The Axe Woman, page 25
Now, looking back on it twenty-three years later from Ragnhild’s Mountain Guest House – or Mona’s Mountain Guest House, she prefers that name, having never even met Ragnhild – she thinks she should have got a grip on herself. As the days turned into weeks that summer, she should have taken a shovel out into the woods one night and made sure her husband was buried good and deep. Six feet under, didn’t they say?
But it’s easy to think things with hindsight and be wise after the event; it went as it did because it was necessary. Things had to be resolved, and when that day in August arrives, she feels no bitterness or regret. Since then she has sometimes found it hard to understand that, but that was how it was.
That is how it is. She and Billy are on holiday, they only have each other and it’s amazing how simply and easily everything goes. Particularly with Göran, and even Ingvor, being so helpful. Yes, amazing is the word.
Her brother and sister-in-law come to visit. Gunder and Lisbeth; it is just after the Öland trip. It has never happened before, and they even stay the night. She talks mainly to Lisbeth; things have always been difficult with her brother. But they all have dinner together and share a bottle of wine. Billy is at the table with them, too. Lisbeth tries to talk to him a few times and also spends a little while on her own with Billy in his room.
A few months later, this suddenly appears in a more significant light.
As if she knew.
But of course she can’t have done.
Six guests. But as she and Mona are eating, too, albeit in peace and quiet in the kitchen, there are really eight of them.
Game casserole with the almond potatoes of the region. It’s a classic, and more or less what the guests will expect; the game in the stew can include a bit of anything. As long as they serve the customary lingonberry sauce, cornichons and little balsamic onions on the side.
She has said hello to the guests in advance, even Inspector Barbarotti. The other five are a young couple from Stockholm and a German family with a ten-year-old son. The family has been staying for nearly a week and will be moving on tomorrow. With no particular destination planned, perhaps the North Cape eventually – that was a route the German visitors tended to favour.
But now here she is, sitting in the kitchen with Mona, eating dinner. The detective she is about to speak to is seated at a table on his own out there. She doesn’t feel particularly anxious, but it’s still good to know that Mona will be on hand. Just in case anything goes wrong. She doesn’t quite know what she means by that thought, but chooses not to scrutinize it any further. Instead she asks Mona if she thinks there are enough juniper berries in the stew.
Oh yes, plenty, says Mona, and gives her a wink. You’re not nervous, are you, sweetie pie?
The hell I am, says Ellen, and they laugh together in that way that makes her feel utterly safe.
She has never told Mona that her laugh has that effect on her. Mona knows, even so. To be precise, Mona basically knows everything, and Ellen has sometimes thought the best idea would be to move up here permanently herself.
But it is important to be away from here, as well. Above all, perhaps, to be able to come back, and they have never really discussed the more radical solution seriously. The main thing is that she knows she will always be welcome.
And that she isn’t a burden. She pulls her weight and Mona often says she doesn’t know how she would cope without Ellen.
The thought keeps recurring to her that she gets more love in a minute from Mona than she got from both her husbands put together, in more than twenty years. A different sort of love, of course, and thank goodness for that – but to think that she had to go to Hinseberg jail and to Vilhelmina to find it. Life is not a walk along a straight path.
At the start of July that summer she and Billy go camping on the island of Öland for four days. Billy is happy, she can see that, but he still doesn’t speak. She doesn’t put any pressure on him; the pact they have sealed works best in silence, there’s no doubt about it.
But they have never before been as close as they were on those days in Böda – and they never will be again. When everything comes to an end on that Monday in August, she knows that is how it will be, and Billy knows it just as well as she does. The whole time in Hinseberg, and ever since, she has felt grateful for that summer, and above all for the trip to Öland. She knows she is going to lose the boy and she knows it is this knowledge that makes the bond between them so strong.
Enjoy each day as it comes, enjoy it while you can, the Mutti voice tells her, but she doesn’t really need reminding. She thinks, both then and now, that she has never been as worldly-wise as she was in that short interlude.
As for Arnold, she hardly ever thinks of him. It’s a conscious decision; he pops into her head now and then, of course he does, but she always banishes him. He has nothing good to give her, nor ever did have, and the memory of him is little more than a burden. But she knows, of course, that he plays a crucial role, and that things wouldn’t have gone the way they did if he hadn’t existed. For better or worse, that’s just the way it is, and maybe that’s why she doesn’t want to think about him.
For better or worse?
But right now, with the dessert course of curd cheesecake and warm cloudberry sauce almost finished, both in the dining room and here in the kitchen, she feels a sudden stab of apprehension. Now that she is facing her talk with the detective sitting out there, waiting for her; Mona can see it and puts a hand on her arm.
‘There’s nothing to be afraid of, Ellen,’ she asserts in her deepest, most reassuring voice. ‘You know what you’re going to say – he can’t hurt you, remember you’re in the safest place on earth. Do you fancy a small brandy?’
They have a small glass each, and then they go out to clear the tables.
‘Ten minutes,’ she tells the detective. ‘I’ll be done in ten minutes.’
38
So there they are, finally.
