The Cruel Stars of the Night (25 page)

Thirty-three

It had been several years since Ann Lindell had woken up with a man by her side. The last time was Edvard. Erik’s father had left her in the middle of the night and gone off home to his wife and kids, leaving behind a used pillowcase and a pregnant woman.

If I get pregnant this time it will be a biological miracle, Ann thought and looked at the sleeping Charles. “Challe” he had called himself, and why not?

He was sleeping on his back. His chest was covered with curly hair. She didn’t like hairy men, especially if the back looked like a shag carpet.

They had been lying close together. He had pressed up next to her but had not tried anything. Ann couldn’t decide if it was because she had so explicity declared her position or if he didn’t want to. She finally decided he simply wasn’t horny. It bothered her a little because she had, when the evening began, had a thought in the back of her head that they might hook up. But now she was grateful that there had been nothing more involved than a hug.

Charles had fallen asleep after half an hour. She had not fallen asleep until around three. It was now seven o’clock and she should be more tired. Erik would wake up any second.

“Challe, it’s time.”

So damn ordinary, she thought and couldn’t help smiling at his bewildered expression when he opened his eyes.

“It’s probably best if you leave before Erik wakes up.”

After he had left Ann got in the shower. She had the door open a crack but hoped it would be a while before Erik came shuffling in.

As the water streamed over her body Ann felt her suppressed desire return. She wasn’t sure if she and Charles were going to share a bed again, or if she even wanted to, but the thought that it was actually possible made life feel brighter than in a very long time.

She smiled as she soaped up and thought about what Görel was going to say. That was the best thing: surprising Görel. It felt like restitution.

Thirty-four

A rough-legged buzzard sailed over the fields at the Krusenberg farm. The ease of its flight made Allan Fredriksson smile joyfully to himself. He leaned forward, searching the sky through the windshield. For a few moments the buzzard couldn’t be seen but then it returned and swooped very close to one of the ash trees at the edge of the road. It was almost the death of him.

As the car cut down into the ditch he was thinking about smews. Inge-mar Andersson, the ornithologist from Buckarby, the most inbred village in Uppland, as he himself put it, had called the night before. He had spotted a couple of hundred resting smews at Lake Tämnaren and more were expected. Perhaps the record from 1978 would be broken?

The car dashed into the ash tree, made a quarter turn, flipped, and spun around on the newly plowed field.

Fredriksson flew forward in the seat belt, put his hands in front of his face, and the only thing he could later recall was the sound of metal buckling.

In the ambulance he said a few words that the emergency technician thought were “common barrow.”

“That’s a hybrid,” Fredriksson whispered, half unconscious.

In his coat pocket there was something that would come to alter the investigation of the three murders. That morning he had dropped by Jan-Elis Andersson’s house in Alsike and he was on his way back to Uppsala when the rough-legged buzzard turned up and played this trick on him.

Now, he had seen quite a few buzzards in connection with the spring and fall migrations as well as the occasional wintering bird, the last one in a field outside Åkerby Church in February, but a buzzard is a buzzard. Or rather, a bird is a bird, and Fredriksson couldn’t get enough of them.

Fredriksson’s early morning visit in Alsike was not due to his work ethic but his forgetfulness. The last couple of days he had been missing his cell phone. However much he looked he was unable to find it. It was embarrassing. It was the third phone he had lost recently. The first was in a washing machine and the second during a hunt for chantarelles in Lun-sen. His sloppiness had become a refrain at work, not to speak of the caustic comments from his wife.

He knew that he had used his phone when he was at the home of Jan-Elis Andersson. It was his last chance. If it wasn’t there he would yet again be forced to buy a replacement.

He had not found his phone but he had found a small object that had made his heart skip a beat. Gusten Ander’s theory immediately took on a new light. Fredriksson jumped in the car in order to drive to the station. He had already forgotten about the phone.

Then the rough-legged buzzard came sailing by and now Fredriksson was lying on a stretcher at the Emergency Room entrance at the Academic Hospital. He was conscious. The ceiling fluttered by above his head.

“Am I paralyzed?” he mumbled and pulled off the oxygen mask.

A woman leaned over him.

“What is your name?”

“Allan.”

“Hi Allan, my name is Ann-Sofie, and I’m a nurse. You have been in a car accident and have some injuries.”

Fredriksson thought it was strange that she was smiling.

“What’s your date of birth?”

“Alsike,” Allan whispered, and threw up.

Nurse Ann-Sofie started to cut Fredriksson’s coat while the others examined his body. Someone washed the blood from his head and carefully cut away the clotted tufts of hair.

“Is there anyone we should call?”

“Ottosson at Crimes,” Fredriksson got out.

“Ottosson, as in the police?”

