The Darkest Room (5 page)

“Hi there,” he said. “Welcome to the new district.”

“Thank you.” She shook hands with her boss and turned to the other man, who had thinner black hair, bushy eyebrows, and was in his fifties. “Tilda Davidsson.”

“Hans Majner.” His handshake was firm, dry, and brief. “I guess the two of us will be working together up here.”

He didn’t sound completely convinced that this would work out well, thought Tilda. She opened her mouth to say something in agreement, but Majner carried straight on:

“Of course I won’t be around too much to start with. I’ll look in now and again, but I’ll be working mostly from Borgholm. I’m keeping my desk there.”

He smiled at the local police chief.

“Right,” said Tilda, suddenly realizing that she was going to be more alone as a police officer on northern Öland than she had thought. “Are you working on a particular project?”

“You could say that,” said Majner, looking out of the window at the street, as if he could see something suspicious out there. “Drugs, of course. That kind of crap comes onto the island, just like everywhere else.”

“This is your desk, Tilda,” said Holmblad from over by the window. “We’ll be getting computers installed, of course, fax machines … and a police radio unit over here. For the time being, you’ll just have to manage with the telephone.”

“Okay.”

“In any case, you’re not going to be sitting around in the office much; quite the opposite, in fact,” said Holmblad. “That’s the idea of the local policing reforms: you need to be out there, a visible presence on the streets. The focus is traffic offenses, criminal damage, petty theft, and break-ins. The less complex investigations. And youth crime, of course.”

“Suits me,” said Tilda. “I stopped a modified scooter on the way here.”

“Good, good.” Her boss nodded. “So you’ve shown that there’s a police presence here again. And next week is the official opening ceremony. The press have been invited. Newspapers, local radio … You’ll be available then?”

“Of course.”

“Good, good. And I expect your work here will be … well, I know you’ve just come from Växjö, and here on the island you’re bound to be working more independently. For
better or worse. More freedom to organize your working day as you wish, but also more responsibility … I mean, it takes half an hour to get here from Borgholm, and the station there isn’t manned all the time. So if anything happens, it could take a while before you get any help.”

Tilda nodded. “At the police training academy we often practiced situations where backup was delayed. My tutors were very keen on—”

Majner snorted over by his desk. “The tutors at the training academy haven’t got a clue about the reality of the situation,” he said. “It’s a long time since they were out on the job.”

“They were very competent in Växjö,” said Tilda quickly.

This was like sitting right at the back in the police van as a new recruit—you were expected to keep your mouth shut and let the older ones do the talking. Tilda had hated it.

Holmblad looked at her and said, “All I’m saying is that it’s important for you to bear in mind the long distances here on the island before you go into a problematic situation alone.”

She nodded. “I hope I’ll be able to deal with any problems that arise.”

The police chief opened his mouth again, possibly to continue his lecture—but at that moment the telephone on the wall rang.

“I’ll get that,” he said, striding over to the desk. “It might be from Kalmar.”

He picked up the phone.

“Marnäs police station, Holmblad.”

Then he listened.

“Where?” he said.

He was silent again.

“Right,” he said eventually. “We’d better get out there.”

He put the phone down.

“That was Borgholm. The emergency number has had a call about an accidental death on northern Öland.”

Majner got up from his empty desk. “Local?”

“By the lighthouses off Eel Point,” said Holmblad. “Anyone know where that is?”

“Eel Point is south of here,” said Majner. “Four or five miles, maybe.”

“Okay, we need to take the car,” said the chief of police. “The ambulance is already on its way … evidently it’s an accidental drowning.”

Once the two lighthouses had been built, there was a sense of security around Eel Point, for both ships and people. At least that’s what the men who built them believed, they believed that life on the coast was safe and secure for all time. The women knew this was not always the case
.

Death was closer in those days, it came into the houses
.

In the hayloft of the old barn there is a woman’s name, hastily carved into the wall:
BELOVED CAROLINA 1868
.
Carolina has been dead for more than a hundred and twenty years, but she has whispered to me through the wall about what could happen at Eel Point—in what is sometimes referred to as the good old days
.

—
MIRJA RAMBE

WINTER 1868

The manor house is large
, so large. Kerstin goes from room to room, searching for Carolina, but there are so many places to look. Too many places on Eel Point, too many rooms in the house.

And the blizzard is on its way, it feels like a weight in the air outside, and Kerstin knows there isn’t much time.

