The Resting Place, page 16
He is so close to saying no. I can see that. He wants to refuse, with an aversion so strong it’s physical. But I stare at him quietly, and he looks me in the eye, and then he says:
“OK.”
I have probably never loved him as much as I do in that moment.
“Thank you,” I say.
I look around, swallowing. There’s a small footstool that has been kicked aside below the hanged man, but it looks too rickety.
I walk over to one of the velvet armchairs by the fireplace, and put the knife down on one of them. They are solid, substantial pieces, as I realize when I start dragging it over to the body. My arms are aching and I’m still sore after everything that has happened in the past few days, but I manage to get it all the way over. I pick up the knife again, feel its cool weight in my hand.
“OK, I’m going up,” I say to Sebastian, my voice shaking just a little. “When I say so, grab him.”
Sebastian stands right next to what was once Mats Bengtsson, just a few inches from the lonely boot.
“OK.”
When I’m standing with one foot on each armrest, for a few seconds I’m afraid they’ll give way under me, but they hold without so much as a groan in protest. The hard stuffing is stable under my feet, and I reach out for the rope. The blue fibers are so taut they look like they might snap at the slightest touch.
Now that I’m this close I can smell something. Not decay, exactly, but something else, frostbitten flesh, perhaps—something cold and irony that lingers on the hands, no matter how many times you wash them.
I almost vomit—I feel my stomach lurch—but manage to keep it down. I force my eyes to look at the rope, and not what is hanging from it.
“Sebastian,” I say, unable to even pretend my voice is really carrying. “Now.”
The silence that follows lasts an eternity, but then I hear a movement, and see the rope suddenly shift. Sebastian has taken hold of the body from behind.
I lift the knife and start cutting the rope.
The fibers break, quickly and mercifully. They are brittle and worn, and the cold has taken its toll. It takes no more than a minute for the blade to cut its way through.
Still, that minute lasts all too long.
When the last, thin strand of rope finally snaps, the muscles in my arm are screaming, and Sebastian lets out a little sound as the full weight of the body falls onto him.
He lays him down on the rug. Mats Bengtsson. More than five months after his death.
After Vivianne’s.
I look at Sebastian, and then I walk over and take him in my arms, squeeze him tightly, paying no attention to the faint smell of corpse now radiating from him, too. I just hold him, because that’s what he needs right now, and it’s what I need, too.
Everything stands still.
And then Rickard gives a long-drawn-out groan and opens his eyes.
ANUSHKA
JULY 1, 1966
The past few days it has rained nonstop. It’s cool but not cold, and more than anything else it makes for a nice respite from the heat.
Yesterday I knocked on the door of what was once their room but is now Ma’am’s room (Sir has started sleeping in one of the guest rooms), and found her out of bed. The sight shocked me so much I gave a start.
“G-g-good morning,” I managed to stutter. She didn’t turn around. She was standing by the window, gazing out at the lake. Her unwashed nightgown was hanging from her narrow shoulders, and her hair dangled down her back. Seeing it like this, and not in its carefully curled locks, I could suddenly see how similar it is to my own—rough and stubborn.
I was only in there to do some dusting and I don’t know what got into me, but I asked:
“Would Ma’am like me to brush her hair?”
At first she didn’t move. But then she turned around, so that her profile was lit by the light of the window, and nodded.
She sat down on the chair by the dressing table and handed me a heavy brush with a silver handle. Standing there behind her, I could smell her. It wasn’t an offensive smell, necessarily, but a smell of body, one that clearly hadn’t been washed in a while. Her hair was greasy at the roots, and the tangles were almost matted. I separated the strands one by one and brushed them gently, delicately, the way Mama used to brush mine when I was a child, her eyes so tired that they were almost falling asleep. I tried to make my hands as soft as my mama’s.
Ma’am’s face didn’t move. She just stared at herself in the mirror. Without makeup on she looked both older and younger at the same time.
The rain was streaming down the windowpanes. The light outside was mild and gray, leaving no sharp edges.
When I brushed her hair out and looked at her in the mirror I saw that her eyes were closed. The deep wrinkles in her forehead that have appeared as if by magic over the past few months had softened.
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
I placed the brush down carefully on the dressing table in front of her, then lingered there for a moment.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
For a few seconds, the only sound to be heard was the rain pattering against the windowpanes.
“Go.”
She had opened her eyes. She looked so tired.
“I…,” I started, but she said it again:
“Go, Annika.”
And then she added, with a voice that made my stomach drop:
“Please, just go.”
And so I went.
ELEANOR
“Rickard!” I say, and kneel down beside him.
His eyes are bleary and bloodshot and they flit around between us as he tries to sit up, but then he groans, coughs, and gives up.
“Don’t move,” I say. “You’re … pretty badly hurt.”
I don’t want to tell him I’m afraid he could have internal bleeding or a ruptured spleen or something. The bruises on his midriff look like nothing I have ever seen before, and though I don’t know enough about serious injuries to be able to tell how bad things really are, his shallow breathing and pale, sweaty skin suggest it’s bad. Very bad.
