Ghost Music (31 page)

“I'm sorry. This is kind of intrusive, I know—but do you
own
the apartment? Or rent it?”

“It is rented on our behalf by the Royal Institute of Technology. My husband is a professor.”

“I see. Thanks. You don't happen to know who actually owns it? They might have some idea where the Westerlunds went to.”

“Why don't you come in, out of the snow?” she asked me. “My husband will be home very soon and I'm sure he knows who the owners are. Our heating broke down last winter, and the agents had to contact the owners to pay for a new boiler. Come on—come inside.”

“You're sure?” I asked her.

She opened the door wider, and smiled. “If you were a rapist, I don't think that you would be standing in the street with a little mountain of snow on top of your head, flapping your arms like a
pingvin
.”

I stepped into the hallway. The glass lantern that Tilda Westerlund had shattered with her screaming had been repaired, but the murky mirror was still hanging there.

The woman held out her hand. It was small and very warm.
“My name is Anna-Carin Olofsson and my husband is Professor Berthil Olofsson. Berthil is quite famous for his research into global warming.”

I brushed the melting snow from my shoulders. “Global warming? I could sure use some of that right now!”

“Come upstairs. I have a good fire going.”

Now that I was standing next to her, I realized how small she was. She hardly reached up to my shoulder. But she had a very trim figure, for her age, and a faded tan, and I guessed that she spent all summer swimming and all winter skiing and she probably ate two bowlfuls of muesli every morning. She made me feel seriously unhealthy.

Upstairs, the apartment had changed very little since the last time I had visited it. The same statuette of Freya in the corridor. The same gilded sofas in the living room. The same Malmsjo piano on which I had played “The Pointing Tree” for Elsa and Felicia.

Anna-Carin Olofsson took my overcoat and hung it up for me. “Sit down by the fire,” she said. “Would you care for some coffee?”

“That's kind of you. Thanks. Just black, please.”

She went into the kitchen, and I followed her. “We love this apartment,” she said, as she spooned coffee into the percolator. “We lived in a brand-new apartment before, in Uppsala, and it had no character. But this place—sometimes my husband thinks that he can still hear the voices of the people who lived in it before us.”

“Really? What do they say?”

Anna-Carin Olofsson flapped her hand dismissively. “Of course it is just his imagination. For a scientist, he can be very superstitious. If he spills any salt on the table, he always throws a pinch of it over his left shoulder to protect himself from bad luck. Two pinches, in fact.”

“Have
you
heard any voices?”

“Me? No. Not voices as such. One evening, though, when Berthil was away at one of his conferences, I thought I heard a woman crying. I went from room to room, but there was nobody here. I think it must have come from the alley, at the back, or maybe another apartment.”

She paused, and then she took two cups down from the cupboard. “It sounded so sad. How can I say it? It sounded like a woman who is in complete despair.”

She poured us each a cup of coffee, and we took them through to the living room. As we sat down, the front door opened and Professor Olofsson arrived home, stamping his feet on the mat.

“Berthil!” called Anna-Carin. “We are in here, my darling!”

A stocky, gray-bearded man appeared, wearing a brown overcoat and a long brown and white scarf. He was balding, with shiny spectacles, and cold-reddened cheeks. He almost looked like a professor out of a child's comic book.

“My darling, this gentleman is a friend of the Westerlunds. He came here to look for them.”

“Gideon Lake,” I said. “Sorry for intruding, but your wife has made me very welcome.”

Professor Olofsson tugged off his woolen glove and shook my hand.

“God afton,”
he said. “If you have come here looking for the Westerlunds, I regret that you have had a wasted journey. I hope you haven't come too far.”

“New York, originally. But it hasn't been a total bust. I believe that I'm a whole lot nearer to finding out what happened to the Westerlunds than I ever was before.”

Professor Olofsson took off his overcoat, and Anna-Carin took it into the hallway to hang it up. He said, “Nobody seems to know where the Westerlunds went. After we moved in here, we had letters and phone calls for them for months, and people calling here to ask if we knew where they had gone. Even their relatives.”