The manor house is solidly built and will not suffer in the storm, but the question is how the people will be affected. A blizzard makes everyone gather around the stoves like lost birds, waiting for it to pass.

A difficult summer with poor harvests on the island has been followed by a harsh winter. It is the first week in February, and so bitterly cold on the coast that no one goes outside unless they have to. But the lighthouse keepers and the ironworkers still have to do their shifts over in the towers, and today every fit man except Karlsson, the master lighthouse
keeper, is out on the point getting the lighthouses ready for the snowstorm.

The women have remained in the house, but Carolina is nowhere to be found. Kerstin has searched every room on both floors, and has been up among the beams in the attic. She cannot talk to any of the other maids or the wives of the lighthouse keepers, because they are not aware of Carolina’s condition. They may have their suspicions, but they do not know for certain.

Carolina is eighteen, two years younger than Kerstin. They are both housemaids working for Sven Karlsson, the master lighthouse keeper. Kerstin regards herself as the one who thinks things through and is more careful. Carolina is more lively and more trusting—in some ways she is just as adventurous as Kerstin’s older sister Fina, who went to America last year—and that means she sometimes has problems. Recently Carolina’s troubles have increased, and she has told only Kerstin about them.

If Carolina has left the manor and gone out into the forest or off toward the peat bog, Kerstin will not be able to find her. Carolina knew there was a blizzard on the way—is she still so desperate?

Kerstin goes outside. In the snow-covered inner courtyard the wind comes sweeping down from the sky, whirling between the buildings, unable to make its escape. The blizzard is approaching; this is just a premonition.

She hears a scream that quickly falls silent. That wasn’t the wind.

It was a woman screaming.

The wind tears at Kerstin’s kerchief and pinafore, making her lean forward. She forces open the door of the barn and steps inside.

The cows moo and move uneasily as she searches among them. Nothing. Then she climbs the steep staircase up to the big hayloft. The air is freezing cold up here.

Something is moving over by one of the walls, below
the big mound of hay. Faint movements in the dust and the shadows.

It is Carolina. She is lying on the hay-covered floor, her legs immobile beneath a dirty blanket. Her breathing is weak and wheezing as Kerstin comes closer; her expression is one of shame.

“Kerstin … I think it just happened,” she says. “I think it came out.”

Kerstin walks over to the blanket, full of foreboding, and kneels down.

“Is there anything there?” whispers Carolina. “Or is it just blood?”

The blanket over Carolina’s knees is sticky and wet. But Kerstin lifts one corner and nods.

“Yes,” she says, “it’s come out.”

“Is it alive?”

“No … it’s not … complete.”

Kerstin leans over her friend’s pale face.

“How are you feeling?”

Carolina’s eyes are flickering all over the place.

“It died without being baptized,” she mumbles. “We have to … we have to bury it in consecrated ground so that it won’t walk again … It will be a lost soul if we don’t bury it.”

“We can’t,” says Kerstin. “The blizzard is here … we’ll die if we go out on the road.”

“We have to hide it,” whispers Carolina, struggling to breathe. “They’ll think I’ve been whoring … that I tried to get rid of it.”

“It doesn’t matter what they think.” Kerstin places her hand on Carolina’s burning forehead and says quietly, “I’ve had another letter from my sister. She wants me to go to America, to Chicago.”

Carolina doesn’t seem to be listening any longer, she is just panting faintly, but Kerstin goes on anyway:

“I’m going to go across the Atlantic to New York, then travel on from there. She’s even deposited the money for the
ticket in Gothenburg.” She leans closer. “And you can come with me, Carolina. Would you like to do that?”

Carolina does not reply. She is no longer struggling to breathe. The air is simply seeping out of her, barely audible.

In the end she is lying there motionless in the hay, her eyes wide open. Everything is silent in the barn.

“I’ll be back soon,” whispers Kerstin, her voice full of tears.

She pushes the thing lying in the hay into the blanket, then folds it over several times to hide the marks of the blood and the birth fluid. Then she stands up and takes the bundle in her arms.

She goes out into the courtyard, where the wind is still increasing in strength, and battles her way back to the main house, pressed against the stone wall of the barn. She goes straight to her little room, packs her few possessions and Carolina’s, then puts on layer after layer of clothes, ready for the difficult journey that awaits her when the blizzard has abated.

