Inertia, page 34
My heart finds its rhythm and sensation returns to my limbs. The room regains its outlines.
‘Fernando’
‘Waterloo’
‘When I Kissed the Teacher’
I turn my head slightly and look straight ahead, into a living room where the sun flows in through large casement windows. One of the windows is open; it sways slowly in the light breeze.
That must have been where the squeak came from.
I shake my head at my own imagination. Inhale deeply and begin to walk towards the living room.
‘Head Over Heels’
‘Name of the Game’
My steps are calm now. Determined. They are steps that know what they want and will not budge for imaginary monsters. But the wide floorboards groan alarmingly under my weight and I am forced to stop.
I let my gaze wander across the room.
Outside the window the sea stretches lazily in the afternoon sun, doomed to forever strive for the heavens, but never reach beyond the horizon. White sofas and armchairs are positioned across the floor. There are bookshelves along the walls. Spines in all sizes and colours of the rainbow fill the shelves, but also photos and ornaments.
Next to a photo of a woman and a little boy there is a cobalt-blue glass bowl on a stem that reminds me of my old cake platter back home in Fruängen that I inherited from my grandmother.
I step closer.
There is a man’s watch with a canvas strap in the bowl, a mobile phone case with a hemp leaf pattern and . . .
And . . .
The window squeaks again and thumps as it swings open and hits a flowerpot. A warm gust of wind caresses my back and the hairs at the back of my neck stand on end.
I look at the blue bowl uncomprehendingly.
Next to the phone case there is a keychain. A tiny fish and an equally small plastic book dangle from the key ring.
That is Samuel’s key ring – I gave it to him myself. We ordered those for all the kids in the congregation’s youth programme. Of course it was cheap Chinese tat. But the important thing was what it meant – obviously the fish symbolised Christianity and the little book was the Bible, the holy scripture.
But why are Samuel’s keys here, in the blue bowl, if he isn’t here anymore? I reach out to touch the key chain, as if it could help me understand what happened. As if the cheapest plastic might transmit some kind of hidden message.
Thud.
Instinctively I turn around. Expect to see the window hit the flowerpot again. But I am face to face with a woman.
She is dressed in jeans shorts and a thin, white blouse. Her dark, almost black hair, hangs over her shoulders. No, it doesn’t hang, it flows, like a river, down her shoulders, along the pale marble skin of her neck.
She is beautiful, very beautiful.
Beautiful in a way that I have never come close to being. And even as the panic comes roaring back, I register that we look alike – kind of like sisters, where one turned out beautiful and the other ugly.
Rachel.
‘Who are you and what are you doing in my house?’ she says in a shrill voice, squeezing hard an object that she is holding in her hand. I can’t see what it is, but it is small and when she moves it reflects the sunlight.
I open my mouth to answer but no words come out.
Rachel takes a step towards me and I step back, knocking my elbow into the blue bowl. It rocks a couple of times, but remains on the shelf.
‘Who are you?’ she screams.
‘I . . .’
My voice doesn’t carry.
I back a few steps out towards the hallway. Trip on the threshold and almost fall, but manage to grab on to the door frame at the last second. But my sweaty hands slide across the painted surface and I lose my balance again:
‘Honey Honey’
‘When All is Said and Done’
‘Samuel,’ I whisper. ‘I am Samuel’s mother. Where is he?’
Rachel begins to walk towards me and I keep backing into the hallway. I trip again and fall against the grey side table. The vase topples over with a crash. Glass shards and roses scatter across the floor like spillikins. Cold water runs down my calves.
‘Samuel quit,’ Rachel says.
‘No,’ I say. ‘I saw his keys. He has to be here.’
‘He quit,’ she says again, taking yet another step towards me. ‘He found another, more ambitious job. Just like the others.’
Rachel stops and for a second she looks endlessly sad. And the sadness somehow seems to take the edge off her anger, at least for a moment, so I decide to keep talking. Just talking.
When it comes down to it, that is what I am best at.
‘I miss him terribly,’ I say and to my surprise I hear that my voice carries.
She knits her brow and lets her eyes wander across the roses on the floor. Then she slowly shakes her head.
‘I know all about missing someone,’ she says after a short pause.
I nod and follow her gaze. Next to my foot there is a door stopper of wrought iron, shaped like a little lamb.
A thought crystallises. A thought so terrible that I almost don’t want to follow it all the way to the horrific conclusion.
I think of the poem. I look at the wrought-iron lamb.
And at that very moment the image of the self-satisfied pastor shows up in my mind again, but I also see one of the framed illustrations on the wall behind him in the congregation hall. It shows a lamb resting safely next to a giant lion.
The Lion of Judah.
The sacrificial lamb.
It is so ridiculously simple that I can’t believe I didn’t think of it earlier. Or that those clever police officers didn’t crack the riddle sooner.
‘It was you,’ I whisper. ‘You are both the lion and the lamb. The atonement and the battle, just like Jesus. There is no accomplice.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Rachel says, but she doesn’t look at me. Her eyes are fixed on the floor.
‘You assumed the right to play with God,’ I say.
