“I think so. It sounds pretty easy on the survivors, I think. Do you?”
“I don’t know,” Sander said. “It feels so violent somehow. Despite what he says.”
“Sander,” Lundström said softly; he was leaning against the wall behind his students, his arms crossed. “Killian. Quiet down and pay attention.”
Something had changed during this past half hour. A tranquil mood enveloped them, as if it had been summoned by the operator’s words. As if the solemnity of the moment had gradually settled inside them. As though he had been waiting for this change, the operator nodded and said:
“I think we can go in now.”
Sander ended up behind Killian and Felicia.
It was a large room. The ceiling was high, and the space was very clean; everything was bright and cool. The crematoria hardly looked like ovens at all. Their shape reminded Sander of playhouses; they were angular, with sloping roofs, made of shiny metal. A large hatch with a small window. The primary and secondary chambers.
“Here we go,” the operator said in a composed voice, still as if it were of no concern to him whether anyone could hear him. “Here’s one now.”
Behind them, two technicians pushed a casket along.
The oven door opened. A smell filtered out, dark and rich. The casket was placed on a lift and raised. The operator kept talking, but Sander could no longer hear him; he was staring into the vast, black chamber of the oven.
Soon they saw the casket devoured by flames, and Sander thought of the person inside, who had once been a living, breathing human, had perhaps had a soul, and was now a piece of meat rapidly turning to ash.
Outside the crematorium, he’d seen an aged wooden sign, with a verse from the Bible carved into it:I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.
46
On that Christmas Day, Sten Persson went to see the Söderströms. Exactly what happened between Sten and Karl-Henrik never became clear, although both of them came out of it unscathed—at least outwardly.
Sten rang the doorbell unannounced. When no one answered, he walked around the house and down the cellar stairs. That door was closed but unlocked. From upstairs, Lillemor could hear the two men’s voices, agitated but muffled. She couldn’t make out any words. After a while, they stopped.
According to Karl-Henrik, Sten accused him of causing Killian’s death. Everyone knew that what had happened to Killian had to do with the Söderström family, that it was because of the tension between Karl-Henrik and Madeleine, and the way Mikael looked up to his father. Jesus Christ, he was crazy, Karl-Henrik said, so angry that he almost went at Sten with his fists. Like Karl-Henrik wasn’t grieving too? Like he wasn’t grieving? For fuck’s sake,hisson was the one who was murdered. Killian, Sten’s stupid fucking boy, had gotten in that car of his own free will and sped off on the icy roads.
None of this was true, according to Sten. Sten claimed that he had come to the Söderströms’ because he was seeking reconciliation. He had found Karl-Henrik down in the basement, so drunk he had tohold on to a shelf to stay upright. He patted the dynamite and said, “If worse comes to worst.”
If worse came to worst, what?
They talked about what had happened over the past few days, and Sten, still in shock over losing Killian, said he didn’t know what to do with himself. He wanted support, he said. But Karl-Henrik fended him off, accused Sten of trying to interfere in Mikael’s murder investigation.
Interfere? How the hell did he mean?
By running his mouth about things that had nothing to do with Sten, things Sten didn’t even have a clue about.
“My son is not a fucking murderer,” Sten said.
“Well, he’s dead, in any case. Same as mine,” was Karl-Henrik’s response.
This retort was the one thing they agreed happened. That, and the fact that upon hearing it, Sten had stormed out in fury.
—
A curse. That’s what some people figured.
The previous year, an old woman in the village had died smack-dab on Christmas Eve. She had grown roses, the most beautiful roses in the area, and each summer they bloomed bright red and thriving all around her house. People said the death of the gardener would turn the roses white, and certainly no one really believed this—until last summer when astonished neighbors flocked to the garden. You could see it with your own eyes as you walked by: the crisp petals gleamed white as snow in the sun.
Maybe it was a sign, or a warning that greater and more incomprehensible events waited in the wings. A year to the day later, the woman’s daughter visited the cemetery to light a candle and leave a frozen Christmas flower next to the gravestone. While she was there, she noticed that the lawn and the paths seemed neglected, uneven and covered in footprints. She complained to the caretaker, who shook his head.
“We do upkeep here every week. But it’s like the dead walk around out there at night. Restless, I imagine. It’s understandable.”
He said it with warmth, as though he were more fond of the dead than the living.