“My boss. He knows.”

Allan Fredriksson felt as if a thousand hands went over his battered limbs. The pain in his back and neck were the worst, or rather, the fear that he was so seriously injured he would have to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.

“X-ray,” he heard someone say.

The words dripped onto him. Some he understood, while others only conjured up pain and confusion.

“My coat,” he said, between the waves of nausea.

“It will be allright,” he heard a voice say.

“This will hurt a little,” another one said.

It was a man with a beard.

“. . . blood . . . we have to . . .”

“I can’t move.”

“You’re restrained,” the man with the beard said.

Fredriksson thought he smelled strange.

“I’m a police officer.”

“Okay.”

“There’s something I have to . . .”

“It was a simple car accident, wasn’t it?”

The bearded man’s breath wafted over him.

“I mean . . .”

“I was thinking about a bird,” Fredriksson said and had an image of hundreds of smews. He and Ingemar Andersson had been at Lake Tämnaren that beautiful October day. The twenty-third of October 1978, to think he still remembered the date. Fredriksson tried to figure out how many years ago that was, and failed. It was a long time ago. The children were young. Ingemar and he . . . to think that he called. There ought to be more like Ingemar. Pity about his wife. Ellen was her name.

The coat! He tried to get up. Someone put a hand on his shoulder. His head spun and he felt the mask over his mouth again.

His left arm was broken in two places, and the blow to his head had given him a strong concusssion and an open wound on his forehead.

He had woken up again but the pain in his back was so unbearable that when he tried to say something he fainted for a third time.

The breaks in his arm were complicated. The bone in his upper arm was protruding. Fredriksson had lost a great deal of blood. The injuries to his back and neck were not visible but would soon be determined with the help of an X-ray. His whole body would be X-rayed and every little fracture would be documented.

The bones in his arm received a preliminary adjustment and were bandaged. That had to be sufficient until they received a complete picture of his injuries.

The staff, a whole team, were both methodical and experienced in their work. Fredriksson embarked on his long journey back.

His coat had been tucked away into a plastic bag under the stretcher.

Thirty-five

Even though it was many years ago she was sure she would find it. In her inner image, or rather, a rhapsody of many different images, she saw the houses, the fields, and the narrow, curving gravel road.

It ran through a sunny landscape. From what Laura remembered it was always beautiful weather when she and Alice traveled those thirty, forty kilometers north.

Once they had stopped in a clearing in the forest and picked wild strawberries.

“This is the landscape of my childhood,” Alice said and smiled. “Of course I know where the wild strawberries are.”

She used words like that, like “landscape,” and dialect words for things such as
pastures, paddocks, hay-cutting,
and
hay-drying racks.
The landscape of childhood.

For Alice, the word “landscape” took on a magical meaning. It wasn’t simply the word used to refer to districts like Uppland, Västmanland, Dalarna, and the other brightly colored patches in the school atlas, no, landscape became something completely different, a scent, a few words uttered in passing, a smile, and some wild strawberries threaded on a stalk of grass.

The road followed the same course as before but had been widened. The forest had changed, as had the houses. It looked deserted. Alice’s landscape had grown more naked and cold. In part this must be due to the time of year but Laura had the impression that an illness had befallen the area. A slow-working virus that turned even the young spruce trees brown, and that bent the smoke from the chimneys, spilling a milky haze over the gardens and yards.

There seemed to be fewer people now, and they looked smaller, more afraid, barely looking up when Laura went past. It was as if they no longer cared. Back then they would straighten up, meet her gaze with curiosity, and hold up a hand.

She couldn’t find the clearing with wild strawberries and suspected it had been planted with trees.

The old school was still there but it had been converted into a private residence. A jeep was parked in front of the entrance. The old schoolyard had been replaced by a gravel display area for
Entreprenad
machines.

Alice often talked about her teacher Miss Olsson, a woman from the Dalarna district who taught Laura how to prune fruit trees, plant and thin vegetable beds, and how to make heaped rows of earth for potatoes.

“That’s its Latin name,” was something Alice would say, “and that’s what it’s called in Uppland dialect, and Dalarna dialect.” “Trifolium” became “bee bread” and “red clover.” “Genum” became “ three-flowered aven” and “prairie smoke.”

All manner of thought-provoking names of herbs flew from her tongue like beautiful butterflies.

For each kilometer that Laura clocked, new memories returned to her. It was like opening an old photo album and making a trip back in time. She drove slower and slower with a feeling of solemnity and grandeur, aware of the fact that this was probably the last time she’d be seeing her mother’s landscape.

Lars-Erik Jonsson came toward her with a wry, but nonetheless welcoming smile. Laura stifled an impulse to hug him. It was not a good idea. He wiped his hands off on his work clothes.

