Murder of Halland (12 page)

Monday. Good! Were we finally back to normal? You could argue I had been away on business in Jutland. I didn’t cope very well, but now I was getting there.

If normal weekday life had resumed, the washing needed attention. I filled the machine. I toyed with the idea of going for a walk, buying some groceries and then sitting down to write. Instead, I made some coffee and went upstairs. Martin Guerre was still rolled up in Halland’s study. I had put the redirected post on his desk. It had been preying on my mind. I tore open the envelopes and pulled out the contents. Placing the letters in a pile, I read them one by one, counted them, then went through them again. Reminders. All of them. One said our telephone was going to be cut off. I went downstairs, lifted the receiver and found that the line was dead. Did they have to do that now?

I knew everything about Halland. He was the love of my life. Did I hate him? As I pulled a jumper over my head and crossed the square, I felt that I did. I entered the bank on the high street and went straight through to
the desks behind the counter, where Kirsten was sitting. She stood up to greet me and then, gently holding my elbow, ushered me into a room at the back.

‘Have you closed Halland’s account? That’s what happens, isn’t it, when people die? I have no money of my own. Why didn’t anyone tell me?’

One thing at a time. Kirsten poured me some coffee. Looking over at me, she said, ‘Now, tell me what’s the matter.’

‘Our phone’s been cut off!’

‘Things never happen that fast. What’s Halland’s ID number?’

I gave her his number. She stared at a computer screen, then looked back across the desk at me. ‘It seems that Halland cancelled his standing orders some time ago. Are they now supposed to come out of your account?’

‘That wouldn’t make any sense. I hardly use my
account
, there’s so little money in it.’ I gave Kirsten my own ID number.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘there’s 2,700 in your current account. And in your interest-bearing account…’

‘That’s to pay my taxes…’

‘Is there supposed to be more than half a million?’

‘How much?’

Nodding, she clicked on the mouse a few more times.

‘Where’s it all from?’

‘From Halland. He transferred a large sum about a month ago, 450,000 kroner. Were you not aware of that?’

Was I aware of that? I stood up and walked out past the cashiers onto the high street.

‘If that number should contact you again,’ Funder had written. I had been contacted. What a lot of money!

Back in my living room, I simply yelled, ‘What’s going on?’ Halland couldn’t possibly have known that he was going to die, and neither would he have
wanted
to die. He had battled to survive his illness. On the other hand, he had clearly developed some sort of scheme, something he had been close to achieving. He had moved his papers out of the house. He had transferred bags of money into my account. That must be illegal. What would I want with all that money? I needed to pay the bills, but what else? I could only think of one explanation. He wanted to leave me. But that made no sense. The house was his. Was there another woman? That lunatic in the woods? Pernille? I went to my desk, rummaged for the note with her number on it, then sat with the receiver to my ear before remembering that the line was dead.

Had I stopped to think, I would have taken the car. But I wasn’t thinking. Climbing on my bike, I cycled towards the woods through the wind and rain. Laburnum. Lilac. Drizzle. I needed the rhythm of words to penetrate the headwind. Whoever had planted that hedgerow with
laburnum
and lilac should’ve been given a medal, assuming they were still alive. Which was unlikely.

Stine was in. Sitting down on the bench at the side of her house to get my breath back, I realized that she played the piano better than most lunatics, if that was her playing inside. I listened for a bit. When the piece came to an end, I went round to the front door. Through the little round pane I saw a pair of feet. Was she standing
on her head? I lifted my hand, ready to knock, but my nerves failed me. If Halland had been planning to move in with Stine, I didn’t want to know. I crept away from the door, grabbed my bike and walked slowly back along the path. The rain had stopped. I didn’t feel like going home. What were those birds sitting on the telephone line? Were they swallows? Were they swifts? No. They were perched in a row, not in the air. Was Halland a swift, living on the wing, never landing? I had no idea how to analyse poetry, only how to enjoy it. Specialist literature was a mystery to me too. I interpreted words at face value.
Normally, a swift will interrupt flight only
for the purpose of breeding
. In my mind’s eye, I saw Halland dancing in the garden. ‘Come out, come out!’ he had called. Did I go to him?

When I arrived back in the square, Bjørn the caretaker was walking towards his car. He raised his hand in
greeting
. I raised mine, then waved to indicate that I wanted to speak to him. He came over. He looked embarrassed. I gripped the handlebars of my bike.

‘What exactly did you hear Halland say?’ I asked.

He took a deep breath and thought for a moment. ‘My wife has killed me.’