Then Kerstin walks without hesitation to the large drawing room, where oil lamps and the tiled stove spread warmth and light through the winter darkness. Master lighthouse keeper Sven Karlsson is sitting in an armchair by the table in the center of the room, his black uniform straining at the seams over his belly.

As a servant of the crown, Karlsson is one of the privileged members of the parish. He has almost half the rooms in the manor house at his disposal, and has his own pew in the church over in Rörby. Beside him his wife, Anna, is enthroned on a fine chair. A few maids are hovering in the background, waiting for the blizzard to pass, and in a dark corner sits Old Sara, who came from the poorhouse in Rörby after the master lighthouse keeper put in the lowest bid at the auction to establish who would take care of her.

“Where have you been?” says Anna when she sees Kerstin.

Her voice is always loud and sharp, but now it is shriller than usual in order to be heard above the howling wind.

Kerstin curtsies, positions herself in silence in front of the table, and waits until everyone’s eyes are on her. She thinks about her older sister over in America.

Then she places the bundle she has brought with her on the table, right in front of Sven Karlsson.

“Good evening, sir,” says Kerstin loudly, unfolding the blanket. “I have something here … something you appear to have lost.”

Joakim’s third morning
in the manor house at Eel Point was the beginning of his last completely happy day for many years—perhaps ever.

Unfortunately, he was too stressed to register how good he felt.

He and Katrine had had a late night. Once the children had gone to sleep, they had walked through the south-facing rooms on the ground floor, pondering how their different personalities could best be brought out in their choice of colors. White would of course be the base color throughout the whole of the ground floor, both on the walls and ceiling, while the wooden details like cornices and doorframes could vary from room to room.

They had gone to bed at half past eleven. The house had been silent then, but a couple of hours later Livia had started calling out again. Katrine had merely sighed and got out of bed without a word.

The whole family got up just after six. The horizon in the east was still pitch black.

The great winter darkness was drawing closer, Joakim realized. Only two months to go until Christmas.

The family gathered at half past six in the kitchen. Joakim wanted to make a quick getaway to Stockholm, and had finished his cup of tea almost before Katrine and the children had sat down. As he placed his cup in the dishwasher, he saw an orange strip of light from the sun, which was still hidden by the sea, and higher up in the sky the V-shaped formation of a flock of birds, bobbing slightly as they flew out over the Baltic.

Geese or cranes? It was still too dark to see them clearly, and he wasn’t very good at identifying birds in flight.

“Can you see those birds out there?” he said over his shoulder. “They’re doing just what we’ve done … moving south.”

Nobody answered. Katrine and Livia were munching their sandwiches; Gabriel was drinking concentrated baby rice out of his bottle.

The two lighthouses down by the water rose up toward the sky like two fairy-tale castles, the south tower regularly flashing its red glow. From the panes of glass at the top of the north tower came a fainter white light that didn’t flash.

This was slightly odd, because the northern lighthouse hadn’t shown a light before. Joakim leaned closer to the window. The white glow might have been a reflection of the sunrise, but it appeared to be coming from inside the tower.

“Are there more birds moving south, Daddy?” said Livia behind him.

“No.”

Joakim stopped looking at the lighthouses. He went back to the breakfast table to clean up.

The migrating birds had a long journey ahead of them, just like Joakim. He would be driving some two hundred and seventy miles today, to pick up the last of their possessions
from the house in Bromma. He would stay the night with his mother, Ingrid, in Jakobsberg, then drive back to Öland the next day.

This was his last trip to the capital, at least for this year.

Gabriel seemed bright and cheerful, but Livia looked as if she was in a bad mood. She had got up with Katrine’s help, but was still sleepy and quiet. She was holding her sandwich in one hand, elbows on the table, staring down into her glass of milk.

“Eat up now, Livia.”

“Mmm.”

She certainly wasn’t a morning person, but when she got to nursery school she usually cheered up. She had changed to an older playgroup the previous week, and seemed happy there.

“So what are you going to do at nursery school today?”

“It’s not a nursery school, Daddy.” She looked up at him with a truculent expression. “Gabriel goes to nursery school. I go to
school.”

“Preschool,” said Joakim. “Isn’t that right?”

“School,” said Livia.

“Okay … so what are you going to do today?”

“Don’t know,” said Livia, staring down at the table again.

“Are you going to play with a new friend?”

“Don’t know.”

“Okay, but drink up your milk now. We’re off into Marnäs soon … to school.”

“Mmm.”