“After so many years,” she said, suddenly embarrassed at his inquisitive gaze, “you still recognize me.”

“You look the same,” her cousin replied and held her hand in a firm grip.

Lars-Erik was five, six years older than Laura. She thought he looked worn. The skin in his face was loose and gray and when he walked across the yard, he limped.

“Do you have aches?”

“Yes, but nothing to worry about,” Lars-Erik said. “It’s my joints.”

Laura knew that Agnes, her aunt and mother to Lars-Erik, had suffered greatly from rheumatism. Her aunt had died young, thirty-one years old, and Laura had no memories of her. She had only seen pictures of a woman who reminded her of Alice.

Lars-Erik had grown up with his father Mårten and two brothers. Alice would always tell Mårten what a fine job he was doing raising the three boys. A couple of times a year Alice and Laura traveled out to Skyt-torp to visit them.

Mårten had a soft spot for Alice. Perhaps mostly because she reminded him of her sister, but also because Alice always remembered his sons’ birthdays and namesdays, a Swedish tradition of celebrating the name assigned to each day throughout the calendar year.

“Will you have a cup of coffee? That thing’s not going anywhere,” Lars-Erik said and nodded his head at the tractor that he was in the middle of repairing.

The kitchen looked like before. The smell that came at Laura was also the same.

She wanted to talk, or rather, to hear her cousin’s voice.

“How is everything with Jan and Martin?” she asked.

“Oh, like always,” Lars-Erik said with a smile. “Janne is still up in Fors-mark and Martin has married, divorced, and remarried.”

He warmed to her question and spoke at length about his brothers. Since they had lost their mother so early they had become very close. Laura had never heard them quarrel or say a harsh word about each other.

Lars-Erik measured out the coffee and poured water in the cof-feemaker. Laura looked at his gnarled hands.

“And you? Are you married?”

Laura shook her head. She considered telling him about Stig but didn’t. Maybe Lars-Erik wouldn’t understand.

“What about Ulrik?”

“Do you know about what’s happened?”

“Well,” Lars-Erik said, “I did see in the paper that he’s missing.”

“He’s still gone,” Laura said.

He looked searchingly at her before he silently set out cups and plates.

“Perhaps I should have called,” he said finally, but they both knew it was an unnecessary comment.

He took out a loaf of bread, cut about half a dozen slices, set out butter, cheese, and a packet of smoked ham. Laura made sandwiches, they drank coffee, and talked about people they knew in common. To Laura’s surprise the conversation flowed well. But Lars-Erik was the most communicative, more open than his younger brothers. He had a streak of nonchalance that both irritated and attracted Laura. He smiled often, quick in his thinking and conversation, putting her at ease with a frankness that she wasn’t used to. She wished she had visited him much earlier.

In the office everyone talked past each other, used euphemisms and carefully chosen words that—behind their apparent innocence—could hurt. Not even praise could be taken at face value. Behind acknowledgements and fine words there could be jealousy and barbs.

Sometimes Lars-Erik paused before giving her an answer to her questions, became thoughtful and silent, replying briefly but with an unspoken signal that he would return to the topic later. It was a habit she knew so well from Alice.

“So, you don’t have a man?”

“No, it didn’t work out that way.”

“Not for me either. Rose-Marie lived here for a while, but then she got a job in town. She thought it got too far to keep driving back and forth.

“It can be lonely sometimes but I have the house,” he added.

She couldn’t bring herself to say that she was preparing to leave Sweden. It would feel wrong. Lars-Erik wouldn’t understand, he who couldn’t even imagine moving to Uppsala, but she couldn’t help asking if he didn’t sometimes long to go away.

“You are so like my mother,” he said. “Not just in your appearance but . . . everything,” he continued, and now there was a hesitation in his voice that had not been there before. “She was an anxious soul. My father said later that she had gypsy blood in her and of course she was dark, just as you are.”

“We have gypsy blood?”

“No, but that desire to travel, to get away.”

“I’ve lived in the same place for thirty-five years,” Laura said, feeling ill at ease.

“But are you happy?”

Laura looked at him, startled, then looked away, confused.

“I don’t mean to say . . .”

“I know what you mean.” Laura interrupted his attempt to try to cover over his unexpected question.

No, I am not happy and I never have been.

“Alice should have stayed here,” Lars-Erik said and looked at Laura with an expression as if he was testing the limits for what he could say.

Now she could tell him! She knew that her cousin, and perhaps above all his father Mårten, had never liked Ulrik.

“It’s going to get better now. I am . . . I have met a man.

“He’s married,” she added and made it sound like a bonus.

Lars-Erik did not appear to be interested in a continuation.