In the same instant I realise my mistake:
‘Oh. Sorry. To play God, I mean.’
But my mistake completely passes Rachel by. There’s a twitch in one of her eyes and she is bracing herself against the wall with one hand.
‘I read the poem,’ I say. ‘Samuel wrote me a message on it. On the poem, that is. And put it in the car. My car. So that I found it.’
‘My partner is a writer—’ she begins.
‘You know your Bible,’ I interrupt. ‘Just like I do. The lion and the lamb are one and the same. They are both symbols of Jesus. The sacrificial lamb who died for our sake and the lion, the king, the messiah. They are Jesus in two different guises. That is how you see yourself, isn’t it? As God? And just like God you believe you have the right to take lives.’
‘I just want my son back,’ Rachel murmurs. ‘Just like you.’ She is crying now. Big tears roll down the pale cheeks and I see real grief and pain in her face. And in that instant yet another piece of the puzzle falls into place.
She didn’t choose the name Rachel just because it meant lamb.
I recall the words from the gospel of Matthew clearly, can almost hear Father’s voice as he reads out loud from his old well-worn Bible:
‘In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.’
Rachel raises her eyes, taking a few steps towards me. There is crackling and crunching as she walks across the broken glass with her bare feet, but her face is as expressionless as stone.
She leaves bloody footsteps as she walks across the wooden floorboards. They glisten in the sunlight that is making its way in from the living room.
‘Where is Samuel?’ I ask again, backing towards the front door. Feel with my hand for the doorknob and find it.
She shakes her head slowly.
‘He is gone,’ she whispers. ‘He is gone. Everyone is gone.’
‘No!’ I say with tears in my throat. ‘He isn’t gone, do you understand? You know where he is and you are going to tell me.’
The handle rests cold in my hand when I push it down, but it doesn’t move one inch.
I look around, search with my gaze for the keys, that have to be somewhere.
Rachel shakes her head slowly. A large puddle of blood has spread around one of her feet, but she doesn’t seem to notice.
‘Are you looking for this?’ she asks and holds up a bunch of keys.
Manfred
‘N
o chance I can make it over that fence,’ I say, looking down at my gut protruding over my waistband.
‘Yes, there is,’ says Malin who has already climbed over to the other side. ‘If I can climb it in my condition, then so can you.’
I follow her, hesitantly.
It ends up being a humiliating experience.
I get stuck halfway up and my expensive English suit trousers acquire a long tear before I clumsily roll over the fence and fall into the grass on the other side like overripe fruit in the autumn. I land on my side and feel a stab in my bad knee. Slowly I get up, end up on all fours like a dog till I recover my dignity and manage to stand.
Once I’m on my feet my phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out and read a message from Afsaneh.
Come to the hospital now!
A cold hand squeezes my heart as I reply.
What’s happened?
Then I run after Malin as fast as my knee will allow. She has already made it to the house and is standing on the stoop, gazing up at the whitewashed exterior. She turns around and looks at me. Then she puts her hand on the handle and tries to open the front door.
I catch up with her, panting. Stop, put my hands on my knees and take a few deep breaths.
Malin looks at me quizzically, then knocks very carefully on the door and inspects the locks.
‘Safety door,’ she says. ‘We’re not getting in this way.’
‘Perhaps we should try ringing the bell,’ I suggest. ‘Like normal people.’
‘You do that. I’ll check the windows.’
Malin disappears down the steps at the same time I get up and wipe the sweat off my forehead.
I push the brass button. Hear the signal cut through the silence, then wait.
Nothing.
I ring again, and then again, but nobody opens. No steps approach from inside the house. Rachel doesn’t open the door and my sense that something is wrong grows stronger.
Malin comes back, shakes her head.
‘I heard something from inside the house; it sounded like a scream. Perhaps we should wait here and call for back-up.’
I look at my pregnant colleague and know she is right. Going into the house on our own is against all rules and common sense. You’re not allowed to even carry a gun when pregnant, much less discharge one. At the same time my conviction that time is of the essence grows stronger.
‘We have to go in,’ I say.
‘There are thick bars on all the windows on the ground floor. She must really have been scared of burglaries. And there’s a deck facing the ocean, but you can’t get up onto it. It’s at the edge of a cliff.’
I lean back and let my eyes wander across the white house, absorb the gingerbread work, the bars in front of the windows and the security door.
‘Do we still have that long wire in the car?’ I ask.
‘I think so, why? Do you think we should climb up? We aren’t exactly the most agile in the force, you and I.’
Malin smiles, as if the thought of the two of us hanging from a wire is comical.
‘No. We’re going in through that window.’
I point to one of the gables and then look at Malin’s questioning gaze.
A few minutes later I have secured the wire and give it a light tug.
‘Ready?’ Malin calls from down the road.
‘Ready,’ I answer.
It is quiet for a bit. Then I hear the bang of the car door closing and the sound of the engine starting.
The metal wire goes taut. There are groans and little cracks become visible in the wood around the attachments for the safety bars. The cracks deepen, the wood fibres snap and long splinters poke out of the wood.
