A Darker Shade of Sweden (10 page)

She put the thermos with the mulled wine upright into her knapsack and braced it with towels so it wouldn't fall over and start leaking.

Later, as she sat on the commuter train, it felt as if she was now one of them, one of all those going in to the city to work. Tired, pale faces, the aisles full of slush. The outside temperature this Lucia's Day morning was just around the freezing point and wet snow was falling. She took one of the free dailies and since she got on at the first station she got a seat. She leafed through the paper disinterestedly while some school teens with glitter in their hair were messing about, having celebrated all night. She smiled at them. As opposed to them, she was absolutely sober.

Thank heaven, the lock code remained the same. She took the elevator to the top floor of the building and continued up the half stair to the attic door. Up here, behind the elevator's control cubicle, she changed her clothes. She had been shivering from the cold while she walked from the train station. Now she no longer felt cold. She put her garments in one of the paper bags and pushed it close to the wall. Then she tied the red ribbon around her waist and put the crown of lights on her newly washed hair. In the glass pane of the elevator well she could see her own reflection. She twisted one of the candles and the crown lit up. So far everything had gone according to plan. She cleared her throat and sang softly.

Then in our darkened house,

Walking with gleaming lights . . .

After that, she glided slowly downstairs.

There was a wreath of boxwood on the door to her former place of employment. The smell of cat pee was persistent. It had been the same way all the previous years. That they never learned, that they didn't get lingonberry wreaths instead. They didn't smell at all.

It was a quarter to nine in the morning. Jannike steadied her grip on the thermos bottle and rung the bell.

Marja opened. Sudden worry flashed across her face.

“Who . . . oh! It's you!”

“Hush!” Jannike put a finger across her mouth. “I'll leave in a few minutes, I just wanted to . . .”

She held out her paper bag with the small presents.

“I wanted to ask all of you to forgive me,” she mumbled and managed to make her voice sound just as thick and full of regret as she had planned. “I brought some mulled wine as well. Please, Marja, help me out.”

Marja's bad conscience. It radiated from her. It came to her help. It was Marja who went out to the others and convinced them all to come to the conference room. All of them were there, all ten of them; it hardly happened every day, but on just this day it did, everything went her way. It was also Marja who went to the canteen to get ten cups.

Jannike stood straight and calm. She paused for a moment on the threshold of the conference room, watched all of them sitting there, her former coworkers. Gunhild looking stiff and wary, Sylvia in a new hairdo. Evy, fatter than before, her breathing a dull rattle. Someone had lit the tea lights and the Advent candles. The room smelled of dust and old papers.

Jannike had intended to give a short speech, but it didn't work out that way. And perhaps that was just as well. Perhaps it was more striking this way. She passed from chair to chair pouring her mulled wine, without trembling or spilling a drop.

“Cheers, and Merry Christmas,” she said and saw them lift their cups and drain them. They smacked their lips and smiled cautiously at her.

“And please forgive me for all the things I've done.”

Marja said:

“But how about you, dear, aren't you going to have some mulled wine yourself?”

She looked Marja straight in the eye.

“No, you see, I've quit,” she said softly.

Then she brought out her gifts, passed them out one by one.

“I wish you a wonderful Christmas,” she said, leaving the office with the empty thermos cradled in her arms.

Born Inger Wilén in 1944, Inger Frimansson grew up in many different towns around Sweden. Though she started writing fiction in her teens—and at nineteen won a nationwide contest with her novella—she worked for many years as a journalist before finally publishing her first novel in 1984. For the next dozen years she wrote nongenre novels, though often incorporating strong thriller elements. Not until 1997 did she publish a clear-cut psychological thriller:
Fruktar jag intet ont
(I Shall Fear No Evil)
. Her second thriller,
Godnatt min älskade (Good Night, My Darling,
1998), won the Best Novel of the Year Award from the Swedish Crime Fiction Academy; in 2005, Frimansson again won that award for
Skuggan i vattnet (The Shadow in the Water)
. Few dispute that Inger Frimansson is Sweden's finest writer of psychological thrillers in the noir tradition; her novels have been published in fifteen foreign countries, including the United States. In addition to her adult novels, she also writes for younger readers.

