“Exactly! There’s nothing there. But there should have been,” he snarled.
She felt the blood trickle from her temple, but it didn’t hurt. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she heard herself say.
“There was a thread on the lid.” He thrust his face into hers. “And now it’s gone.”
“Let go of me. Let me get up. Couldn’t it have fallen off by itself? When did you last rummage around in those packing cases? Four years ago? All sorts of things can happen in four years!” And then she mustered all the air in her lungs and screamed as loud as she could: “LET GO OF ME!”
But he didn’t.
She watched the distance between herself and the stool increase as he dragged her into the room with all the boxes. She saw the trail of blood she left behind on the floor. She heard his oaths and his grunts as he held her down with his foot against her spine.
She wanted to scream again, but she couldn’t find the breath.
And then he raised his foot, took hold of her roughly, and threw her into the middle of the floor. And there she lay, helpless and bleeding in the valley of cardboard.
Maybe she could have reacted, but what happened next took her completely by surprise.
She registered only his legs stepping quickly to one side and the packing case as it was raised high above her.
And then he slammed it down hard against her rib cage.
For a moment, all air left her. But instinctively she twisted her body slightly onto her side and drew one leg up on top of the other. Then the second case descended, forcing her lower arm against her ribs and rendering all further movement impossible. And then, finally, a third on top.
Three full packing cases, weighing all too much.
She could see the landing beyond her feet, but then he closed off the space with another stack of boxes on top of her lower legs, and then another up against the door.
As he did so, he said nothing. Neither did he speak when he slammed the door shut, trapping her tight.
It was done so quickly that there had been no time to shout for help. But if she had shouted, who would have come to her aid?
She wondered if he would simply leave her there. Her chest felt immobile, and she was breathing from her abdomen now. All she could see in the remaining chinks of light from the skylight above her were brown surfaces of cardboard.
When finally darkness came, the phone in her back pocket rang.
Chimed until it stopped.
21
In the first twenty kilometers to Karlshamn, Carl smoked four full-strength Cecils just to settle his system again after ingesting Tryggve Holt’s horrendous coffee.
If only they had finished the interview the night before, he could have driven home again and would at this moment be lying in his cozy bed with the newspaper spread across his chest and the enlivening aroma of Morten’s rice porridge pancakes drifting into his nostrils.
He could taste his own malodorous breath.
Saturday morning. In three hours, he would be home. If he could keep his arse cheeks clenched.
Hardly had he tuned in to Radio Blekinge before his mobile chimed in the middle of a jig performed on Hardanger fiddles.
“Hey, Carlo, whassup? Where are you?” inquired the voice at the other end.
Carl glanced at the time on the instrument panel. It was nine o’clock, so this boded ill. When had his stepson ever been up this early on a Saturday morning?
“What’s wrong, Jesper?”
The lad sounded peeved. “I don’t want to stay with Vigga anymore. I’m going to move back in with you, if that’s OK?”
Carl turned the volume down on the Swedish folkies. “With me? Hang on a minute, Jesper, just listen up for a second, will you? Vigga gave me an ultimatum. She wants to come back, too. And if that doesn’t suit me, she wants to sell the house so she can run off with half the proceeds. So where are you going to live then?”
“She’s joking, surely?”
Carl smiled. It never ceased to amaze him how little the lad knew his own mother. “Anyway, why do you want to come back all of a sudden? What’s wrong? Fed up with the leaky roof in that garden shed of hers? Or was it your turn to do the washing up?”
He smiled to himself. A bit of sarcasm did his dodgy stomach no end of good.
“It’s too fucking far from school! An hour each way, a total downer. And then there’s Vigga’s moaning all the time. Who wants that?”
“Moaning? What sort of moaning?” he heard himself say before he could stop himself. What a stupid question. “On second thought, Jesper, I think I’d prefer not to know.”
“Nah, not that sort, Carlo! She moans whenever there isn’t a bloke in the house, like now. It’s getting on my nerves.”
So Vigga was on her own at the moment? What about the poet in the horn-rimmed specs? Had he found himself another muse with more money in the bank? Someone able to keep their gob shut for five minutes at a time?
Carl gazed out at the rain-drenched landscape. The GPS told him to go via Rödby and Bräkne-Hoby. The route looked meandering and most likely muddy as hell. And how come there were so many trees in this country?
“That’s why she wants to go back to Rønneholtparken,” Jesper went on. “Then at least she’ll have you for company.”
Carl shook his head. What a compliment.
“OK, Jesper, I’ll tell you what. There’s no way I’m having Vigga back in the house. I’ll give you a thousand kroner if you can talk her out of it. How does that sound?”
“Talk her out of it? How am I supposed to do that?”
“Easy. Find her a new bloke. Use your brains, lad. Two thousand if you can manage it this weekend. And then you can move back in with me. That’s the deal.”
Two birds with one stone. Carl was a happy man. Jesper, however, was stunned into silence on the other end of the phone.
“Oh, and one more thing. If you do come back, I want no more complaints about Hardy staying with us. If you don’t like the setup, you can stay put in the little house on the prairie.”
“On the what?”
“Are you with me? Two thousand if you get her sorted this weekend.”
More silence as the proposition passed through the standard teenage filters of resentment and bone-idleness, together with a liberal spread of morning-after sloth.
“Two thousand, straight up?” came the response after a while. “OK, you’re on. I’ll run some flyers off.”
“Deal.” Carl had his doubts, though, as to Jesper’s chosen method. He had imagined something more along the lines of him inviting a swarm of impoverished daubers to the allotment house where they could see with their own eyes the magnificent and, more important, gratis studio that might be part of the package when taking on a female hippie with mileage on the odometer.
“What are you going to put on those flyers, then?”
“Haven’t a clue, Carlo.” He mused for a moment.
“Maybe something like: Hey, my lush mum’s looking for a lush bloke. Miserable bastards and down-and-outs needn’t apply.” He laughed at his own suggestion.
“OK, but have another think before you get started.”
“No probs, Carlo!” Jesper laughed again, a hangover rasp. “Get your money ready!” And then he hung up.
Slightly bewildered, Carl peered out over the dashboard at red-painted houses and grazing cows in the pouring rain.
There was nothing like modern technology to muddle together life’s elements.
It was a dejected, doleful smile Hardy mustered when Carl appeared in the front room.
“Where have you been?” he asked softly as Morten wiped mashed potato from the corner of his mouth.
“Oh, a little jaunt over to Sweden. Had to go to Blekinge and stayed the night. In actual fact, I stood outside a pretty sizable police station in Karlshamn this morning knocking on a locked door. It’s even worse than here. Too bad if there’s a crime on a weekend.” He allowed himself an ironic chuckle. Hardy didn’t think it was funny, either.