Murder of Halland (3 page)

I saw ‘lust’ where the text said ‘last’. I tried to continue reading, but couldn’t. I mused on my mistake, marvelling at the ability to read in the first place. How did the eyes work? And the brain? Just as I wobbled on a bike if I allowed myself to think about balance, my reading became shaky if I wondered about the mechanism of reading. I loved reading and had always thought of it as a refuge. I even read the labels on bottles, if only to keep myself occupied on trains or in restaurants. I read in bed at night. If I lay awake for more than two minutes after switching off the light, I switched it on again to avoid lapsing into thought. To avoid thinking.

I gained this understanding the morning after
Halland’s
murder. I had managed an hour or so of sleep on the sofa. I tried to watch a film, to find something to read. I scanned the spine of every volume I owned without finding anything suitable. All the books I had bought just for their titles and which I had never read.
Time was too short.
The Far Islands and Other Cold Places. Travel Essays of a Victorian Lady
. I resolved to read the latter in due course. I waited for Abby to call, knowing that she wouldn’t. Eventually, I settled on a book, only because its size fitted into my back pocket. I put on a jumper, covered my head with a scarf and went out with a newspaper tucked under my arm. It was five o’clock in the morning. The light was grey, the grass was wet. The summer house was cold and damp. I walked down to the shore. The sun wouldn’t come out today; I could feel it in my bones. I sensed some movement behind me but didn’t dare turn round. Was someone watching me? All of a sudden, my legs threatened to give way.

I lay the newspaper on the jetty, sat down and opened my book. Again I thought about my obsession with
reading
and smiled to myself. ‘Lust’ instead of ‘last’. I stared at the fjord’s leaden waters and realized my vulnerability. I had sat reading on the jetty on other occasions; I was a writer after all. Halland always maintained that writers were privileged creatures. The more foolish and bizarre their behaviour, the happier they made those around them. Partly because other people’s prejudices were
confirmed
, partly because such conduct inspired outrage. Halland had lectured me on the subject, insisting that anyone who made a spectacle of herself couldn’t really blame others for doing the same. But he could hardly have been thinking of a situation like this. Someone
sitting
on a jetty at five thirty in the morning would barely be noticed. But if her husband had just been murdered?
The situation could so easily be misconstrued. A grieving woman could sit alone on a jetty in the early morning. But not with a book in her hands.

I put the book back in my pocket. The jetty creaked. I was resting my chin on my knees when I saw a figure approaching out of the corner of my eye.

In the past – though now I found the obsession
ridiculous
, even disturbing – I had likened strangling to a caress but considered shooting as callous. I had wanted to write a story about the difference between them. Now I was unable to fathom my excitement about intimate forms of murder (passion/strangulation) as opposed to calculated, remote forms of murder (callousness/shooting). Murder was murder, I thought, as the figure approached. I was overcome by a feeling of nausea. I imagined hands closing around my throat. Someone was aiming a rifle at me from further up the hill.

A man stopped beside me. I didn’t know him. ‘
Morning
,’ he said, then continued the last few metres to the end of the jetty, where wooden steps led down to the water. I nodded wordlessly. He filled a pipe with tobacco and then struck a match. The smoke wrapped itself around me. Its fragrance was sweet. The sun broke through the clouds. I stood up.

‘Lovely, isn’t it?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I replied, and looked out over the fjord to see if I agreed. He sat down. As I was turning away, he said something else. All I heard was ‘Halland’.

‘I beg your pardon?’ I said.

‘I’m sorry about Halland.’

‘Thank you,’ I replied, walking off briskly. I didn’t care who he was, or how he knew me. I could see the white-painted summer house with the silly weathervane. A blackbird sang. I went up the path. It could have been a normal day. I could have been going back to make coffee and wake Halland. When I reached the garden, I stopped and looked back on the jetty. The man hadn’t moved. If he was a journalist, he certainly wasn’t the keen sort. The smoke from his pipe created a cloud around him. I had forgotten my newspaper; it stuck to the wet planks. The fjord lay calm. Its bluish-grey surface glistened here and there with the rays of the sun. I almost didn’t feel sorry.