By twenty past seven
the sun was on its way up over the horizon. Its yellow beams were feeling their way cautiously across the calm sea, without giving any warmth. It would be a sunny but cold day—the thermometer on the wall of the house was showing plus three degrees.

Joakim was out in the courtyard scraping frost from the
windows of the Volvo. Then he opened the back door for the children.

Livia settled herself in her child seat with Foreman in her arms. Joakim fastened Gabriel into the smaller seat beside her. Then he got into the driver’s seat.

“Wasn’t Mom going to wave us off?” he asked.

“She’s gone to the bathroom,” said Livia. “She’s gone to do a big one. She likes to sit there for a while when she does a big one.”

Livia had quickly cheered up after breakfast and become more talkative. Once she got to playgroup, she would have tons of energy.

Joakim leaned back in his seat and looked at Livia’s little red two-wheeler and Gabriel’s three-wheeler, standing out in the courtyard. He noticed the bikes weren’t locked. This wasn’t the big city.

Katrine came out a couple of minutes later, turned off the light in the hallway, and locked the door behind her. She was wearing a bright red winter jacket with a hood and blue sweatpants. In Stockholm she had usually dressed in black, but here on Öland she had begun to go for roomier and slightly more colorful clothes.

She waved to them and gave the red-painted wooden wall next to the door a friendly pat. Lack of sleep had smudged dark shadows beneath her eyes, but she still smiled toward the car.

Their manor house. Joakim waved at Katrine and smiled back.

“Okay, let’s go,” said Livia from the back seat.

“Go! Go!” yelled Gabriel, waving goodbye to the house.

Joakim started the engine and the headlights came on, illuminating the house. A thin layer of glittering frost covered the ground, an early sign of winter. He would soon have to change over to studded tires.

Livia quickly pulled on her headphones so that she could listen to the adventures of Bamse the bear—she had been
given a tape recorder of her own, and had quickly learned how the buttons worked. When there were songs on the tape, she let Gabriel listen too.

The route to the main coastal highway was a gravel-covered track running between a small, dense deciduous wood and a ditch running along the bottom of an old stone wall. The track was narrow and twisting, and Joakim kept his speed down, gripping the wheel firmly. He hadn’t gotten to know all the bends yet.

Out by the main highway their new metal mailbox was hanging on a post. Joakim slowed down and looked to see if there was any sign of lights from other cars. But everything was dark and silent in both directions. Just as deserted as the opposite side of the road, where a yellowish-brown bog extended into the distance.

They didn’t meet any other cars on their way into Marnäs through the little village of Rörby, and there weren’t many people out and about when they drove into town. A fish van drove past them and a couple of schoolchildren aged about ten were running toward the school, their rucksacks bumping on their backs.

Joakim turned onto the main street and headed for the empty square. A few hundred yards further on was the Marnäs school, and next door, in an enclosed yard with slides and sandboxes and a few trees, was Livia and Gabriel’s preschool. It was a low wooden building with a warm yellow light shining from the big windows.

Several parents were dropping off their children on the sidewalk in front of the school, and Joakim stopped at the end of the row of vehicles without switching off the engine.

Some of the other parents smiled and nodded at him—after the previous day’s article in
Ölands-Posten
many people in Marnäs now knew who he was.

“Watch out for the cars,” said Joakim. “Stay on the sidewalk.”

“Bye!” said Livia, opening the car door and maneuvering
herself out of the child seat. It wasn’t a protracted farewell;

she was used to him being away.

Gabriel said nothing; when Joakim helped him out of the seat, he just charged away.

“Bye then!” Joakim called after them. “See you tomorrow!” By the time the doors closed, Livia was already several yards away, with Gabriel right behind her. Joakim put the car in gear and swung across the road, back toward Eel Point.

Joakim parked next to
Katrine’s car in front of the house and got out to pick up his overnight bag and say goodbye.

“Hello?” he called out in the porch. “Katrine?”

No reply. The house was completely silent.

He went into the bedroom, picked up his case, and went outside again.

Out on the gravel he stopped:

“Katrine?”

There was silence for a few moments, then he heard a muted scraping from the inner courtyard.

Joakim turned his head. It was the sound of the big black wooden barn door being opened. Katrine stepped out of the darkness and waved to him.

“Hi there!”

He waved back and she came over.

“What were you doing?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “Are you leaving now?”

Joakim nodded.

“Drive carefully.”