Sebastian has knelt down beside him, too. Rickard’s eyes dart back and forth between us. He seems to be struggling to recognize us.
“Do you remember who I am?” I ask.
He nods and shuts his eyes again.
“Do you remember messaging me?” I go on. He must have sent it from the small, black cell phone on the floor, the one I now see lying next to him.
Bengtsson’s phone. How could it still be charged, after all these months? Bengtsson must have turned it off before he put the noose around his neck. That would be why I went straight to voicemail whenever I tried to call. When Rickard found it and turned it back on there must have been a little battery left.
Rickard nods again.
“Where am I?” he asks. He takes a few deep breaths, grimacing with every inhale.
“You’re in the hunting lodge. Do you remember how you got here?”
He slowly shakes his head.
A sharp gust of wind makes the chimney howl. I look over my shoulder at the door. It’s still shut, but that doesn’t stop my heart from pounding.
“Rickard,” I say, “can you look at me?”
He opens his eyes and searches for mine. I can see that even this takes some effort.
“Do you remember who did this to you?”
Nothing in his face suggests he understands the question.
“Listen to me,” I say. “You have to say something, so I know you understand me. You went out to the wine cellar to get a bottle.”
He nods.
“Did you go to the wine cellar? Or did you go somewhere else? Like to your car?”
“No,” he says. “I went … to the wine cellar.” The breath he takes between the words sounds strained.
I try not to hear the wet, bubbling sound in his chest.
“Then what happened?”
The silence lasts so long I don’t think he’s going to say anything more. His face is so drained it looks like it would feel cold to the touch.
“There was someone there,” he says eventually. “I saw someone in the storm. I shouted, but he ran away. I followed him. Then I saw…” He raises his hand and touches his head. Frowns, as though trying to remember something.
“I saw … lights. Bright lights.” He licks his lips. “That’s all I remember.”
I look at Sebastian, who raises his eyebrows but doesn’t say a word. I don’t understand either. It could be a false memory, from the head trauma. Or something as simple as a flashlight in a snowstorm.
But that thought seems worse.
Because who would that be? Who would be wandering around in a storm with a flashlight?
A few hours ago I would have said Bengtsson. But now I know it can’t be him.
So the figure by the cottage …
The thought coils, cold and noxious, in the pit of my stomach.
“Do you remember what happened to you?” Sebastian asks. “Your injuries are … pretty serious.” He swallows.
Rickard purses his lips. They are dry and pale.
“No. Maybe I fell, or…”
I cast a glance at Sebastian, and can tell he’s thinking the same thing as me. Those injuries couldn’t come from a fall. Someone has hurt him, badly, the same person who hit Veronika’s head so hard the blood left thick, matted clumps in her hair.
But I don’t think Rickard is trying to hide something. I believe him when he says he doesn’t remember. He doesn’t seem to be in any condition to be lying.
“Do you think you can stand up?” Sebastian asks Rickard, who looks at him with resignation in his eyes.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I can try.”
Sebastian looks at me.
“We’ll be right back, OK?” I put my hand on Rickard’s arm, trying my best to sound warm and caring. Rickard looks at me for a long time. I don’t know if he’s searching for something in my face, or if I’m reading something into his look that isn’t there.
With aching muscles I stand up and walk over to Sebastian by the fireplace. From above the mantel a moth-eaten elk head stares down at us haughtily, its eyes glimmering, cold and blind, in the dim light of the windows.
Sebastian opens his mouth, then shuts it again.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “I’m so sorry, Eleanor. I should have listened to you. I should have trusted you.”
It should feel good to hear this, but I don’t feel anything at all. It doesn’t mean anything, not anymore. Not when I so desperately wish I were wrong.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say, but Sebastian shakes his head.
“No,” he says, “you were right.”
“Not about Rickard,” I say.
“No. But about there being someone here. That you saw someone, that something wasn’t right. I should have listened.”
I allow myself to close my eyes, briefly, to come back to myself. Then I open them again.
“We have to get out of here.”
“How are we going to take him with us?” Sebastian asks.
He is trying to muffle his voice, but the lodge is so small that Rickard can probably hear our mumblings anyway.
“He’ll have to walk. We can support him, but he’ll have to walk.”
“I think his ribs are broken, Eleanor. If he stumbles they could puncture his lungs.”
“Better that than leaving him here. All we have to do is get him back to the house. Then we can put him in a car and drive to the nearest hospital.”
Sebastian runs his hand over his mouth.
“Shit, Eleanor,” he says—not even a whisper anymore, barely even an exhalation. “What is this?”
I shake my head.
“I don’t know. I…”
Then it hits me.
I walk back over to Rickard and sit down. When I speak, my soft, accommodating voice is gone.
“Rickard, look at me,” I say, and he opens his eyes with visible strain. I almost relent when I see the exhaustion and pain on his face, but I steel myself.
Sometimes we have to get our hands a little dirty, Victoria. Don’t let anybody push you around. Don’t let anybody try to dodge your questions or lie to you. You can’t play your next hand until you have all the cards.