He sat down, and unlaced his shoes. “I think Dr. Westerlund's
sister went to the police, and reported them as missing, but as far as I know nothing ever came out of that.”

Anna-Carin came in with a mug of frothy coffee, with chocolate sprinkles, and set it down on the table.

Professor Olofsson took two or three noisy sips, so that chocolate sprinkles clung to his beard. Then he said, “You think you might have found out where they moved to, Mr. Lake?”

“No. It would surprise me if anybody ever sees them again. Not alive, anyhow. But I'm beginning to understand what happened to them, and why.”

“You believe that they are
dead
?”

“I think that it's a very strong possibility, yes.”

“All of them? The whole family?”

I nodded. “I don't have any proof yet. But it seems very likely. And I don't think it was accidental either.”

“But Dr. Westerlund was a surgeon, wasn't he? Why would anybody want to kill him?”

“I think I know what the motive was. I also think I know who did it. As I say, though, I don't have any proof. None that makes any sense.”

“Well, I wish you luck. If the Westerlunds really have been murdered, then they deserve justice.”

I put down my coffee cup. “Your wife tells me that you know who owns this apartment.”

“How would this help?”

“I'm not sure. But whoever bought it from the Westerlunds, maybe the Westerlunds gave them some clue about where they were going.”

Professor Olofsson dragged out a handkerchief and blew his nose. “Of course our lease was all arranged by my university, and so I never saw the original contract. But when the heating went wrong, I got in touch with the letting agents, and when I visited their office, the paperwork was all there, lying on the agent's desk.
Penumbra.
Not a name you would forget.”

“I've heard of Penumbra. They're based in New York.”

“In that case, it will not be so difficult for you to talk to them, yes?” He blew his nose again. “
Murdered.
That would be terrible. What a world this is turning into!”

We sat in silence for a short while, punctuated only by the lurching of logs in the fireplace, and the clink of coffee cups. Then I said, “I understand you've been hearing voices, professor.”

Professor Olofsson looked across at Anna-Carin and wagged his finger at her. “My wife shouldn't tell you such stories! I don't want it getting out that I'm going a bit funny in the head.”

“You have, though?”

“Well—I don't think they can really be voices. More likely, it's just a draft, blowing under the door. You know how the wind can sound as if it is talking to you, especially at night, when you're very tired.”

“Can you make out anything of what they're saying?”

Professor Olofsson looked at me sharply. “It's the wind, Mr. Lake. I'm almost sure of it. I just like to think that in an old apartment like this, the spirits of the people who used to live here are still keeping us company.”

“Did you ever hear them saying the word
drunkna
?” “

Drowning? Who told you that?”

“So you
did
hear them say it?”

Professor Olofsson shook his head. “No, of course not. I heard nothing except whispering.”

“Have you ever heard any unusual noises—like children, running along the corridor, in the middle of the night?”

“Sometimes the plumbing makes a banging sound. But that is simple physics. Expansion and contraction. Not children.”

“And you've never seen anybody? Or felt anybody touching you?”

“You sound like one of those mediums, Mr. Lake. I don't believe this apartment is haunted. I hear whispering sometimes and it sounds like voices, but that is all.”

He looked at his watch and I could tell that he didn't want to discuss this anymore. Anna-Carin gave me a sympathetic shrug.

“Okay,” I said. “I think I've probably taken up too much of your time already. Thank you for your hospitality, sir, and thank you for your coffee, Mrs. Olofsson. Is it okay if I use your bathroom before I go?”

“By all means,” said Anna-Carin. “I will show you where it is.”

I knew, of course, but she led me along the corridor anyhow. Outside the bathroom door, she stopped and said, “Berthil does not want you to think that he believes in such things. But he has told me that he can sometime catch what the voices are saying. One of them said,
vilja de drunkna oss
? Will they drown us?”

“Okay,” I said. “Thank you. You don't know how helpful you've been.”