‘But he can’t have said that, surely? Are you quite certain?’

He furrowed his brow. ‘Yes. At least I think so.’

‘Is that what you told the police?’

‘As far as I remember.’

I felt annoyed. ‘That’s not the sort of thing you should say without being certain!’

‘Well, it’s a while ago now,’ he protested. ‘I’m fairly sure that’s what I told them.’

Shaking my head, I walked my bike towards the gate. ‘Do you fancy dinner at the Postgården?’ he called after me.

‘I always eat there on Mondays,’ Bjørn the caretaker said as we walked down the hill together. I never had supper at the Postgården. In fact, it was a long time since I had done anything as unremarkable as walking down the hill to the Postgården.

The dish of the day was a traditional fatty roast pork with potatoes and gravy. We waited in silence for the food to come. When it arrived, I fell on it.
Eventually
I looked up. The caretaker pointed at my plate and said, ‘You’ve eaten everything!’ He had removed the fat from his pork and left a large potato. ‘I was hungry,’ I replied, getting up to go to the loo. Was I going to throw up again? I had forgotten to check if there were any traces of my previous mishap on Stine’s step. Cold sweat appeared on my forehead. I was back in the woods. How had I got there that night? What about my bike? Stine didn’t have a car. Didn’t I see a car? My editor once scribbled a note on the side of one of my manuscripts. Halland would tease me about it:
Are there going to be any more flashbacks?
I hardly knew what flashbacks were any more. My life was a continuous stream of flashbacks. Like now: I went to the ladies. I read the words on the toilet-paper dispenser:
TORK
. And immediately all the other times I had sat in
a cubicle in the ladies’ loo recalling Thorkild Hansen’s French nickname,
Mon Tork
, came back to me. I had repeated the word to myself in many a public
convenience
. Flashbacks were all that was left.

When I returned to the table, Bjørn had gone. ‘He paid the bill,’ Betina said from across the room. ‘Would you like some coffee?’ Nodding, I sat down at my empty plate. I saw people at the harbour, near the side entrance of the old warehouse. The view reminded me of something I was supposed to remember but had forgotten. Had I killed Halland? Was that even plausible? Had he really said that I had? I hadn’t shot him, I knew that much. I couldn’t even hit a barn door that time I tried to apply for a hunting licence in my youth.

‘I didn’t have a chance to talk to him,’ I said when Betina put a cup of coffee in front of me.

‘It’s nice to see you getting out again,’ she said. ‘How are you?’

Why was she so friendly? I had come here a few times for coffee, but we had never exchanged more than two words. I almost told her I was fine, but I didn’t. Partly because it wasn’t true, partly because it would be the wrong thing to say. So all I did was shrug.

‘Well, it’s no wonder!’ she said.

I never found that the words people said to each other revealed to any great extent what happened between them. A single word never changed anything. A word was not an illumination that lodged itself in the brain and led a person to find a murderer. A word could never wound someone fatally. Love couldn’t die on account of
a mere word. One word would always be followed by another that compounded or expounded, repaired or derailed. Not even that second word would be decisive. Not in a good way, at any rate. There were times when I lost the inclination to speak. Silence felt simple and straightforward – but also indicated a lack. Silence acted on a person like a prison or a cramped cell. My mother had the ability to repeat my words in such a way that I both recognized myself and realized that she had
completely
misunderstood. ‘But you said you were afraid of him!’ she once claimed, referring to a former teacher of mine. Her voice was high-pitched, almost triumphant. She wiped her lips with a napkin. It wouldn’t have helped if I had retold the story more accurately or slanted it
differently
. She drew her own conclusions. That’s just one example. Other people behaved just like her. Me too. I wasn’t any different.

As soon as I got home, I rang Pernille on my mobile. Halland’s jacket was still on the peg in the hall. At first she expressed reluctance. ‘I’ve already told you,’ she said.

‘But he was having his post redirected!’

‘I’ve no idea why he did that.’

‘Why didn’t you ever come to see us?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose I never needed to, not with him coming here so often. You sound so angry. It can’t be my fault, surely?’

‘Why did he want to be present at the birth of your baby?’

‘He offered to be there, that’s all. Perhaps because he didn’t have any children. How should I know? Perhaps
he just wanted to see a baby being born. I appreciated the offer, since I had no one else to turn to.’

‘Oh, what rubbish!’ I barked, and hung up.