PAUL'S LAST SUMMER

E
VA
G
ABRIELSSON

To readers of crime, Eva Gabrielsson is known only as the life companion of Stieg Larsson, whom she met during an anti–Viet Nam War rally in Umeå when they were both eighteen. They remained inseparable until Larsson's death in 2004; in 2011, she published
There Are Things I Want You to Know about Stieg Larsson and Me,
a book largely about her struggle to live on after his death. But Eva Gabrielsson is a writer in her own right. Just like Larsson, she was an active science fiction fan in the 1970s, writing for fanzines and copublishing two. Later on, apart from her writings on architecture, she translated Philip K. Dick's Hugo-winning novel
The Man in the High Castle
into Swedish, wrote essays for feminist magazines, and published a book criticizing the treatment in Swedish law of unmarried couples.

Eva Gabrielsson moved to Stockholm in 1977, where she studied architecture. She went on to work with computer-aided design at the Ohlsson & Skarne building company; later still she was a secretary of the governmental Building Cost Delegation, led a sustainable building project in the county of Dalarna, and has developed manuals for the Build-Live-Dialogue, a cooperative project to develop a sustainable Swedish living style involving the national government, a number of local government areas, and a number of major corporations. One of her continuing projects is to write a book on the architect and city-planning head of Stockholm, Per Olof Hallman, who put his unique stamp on important parts of Stockholm as well as on numerous other Swedish cities and towns. Devotees of crime fiction may be interested in knowing that Eva Gabrielsson's research on Hallman influenced Stieg Larsson's Millennium novels—all the good guys in the books live in areas planned by Hallman.

Her contribution to this book is her first published work of fiction. It is a low-key story about a seemingly not very dramatic event. But it raises important issues, and asks us to examine both our conscience and the way we treat our fellow men.

PERHAPS THE UPWARD SLOPE TO THE CHURCHYARD WAS A LITTLE TOO
steep after all. But Paul Bergström stubbornly set his jaw and continued walking, firmly if slowly and a bit unsteadily, supported by his cane. In honor of the day he wore his best tweed jacket and a trench coat bought in the 1970s, which he used in the summer.

“What your head lacks your legs better make up for, as they said when I was young. But now both my legs and my memory are going. Being eighty isn't easy. The down slope of life but still you have to go uphill, nothing fair about it,” he grumbled to himself.

Finally he was on the graveled path winding among the graves, stepping carefully, his bouquet in a firm grip. “Now where is Emma's grave,” he mumbled, trying to find the red granite stone somewhere among the linden trees. In the greenery, nothing seemed familiar. He stopped to get his wind and get a better look. The white stone church blinded him. “I'd really appreciate a tiny bit of revelation right now,” he said hopefully.

Sitting in the cool church vestry, Louise Alm was considering her Sunday sermon. She lit a candle, wound her long hair around her index finger, chewed her pencil, and finally began noting down random thoughts.

Her congregation was a mixture of young and old. Lately, they had begun worrying markedly more about the future. More of them had asked to see both her and the lay worker. It was a time of life crises for persons of all ages, and unfairly enough many of them seemed to land simultaneously on the same weary and insignificant person, as she saw herself. Louise felt insufficient. She was only forty, with much less life experience than many of the older members of her congregation. While the younger lived lives she was hardly able to comprehend, despite her two children. She was constantly uncertain about her own role. How was she supposed to be a shepherd to this flock of wildly careening individuals? Perhaps what she had felt to be her life's calling was hopelessly out of date in this era of egotism.

The candle suddenly fluttered as the doorway was blocked by an elderly man, clearly lost and with a bouquet of flowers in his hand. There were tears in his eyes.

“Can I help you in some way?” Louise asked, putting her pencil down.

He really looked desperate.

“Could you come?” he said. He held out a trembling hand, dropping his flowers.

“I'm sorry. My name is Paul Bergström.”