Caution in the face of novelty. The hesitant curiosity I had felt about Halland, about the house in which we were going to live, about the garden. The place was ours, yet I held back. I experienced the world with provisos.

The call of a cuckoo startled me. Cuckoos were
supposed
to call from far off, not from a tree in one’s own garden. What did they say about the cuckoo’s call, about death and how many years you had left? But death had already come and gone. Or was the cuckoo calling for me? I shied away from trying to understand Halland’s death. Out of fear? But I was not afraid. And now my grandfather was about to die as well. For many years I had missed him terribly; now I didn’t want to see him. I felt nothing any more, not sorrow, not grief.

I went back upstairs to Halland’s office. I stood for a moment, then sat down in his chair, closed my eyes and inhaled deeply. The room smelled of nothing in
particular
, dust perhaps, the warm fragrance of wood from the furniture. Under the desk was a pair of roll-front cabinets,
one to the left, one to the right. The keys were in the locks. When I opened the one on the left, the roll-front clattered to the floor. The drawers were nearly empty: some letters and a couple of brochures, a few loose photographs of the garden and the view out over the fjord, some of me, one of Halland’s mother. I didn’t find the photo with the maverick.

The drawers of the right-hand cabinet were full of documents to do with Halland’s business: VAT forms, tax forms, old mileage records. Although I had never
rummaged
through his papers, I didn’t feel I was intruding. Halland’s tidiness made me feel safe. Then I saw the two keys, this time on a loop of string: an ordinary one and one for a security lock. Halland had tied a little tag to them:
SPARES
. They looked exactly like the ones Funder had shown me. I weighed them in my hand before returning them to the drawer. Then I pulled up the roll-front and rose to my feet. Next, I opened the cabinet again, pulled out the drawer, took the keys and put them in my pocket. Leaving the cabinet unlocked, I went downstairs, only to change my mind again. I returned to Halland’s office, removed the cabinet drawers one by one and searched through their contents. I didn’t know what I was looking for. A piece of paper, perhaps, with the words
THIS IS
WHAT THE KEYS ARE FOR
. Anyway, I found nothing.

I slumped over the desk and rested my head on my arms for what seemed like a long time, my nose pressed into the fragrant wood.

Funder had left a card with his number. I could call him. On the other hand, I expected the police to return. 
Weren’t they supposed to pursue their inquiries? Shouldn’t they be going through Halland’s things,
questioning
me, making progress on the case? Somewhere out there was a man with a hunting rifle – and he had to be found. But they would hardly find him here. I had discovered some keys. The police already had a set. So I didn’t ring Funder.

I had to get out. Go for a walk or do some shopping. Anything. As I left the house, a figure ducked behind an open door. Then the door slammed shut as if someone had kicked it. Were people avoiding me?

Despite the sunshine, a chill lingered in the air. On the high street outside the newsagents I recognized
Halland’s
shadowy face on a tabloid placard.
WHO SHOT HALLAND
? asked the headline. Where did they find that photo? As so often, anger grabbed me and I was about to storm into the newsagents. Hadn’t Halland been a customer for years? Where were their manners? Did they even know what manners were? However, I turned on my heel and took a short cut down to the stream. My breathing quietened. My mind ran on two parallel tracks: one thinking about nothing, merely existing, the other churning out unpleasant explanations. At least I managed to hold the second track at bay. I clasped the unfamiliar keys in my pocket as I criss-crossed the
narrow
streets. Suddenly I heard a car behind me. This is it, I thought. Now they are going to run me over. What will death feel like? Will I scream or fall silently? But nothing happened.

Inger came outside just as I was unlocking my front door. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ she said.

‘I know.’

‘Is he really dead?’

‘It says so in the paper.’

‘Was he really shot?’

‘Didn’t you hear the shot?’ I asked, vaguely interested in what she would say.

‘Yes, I did. The sound woke me up. At first, I thought it was Lasse coming home late. Have they found the murderer?’

I didn’t reply.

‘How are you doing?’

I didn’t reply.

‘It always happens to the person next door, doesn’t it?’ she said. ‘But I don’t want it to happen to the person next door. I’m frightened. Aren’t you frightened?’

