The Darkest Room (35 page)

Shit.

Tilda remained outside for several minutes, but saw no other movements in the darkness apart from the whirling snow. It was still blowing in across the coast, and when she
began to lose the feeling in her fingers she turned her back to the wind. She went back and picked up the Mauser in the doorway.

On her way back to Joakim she decided to go along the outside of the barn, despite the fact that the wind and the cold had almost finished her off by now. But she didn’t want to risk meeting anyone else in there, in those black rooms.

Dousing the fire with snow
had worked, but when Joakim finally managed to put the flames out, almost the entire staircase up to the loft was charred, and thick curtains of smoke hung from the roof beams.

Joakim coughed in the dry air and sat down at the bottom of the smoking staircase with aching legs. He was still holding the snow shovel he had fetched from the house.

He couldn’t even think anymore, didn’t have the strength to wonder where all these uninvited guests had come from tonight, or to ponder what had happened up there in the room with the church benches. He realized that Gerlof Davidsson was right: a veil of forgetfulness was already beginning to obscure his memories of this night.

Had he really met Katrine up there? Had she confessed that she had drowned his sister?

No. Katrine hadn’t said that.

Joakim looked at the tall man lying over by the wall. He
had no idea who he was or why he was wearing handcuffs, but if police officer Tilda Davidsson had caught him, then certain conclusions could be drawn.

Almost at that same moment, he thought he heard fresh shots from somewhere outside the barn.

Joakim listened, but when he heard nothing more he looked over in the direction of the wall.

“Was it you who started all this?” he asked.

After a few seconds a quiet reply came from the floor.

“Sorry.”

Joakim sighed. “I’ll have to build a new staircase to the loft … sometime.”

He leaned back, then remembered that Livia and Gabriel were still in the house, alone.

How could he have left them?

There was a sudden scraping noise over by the barn door, and when he turned his head he saw Tilda come stumbling in from the storm, covered in snow. She had her pistol in one hand, and an old hunting rifle in the other.

She sank down over by the wooden wall and breathed out.

“He’s gone,” she said.

Freddy looked up from the floor.

“Gone?” said Joakim.

“He ran into the forest,” said Tilda. “He disappeared … but at least he hasn’t got a rifle now.”

Joakim got up. “I have to see to my children,” he said, walking toward the door. “Will you be okay on your own for a while?”

Tilda nodded, but remained on the floor, her head drooping.

“If you go through the veranda … there are people there. Two men.”

“Injured?” said Joakim.

Tilda lowered her eyes. “One’s injured … and one’s dead.”

Joakim didn’t ask any more questions. When he glanced
at her for one last time, she had taken out her cell phone and started to key in a number.

He walked out into the billowing snow dunes in the inner courtyard, bending low against the wind. Eel Point didn’t seem so big tonight—the buildings seemed to be cowering like a pack of frightened dogs beneath the blizzard. The onslaughts of the wind ripped off slates and whirled them up above the top of the roof, where they disappeared into the darkness.

Joakim went inside the veranda and closed the door. A man was lying stretched out on the rug. Dead? No, he was just deeply asleep.

The storm was making the windows on the front of the house rattle, and the putty and frames holding the panes were creaking, but they were still holding.

Joakim walked into the house, but stopped in the hallway.

He could hear creaking noises in the corridor.

Hoarse breathing.

Ethel was there.

She was standing in front of the door to the children’s rooms; she had come to collect her daughter. Ethel was going to take Livia away with her.

Joakim didn’t dare go up to her. He simply bent his head and closed his eyes.

Trust me
, he thought.

He opened his eyes and went on into the house.

The corridor by the bedrooms was empty.

Tilda had vague memories
of being helped up the steps to the veranda late that night. It was still cold outside, but it felt as if the wind from the sea was beginning to subside. It was Joakim Westin who was walking beside her, supporting her along a newly cleared track. High banks of snow rose up on either side of them.

“Did you call for help?” he asked.

She nodded. “They said they’d get out here as soon as they could … but I don’t know when that will be.”

They passed a snowdrift with a piece of material sticking out. It was a leather jacket.

“Who’s that?” asked Joakim.

“His name was Martin Ahlquist,” said Tilda.

She closed her eyes. There would be many questions about this night: about what had gone wrong, what she had done right and what she ought to have done differently—but she was bound to ask herself more questions than anyone
else would. But she just didn’t have the strength to think about that right now.