“You are very welcome. I'm Louise Alm and I'm the vicar. We have met before, though perhaps you don't remember it right now.” She stood, went up to him and shook his hand. Then she picked up his flowers.

Together they walked out in the churchyard and up to a small red granite marker with room for more names than the three already cut into it. Next to the red stone stood a smaller black one. They looked at them silently for a long while. Louise waited, uncomprehending, next to Paul. His breathing was rapid.

“I visit more graves than people nowadays,” Paul said when at last he had regained some of his composure. “But even so I don't think anyone should have to visit his own grave while still alive.”

“I'm sorry, I don't understand,” Louise said.

“That black one,” Paul said, pointing. “It has my name on it, though no dates.”

“That can't be. How strange. Maybe it's been delivered here by mistake,” Louise tried.

“Oh, no. I haven't even ordered it,” Paul said.

Squaring his shoulders, he searchingly tapped his cane on the stone, as if to see if it was real. It remained, immobile, dark and frightening.

“And I'm not even supposed to rest here once the time comes,” he went on. “I'm to be buried with Adele, my wife. And Emma is here, as she should be, with her husband and their daughter.”

“But then why on earth is your stone here?” Louise said.

“I have no idea,” Paul said, and started to cry again. “It frightened me.”

“Please calm down, Paul. I'm sure there must be some reasonable explanation,” Louise said. “Let me walk you home. Somehow I'll get to the bottom of this.”

“Thank you,” Paul said, wiping his nose. “That's very kind of you. Could you hand me Emma's flowers? After all, it's for her sake I went here.”

Louise stopped to admire Paul's wooden house and its garden, full of apple trees.

“I built it myself, back in the nineteen fifties,” Paul said. “Had to do it all on weekends and holidays, of course. Then I married Adele. But she died ten years ago.”

“I remember you from Emma's funeral,” Louise said. “That's when we met. And I knew she wasn't your wife.”

“No, she never was. But we lived together for five years. Both her husband and her daughter died in a car accident eight years ago. Only her granddaughters are left now. Nice girls. You can see them in the photos on my living room bureau.”

On the kitchen table was a pile of junk mail, a few magazines and a smaller pile of letters, some of them left unopened for more than a month, to judge from the postmarks. On the windowsill, a forlorn geranium wilted in abandonment. If anyone had had green thumbs, it must have been Emma. Louise pushed the piles of paper aside to make room for the coffee and cinnamon buns Paul began to set out. In the middle of it all the doorbell rang. Paul went off to the door and returned with more mail and a large parcel.

“That was Johan, the mailman. He usually checks to see if I'm in, so I won't have to walk out to the mailbox if I should get heavy or unwieldy things. It's hard to carry things nowadays, when I need my stick and often get a bit dizzy.”

“What service,” Louise said, while Paul sorted the new mail into the piles for junk, advertisements of interest, and letters. He put the parcel in a pile of its own. Most of his mail seemed to be bills.

While they had coffee, Paul praised his kind mailman. “Though one thing was a bit strange,” he said. “Johan wondered about my lodger. But I've been alone here since Emma died.”

“Yes, time must seem to run slow nowadays,” Louise said. “How are you doing?”

“Well, when I don't speak to Emma's photo, I mostly talk to the birds in my garden. It does get a bit monotonous. Adele and I never had any children, you know. But of course I see my brother's children. And while Emma was still alive, her girls looked in on us fairly often.”

“Maybe your mailman was suggesting that you should get a lodger, not saying that you already had one,” Louise said.

“Oh, no. He said that someone is having his mail forwarded from my address.”

“He couldn't be talking about Emma's mail?” Louise said.

“No. He didn't mean her. I asked him about that. But he couldn't remember the name,” Paul said. “But I suppose they have too much going on at the post office nowadays to remember every small thing.”

Louise suspected that Paul must have misunderstood what the mailman had said. Or misheard. Or simply was getting a bit senile. Which might explain the tombstone as well. But she felt that those things should wait until he seemed ready to talk about them. Meanwhile, they could always deal with his mail.

“Maybe we ought to open your letters?” she said, taking a
bun.