“Rickard, I found Veronika’s letters in your car.”
Even through the pain in his face, I can see him suddenly go still, a new watchfulness in his eyes.
“It was you who took them, wasn’t it? Don’t try to deny it.”
His breaths are slow, audibly rattling in his throat.
“Yes,” he says eventually.
“Why?”
He is still eyeing me up with that watchful gaze. When he opens his mouth I can already tell he intends to lie.
“I mistook them for—”
“If you lie to me I’m leaving you here,” I interrupt.
My voice sounds alien to my own ears.
Sebastian says, “Eleanor,” in shock, but I don’t look his way. I keep my eyes on Rickard, let him see that I mean what I say.
Do I?
I don’t think I could leave an injured man to freeze to death, with only a corpse for company. But by this point it feels like I have been walking through a fog for months. I have to know what all of this is.
You may not be able to leave him here, but I can, my dear. Leave this to me.
For what is perhaps the first time in my life, Vivianne’s voice is very welcome in my head.
I see when the shift happens in Rickard’s eyes. When he makes the decision.
When he opens his mouth again, he sounds different. His voice less nasal, a touch deeper.
“I’m not a lawyer.”
ANUSHKA
JULY 7, 1966
Oh, help, I don’t know what to do.
Part of me is annoyed at Märit, because if she hadn’t said anything I wouldn’t have noticed. Before she said it the thought hadn’t even crossed my mind, but now I can’t look at him without blushing!
It all happened yesterday at lunch. I have started taking any root vegetables that are beginning to spoil out to the stable—the horses seem to like chewing them, and Kicki loves the chance to feed them. At first she was afraid of them, but now she reaches her chubby little hand as high as she can toward their muzzles, and when the horses chomp at the carrots she feeds them she giggles herself breathless. That always makes me chuckle, too.
It was a beautiful day yesterday, with fluffy white clouds floating across the sky and a mild breeze blowing in the trees, making everything smell of pine and sunshine. When I got to the stable, the stableboy was showing Kicki how to brush the horses. He’s kind and a little quiet, and Kicki seems to like him.
When I walked in he looked up and seemed to lose his train of thought, and Kicki had to tug at his arm to remind him to keep on brushing. I smiled and said hello, handed Märit the bread I had brought with me, and then gave Kicki a bunch of carrots to feed the horses with. I said hello to the stableboy, who smiled bashfully and nodded back at me.
It was only when Märit and I were sitting on the steps in the sunshine that she nudged me in my side.
“So, what do you think of him?” she asked.
“Who?” I replied, but then answered straightaway: “Oh, he’s nice. I think he’s just worried about his wife.”
“No, not Sir,” she said, “Mats.”
“Mats?” I asked, now confused.
Märit jerked her head back. I turned around automatically to see the stableboy, who had gone on to inspecting one of the horses’ hooves—the little brown one he sometimes lets Kicki sit on and walks around.
“I don’t know,” I said. “He’s friendly?”
Märit laughed at me. She has a dimple that appears when she laughs like that, high up on her left cheek.
“Oh, Annika. You must have noticed that he’s head over heels about you?”
It felt like my whole face was starting to blush, and I shook my head.
“Don’t be silly! He’s not at all!”
“Hey, just because you haven’t noticed doesn’t mean it isn’t true,” Märit said, turning her face up to the sun. After a few weeks out here, her freckles have started to appear. Mama always said that freckles looked dirty, but the way they look on Märit makes me wish I had them, too. I have skin like Ma’am’s—so pale that I just get sunburned and pink nosed in summer.
“I think you should have a summer fling, Annika,” said Märit.
I must have looked so puzzled that Märit assumed I didn’t understand.
“You know, a little romance,” she said. “With Mats. A beautiful young girl like you. It would do you a world of good. And he’s pretty cute when you really look at him. Under all those sack-like shirts he wears, his shoulders are big and broad.”
I couldn’t even look at her now; I just shook my head as she laughed and put her arm around me.
I wish she hadn’t said anything! Now I can’t even look at the poor boy without going red as a beetroot, and he seems to have noticed too, because he won’t even meet my eyes.
* * *
No, I don’t want any fling with him, but how could I say that to Märit? I’m scared she would see there’s something I’m not telling her.
Mats isn’t the one I think about before I go to sleep. As I close my eyes on that hard little bed in my windowless cubby, his sweet brown eyes aren’t what I see.
The eyes I see are a bright, light blue.
The one I think about is sleeping in the bedroom next to mine.
But I could never say that to Märit.
ELEANOR
“Who are you?” I ask Rickard.
His gaze is still steady and locked on mine, but I can see that even this takes some effort. His forehead has started to get clammy, and the sweat is beading along his hairline, even in spite of the cold.
“I’m a private investigator.”
Private investigator. My exhausted mind is racing so fast that for a moment I appear to lose all ability to speak.
The light in the little lodge has dimmed even more. All of the corners are in shadow. The cloud cover above us must be so thick and dark that it’s completely shutting out the pale winter sun.
