She guessed that the boy spoke the truth where the SMS was concerned, and sensed that he had not seen her that Saturday. In April they had already asked all the neighbors around the Davidsson house if they might have seen Klara Lovisa, but no one had seen or heard anything.
“Where you did usually meet?”
“Here or at her house,” said Andreas.
“But when you wanted to be by yourselves?”
“By the crematorium, behind there kind of. There’s a place where they pile up old gravestones, so they can use them again. Recycling, kind of.”
Lindell could not keep from smiling at his word choice, but it didn’t seem to be the most romantic place for a date. At that moment she remembered that the first time she saw an erect penis was at a cemetery in Ödeshög.
“May I borrow your cell phone?”
“Why? That’s what it says.”
“I just want to check,” said Lindell, reaching out her hand.
After a slight hesitation he handed over the phone. She read the message. He had left out an “XOX” at the end. She went back a step and checked incoming texts. If he had gotten a reply from her, she guessed he would have saved that too. But there was no SMS from Klara Lovisa.
She handed back the phone.
“Thanks,” she said. “It’s good that this came out, isn’t it?”
He nodded.
“Will I be punished?” he asked.
“No,” said Lindell, and turned off the recorder.
The one who should be punished is his mother, she thought.
Andreas sat with the phone in his hand. Wonder how many times he’s read his message, wondered Lindell, more gloomy than content at having cracked his alibi.
“One thing, and now the tape recorder is no longer running,” she emphasized. “When I asked you whether you had slept with each other, you said that Klara Lovisa wanted to wait. Wait until when?”
“Until she turned sixteen,” said Andreas.
Back in the car she wondered about the significance of Andreas’s final statement. Certainly he had hoped that he would be the first. An SMS could create contact, that was his obvious thought.
Lindell did not believe that Andreas had any part in her disappearance, but obviously that could not be ruled out. She looked at her watch again. Erik would not like her arriving late, and she saw that she still had time to take a look at the area around the crematorium and cemetery.
She headed in that direction, and when an elderly woman came walking along Berthågavägen she braked to ask about the place where the church stored old gravestones. The woman looked perplexed at first, and then nodded encouragingly, as if she thought Lindell was going to choose a gravestone, and pointed out the way.
Lindell got out of the car. The woman’s face made her think about her parents, that one day, perhaps in the not too distant future, she would have to choose a stone.
The area was an open yard where stones in all forms were laid out like on parade. She read some of the stones. Some of the inscriptions were almost worn away by the teeth of time.
She strolled around, turning in behind a wooden fence and surveying the ground. Weeds were growing luxuriantly between piles of gravel and chunks of concrete. Had Klara Lovisa and Andreas, despite everything, seen each other here on her birthday? Perhaps Klara Lovisa was happy that he remembered her birthday, even if she rejected his overture to resume the relationship. Could Klara Lovisa be buried here?
Andreas seemed to be a careful guy, but Lindell knew the problems that raging hormones in combination with disappointment could create.
She left the place with a sense of oppression, as if she had trespassed. The same feeling as when you are witness to a stranger’s sorrow.
She understood that it was this place, so lacking in finesse, that she would associate with Klara Lovisa. This would be her resting place, until they found her.
Fifteen
Itaberaba-Portal da Chapada, it said on the wall of the bus station. Gateway to the inferno might be more like it, thought Anders Brant.
For an hour he had fought with flies, stared blankly at the blaring TV, had a cup of overly sweet coffee, and turned down several taxi drivers.
He should have taken the first offer, but indecisively lingered at the station. The trip had taken four and a half hours, and once at his destination he felt mostly like getting on the first available bus back.
He was sweaty and strangely irritated at the people around him. He found himself looking for faults: one was too fat, another had ridiculously ugly clothes, and the third was talking nonsense. This behavior was quite unlike him.
He was usually not easily annoyed. If anything he was tolerant of people’s ideas and ingenuity, but now he felt as if the whole city, the bus station anyway, was one big taunt.
He had been in Chapada before, stayed at a hippie-influenced guest house in Lençóis and from there went out on various adventures, hiked in the mountains, rode a spavined horse during a three-day tour with a guide who talked about sex most of the time, and rafted down a river together with three Dutch women, all of it pleasurable and exciting. He liked Chapada, but not this time.
Now there were no outdoor arrangements waiting. The anguish made him sweat even more. He had a second cup of coffee. The man behind the counter asked what bus he was waiting for.
Anders Brant only shook his head and pretended not to understand, but realized that as a gringo he stood out, all the more so as he did not seem to be on his way anywhere, but hung around like a homeless person trying to pass the time.
He went up to the wastebasket, threw away his plastic mug, and decided it could not wait. Going back with unfinished business would be both silly and irresponsible.
He had prepared what he would say. In his money belt was an envelope with cash. When he left the bus station it was with a feeling of fateful distress, as if he could not have done this any other way, at least that’s what he told himself. There had really been no choice, everything had worked toward this ignominious end.
Obviously there had been a choice at one time, he could have left the place, even after they established contact and started exchanging small talk in that way Brazilian women are so good at, demure and flirtatious at the same time. But he wanted to hear the music group that would appear an hour or so later and decided to wait. In the interim he could just as well pass the time with a little company. She introduced herself as Vanessa. He ordered a beer, which they shared, and then another.
If he had left the concert and instead taken the last ferry back to the island, then he would not need to go back to Itaberaba like a scoundrel, with words and money ready, but without honor. You got horny, it was that simple, admit it, you idiot, he thought, heading for the first available taxi. I should have gone home, given myself a hand job and woken up at sunrise, sober and free.
The taxi ride was short, maybe fifteen blocks or so. It cost 8 reais. Brant gave him ten, got out of the car with sweat running down his forehead, and headed for the blue-painted house with the light red wall she had described.
A few children were playing on the street. A gas peddler pulled his cart as he called out that he was in the neighborhood. Anders Brant looked around in hope of finding something, a sign that would give him a chance to leave the field. Maybe Vanessa might come walking with a guy at her side? Then he could sneak away behind the ice cream seller’s hut, observe them, let him give her a passionate kiss, which could not be misunderstood, before he continued up the street. He would wave at the man and then disappear through the gate to the blue house.
Fantasies! But could he simply, untruthfully make up a man? A rival. Go back to Salvador and then from Sweden write a letter, filled with anguish and injured fury.