She smiled to herself. After a while she turned on the radio. The calm music that flooded the interior took her back to another car ride on a summer’s day several years ago when she had been on her way to visit her parents. The music combined with her own sense of being lost had caused her to turn the car around and drive to Gräsö and Edvard for the first time.
It had been summer. She had had Edvard. Now it was raw winter. She turned off the radio, suddenly exasperated at herself and her depressing fate, her inability to look after herself.
Forty-two
Ruben Sagander was sweating and as the sweat froze it felt as if it were forming into armor. He looked up at Berit Jonsson’s illuminated windows. He walked in the front door to the building but did not turn on the light. He took a deep breath and started to walk up. The stairwell was full of Christmas smells. He walked past door after door. He heard music and laughter. Now he was sweating copiously, just like he always did on an elk hunt when the animal turned up in his viewfinder and he slowly, silently raised the barrel.
One flight of stairs left and in his mind he saw the damaged sign to the shop and recalled the sign of the first one they had erected in the shop. Sagander paused. A door opened on the floor below and he heard the sound of footsteps going down.
“Take the boxes with you too!” a woman shouted. The footsteps stopped. A man muttered something and returned to the apartment. There was a brief exchange and then the footsteps went down again. Ruben Sagander stood completely still and was relieved that the man hadn’t turned on the light either. The front door opened. Sagander waited and fingered the knife in the pocket of his hunting jacket. A few minutes later the man returned, tiptoed up the stairs, a door opened, music streamed out, and the door closed again. Sagander breathed again and kept going.
Outside Berit’s door he stopped and took out a hood. He drew the knife from its sheath and cut two slits in the fabric, pulled the hood over his head, and felt the door handle. The door was unlocked.
Berit was sitting at the kitchen table staring blankly at the carton of bills in front of her. Thousands of kronor. She had never even seen this much money before. She stuck her hand down and put a bunch of five-hundred-kronor notes on the table. Suddenly she started to cry.
“Why, John?” she sniffed and pushed some notes off the table.
Mechanically she started to count, putting twenty five-hundred-kronor notes in each pile. Anger overcame her when she had counted to fifty thousand. He had let her down. God, how she had scrimped and saved all fall, worrying about their finances and their future. She had even wondered if they would be forced to sell the apartment and start renting. This while John had been sitting on hundreds of thousands of kronor the whole time. Justus had clearly taken some money too. He had also known. John and the boy had been planning something together. A double betrayal.
There was a sound from the hall. She reached out and turned down the volume on the radio.
“Justus,” she called out. “Is that you?”
Lennart watched the man looking up at Berit’s windows. The yard was badly lighted and in the heavy snowfall it was hard to pick out any detail, but the figure looked familiar. Could it be Dick Lindström? He wasn’t quite as large, but winter clothes could be misleading. Was he back from Holland and horny as a tomcat? Lennart swore under his breath. I’ll fucking catch you in the act, he thought. He’s got some nerve showing his face around here. And Justus, the poor bastard, has to stand by and watch his mother being mounted by a scumbag with buck teeth a week after his father has died.
Lennart drew closer to the entrance but pulled back after he caught sight of a man carrying garbage bags and a large box. He walked toward the garbage shed where Lennart was hiding. He heard the man come closer, how he mumbled something, cleared his throat, and spat into the snow.
He threw open the door to the garbage shed and Lennart more saw than smelled the stink waft out into the winter night. The man shut the door, cleared his throat again, and walked back to the apartment building. Lennart waited a minute or so before following him.
Ruben Sagander stared transfixed at the money in front of him. Piles of money were laid out on the floor and table. His money. He had been right. He gave a harsh laugh.
Berit automatically drew the money toward her as she stared at the masked man. She started putting the money back into the box.
“Don’t touch me!” she said and looked around for something to defend herself with.
The man laughed again, bent down, and picked up a note. Berit lunged for a bread knife on the counter but was immediately caught in an iron grip. She felt the intense sweat smell and the hands like a vise around her arms. The man didn’t say anything but he was panting. The mask made him unrecognizable but nonetheless there was something familiar about him. She tried to free herself but her attempt resulted only in a tighter grip and another laugh. She kicked him on the leg but it didn’t seem to affect him.
I don’t want to die, she thought with increasing desperation and remembered the expression of terror on John’s face when she had said good-bye to him at the morgue. She made a new attempt to escape by throwing herself to the side as she also knocked him with her head. Her forehead met its mark. For a moment the grip around her arms loosened. She threw herself over the counter but the man was immediately on top of her again. She was thrown to the floor but managed to get one hand up and scratch him in the face. Her hand touched something wet and she understood it was blood seeping out through the mask. He howled with pain and aimed a blow at her body. It hit her on the shoulder and Berit was spun around by the incredible power of the blow.
Then he was on top of her. It had been a silent struggle, but now Berit screamed. He let go of her with one hand and tried to cover her mouth, and that gave her the opportunity to push her knee into his crotch. He cringed with pain, rose halfway to his feet, fumbled inside his coat, and pulled out the knife.
I’m going to die, she had time to think when she saw the raised knife above her head. At that moment there was a violent explosion and she felt the masked man flinch. Then there was another explosion and she saw the mask torn asunder and a terrible wound was revealed in his head before he was thrown forward on top of her.
The man’s limbs jerked before everything was still. The weight and sharp smell of his body fueled her panic and she fought to get him off her. Blood dripped down onto her face and chest.
When she had managed to free herself she saw a figure standing in the doorway. She saw the weapon in his hand and realized that he had saved her life. She managed to crawl over, then pulled herself up to her knees and wiped the blood from her face with her sleeve. Then she saw it was Lennart. He was pale as a ghost. The hand with the gun was shaking and his body twitched once as if from an electric shock. She drew her breath and tried to say something.
“Lennart,” she whispered.
He shook more violently and started to cry.
“Lennart,” she repeated.
He turned around and left the apartment on wobbly legs. She looked at him leaving, stretched out her hand as if to stop him, but where he had stood only the gun remained. Berit leaned her head against the kitchen cabinet as heaving sobs racked her body. She stared, sickened, at the wound where the bullet had entered the man’s head and retched violently.