Despite the meager snack, he felt satisfied and did not let himself be discouraged by the fact that he would probably need to stop for food once more before Uppsala.
It had been a fine trip, a mini-vacation of over a week. He went to Koster for the first time in his life and visited an old acquaintance who had moved there permanently, spent a few days in Gothenburg, and unexpectedly ran into a childhood friend he had not seen for at least fifteen years. The last two days he camped at Kinnekulle, swam in ice-cold Lake Vänern, and finished the red wine he had bought in Gothenburg.
Now he turned on his cell phone for the first time since Koster. Five voicemails and eight missed calls.
He listened to the messages. The first few were not sensational, two from motorcycle buddies, who like him were out and about and wondered where in the world he was, two from his sister, who wanted help moving. The fifth message was all the more worrisome.
A woman from the police, Ann Lindell, was looking for him in “an urgent matter.” It was about Klara Lovisa.
Håkan Malmberg pushed aside the plate with the remains of the roll, got up immediately, and left the place.
“Bye now and welcome back,” a voice was heard, but he did not turn around and did not answer the greeting. There was nothing to say thank you for here either, he thought bitterly, suddenly enraged at the whole place. How the hell can you work in such a dive! Not even keep it clean. He resisted the impulse to go back in and scold the woman behind the counter.
“All these bitches can go to hell!”
It was more than a two-hour drive home. Just as he was kick-starting the motorcycle, he got the idea to turn west instead on E18 and go to Oslo. There he had bike buddies and could disappear for a week or two. Then maybe it would blow over. He had nothing waiting in Uppsala.
“She can move herself,” he muttered.
It was the third time in as many years that his sister was moving, always in the summer, and she always expected him to help out.
He pulled out on E20 and placed himself aggressively close to the centerline and the cars he would pull up alongside of and, one after another, put behind him on his ride.
Thirteen
Bernt Friberg’s and Gunilla Lange’s relationship could be summarized in a single word: skin.
They crept together like two animals in darkness. Gunilla breathed against his shoulder and he hid himself behind her ear.
He’s a fine person, Gunilla would think, when she heard his heavy breathing. She knew what he did during the day, felt the weight of his body, the twitching muscles.
I love you, Bernt might mumble, before he passed out.
The hours of skin counterbalanced much of what felt incomplete.
She stared into the darkness. They were lying close together, he with one leg over her thigh, she with her arm resting on his shoulder. It looked like any late evening, they always lay close together, wordlessly storing up skin from the other.
“What is it?” he said, twisting his head. She felt his words against her throat, and she heard that he was worried. Not angry, just worried, a feeling he often expressed in darkness.
“I’m thinking about Bosse,” she said without fear.
What else could she say? Betray Bosse by saying: “Nothing?”
“Don’t think like that,” he mumbled.
What do you mean by “like that,” she wondered.
“He’s gone,” he said. “Now you have me.”
“I know,” she answered.
She waited awhile for him to continue. Normally he would rattle off a long litany, but he remained silent.
“He wanted so much to get away from this life,” she said instead, encouraged by his silence.
“I doubt anyone really believed in that company, other than Bergman, but he was wounded too.”
“What do you mean?”
“He sits at home dabbing at canvases and daydreaming,” said Bernt.
“I believed in their company,” said Gunilla. “I know what he could do, what they could do.”
“That was then,” said Bernt, with sharpness, but still consoling in tone.
“He deserved a better fate.”
“You have me,” Bernt repeated.
They were still lying close together, but none of the customary calm was present. Suddenly he placed his hand on her breast, caressed it carefully, took hold of the nipple between his thumb and index finger and mumbled something she could not interpret.
She did not want his hand on her breast but against her will the nipple stiffened. She freed herself carefully from his hold by turning over. She felt how he stiffened and how he pressed himself against her back and buttocks. His breathing became heavier. Without wanting to she became damp, and she thought about Bosse as he forced himself inside her.
When in the middle of the night she woke up he was no longer in the bed. He usually got up once during the night, but there was no sound of flushing from the toilet.
She pulled aside the cover, swung her legs over the side of the bed, and sat that way for a few minutes before she got up, pulled on her bathrobe, went up to the closed bedroom door, and listened. The apartment was quiet.
The door creaked a little as she opened it. She heard a faint sound from the kitchen and happened to think of a puppy she had as a child. A puppy that never was more than a puppy as he was run over at only three months old, who at night would whine at the foot of her bed, unable to jump up onto it.
He was sitting at the kitchen table, naked, with his shoulders tensed, his head resting in one hand. In front of him were two bottles of beer. One was empty, the other half empty. Bernt, who would not have a drop for weeks, not even a beer.
“What’s going on?”
He started and turned quickly around. In his eyes there was fear. His hairy chest heaved in a deep breath.
“I woke up,” he said as he exhaled.
“Were you dreaming?”
He shook his head. She knew that it would be as good as impossible to get him to talk, but she made an attempt anyway.
“I liked what you did,” she said, realizing how crazy that sounded. “I mean, it was nice for me too.”
She guessed it was something like that he wanted to hear.
He said nothing, raised the bottle, and took a gulp.
“Won’t you come and lie down?”
Another shake of the head.
“I might as well stay up. I’ll be leaving soon.”
She looked at the clock on the stove. 4:13.
“You can sleep another hour,” she said.
At a quarter to six he had to be at Heidenstam Square. He and four workmates met there every morning to carpool down to Jakobsberg. They had done that since March. In the fall there would be a few weeks in town before the commute to Stockholm started up again.
In that respect they were alike, Bernt and Bosse. It felt good in the morning, like a continuation of her life with Bosse. Bernt was also in construction and always left home early. Bosse had never been exactly talkative in the morning, and Bernt wasn’t either.
“Why do you have to work on a Saturday?” she said.
“You know how it is,” he replied.
She knew. How many weekends hadn’t Bosse worked?
“Shall I make you a cup?”
He did not answer and she took that as a yes.
They drank coffee together. She glanced at him.
“Aren’t you cold?”
“Yeah,” he said.
She went for the cover in the bedroom and draped it around him. He looked surprised, but smiled, took a sip of coffee.
“That was good,” he said. “I needed to warm up.”
“What are you thinking about?”
It was as if Bosse’s death made it possible to ask such a question at four thirty in the morning. She did not understand how, but that’s how it was.
“About us,” he said. “You are so dear to me.”