The same table where he had dinner. A red-and-white checked tablecloth. Salt, pepper and HP Sauce. A knotty candlestick and a view over the mountains. The rain has stopped, but their outlines are still blurred by the low, scudding cloud. It is a few minutes past nine, they are alone; the other guests have retired and Monica Frisk is probably lurking in the kitchen.
They each have a cup of coffee. He puts his recording device on the table between them, she looks at it with surprise and he asks if she has any objection. She shakes her head.
She reminds him of a teacher he had at upper secondary school, he thinks. History and religious studies, if he remembers rightly, possibly social studies, too. Cool, correct, composed; her name was Miss Jonsson, wasn’t it?
She is quite small, too, Ellen Bjarnebo. Especially compared to Mona Frisk; there must be a thirty-kilo difference in weight. But she isn’t slight, he thinks, and she would certainly still have the strength in her body to deal a man a fatal blow with a sledgehammer, if the need arose. Her hair is short, dark and straight. Her eyes are calm and a greenish-grey, her facial features have a clean cut to them. He knows she is seven or eight years older than him, but it feels as if they are much the same age.
He has had time for these reflections as he was sitting over his meal. Some of them, anyway. They had exchanged greetings when he came down, and she has been back and forth between the kitchen and the dining room several times, to serve and to clear away. It feels very weird, he thinks, for this really to be her.
The Axe Woman of Little Burma.
And just as he has had time to observe her, so she has had time to observe him. Of course. He can’t remember ever having been part of such a protracted build-up to an interview. Or an interrogation, or whatever this is.
‘There are a few things I need to discuss with you,’ he begins. ‘Primarily about the disappearance of Arnold Morinder. We’re going through a few old cases that are still unresolved, and we’d be grateful for your cooperation. But we’re also still interested in the murder of your husband in 1989, for which you were convicted and served a prison sentence, because . . . well, because we think the two are linked.’
‘I see,’ said Ellen Bjarnebo. Her voice is calm and quite deep. Pleasing to the ear, thinks Barbarotti.
‘First, I want to ask you why you have been deliberately keeping out of my way. Both you and Mona Frisk lied to me when I was trying to make contact with you.’
‘That wasn’t my intention,’ answers Ellen Bjarnebo after a slight hesitation. ‘But I am under no obligation to turn up to this interview, as I understand it. I have paid for the crime I committed, and I have nothing more on my conscience.’
‘I can see your point of view,’ says Barbarotti, ‘but still.’
‘But still?’
‘Why such flagrant lying? All I want is to ask you a few questions. It makes me suspicious, you can see that, surely?’
‘It was Mona’s idea,’ says Ellen Bjarnebo. ‘But I agree with her. The police didn’t treat me correctly after Arnold went missing. I’m tired of being interrogated.’
‘We have to do our job,’ said Barbarotti, ‘and now I’ve come all this way to ask you to answer a few questions. Shall we start?’
‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ says Ellen Bjarnebo.
‘Thank you,’ says Barbarotti, and glances at his recorder. He glances out at the veils of cloud, too, and thinks of a game of chess in which he has already made several bad moves. Alfons Söderberg crops up for a moment, as unwelcome as a cold sore. He ignores him, gives a little cough and launches in again. ‘Right then. I’ve read everything you said in the interviews and at the trial, and there are a few points I wonder about. If we start with Arnold Morinder, I get the impression you weren’t particularly surprised when he went missing. Is that right?’
Ellen Bjarnebo shakes her head. ‘That isn’t right at all. I was as surprised as everybody else. But you don’t need to be a Nobel prizewinner to understand what the police were thinking. It’s hard to be surprised when you’re a suspect from the very first instant.’
‘I can see that,’ says Barbarotti. ‘But were you surprised then?’
‘Of course.’
‘What were your spontaneous thoughts?’
‘Sorry?’
‘When he didn’t come back that Sunday. What was the first thing that occurred to you?’
She gives it some thought, but only for a moment. ‘That he must have gone back into town.’
‘To the flat you both shared in Rocksta?’
‘Yes.’
‘And do you think he actually did?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘But if we assume that he did, can you see any reason why he might have?’
‘I don’t remember. What sort of thing do you mean?’
‘Well, perhaps you’d quarrelled?’
‘No, we hadn’t quarrelled. But Arnold was an odd one. He didn’t like talking. I didn’t always know what he was planning.’
‘But when he didn’t get back by the evening, you must have started to wonder?’
‘Maybe. Or when I didn’t hear from him the next day, at any rate. But I had the car, so I was all right.’
‘Did you try ringing him?’
‘Yes, I did. But I got no answer. I assumed he’d forgotten to charge his mobile. He often did. And the charger was still there at the hut.’
‘Did you have electricity out there?’
‘He’d fixed up a cable running from a transformer. Illegally, I think, but he was an electrician, after all.’
‘You say “was”.’
‘I don’t suppose he’s still an electrician, if he’s alive.’
‘And why’s that?’
She shrugs, but says nothing.
‘OK. But he had his mobile with him?’
‘I assume so. It was never found, anyway.’