Katrine leaned over and quickly pressed her mouth against his—a warm kiss in the cold. He breathed in the scent of her skin and her hair for one last time.

“Say hi to Stockholm from me,” she said, giving him a long look. “When you get home, I’ll tell you about the loft.”

“The loft?” said Joakim.

“The hayloft in the barn,” said Katrine.

“What about it?”

“I’ll show you tomorrow,” she said. He looked at her.

“Okay …I’ll call you from Mom’s tonight.” He opened the car door. “Don’t forget to pick up our little lambs.”

At twenty past eight
he pulled into the gas station by the turning for Borgholm to pick up the rented trailer. It was already booked and paid for, so all he had to do was hook it up and set off.

The traffic was heavier after Borgholm, and Joakim ended up in the middle of a long line of cars—most were presumably commuters who lived on the island but worked in Kalmar, on the mainland. They maintained a leisurely country speed.

The road curved to the west, and when the ground disappeared beneath it, he was up on the bridge. He liked driving across it, over the span between island and mainland, high above the water in the sound. This morning it was difficult to see the surface of the water down below; it was still too dark. By the time he came off the bridge and joined the coast road toward Stockholm, the sun was rising higher above the Baltic. Joakim could feel its warmth through the side window.

He switched on a radio station playing rock music, put his foot down and headed north at speed, past the small communities along the coast. It was a winding road, beautiful even on a cold, overcast day. It passed through dense pine forests and airy groves of deciduous trees by the water, past inlets and streams that headed out to sea and disappeared.

The road continued to curve gradually westward, and left the coast to head in toward Norrköping. Just outside the town Joakim stopped for a couple of sandwiches in an empty hotel restaurant. He had a choice of seven different bottled mineral waters in the chilled display case—Swedish, Norwegian, Italian,
and French; he realized he was back in civilization, but chose water from the faucet.

After he’d eaten, he carried on, first toward Södertälje and then into Stockholm. He reached the tall apartment blocks in the southwest suburbs of the city at around half past one, and his Volvo and trailer became just one of a multitude of vehicles, large and small, heading for the city center in lane upon lane, past long rows of storage depots, apartment blocks, and stations used by the commuter trains.

Stockholm looked beautiful from a distance, a big city on the Baltic, built on a series of large and small islands, but Joakim felt no real pleasure at being back in the city of his childhood. All he could think of were the crowds and the queues and the struggle to get in first. There was a constant lack of space here; too few places to live, not enough places to park, a shortage of daycare places—even a shortage of burial plots. Joakim had read in the paper that people were being encouraged to cremate their dead nowadays, so that they would take up less space in the churchyard.

He was already missing Eel Point.

The freeway split repeatedly into a boundless labyrinth of bridges and intersections. Joakim chose one of the exits, turned off, and entered the network of the city, with its traffic lights and noise and dug-up streets. At one intersection he sat there trapped between a bus and a garbage truck and watched a woman shoving a child in a buggy across the street. The child was asking something, but the woman was just staring straight ahead with a sullen expression.

Joakim had a couple of things to do in the capital. The first was to call in at a small gallery in Östermalm to pick up a landscape painting, an inheritance he didn’t really want to be responsible for.

The owner wasn’t in, but his elderly mother was there and recognized Joakim. When he had given her his receipt, she went off to unlock a security door and bring out the Rambe painting. It was in a flat wooden box, fastened with screws.

“We looked at it yesterday before we packed it,” said the woman. “Incomparable.”

“Yes, we’ve missed it,” said Joakim, although that wasn’t strictly true.

“Are there any of the others left on Öland?”

“I don’t know. The royal family has one, I think, but it’s hardly likely to be hanging in some drawing room at Solliden.”

With the painting safe in the trunk Joakim drove west toward Bromma. It was half past two and the rush-hour traffic hadn’t yet begun to snarl up. It took him just about quarter of an hour to get out of the city and turn off toward the area where the Apple House lay.

The sight of his old home awoke a greater sense of nostalgia within him than Stockholm had done. The house was only a few hundred yards from the water, in a big garden surrounded by a fence and thick lilac hedges. There were five other big houses on the same street, but only one of them was visible through the trees.

The Apple House was a tall, airy wooden house that had been built for the director of a bank at the beginning of the twentieth century. But before Joakim and Katrine bought the house, it had been lived in for many years by a collective of New Age individuals, young relatives of the owner who had allowed people to rent rooms and had clearly been more interested in meditating than in painting or general maintenance.