What now? A book to read. Find a book. Wolf, maybe. Something melancholy and meditative. Something
beautiful
. Lying down on the sofa, I turned to page 47.
The rest is silence. Yet again, I realized that our lives take place inside our minds
. I felt better already. My hands stopped shaking.

Afterwards. Of course, afterwards you always know what you should have said. I went barging into Inger’s house without realizing that the electricity was off there too. I made straight for the sound of her voice. Four candles burned in a holder in the kitchen. The man sitting
opposite
Inger was Brandt. I flung myself at him, almost going down on my knees, my hands clutching wherever they could get a grip. He didn’t get up.

‘Brandt!’ I shouted out, only to remember
immediately
that he had said, ‘Can’t you stop calling me Brandt now that Halland’s dead?’ We must have been sitting in a car when he said that. When could that have been? But everyone called him Brandt, even Inger.

I didn’t say, ‘Where have you been?’ or ‘Are you all right?’ or ‘What happened to you?’ Instead I started wailing, ‘Why? Why did he have to die? It doesn’t make sense. You remember how ill he was!’
Slumping
across Brandt’s knee, I wept. It took me a while before I realized that he wasn’t responding. Gripping my shoulders, Inger persuaded me to stand up. ‘Be
gentle. He’s only just arrived. He hasn’t said a thing. Come and sit down.’

The three of us sat in the flickering light, staring into each other’s shadowy faces. I studied Brandt’s unshaven skin. He didn’t return my gaze. Now the real questions began to surface. I wanted to ask them. But then I
suddenly
remembered that I hadn’t locked my door. The candle wax was dripping. There was a draught. Had I forgotten to shut Inger’s door? Had I shut my own? I should check.

‘When did you get back? Where have you been?’ I asked Brandt.

He didn’t reply.

‘Have you rung the police?’

Brandt turned his head. ‘That despicable man…’ he muttered.

‘What man?’

Raising his hand, he pointed at me. ‘Why didn’t you come?’

‘Where to?’

‘You promised!’

‘Promised what?’

‘Down there.’ He stared straight past me. He spoke with great effort.

‘He told you… to go down there!’

‘What’s he talking about? Down where?’ I asked Inger, then looked back at Brandt. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Despicable!’ he said.

‘Who is?’

‘I want to go home!’

Inger stood up and peered out of the window. ‘I’ll take you home when the power comes back on.’

‘That’s why I’m here,’ I said. ‘I thought they’d turned off the electricity because we hadn’t paid. I may have left the door open. Let me pop back and see.’ I wanted to be on my own. Brandt was acting so oddly and I didn’t understand what he was saying. He looked at me. ‘I don’t understand what you are talking about,’ I said.

The front door is ajar.

I push it open. Something comes hurtling out and nearly knocks me over. It lets out a yelp and makes off past Brandt’s house. A dog. The power still hasn’t come on. ‘Is anyone there?’ I call out. Why should anyone be there? Is there a monster in the darkness?

‘What are you doing?’ I ask. A dark figure is sitting in a corner on the floor. He clears his throat.

‘Abby says… you don’t seem to be grieving.’

‘Does she indeed?’

‘Says you’re flitting about, drinking and dancing.
Flirting
, and kissing the neighbour.’

‘That’s not what Abby says at all.’

‘You’re drinking again.’

‘I don’t drink.’

‘You’re not grieving.’

‘Abby wouldn’t know.’

‘Are you grieving?’

‘What’s it to you?’

I attack the monster. We roll around on the floor. He is on top, I’m underneath, then we switch places. The
windows are illuminated by the white summer night, but on the living-room floor we are in darkness. I catch a glimpse of the bridge of his nose. He doesn’t look
familiar
. He’s hurting me. Are we fighting? ‘Oh!’ I exclaim. My index finger brushes the back of his neck and I’m no longer in doubt. I know who he is now. I’m not afraid. I’m not dreaming. I’ll need to pull myself together in a moment. Then I’m hugging him from behind, unable to tell if he is asleep. I awake with him crawling across my face. I pretend to be sleeping. He is standing at the window. The sky gives out its pale light, though it is still night. He snuggles back down with me, top to tail. What’s he up to? Taking hold of my foot, he tries to open his mouth wide enough to take the heel between his lips. That is how we lie, my heel in his mouth, me pretending to be asleep. What does he want, I ask myself. ‘Leave,’ I whisper.
‘It’s better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.’
His voices trembles as he scrutinizes me. ‘Oh, stop it,’ I say. ‘Go home.’ ‘But I’ve waited all this time.’ ‘For what?’ ‘For you.’ ‘What a shame,’ I tell him.