Autumn
Anders Brant crept next to her. His thin body was shaking. Ann Lindell realized that he had been dreaming. Perhaps he was still dreaming. He whimpered.
Like so often they were lying front to back, usually him behind her, coiled together, naked.
It was still dark outside. Ann did not want to lean over to check the time. She guessed four o’clock.
The nights had been unsettled ever since he left the hospital. He had incorporated his anxiety, sleep betrayed him. Sometimes he woke up screaming, sweaty and filled with a pounding anxiety.
Even his body failed him. He caressed her. He himself was often limp.
Anders Brant spent the days in Ann’s apartment. He seldom went out.
The texts flickered on his computer screen. He talked about what he was writing, and what he wanted to write, but Ann suspected that not much was getting accomplished.
They had not talked about Vanessa. He mentioned her name, but nothing about their relationship, other than that he had left her for good.
She wanted to believe him, chose to do so. His obvious helplessness made such hope easier. Earlier in the year, when they met and started their relationship, he was the stronger one. Now, after his return from Brazil, the knife attack, and the hospital stay, he was like a disheartened child.
Many times she was irritated at his passivity, even at his anxiety, but also saw how he suffered, so she could never get really angry.
One day when Ann came home, he was sitting on the balcony, smoking a cigarillo. That was the first time since he left the hospital. He had obviously not heard her, because he continued talking to himself, with himself, it looked like he was arguing with himself. He argued and gesticulated. She took that as a good sign.
And gradually he had come back. At the end of September he had an article accepted in Aftonbladet, which made him, in Ann’s eyes, ridiculously exhilarated.
She needed to sleep, but realized there would not be much more of that. Carefully she slipped out of his grasp and left the bed, closing the door behind her and hoping that he would not wake up.
The kitchen clock showed 5:14, much better than she had feared. The vigil before Erik would get up would not be very long. He was like a clock and always woke up around six thirty.
She retrieved Upsala Nya Tidning and sat down at the kitchen table, but did not open the newspaper. Instead she sat with a cup of tea before her.
In the morning the trial of Johnny Andersson would begin. He was indicted, in part, for two homicides and attempted homicide. During the first round of questioning he had already confessed that he clubbed down Bo Gränsberg. He had hidden the murder weapon, an iron pipe, in a pit, where it was later also recovered. The reason for their fight was the so-called Russian papers, which Gränsberg had stolen from Jeremias Kumlin’s house. Johnny, like Gränsberg, believed they were very valuable.
When Johnny later looked up Jeremias Kumlin to blackmail him for not revealing the contents of the documents-he had threatened to go on TV-Kumlin laughed in his face. That laugh became his death.
Henrietta Kumlin also identified Johnny Andersson as the “Russian,” the man who stood outside their villa in Sunnersta. Johnny had entered the garage and slept there. In the morning, when Kumlin came to get his car and go to Arlanda, Johnny was waiting in the semidarkness.
Beatrice Andersson had expended great effort to bring clarity into what happened the night Ingegerd Melander died. Her theory that Johnny Andersson pushed her down the stairs could never be proven. If on the remaining points of the indictment he was, if not cooperative, at least grudgingly compliant, he loudly denied that he was responsible in any way for Ingegerd’s death. Johnny asserted that “you don’t kill an old lady,” which Beatrice was quick to point out was just what many do.
Ann Lindell had nothing to do with the case. Anders Brant on the other hand would be called as a witness, but that would not happen for another day or two.
She opened the newspaper and read the headlines. The only thing that caught her interest was an assault in Årsta. A seventy-year-old homeowner had quarreled with his neighbor, about a tree branch that was hanging over the property line and which had caused discord for several years. The exchange of words ended with the retired bank official striking his antagonist on the head with a rake.
Ann could not help but smile. There was something almost laughable in the fury of the middle class. In Johnny Andersson’s hatred and flashes of violence there was no comedy, his actions, his whole being, were only frightening. Now he had clearly resigned himself and was strangely silent. It seemed as if he wanted nothing more than to crawl into an institution for life.
Suddenly the phone rang. She threw herself forward to stop a second signal from sounding.
“Good morning, Forsberg here. Excuse me for bothering you so early, but something has come in that I think will interest you.”
“I see.”
“Håkan Malmberg is dead.”
“What?”
“It seems as if a kind of justice has been rendered. The girl’s father has confessed. He called half an hour ago. We sent a patrol car and it’s true. Malmberg is done.”
“Klara Lovisa’s dad?”
Could that little mouse-gray man have murdered the powerful Håkan Malmberg?
“Yes.”
“How?”
“He went to see Malmberg yesterday evening and shot him in the head. Then he sat with the dead man the whole night. Maybe he intended to shoot himself too but changed his mind. Allan Fredriksson is at the scene. He asked me to call you. True, it’s early, but I thought you’d want to know right away.”
After the call, Ann Lindell went out on the balcony.
Håkan Malmberg was dead. In the end Klara Lovisa’s father, a taciturn man her own age, had snapped. How did he get hold of a gun?
It suddenly struck her that perhaps he had murdered an innocent man. It had never been established that the thread in the shed really did come from Håkan Malmberg’s bandanna. The only thing that argued against Malmberg were his own words that Klara Lovisa had been buried. He had stubbornly maintained that he heard that from someone, but could not remember from whom, not when or where either.
According to the prosecutor it could not be ruled out that he spoke the truth, and Håkan Malmberg went free. Now he was dead.
Ann Lindell realized that she would never be certain who had murdered Klara Lovisa on her birthday.
On the balcony was the ashtray with three butts neatly lined up on the edge. There was also Aftonbladet open to Anders’s article. He had made notes in the margin, underlined and crossed out. She read the introduction. It was clearly a polemic aimed at Green Motorists, an organization she had never heard of. But there were many things she did not know about in Brant’s world, what sugar cane looked like or a plundered rainforest, for example.
Lindell understood that he was on his way back. What if he could write about Klara Lovisa, Gränsberg, Sammy Nilsson, me, and all the others? What Sammy Nilsson had talked about, what couldn’t be written.
Leaning over the balcony railing she started to cry. Uppsala was bedded in a cold, gray October fog. The whole city was weeping.
“Stay with me,” she whispered.
About the Author
KJELL ERIKSSON is the author of the internationally acclaimed The Princess of Burundi, The Cruel Stars of the Night, The Demon of Dakar, and The Hand That Trembles. He won the Best Swedish Crime Novel Award for The Princess of Burundi, and his work has been honored by many other countries around the world. He lives in Sweden, France, and Brazil.