He hung up. Her new tone worried him; it had sounded almost like a rapprochement.
He got up and put the photo of Annika back on the shelf, adjusting the angle so it could be properly seen. It struck him that it had been a long time since he’d been to her grave, but he had never really felt any connection with the place. How could he? Her name on the headstone proved that she was lying there, but he had never seen her with his own eyes. His father had refused to pay for the trip home, since Jan-Erik had refused to use the return ticket he had already financed. Against his parents’ will he had stayed in the States after finishing his studies, and for two years he had hitchhiked around with no goal except to avoid going home. It had taken him ten months to make enough money for a plane ticket, and in the meantime he’d missed both Annika’s funeral and the Nobel ceremony for his father. But he did make it home in time to see Björn Borg win at Wimbledon. They had met twice as junior players. One time Jan-Erik had been close to beating him.
It had begun to grow dark outside when he opened the door to his father’s office. His hand found the new light switch. He stopped in the doorway. About a month after his father had his stroke, when Jan-Erik had become used to the idea that no one was going to stop him, he had gone in and sat down behind the desk. He had sat there for a long time, absorbing the feeling. Then he had carefully pulled out the top desk drawer, just to see how it felt, and then pushed it back in.
One wall was filled with bookshelves, most of them holding Axel’s books translated into various languages. The opposite wall was covered with certificates and framed photographs, and here and there was a space where a signed picture had once been. He went over to the wall. None of the photos was of the family. They were all from some award ceremony or banquet with dignitaries. Believing that he would find Gerda anywhere was hopeless.
He went over to the cupboard door. He had only looked inside once before, and he’d found the key in the desk drawer. The darkness and raw cold struck him, and he realised that he needed a pocket torch. There was one on the shelf inside the door to the cellar; it had always been there. Removing it would have been ill-advised, since his mother had always been meticulous about everything having its place, and her reaction was unpredictable. Yes, the pocket torch was right where it should be, despite the fact that no one would ever be angry again, as if it had learned to obey all on its own. Nothing happened when he pushed the button on it. He went to the kitchen and pulled out the fourth drawer from the top – the drawer for batteries, elastic bands and clingfilm. There was an unopened packet. It occurred to him how strange it was to find charged batteries in the deserted house. As if they were the only things still alive. They lay there, ready, waiting for something that no one knew would ever happen. He changed the batteries and went back to the library.
There was a half-full rubbish bag inside the door. He shone the torch beam into it and saw printed materials and other papers. He would take those with him when he left – if his father had intended to throw them away they were undoubtedly rubbish. Axel had saved everything. Jan-Erik’s mother had called his hoarding a disease.
The cupboard was bigger than the others in the house, and ran along one whole side of the room. Heaps of paper, magazines, folders, binders, fan letters, newspaper clippings and boxes. All in a godforsaken mess that could not have been systematic even for the person who had once stuffed it all in. It would take weeks to clean out, sorting through what should be saved. The rubbish bag was a sign that his father had already begun, but considering the small amount in the bag and the quantity left he hadn’t got very far. The dream was to find an unpublished manuscript somewhere in the mess. After his Nobel Prize, his father had only published a few books; they were well received by the critics, but there was no real enthusiasm for them. It was clear to everyone that Shadow had been the high point of his career, a level he never managed to achieve again. But an unknown manuscript published after his death would bring in a considerable sum, even if it was from his declining years.
Jan-Erik began to dig through the piles, at a loss as to where to start. Notebooks, reviews, letters from admirers, programme flyers for author visits and the follow-up articles in the press. Much of what he found he was interested in studying further, but he knew this was not the right time. Even finding a photograph of Gerda might take hours. He opened a cardboard box full of old letters and to his relief found some old photographs. He took the box over to the desk and sat down. He moved the typewriter and set the box in its place. The first photo was an old black-and-white snapshot showing his father’s parents; the next was in colour and more recent, and they looked just as he remembered them. They had come to visit occasionally, always formally dressed, his grandfather in a suit and tie and his grandmother in a dress. They had moved about the rooms cautiously as if they were afraid to knock something over. They would come on the occasion of some celebration, and he recalled that even as a child he had noticed the way his father changed. He had looked on in wonder as Axel suddenly lost his usual commanding presence and instead dashed about the house showing off his fine prizes and framed certificates. His grandparents had looked on wide-eyed but didn’t say much, except for trivial remarks about some detail of a frame. Otherwise they had seemed to be more comfortable in the kitchen with Gerda, who on those occasions was always welcome to eat with the family in the dining room. And he suddenly remembered one Christmas dinner when they had been using the fine china, and his grandmother had tipped over her glass on the white tablecloth. Her face had turned crimson despite all assurances that it didn’t matter in the least, and she hadn’t eaten another bite. Not until Gerda happened to tip over a half-full beer bottle ‘by accident’.
They had died in the mid-eighties, four days apart, and at the joint funeral Jan-Erik had seen his father cry for the first and only time.
He put the lid back on the box and went back to the cupboard, determined to start at a different corner. There was a box on the floor at the back. A tall pile of papers was stacked on top. He lifted them off and opened the box. The first letter was dated 1976 and was from a publisher, but the date showed that he was in the right time frame. He took the box out to the light in the office.
He found it somewhere in the middle of the pile, after he’d glanced through his father’s name and address on countless envelopes and other items of mail. It was not at all what he was looking for, but the printed text up in the corner attracted his interest. A brown envelope from the police. He pulled out a folded sheet of paper, and everything he thought he knew became meaningless in an instant.
It was a police report.
Annika’s full name, address, and Social Security number. The words underneath made his body react as though he’d been startled by a sudden bang.
Immediate cause of death: Hanging.
Manner of death: Suicide.
12
‘When you hear the tone – ding-a-ling – it means it’s time to turn the page. Now we’ll begin.’
Kristoffer pushed the stop button on the old tape player. Many years had passed since he’d listened to the cassette. When he moved it had been packed in a carton and always had its obvious place among his belongings, but now he could no longer listen to it.
If a person had been waiting for a phone call for thirty-one years and that call finally came, how would that person be expected to react? Kristoffer didn’t know. For five hours he had sat motionless on the sofa, incapable of feeling anything at all. The little scrap of paper on which he’d written the number lay beside him on the sofa cushion; occasionally he would turn his head to look at it.