“Yes, I suppose so,” Paul said. “I simply haven't been able to do a lot of things since Emma passed. To think it's already been three months. Time flies, it really does.”

There were a few bills that ought to have been paid weeks ago, solicitations from various charities, a few letters of condolence from Emma's relatives and a letter addressed to someone named Carl-Edvard Palm.

“Well, isn't that what I said,” Paul said in a firm voice, putting the letter aside. “They have too much to do at the post office nowadays. No question about it. Carl-Edvard doesn't live here, now does he?”

“I seem to remember his name. Didn't he go to Emma's funeral as well?” Louise asked.

“Oh, yes, Emma was his mother-in-law. He used to be married to Emma's daughter, the one who died in a car accident. He lives in the house they had at the other end of town, but with his new wife. So the post office really has messed up,” Paul said.

“Well, at least that's one mystery solved,” Louise said.

Fortified by two cinnamon buns and very strong coffee with cream, Paul was clearly in better shape. He walked into his bedroom and returned with a binder full of receipts and account statements from his bank. To Louise's surprise, he said thoughtfully:

“Well, as you can see, there was no unopened bill for any tombstone. But I thought perhaps you might help me look through this binder as well, just to make sure that I haven't mixed anything up. Could you spare the time?”

“Of course,” Louise said, impressed, and dismissed the idea that Paul might be senile. She began leafing through years of orderly bills and receipts.

After half an hour they were in complete agreement. There was no invoice for a tombstone, and the bank statements for the last seven months were in complete accordance with the bills accounted for in the binder. Nor were there any unexplained bank drafts or payments that could account for the 10,000 or so kronor such a stone would have cost.

“Well, that didn't make us any the wiser,” Paul said.

“It really is very strange,” Louise agreed.

“The stone wasn't there two weeks ago,” Paul said. “So it must have been ordered fairly recently. But not by me, as I've said. And I certainly haven't paid for it either.”

“No, I'm sure you haven't. I just don't quite know how to proceed with this,” Louise said, “but if you want me to, I can easily find out which companies deliver tombstones to my church. Do you want me to give it a try?”

“God bless you,” Paul said.

It was the first time Louise saw him smile.

Not until she got home that day did it strike her that the letter to Carl-Edvard Palm had been printed with the unmistakable logotype of the tax authority. And the tax authority, if anyone, should have the correct address of whomever they wanted to communicate with. After all, they were responsible for the national registration of ­citizens—if they had a wrong address for someone, that person might even get out of paying taxes. And the government certainly didn't allow that to happen. She suspected there was at least one more phone call for her to make.

Two days later, Louise returned to Paul. She stopped at his mailbox to pick up his mail before ringing his doorbell. Today it seemed his friendly mailman had been too rushed to bring Paul's mail to his door. Paul was in, waiting for her.

“Hello again,” she said, “and here you are. Today's crop, but mostly advertising.”

“Thank you,” Paul said. “Come on in. I hope you have something to tell me.”

Louise did. According to the tax authorities, Carl-Edvard Palm really was registered as a resident at Paul's address. The change had been made two months ago, and it was Carl-Edvard Palm himself who had requested it. At the same time, according to the mailman, whom Louise also had talked to, he had put in a request to the post office that all his mail should be forwarded from Paul's address to the house where he lived with his wife.

“Carl-Edvard never told me anything about this,” Paul said.

“I can't understand it either,” Louise said. “But the mailman has done nothing wrong, except delivering that letter from the tax people here instead of sending it on to Carl-Edvard's house.”

“It's very strange. I suppose I ought to call him about it,” Paul said.

“Wait a bit,” Louise said. “I have more to tell you.”

Paul suddenly looked frightened, and his eyes shifted warily. Louise suspected that the thought of the tombstone was haunting him.

“I'll fix some coffee,” she said. “You just sit back and relax.”

But Paul refused to be distracted. He sat rigidly and didn't move until Louise brought the coffee. Then he fetched a small bottle of schnapps from the corner cupboard, put a lump of sugar in his cup, added some schnapps and topped it with coffee.