She always had something to say; she was constantly jabbering on. I cocked my hip, the posture I used to adopt
as a bored teenager. I had never stood that way since. I was fond of Inger, but I didn’t want to listen to her.

‘On the inside I’m the same person I’ve always been,’ she went on. ‘I look at myself in the mirror in the
mornings
and think, It’s high time you had an early night. Then I think, But you had an early night
last
night,
and
the night before. It’s just the way I look! Shocks me every morning because I feel young inside, or at least the same as I’ve always felt.’

I didn’t think Inger looked old, but then I myself didn’t feel like the same person inside any more. Perhaps she was expecting me to say something. I couldn’t.

‘Where have you been?’ she asked.

‘Shopping.’

‘Are you hungry?’

‘No.’

‘I’ll leave a casserole on the step for your supper. You might want something by then.’

I went inside. The postman had come. When I picked up the newspaper and a letter, I recognized my mother’s handwriting and tore open the envelope. The phone rang. As I dashed into the bedroom to answer it I banged my leg against the bed frame. Rubbing my knee, I picked up the receiver, expecting to hear Abby’s voice. It was a journalist. I pulled the plug out of the wall. The letter lay crumpled in my hand. It read: ‘Dear Bess. She doesn’t want to. I’ve told her you called and that Halland is dead, but she doesn’t want to. What did he die of? Love, Mum.’ Why didn’t she ring to tell me? Was this her idea of a condolence letter?

I had led a good life with Abby and her father. A normal, everyday life full of joy, sex, laughter, boredom, drudgery, acrimony and minor arguments. My husband took a sabbatical from his teaching job to go on some courses. He travelled a lot that year. I met Halland. If the
five-minute
encounter in a bookshop could have been avoided, everything would have worked out differently. Of course, any event can be thought of as inevitable or as something you could have altered or ignored.

The moment I told him I was leaving, my husband became consumed by a fury I never knew he had in him. For a year, Halland and I tried, though never consciously, to make my decision to live with him work. We really tried. We went on holiday and to parties. During the summer, we swam in the fjord every morning. Had people round. Planted roses. I painted the little summer house white; we put a weathervane on the roof. We never had any children, though. Before the year was out, Abby’s father became the father of twins. There was no turning back. A cliché, for sure. But it described reality. Abby wouldn’t see me. Halland and I were happy – at least until he fell ill.

Despite our year together we barely knew each other, and our relationship became more difficult as his
condition
worsened. Though we ate together and shared a bed, I felt as shy and awkward as I had been when we first met. That never changed. Right from the beginning I kept my sanitary towels, make-up, lotions, even my vitamin pills hidden away in drawers in my study. I rarely revealed myself to Halland, not if I had time to think before I spoke. The thoughts sounded wrong inside my head so
they never came out of my mouth. Eventually I convinced myself that we understood one another without recourse to words. His personal belongings and affairs were so inconspicuous that I never considered them at all. But his illness filled my entire consciousness. I couldn’t look away any longer. I helped him in little ways, though I spoke of the illness as seldom as possible. Only once did I ask him if he
was
in pain. He turned away without replying, because he was in pain, I suppose, but I never knew. Poor Halland. I think he would have liked to have known me.

I stood in the living room. The lid of the piano was open. Halland had put candles in the holders. He had given me the piano when I moved in with him because I had told him I played. The only time I showed any interest in the instrument was the day the tuner came. I still had ‘
Golliwog’s
Cakewalk’ at my fingertips. Part of it, anyway. But then I ground to a halt and didn’t return to the keyboard other than to run a duster over it, which happened rarely. We never spoke about the piano again. Now I began rummaging for my childhood sheet music. I found the box and placed it on the coffee table. I sorted through the sheets, chose a piece and began to play. Progress was slow, but I was in no hurry. When I looked up, I realized that an hour had passed. I felt at peace.

I had left a window open onto the street. A man stood in the square as if listening. At first he didn’t bother me, until I recognized him as the man from the jetty. What on earth was he doing here? I noisily closed the window. He acknowledged me with a nod and went on his way.