Malin accelerates and I hear the wheels spin on the dry gravel road. A second later the bars come off with a crash, fly off and end up in the grass a bit further away.
I wrap my jacket around my fist, break the window, stick my hand in and open it from the inside.
Malin comes running across the lawn.
‘I’ll do it,’ she says, and climbs in the open window with surprising agility.
A second later she reaches her hand out. I grab it and climb after her into the house. We are in a bedroom furnished with a hospital bed and some sort of metal frame with a harness attached. The room has two doors: to the right I look into what must be the hall.
The floor is covered in blood. Broken glass and red roses are scattered all over the place. Malin takes her gun out and cocks it. I do the same and follow her into the hallway.
‘There,’ Malin says and points to tracks of blood that continue into a living room with large windows facing the water.
A white armchair has been knocked over and there are smudged bloodstains around it. A flowerpot lies broken on the floor.
Through the large windows there is a deck, surrounded by a white wooden railing. A section is missing from the middle of the railing, it looks almost as if someone has kicked it in. Sharp pieces of wood jut out from the hole, and right next to one of them, someone is clinging to the actual railing.
My heart picks up speed and I run for the doors. In that instant I am no longer here, in Rachel’s house in Stuvskär. In that instant I am at home on Karlavägen and it is spring and Nadja still hasn’t . . .
And I run.
I run because it is the only thing I can do. I run because I have to, because I must. You cannot let your child, fall, die. It is the one thing you cannot do in life.
‘Nadja!’ I bellow when I get out onto the deck and see the hands with their white-knuckled hold on the railing.
‘Nadja!’
And I am so afraid. So very afraid, because I already know how it ends. But I throw myself towards her because that is what you do. You throw yourself at your child, you walk through fire and water.
You do everything and then more.
And I get a hold of her, I make it. But the hand is slowly sliding out of mine.
‘I’m losing her!’ I scream and in the next instant Malin is by my side and I am transported back to reality – to Stuvskär and a time in which Nadja is already lost.
To the reality in which it is already too late.
But this woman won’t fall. I can save this woman.
Malin gets a firm grip on her lower arm and braces against a board.
I look down at the woman whose hand I am holding – the woman who is Rachel, aka Susanne Bergdorff. I can see the precipice over her shoulder and my stomach drops. It has to be at least fifty feet down to the ground, covered with rocks and boulders. Beyond them is a jetty and a boathouse.
Then nothing but sea.
Rachel’s long hair flaps in the wind and she groans heavily. Her arms are bloody and her eyes half-closed.
There is a crash and another part of the fence breaks. A foot-and-a-half long piece of wood falls off, bounces down the rocks and then floats to the ground where it lands with a sharp bang.
‘Now!’ Malin says and with a joint effort we get the woman onto the deck.
*
Ten minutes later Susanne Bergdorff is lying prone on the deck in handcuffs, because although we don’t know if she is our killer we aren’t taking any risks. We have searched the house, established that it is empty and called for back-up.
Susanne murmurs something inaudible.
‘Uehl.’
‘Either she got hit or she is under the influence of something,’ Malin pants and stands up with much effort. ‘I let them know that we will need an ambulance as well.’
She goes into the living room to contact central command.
‘Muehl,’ Susanne groans again.
My gaze wanders away from her, past the enclosure and on down the paving to the jetty.
If she’d fallen from the deck she would have died instantaneously. She would have broken every bone in her body.
High-energy impact, I think.
And in the next moment the logical conclusion emerges: could that be what happened? Dead bodies are difficult to drag, but even a child could roll them off a cliff. And once down there it would be relatively easy to transport them out to sea.
The realisation makes my stomach turn.
Malin comes out again.
‘We have a neighbour here,’ she says. ‘Can you have a few words with him? I’ll stay in touch with our colleagues and keep an eye on her in the meantime.’
*
The neighbour, a man in his forties, introduces himself and takes my hand. He would have looked ordinary had it not been for the large disfiguring scar running from one temple down to the corner of his mouth.
‘She is renting from Mai-Lis Wennström,’ he says in such a broad Southern Swedish dialect that he is hard to understand. ‘I spoke to a police officer earlier today, on the phone. And I told her something isn’t right here.’
‘OK?’
‘What happened by the way?’
The man looks inquisitively towards the house and then at the three cars that are parked by the side of the road.
‘We can’t talk about it right now,’ I say. ‘What do you mean something isn’t right?’
The man makes a face, turns his head and spits, as if he’d just bitten into something sour.
‘Young boys. New ones every time I came. And then the sick son. In the end I went in to find out what she was doing. But then she asked me what I’d done to the boy, even though I hadn’t even touched him. But I have seen her photographing him in there.’
‘She was photographing him?’
The man nods and turns his disfigured cheek away so that he is watching me from the side.
‘Did you ask her what she was doing?’
‘I spoke with her several times,’ the man says, nodding. ‘But she was slippery, like a snake. And she threatened to call the police unless I got off her property. Her property? What bullshit. I wish Mai-Lis would’ve heard that. Then the bitch would have been thrown out head-first.’
