She closed the door but remained standing there with her hand on the doorknob. How is this going to go? she asked herself. The feeling of unreality lay like a mask over her face. Her legs were as heavy as if they were set in plaster casts and her arms felt like foreign outcroppings on a body that was hers and yet not. She moved, talked, and experienced her surroundings with full possession of all her senses but as if at a great distance from herself.
Justus had broken down. For several hours he had been shaking and crying and screaming. She had forced herself to be calm. Then he had eventually calmed down and, as if with the wave of a hand, sunk down into a corner of the sofa. Something strange came over his young face.
They had immediately become very hungry. Berit quickly cooked some macaroni, which they ate with cold Falu sausage and ketchup.
“Does it hurt to die?” That had been one of his questions.
How was she supposed to answer? She knew from that female police officer that John had been assaulted, but she didn’t want to hear any details. It hurts, Justus, she had thought, but in order to comfort him she told him that John had most likely not suffered.
He didn’t believe her. Why should he?
Her hand on the doorknob. Closed eyes.
“My John,” she whispered.
She had been sweating, but now she was cold and walked with stiff legs to the living room to get the blanket. She stood passively in the middle of the room, wrapped in the blanket, unable to do anything now that Justus had fallen asleep. Before, he had needed her. Now the minutes were ticking away and John became more and more dead. More distant.
She walked over to the window. The smell of the hyacinths almost choked her and she wanted to smash the window to get some air, fresh air.
It was snowing again. Suddenly she saw a movement. A man disappeared in between the buildings on the other side of the street. It was only a split second, but Berit was convinced that she had seen the figure before, the same dark green clothing and a cap. She stared down at the corner of the building where he had disappeared, but now all that could be seen were some footprints in the snow. She wondered if it was the same man she had seen while she was waiting for John. Then she had thought it was Harry’s brother who was helping him with the snow removal, but now she wasn’t sure.
Was it John appearing to her? Did he want to tell her something?
Ola Haver came home shortly before nine.
“I saw it on the news,” Rebecka said to him first thing.
She gave him a look over her shoulder. He hung his coat in the closet and felt the fatigue settle over him. From the kitchen he heard the continuous hacking of a knife against the cutting board.
He walked into the kitchen. Rebecka had her back to him and he felt drawn to her like metal shavings to a magnet.
“Hi,” he said and buried his face in her hair.
He felt her smile. She kept slicing and cutting.
“Do you know that in Spain women spend four hours working in the home a day and the men only forty-five minutes?”
“Have you been talking to Monica?”
“No, I read it in the paper. I had time for that in between the vacuuming, breast-feeding, and laundry,” she said with a laugh.
“Should I do something?” he said and put his arms around her body, grabbing her hands so that she had to stop cutting.
“It was a study involving several European countries,” she said, freeing herself from his grasp.
“How did Sweden do?”
“Better,” she said curtly.
He knew she wanted him to leave her alone so she could finish the herring salad or whatever it was, but he had trouble letting go of her body. He wanted to press up against her back and bottom.
“Was it bad?”
“The usual. Hell, in other words, but Bea had the worst of it.”
“Informing the family members?”
“What else is going on? How are the kids?”
“Was he married?”
“Yes,” Haver said.
“Children?”
“A boy, fourteen.”
Rebecka tipped up the end of the cutting board, pulling the knife over the board to scrape the last pieces into the frying pan. He looked at the knife in her hand. The stone in her ring, the one he had bought in London, gleamed ruby red.
“I’m making something new,” she said, and he knew she was talking about the food.
He straightened up and went to shower off.
Eight
Justus Jonsson got up out of his bed at twenty to four in the morning. He had woken up with a start, driven by a single thought. His dad’s voice: You know what you have to do, boy.
Why hadn’t he thought of it before? He tiptoed to the door, opened it, and saw the light on in the hall. He listened, but the apartment was quiet. The door to his parents’ bedroom was slightly ajar. He peeked in and saw to his surprise that the bed was empty. He was confused for a few seconds-had she left? But then he saw that the covers were missing and then he understood.
She was sleeping on the sofa. He walked over and stood so close that he could hear her breathing and then, reassured, returned to the bedroom. The closet door squeaked softly as he opened it. With the most careful movements he could muster he carried a chair over so that he could reach the top shelf, all the way at the back.
That’s where John had kept the boxes of aquarium equipment, spare parts to the pumps, filters, a jar of pebbles, plastic bags, and the like. Behind all this Justus located what he was looking for and carefully teased out the box. His mother coughed and he stopped, waiting for half a minute before he dared to get down, put the box on the bed, put the chair back, and gently shut the closet door.
The box was heavier than he had expected. He tucked it under one arm, looked out into the hall, and listened. He was sweating. The floor was cold. The clock out in the living room struck four.
Justus had saved his father. That’s how he felt. A wave of warmth pulsed through him. It’s our secret, he thought. No one will find out, I promise.
He crept in under the covers, pulled his legs up, and put his hands together. He prayed that John would see him, hear him, touch him. One last time. He would have given anything to feel the touch of his father’s hand again.
On the other side of the city, Ola Haver was getting up. Was it the headache that had woken him or one of the kids? Rebecka was sleeping heavily. She always woke up at the slightest sound from the little ones, so he suspected it was the pain behind his brow that had cut his sleep short.
He took a couple of painkillers, washed them down with a glass of milk, and remained standing at the kitchen counter. I should be sleeping, he thought. He looked at the time: half past four. Had the paper arrived? At that moment he heard the door to the apartment building slam shut and he took that as a sign.
He waited at the front door and picked the paper up when it was pushed through the mail slot. It struck him that he had never seen the delivery person, but he sensed it was a man. That’s what the steps in the stairwell sounded like. A person who serves us every morning and whom we would sorely miss if he stayed home one day. No face, just a pair of feet and a hand to push the paper through the mail slot.
Haver unfolded the newspaper and turned on the kitchen lamp. The picture from Libro was the first thing he saw. The story had not changed. Liselotte Rask, the public relations manager, confirmed the facts of the brutal murder and added that the police had recovered certain traces at the site. Haver smiled. Yes, he thought, my shoe prints, Ottosson’s, and Bea’s.
The picture of the victim didn’t do him justice, but in comparison to how his body had looked it was a glamour shot. People just can’t imagine, Haver thought. They don’t know what we have to see. Not even Rebecka understands-but how could she?