacrifice needed to embrace someone who is a social outcast. As a result, the woman nearly always returns to her captor.
There was a world outside, and the only thing that separated Ylva from it was the cellar walls. She tried to remind herself of that, to recall the feeling she had had at first, before all her ambitions were thwarted. When she still imagined it was possible to escape. When she still tried to think logically.
Before she understood the price of her futile attempts, and the blows and threats had made her shrivel and accept. Her situation and who she was.
To c
lean the house.
The thought of being allowed up and being able to feel the sunlight had aroused something in her.
In her dreams, she jumped out of the window and ran across the grass to her own house and …
She never got any further. Her mind refused to dream on. Presumably it was trying to spare her the pain.
To clean the house.
They would never let her. It was just another way to torment her, a promise they waved in front of her eyes. They would snatch it away at the last minute. Just as they had done before.
Ylva looked around, thought about what was at risk, everything she had worked for.
The TV screen that gave her an eye on the world, food, water, electricity. Books to read.
The only thing they demanded of her was obedience. Otherwise, she was her own boss. The fact that Gösta took her body a couple of times a month didn’t bother her any more. His pleasure showed that she was good. As long as Gösta wanted her, she was safe. As long as Gösta came back for more, she would be kept alive.
If that was what she wanted.
In her darkest moments, she thought about the rope. That was what Gösta and Marianne expected from her in the end. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.
But Ylva wasn’t there yet. And Gösta’s half-promise about letting her up to clean the house had kindled a spark. She could almost visualise it. How, under supervision of course, she would go round with a vacuum cleaner and be blinded by the light that poured in through all the windows. Filled with colours and sounds from outside. Even in her dreams, Ylva felt overwhelmed.
She knew every nook and cranny of the cellar, every unevenness in the brickwork was etched in her mind. The cellar was her security.
Gösta seldom hit her. He only had to raise his hand. Ylva understood that he did it because it was necessary. To remind her who was in charge.
Marianne was worse, disdainful and patronising.
Sometimes Ylva fantasised that Marianne would die. That it was just her and Gösta. She wished the plague on Marianne, that she would suffer, not a sudden accident. It would give her great pleasure if it was drawn out.
‘You have to know your place,’ Marianne said time and again.
‘Don’t forget what you are. An outlet for my husband’s bodily fluids. Nothing more.’
The last time she was down in the cellar, she had grinned.
‘I think you’re dreaming about your old life. Yes. I do believe you are. That just shows how stupid you are. Have you looked at yourself in the mirror? If you were only half as ugly, it would be bad enough. I’m trying to come up with a word to describe what you are, but I can’t. No, wait, I know. Spent. There you go. You’re spent. Finished. You should think about the rope.’
Ylva tried to remind herself of something she’d heard Christians say. That you chose to believe.
She didn’t believe. Not in the possibility of escape, nor that her old life was waiting for her outside.
To clean the house.
To be allowed to leave the cellar, if only occasionally. The thought made her giddy. It was almost impossible to take in.
Ylva’s stomach was in upheaval.
She wished that Gösta hadn’t said anything, not fed her that false hope.
Sanna watched them, as if she knew that Nour was a threat to her and Mike’s world. But it was confusing for her, because she liked Nour and didn’t know how to deal with the fact that her daddy also seemed to like her.
Sanna and Nour played badminton while Mike tended to the barbecue. Nothing to worry about. It was different later, when all three of them went to Hamnplan in the car to swim. Sanna insisted on sitting in the front as normal.
Mike said that the front seat was actually meant for adults, but Nour quickly and deftly managed to smooth feathers by jumping in the back.
Once they were in the water, Sanna showed all her tricks to Nour. She dived between her father’s legs, jumped from the jetty and did the front crawl. But no matter how hard she tried, her father and Nour somehow seemed to end up beside each other all the time.
After swimming, they drove to Sofiero’s and bought icecream, which they ate on the bench outside the kiosk. Sanna held out her cone so Nour could have a taste.
‘Mm, that’s good,’ Nour said.
‘What have you got?’ Sanna asked.
‘Rum and raisin. Do you want to try?’
Nour held out her cone and Sanna licked it.
‘Ugh. That’s horrible. Tastes like alcohol.’
‘It is alcohol. Rum.’
‘I’m not allowed that.’
‘I think it’s okay,’ Mike said.
‘Children shouldn’t have alcohol,’ Sanna said.
‘No, that’s right,’ Nour replied.
‘Why did you give me some then?’
‘I thought you wanted a taste.’
‘Not alcohol.’
