Freyr shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. He could feel the onset of the headache that had characterized their last year together, an oppressive throb at his temple that no painkiller seemed able to cure. ‘I do hear everything you’re saying, Sara. I just don’t believe in these things, you know that. But thanks for telling me.’ The latter statement was the opposite of how he actually felt. He would have preferred her to keep her dream about their son and his messages from beyond the grave entirely to herself.
‘He feels bad where he is.’ She was clearly about to start sobbing.
‘Sara.’ Freyr scrubbed at his eyes. ‘You’ve got to stop this. There’s nothing we can do and nothing we left undone back then. You’ve got to face reality. Benni’s not coming back.’ His own voice finally cracked a tiny bit as he let his hand drop and opened his eyes. This obsession of hers had reopened the poorly healed wound in his heart so often that it was nearly gangrenous. Had he not made the decision to leave her, he would most likely have ended up drinking himself to death or destroying himself by some other means. All he wanted was to be able to go through the grieving process on his own terms, without constant interference from the delirium that gripped Sara. Before moving out, he had never looked forward to going home and had eked out his work as much as he possibly could. He still did, in fact, which said a lot about his pathetic little apartment which he was barely familiar with even after living there for six months. ‘You’ve got to accept it, for your sake and everyone else’s. And now I’ve got to say goodbye.’
‘He came to me in a dream. Benni feels bad where he is and he wants you to find him,’ she repeated.
Freyr wanted to shout, but suppressed it. ‘Thanks. Talk to you later.’ He hung up, the same questions that kept him awake most nights running through his head. How could a six-year-old boy vanish without trace in broad daylight? Where was he? Why couldn’t he be found? Freyr stood up and stared for a moment at the ugly, awkward handset as if it held the answer.
The old man’s frail body jerked spasmodically. ‘Would you like something for your cough?’ Freyr put down the patient’s chart.
‘Would one more pill make any difference?’ said the man in the white hospital gown, stretching his purple lips into a ghastly smile. As his gums had receded, his false teeth had long since become one size too large and they overwhelmed his face when they appeared like this in all their glory. ‘All right, then.’ He laid his trembling hand gently on his own chest as it moved up and down to the rhythm of his feeble breathing. ‘I swallow everything I’m given, my good man. But I think I’ve almost had enough.’
‘So you’ve said.’ Freyr knew as well as the old man that his days were numbered. He was in his late nineties and suffering from bowel cancer. Freyr, however, was too tired to discuss life and death with him today. ‘What a beautiful girl.’ He lifted a framed photo of a girl with dark plaits from the bedside table. ‘Is this your great-granddaughter, who was here earlier?’ As soon as he’d said it he realized this couldn’t be the case. The child in the photo was older than the little girl who had led her mother out of the room earlier that day.
The man gave a short, rattling laugh. ‘Almost. You’re quite perceptive. The photo was taken of my granddaughter, Svana, twenty years ago. And now she has a little girl herself. Both of them are wonderful, they often come in to see me.’ The man’s watery eyes squinted as he looked at Freyr’s hands. ‘You’re not married?’ Another coughing fit prevented him from continuing his interrogation.
‘Divorced.’ Freyr grabbed his stethoscope. ‘I’d like to take a quick listen. That cough doesn’t sound so great.’
‘Does any cough sound great?’ The old man didn’t wait for a reply, but continued, ‘That’s a big mistake you’re making, my good man, if you plan to spend your life alone instead of remarrying. A big mistake.’
Freyr nodded in agreement. ‘Well, hopefully I’ll put that right. I just need a woman. I’m not exactly beating them off with a stick.’ He pulled the covers off the man’s chest and unbuttoned his gown. ‘It’ll be a bit cold, but I expect you’re used to that by now.’
‘Svana, my granddaughter who was here earlier, she’s single.’ The man looked into Freyr’s eyes. ‘She’s a good and beautiful girl. And so is her daughter.’
Freyr smiled at him. ‘I don’t doubt it. They’re probably too good for me.’ He looked at the big wall clock above the door. ‘I’m always working.’ He placed the stethoscope on the man’s speckled chest. ‘How old is the little girl?’
‘Three. Speaks perfectly.’ The old man stopped to cough, as Freyr instructed. ‘Her preschool was closed this morning, so our little cherub had the day off and wanted to visit her grandfather. Someone vandalized the place last night. A damned shame.’ The man stopped again and concentrated on breathing deeply, in and out, as Freyr asked. As soon as Freyr stuck the stethoscope back in his pocket he continued, ‘Unfortunately, some things never change. There will always be scumbags who get a kick out of spoiling things for others. There’s something particularly unpleasant about that kind of destruction. When I taught primary school here, the school was vandalized once. That was such a horrible day – I feel for the staff at the preschool if it was anything like that.’
‘I was called out there this morning and I saw the state of the place. I know what you mean.’ Freyr buttoned up the man’s gown and spread the blanket back over him. ‘We just have to hope they find the perpetrator.’
‘I don’t hold out much hope of that. They never found the one who wrecked our primary school all those years ago; no one’s ever cracked the case.’ The old man shook his head sadly. ‘Damn it, I can hardly remember anything nowadays, but I’ll never forget it. Everything that could possibly be damaged had been. In those days things weren’t so replaceable; you couldn’t just stroll to the shops and upgrade things as soon as they showed any sign of wear, so the damage wasn’t just emotional. The school and its staff bore the marks of the incident for several years afterwards.’ The old man succumbed to another violent coughing fit, then continued in a slightly hoarser voice, ‘They had to be sparing with the paint, so the graffiti showed through for a long time after. It wasn’t until the entire school was repainted that the letters disappeared.’
Freyr was waiting patiently for the man to finish so he could move on to his next patient, but his story sounded uncomfortably familiar. He had tried to reach Dagný at lunch to ask whether there was any news, but without success. There was no way of knowing whether the investigation was making any progress or whether everyone was just as clueless as they had been that morning. Of course Dagný might have returned his call, but Freyr kept his mobile phone in his locker to avoid interruptions at work. Unfortunately Sara had figured this out and found a way to call the department directly. ‘Did you say something was written on the walls?’
‘Yes. It was completely incomprehensible. The vandal must have thought his message was clear, but he can’t have been in his right mind.’
‘What had he written?’
‘Just a few words, but the same ones repeated throughout the building.’ The old man cleared his throat but didn’t cough, much to Freyr’s relief. ‘Ugly was written on the wall of my classroom. Whatever that was supposed to mean.’
‘Ugly?’ Freyr exclaimed. The old man focused his watery blue eyes on Freyr. ‘Yes. I chose to interpret it as the man referring to himself and what he’d done. That helped me, having to look at it for all those years, even if you could only see a faint shadow of the word through the paint.’ The man pulled the cover all the way up to his chin. ‘I had a harder time coming to terms with what was written in the assembly hall.’