“I have to ask one thing,” he said and drew a deep breath before going on. “It’s about Alice. This is a hard question to ask but I have to know. She died in the basement. No one really knows what happened. Father said something a long time ago that maybe you pushed her down the stairs. He said that. That Laura was not an innocent child.”

“It’s a lie! Ulrik made that up.”

“Ulrik came here once after Alice died. They argued, almost so it turned into a fight. It was probably something Ulrik said. Father wasn’t himself for a long time. He was so fond of Alice.”

Laura looked at him but Lars-Erik avoided her gaze. He kept talking as if to himself.

“It’s not always how you think. I know that Alice and my father were close.”

“Mårten never said a mean word to me.”

“No, it was probably just something Ulrik tossed out.”

Laura gazed at her cousin.

“Did you think,
do
you think that I pushed Alice?”

“No, why would you do something like that?”

Lars-Erik started to clear away the coffee cups and the plate of sandwiches.

“Are you moving?” he asked suddenly, his back turned to her.

Laura didn’t answer but he took this for a yes.

“Far?”

“Yes.”

“You can move to Skyttorp. There are houses for sale.”

Suddenly her plans appeared so paltry. All calculation and planning was in vain.

“Even though we’re cousins,” Lars-Erik continued, “I don’t know you very well, but there are bonds that make us receptive to the same wavelengths. I saw that as soon as you got out of the car. At first I was shocked because you looked so much like Agnes. It’s almost spooky. As if she had come back, for a couple of moments.”

Laura stretched out and nudged his hand with hers.

“You looked so lost,” he said, and Laura saw how he steeled himself to maintain his calm. “You gave me a look that said ‘Save me!’”

“I have to do that myself.”

Lars-Erik smiled.

“Where did Ulrik go?”

“He disappeared.”

“And that made you happy?”

Laura nodded. He looked at her and she expected more questions but her cousin left the kitchen. She heard him walk up the stairs to the upper floor and suddenly felt abandoned, as if he had left her for good.

He returned with a small cardboard box in his hand, placed it on the table, and gave her a look that said, this is important. Don’t say anything to ruin this moment.

Laura kept quiet while he untied the string that kept the lid in place. The box smelled like closet.

When he removed the lid she saw that the box contained letters and photos.

“Your mother wrote letters to my father,” he said and took out a thick bunch of letters tied up with paper string. When he undid the knot she immediately recognized her mother’s handwriting on the uppermost page.

“There’s about thirty-something in all. The first one came about a week after my mother died and last one was written the week before Alice died.”

Laura stared at him.

“Why did she write to Mårten?”

“She needed someone to talk to,” Lars-Erik said. “I know it may feel unpleasant but we’re adults now. I read some of them for the first time two years ago, after my father had died. I learned a lot about him. Everything may not have been so fun but that’s life. Why I should I judge others?”

“Why did he keep them?”

Lars-Erik didn’t answer.

“Are they love letters?”

“No, not really, but there is a lot of love in them. I’ve arranged them in chronological order. Do you want them? They are yours as much as mine. More yours, really.”

Laura held out her hand and pulled out an envelope from the bunch, but hesitated in taking out the letter.

“Your mother was unhappy,” he said.

“I hate him,” she said.

“I thought as much,” Lars-Erik said. “Do you think he’s coming back?”

Laura shook her head. She couldn’t tear her gaze away from the envelope with the neatly printed address. She experienced the divided feeling of both being close to her mother and being betrayed by her. She had written to another, and although Laura had only been a child when the letters were written she wanted all her mother’s confidence. But the letters were also a greeting from Alice. The almost physical sensation of her mother’s presence that seeped from the stack of envelopes filled Laura with sadness. Alice was still talking to her.

“May I . . . ?”

“Of course,” Lars-Erik said.

“I won’t read them now,” she said and put the letters away, carefully re-tying the string and putting everything into her bag.

“You can get them back later,” she said.

Her cousin’s expression conveyed that it didn’t matter.

Both he and Laura had trouble finding the thread again. The carefree conversation, the light talk about what had been, and the gossip about people in common did not want to restart.

Lars-Erik picked up the cardboard box, got up, and walked up the stairs. Laura looked out the window. Dark rainclouds were piling up on the horizon and gliding together into gigantic formations that threatened the sun.

So much sky, so much space and life, Laura thought. A movement on the other side of the road caught her attention. It was an old woman who with great effort came out of the woodshed with an old-fashioned wood-bin in her hand. She stopped halfway, put down her burden, and rested.

“That’s Elsa,” Lars-Erik said, having silently slipped back into the kitchen. “She is my only neighbor. She’s turning eighty-seven this year.”

“I remember her,” Laura said. “It’s a wonder that she’s still alive. I thought she was ancient twenty-five years ago.”