‘It’s not real alcohol,’ Nour explained. ‘The raisins are soaked in rum for the flavour.’
‘It tastes horrible.’
It was no more than that, but it was so pointed that Nour and Mike exchanged glances over her head.
‘Will you drive me home?’ Nour asked.
‘Of course,’ Mike said.
They dropped her off at Bomgränden. Nour stretched over from the back seat and put a hand on Mike’s shoulder.
‘Thank you for a lovely day.’
‘Wait, I’ll get out. We have to say goodbye properly.’
He got out of the car and gave Nour a hug.
‘Thank you,’ he whispered.
Nour patted him on the chest, bent down and spoke to Sanna.
‘Have fun riding tomorrow. Hope to see you again soon.’
‘Mm.’
In the car on the way home, Sanna asked her father if he was in love with Nour.
‘Why do you ask that?’
Sanna shrugged.
‘It seems like it.’
‘Does it?’
Sanna didn’t answer.
Mike drove home along Drottninggatan and Strandvägen. It was a meditative route that most people from Helsingborg preferred to the motorway by Berga. The sky was immense and open down by the water, whereas the motorway offered only traffic and movement.
Mike remembered the time when Tinkarpsbacken was still cobbled and how the sound changed when the car left the tarmac. Back then the trees in the avenue at the top of the hill were big and solid, the old king’s sheep grazed in the meadow down by the water and there was a model of a sailing boat with several masts in the window of the red-and-white farmhouse closest to the road. Now the cobbles had been replaced by smooth tarmac, new trees, still pathetically small, had been planted on the avenue, and there was no longer a sailing boat in the farmhouse window.
‘I miss Mummy,’ Sanna said.
Mike glanced over at his daughter. She was staring straight ahead.
‘I do too,’ he said. ‘I do too.’
42
‘Karlsson speaking.’
‘Hello. I’d like to remain anonymous.’
The voice belonged to a woman who was determined and yet unsure, given the situation.
‘What’s it concerning?’ Karlsson asked.
‘Ylva Zetterberg.’
‘Who?’
‘The woman from Hittarp who disappeared just over a year ago.’
‘I’m with you,’ Karlsson said. ‘Why do you want to remain anonymous?’
‘Because what I’m about to say is sensitive.’
‘Well, come on then.’
‘Ylva’s husband is seeing another woman.’
Karlsson sat quietly and waited for her to go on, but she said nothing.
‘And …?’ he said in the end.
‘He’s spending a lot of time with one of Ylva’s colleagues.’
‘Right.’
‘A lot of time, if you get what I mean.’
‘They’re an item?’ Karlsson prompted.
‘They’re quite open about it, not
ashamed. She’s a foreigner.’
‘Well, there you go.’
‘My immediate thought was that they did it together.’
‘Did what?’
‘Got Ylva out of the way.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Like I said, just a thought. But perhaps it’s not that interesting to you that the husband of a missing woman is having a relationship with one of her former colleagues?’
‘All observations are of interest,’ Karlsson said, and rolled his eyes at Gerda, who had appeared in the doorway, eyebrows raised in question. ‘I just don’t quite understand why you think that they have anything to do with Ylva’s disappearance.’
‘Motive,’ the woman said.
‘Motive?’ Karlsson repeated, and at the same time ceased to pay attention to the woman’s ramblings.
‘She stood in the way of their love.’
‘Sounds fascinating,’ Karlsson said. ‘Is there a number I can get you on?’
‘Yes, zero seven three – no, I want to remain anonymous, I said so.’
‘Well, thank you for calling. I promise we’ll follow that up.’
Karlsson put down the phone and looked at his colleague.
‘The wife murderer in Hittarp,’ he said. ‘The man whose wife disappeared.’
‘What did he want?’ Gerda asked.
‘No, no, it was some old cow, probably a neighbour. Apparently he’s porking his wife’s colleague.’
‘Something we should check out?’
‘How, exactly?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Precisely. Is there any fresh coffee?’
Virginia looked out of the kitchen window on to Tennisvägen. She held the teacup up to her mouth and blew. She had done the right thing. It would be wrong not to say anything. Wrong to stay silent. Mike shouldn’t go unpunished.
It was three months since Nour had come over for dinner, two months since the first kiss, and so far they’d only managed to have sex a handful of times. Their initial attempt was more a case of clumsy groping while Sanna slept uneasily in the room next door. The other times had been up in Nour’s flat on Bomgränden, at lunchtime.
This was the first night they had been alone together. Sanna had been packed off to her grandmother’s.