Professor Olofsson called, “Anna! Anna!
Kanna Jag har något mer kaffe
?” and she called back, “Coming, my darling!” and left me alone in the corridor.

I was pushing open the bathroom door when I thought I heard singing, coming from one of the bedrooms. I stopped, with my hand still holding the doorknob, straining my ears. It was very high, and very faint, but it was definitely singing.

I walked farther along the corridor until I came to what had once been Elsa and Felicia's bedroom. I pressed my ear against the door panel, and I could still hear it. Two girls' voices, clear and infinitely sad, and singing in English.

“The forest may be tangled . . . but every time you stray . . . you can always find a Pointing Tree . . . to help you find your way . . .”

I opened the bedroom door, and as soon as I did so I had that skin-shrinking feeling. Elsa and Felicia were sitting together on the end of the bed, facing each other and holding hands. But they were
transparent
, as if they were nothing more than holograms. I could see the closet and the dressing table right through them.

“Elsa?” I said. “Felicia?”

I stepped into the room and they both turned their heads and
smiled at me, although their eyes were so dark and shadowy that it was impossible for me to tell if they could see me.

“Elsa, Felicia, it's me—Gideon. The guy who wrote you that song.”

Neither of them spoke, although they both kept smiling. As I came nearer, I could see that they were both wearing white nightdresses, but that both of their nightdresses were soaked, and clinging to their skin.

“The men who did this to you—I'm going to find them, and I'm going to make sure they get punished for it. Do you understand me?”

Elsa reached out for me. I tried to hold her hand, but there was nothing there, only the faintest of chills, as if she had breathed on me.

“We knew that you could save us,” she said.

“Yes,” said Felicia. “We told each other that Gideon would never forget us.”

They faded away right in front of my eyes. Within seconds, I was standing in the bedroom on my own—panting, as if I had run all the way along Skeppsbron and up the stairs and along the corridor, to catch them before they disappeared.

Self-consciously, I laid my hand on the cream woven bedspread, to feel if it was damp—but it was completely dry. Wherever Elsa and Felicia had been soaked in water, it hadn't been here.

I left the bedroom and closed the door quietly behind me. Then I went back to the bathroom.

It was dark inside, so I reached for the light cord, and tugged it. The ceiling light clicked on, and I almost shouted out loud.

Standing on the tiled floor right in front of me, her dress plastered in blood, was Tilda. Her hair was as wild as a cockatoo. Her eyes were bulging and her mouth was stretched wide open in a silent scream.

She took one lurching step toward me, almost falling over—and then another. Her face had been cut all over—her forehead, her
cheeks, her nose, her lips. There were gaping cuts on her shoulders and blood was running in thin streams from her elbows.
“Behaga döda jag,”
she mumbled, and bubbles of blood burst out of her nostrils. “Please kill me.”

I could have called out for Anna-Carin. I could have taken Tilda in my arms, and tried to give her first-aid. But I knew that Anna-Carin wouldn't be able to see Tilda, and I knew that Tilda was just as insubstantial as Elsa and Felicia. None of them were really here, not anymore. They were nothing more than a terrible echo.

I did the only thing that I could think of. I switched off the light and slammed the bathroom door behind me. I stood in the corridor for a moment, breathing hard. I thought of taking another look in the bathroom, just to make sure that Tilda wasn't really there, but I decided against it, in case she was. Stiff-legged, I walked back to the living room. Anna-Carin smiled at me, and I tried to smile back.

“Are you all right, Mr. Lake?” she asked me. “You look a little—I don't know.
Off-balance.
”

“I'm just pooped, I guess. Venice, Zurich, Stockholm, all in one day. I think my bed's calling me, back at the Sheraton.”

Professor Olofsson shook my hand, very firmly. “I wish you well. I hope that you find the answers that you are looking for, and that the conclusion of your quest is not too tragic.”

“Well, me, too, professor. But between you and me, I'm not holding out too much hope of a happy ending.”

* * *

Margot called me at 2:35 in the morning.