‘Had it happened before? Him pushing off for a day, or longer?’
‘Only ever for a day.’
‘But you didn’t go into town to check whether he was there?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘When was that?’
‘It was the Wednesday.’
‘The day you called the police?’
‘Yes. Once I realized he hadn’t been back home, I called them. That must be in the interviews you read, surely?’
‘Yes,’ confirms Barbarotti, ‘it is. I just want to make certain that I understand.’
‘That you understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what is it you want to understand?’
And the sense of similarity with his old teacher abruptly intensifies. Her ostensibly simple question puts him on the spot – exactly as Miss Jonsson used to put him on the spot – and he feels he has been rumbled. Not completely exposed, but she has somehow shifted the balance to her advantage. He doesn’t know how, only that she has contrived to do it, and with no visible effort. Because what is there actually to understand? He fortifies himself with some coffee before he responds.
‘I want to understand what happened. That’s why I’m sitting here.’
She makes no comment. Sips her own coffee and eyes him coolly.
‘So you two were in the same form at school?’
Just as well to try to reset the positions right away, he thinks, and it is clear that he has caught her out.
‘Y . . . yes, we were. How do you know that?’
‘It doesn’t matter how I know. But you never mentioned it to the police when they interviewed you?’
‘Why should I have done? It’s irrelevant, surely, that Arnold and I were at the same school for a while?’
Barbarotti shrugs his shoulders. ‘You never know. So you two were well acquainted from before, when you met?’
‘I wouldn’t say that. I mean, it must have been . . . what, forty years since we’d seen each other. I remembered who he was, but that was all.’
‘So it wasn’t a factor in the pair of you embarking on your relationship?’
‘No. And that’s my private business. I’m not going to talk to you about my relationship with Arnold Morinder. It’s got nothing whatsoever to do with his disappearance, I told them that a hundred times, five years ago.’
‘All right,’ says Barbarotti. ‘I accept that.’ But only because I’m actually more interested in the other case, he thinks.
‘Can you see any link at all between what happened at Little Burma and the disappearance of Arnold Morinder?’ he asks.
She shakes her head. ‘No,’ she says. ‘Of course I can’t, because there isn’t one.’
‘When Arnold left that petrol station in Kerranshede, do you know which way he went?’
She has no way of knowing this, since even the girl on the till had not been able to answer the question. She happened not to be looking as Morinder pop-popped on his way, according to numerous accounts Barbarotti had read. But before he starts delving deeper into the summer of 1989, he wants to explore the Norway lead as far as he can.
‘No,’ she says in surprise. ‘Obviously I don’t.’
‘You threw out the idea that he may have decided to head for Norway. He knew somebody there, didn’t he?’
Ellen Bjarnebo shrugged. ‘I know that’s what I said,’ she concedes. ‘But I don’t really believe it. I didn’t believe it then, either, but when they sit you down and make you answer questions all day long, you’ll say just about anything in the end.’
‘Just about anything?’
‘Maybe not just about anything, but you get tired.’
‘And does this feel equally oppressive?’
‘Yes, it does. But keep on with your questions – let’s get it out of the way.’
‘Surely you can appreciate that we want to find Arnold?’
‘Certainly, but it’s nothing to do with me. I can’t help you. I couldn’t then and I can’t now.’
‘When you got back to the flat that Wednesday, was there anything at all to indicate that he had been there?’
‘No, I’m pretty sure he hadn’t been back.’
‘How could you tell?’
‘Newspapers and post on the hall rug. The blinds down. Everything.’
‘Do you miss him?’
‘What?’
‘I’m asking whether you miss him.’
‘Yes, of course I do.’
‘Are you saying yes because you’re expected to?’
She suddenly smiles. Only fleetingly, but it’s enough for him to see how much charm she must have had in her younger days. Perhaps still does, but she definitely won’t intend wasting it on a straying DI.
‘I was never in love with Arnold,’ she says. ‘If you absolutely must know. But it can be nice to have someone, even so. Though as it turned out . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘As it turned out, it would have been better if we’d never got together.’
‘You mean his disappearance?’
‘Yes, that and everything that came after it. Five years have gone by and I’m still stuck here talking to the police.’
‘Sorry.’
He wasn’t intending to say sorry, but he finds he is starting to like her. He never liked Miss Jonsson, he’s sure of that, but then she never smiled. Not for a single second in all those school terms – not that he can recall anyway – but maybe he’s being unfair. It’s all about power, he thinks, and when power smiles, its subjects don’t always construe it as such. This is an irrelevant and distracting meditation and he resorts to more coffee to help him find his thread again. Marianne appears momentarily in his mind’s eye once more. She seems to be moving her lips. Stay alert, Gunnar, she is presumably urging him as she melts away.
‘I met Billy in Stockholm the other day,’ he says.
‘Oh yes?’ she says, and now her smile has definitely been obliterated. For the first time he senses a hint of uncertainty. Or shame, or something.
‘He asked me to pass on his regards.’
She nods.
‘You don’t see each other all that often these days?’
She takes a deep breath. Her shoulders rise and fall and she regards him gravely.
