“You will,” Karl-Henrik had assured him, tousling his hair.
The family photographs on the walls; Mikael’s Christmas presents, all wrapped; the door of his room ajar. The mess on his desk, math book and graph paper on top, the bed sloppily made. Only days ago he was moving around this room; making a racket and eating breakfast and showering; getting dressed and shouting goodbye when he left; breathing and laughing and being alive. Sounds, all those sounds, endless sounds, there had been so many different ones, and he couldn’t bear that they were gone. So many moments, details, tiny everyday routines that passed through this house, and now they would never happen again.
He brought the cup to his mouth and drank half of its contents. The liquor burned, a pleasant stinging in his throat and down to his stomach, radiating out to his chest, shoulders, heart. Slowly, he grew numb.
What had she wanted, that puny cop? For a moment, his memorywas a blank. This had happened more than once in recent days—he couldn’t recall something that had happened just minutes earlier.
“Is it true that you and Madeleine Grenberg had an affair?”
Right. That was it. He had cursed at her, obviously, to defend himself, but then he went on the attack: “I thought you came here to tell me who killed my son, not to catch up on gossip.”
She was unfazed, or at least she appeared to be. “That’s why I’m asking. So that I will be able to tell you as soon as possible.”
“So you don’t know.”
“Not yet. Did you? Have an affair?”
Yes? Of course. Of course they had. He had nothing to hide anymore. The only reason to hide things was to protect yourself. For Karl-Henrik, that time was over.
Madeleine. It had never been about him, not really. If it hadn’t been him, she would have found someone else. She needed security, after Göran. If he had taken advantage of that, it wasn’t intentional. He had found work on the farm for her out of sheer goodwill.
He didn’t like the way this cop with the narrow, dark eyes was watching him.
“You don’t think Madeleine might have felt, I don’t know, obligated to see you?”
Now he roved about the house, cup in hand. He’d downed the first half in one gulp; the rest he drank in smaller mouthfuls. He let the liquor sit on his tongue so long that his saliva thickened it, and then he could swallow and start all over. As long as he had something in his mouth, he would be okay.
Obligated.
What a word.
What did his relationship with Madeleine have to do with Mikael? Nothing. But they didn’t get it. They didn’t understand a damn thing, those fucking cops.
They ought to talk to Sten Persson instead. That untrustworthy bastard. He had come up to Karl-Henrik once, looked at him with his vacant, pale eyes and told him to leave Madeleine alone, claiming thatKarl-Henrik had forced himself on her. He’d threatened to go to the police.
Vacant and pale, that was the perfect description. When Sten looked at you, the lights were on but no one was home. They’d been at the bar and Karl-Henrik had brushed him off, shoving that idiot away from him. He and Madeleine had nothing to do with one another, he said. Sure, it was a lie, but why bother to be truthful with someone like Sten?
Forced himself on her? Where the hell did people come up with this stuff?
The shove had knocked Sten off balance, but he caught himself and stayed upright. Karl-Henrik tried to whack him one, not that he’d planned it, the urge just came to him in the moment. Controlled by their urges—that’s people for you. Like animals.
Sten darted out of the way and responded by elbowing Karl-Henrik in the jaw. It hurt like hell and the walls began to spin. Karl-Henrik tried to hit back, but something caught him in the cheek and he fell to the floor. When he came to his senses, Sten was gone and he was sitting in a corner of the bar with no idea how he’d gotten there.
He didn’t mention any of this to the cop.
On a table of their own in a corner of the hall were flowers. They had flooded in, bouquets with those little cards, so many that they formed colorful islands in every room of the whole house. They were the only thing Lillemor seemed to care about. As soon as a new one arrived, she came down from upstairs, meticulously snipped their stems, and scoured the cabinets for a vase. Once a day, always in the morning while he was in the basement, she made sure the flowers were happy and had plenty of water.
He heard her footsteps through the floor, moving above him. Sometimes it sounded like she was talking to someone. It took a few days for him to realize she was talking to the bouquets.
At some point in all the years that had passed in this house, it had become a labyrinth of passages, of nooks and crannies, and those who lived in it wandered alone along different paths until theysuddenly ran into each other. He had still known Mikael, he was sure of it, but Filip? It was like he couldn’t talk to his younger son.
And then there was Lillemor. The moment he tried to touch her she recoiled, as if he were a creepy stranger. Maybe that’s what he had become. How anyone could live a life as incomplete as his had been these past years, like a person with no heart or lungs, was beyond Karl-Henrik.
And then something remarkable happened.
The cop asked about Jakob Lindell.
34