The house was quiet. Joakim led her through the corridors to a big room where a mattress made up into a bed lay on the floor. There was a tiled stove nearby; it was warm, and she lay down and relaxed. Her nose was aching and was still full of blood—she couldn’t breathe with her mouth closed.

The wind was howling around the house. But at last she fell asleep.

Tilda slept deeply, but was woken occasionally by a throbbing pain in her head and with memories of Martin’s body in the snow—and by a spine-chilling fear of being back out there in the darkness of the barn, where pale arms with long fingers reached out for her. It took time to relax.

Sometime before dawn a shadow leaned over her. She gave a start.

“Tilda?”

It was Joakim Westin again. He carried on talking, slowly and clearly as if he were addressing a small child.

“Your colleagues called, Tilda. … They’re coming soon.”

“Good,” she said.

Her voice sounded thick through her broken nose. She closed her eyes and asked, “And Henrik?”

“Who?”

“Henrik Jansson,” said Tilda. “The guy on the veranda … how’s he doing?”

“Pretty good,” said Joakim. “I put a fresh pressure bandage on.”

“Tommy? Is he here?”

“He’s gone … the police are going to look for him when they get here.”

Tilda nodded and went back to sleep.

An indefinable amount of time later she was woken by a droning noise and quiet voices, but she hadn’t the strength to wonder what was going on.

Then she heard Joakim’s voice again:

“The cars can’t get through, Tilda … they’ve borrowed an all-terrain vehicle from the army.”

Soon after that the room was filled with voices and movement, and she was helped up out of bed, somewhat roughly.

The warm air suddenly disappeared, she was out in the cold again, but now there was barely a breath of wind. She was walking along a path that had been cleared of snow, with white mounds all around her.

Christmas Eve, she thought.

A door closed, another opened, she was placed on a bunk beneath a weak lightbulb. Then she was left in peace.

Silence fell.

She was lying in an army vehicle and she could see a body below her on the floor, wrapped in a plastic sack. It wasn’t moving.

Then someone beside her coughed. Tilda raised her head and saw another person lying a few yards away with a gray blanket over their legs. The body moved slightly.

It was a man. He was lying on his back with his head turned away from her, but she recognized his clothes.

“Henrik,” she said.

No reply.

“Henrik!” she shouted, despite the fact that it made her ribs hurt.

“What?” asked the man, turning his head toward her.

And she finally got to see his face clearly: Henrik Jansson, flooring contractor and thief. He looked just like any twenty-five-year-old guy, but his face was exhausted and chalk white. Tilda took a deep breath.

“Henrik, your fucking ax broke my nose.”

He was silent.

Tilda asked, “Have you done anything else I should know about?”

Still he didn’t reply.

“There was a death here on the point in the fall,” she went on. “A woman drowned.”

She heard Henrik move.

“Some people heard a boat down by the point on the day she died,” said Tilda. “Was it your boat?”

Then Henrik suddenly opened his eyes. “Not mine,” he said quietly.

“Not yours?” said Tilda. “Another boat?”

“But I did see it,” said Henrik.

“Did you, indeed?”

“I was standing by the landing stage the day she died …”

“Katrine Westin,” said Tilda.

“She had a visitor,” he went on. “In a big white boat.”

“Did you recognize it?”

“No, but it was bigger than mine, built for longer trips … a small yacht. It moored by the lighthouses and someone was standing there. I think it was her …”

“Okay.”

Tilda suddenly realized she just didn’t have the strength to talk anymore.

“I
saw
it,” said Henrik.

Tilda met his eyes.

“We can … talk about it later,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll be having plenty of interviews.”

Henrik just breathed out with a heavy sigh.

Silence fell in the vehicle again. Tilda just wanted to close her eyes and doze off, so that she could escape the pain and thoughts of Martin.

“Did you hear anything in the house last night?” Henrik suddenly asked.

“What?”

A door slammed. Then the carrier’s engine roared into life, and the vehicle moved off.

“Knocking noises?”

Tilda didn’t understand what he meant. “I didn’t hear anything,” she said through the noise of the engine.

“Me neither,” said Henrik. “No knocking. I think it was down to the lantern … or the board. But it’s all quiet now.”

He’d been stabbed and was well on his way to ending up in jail, but Tilda still thought he sounded relieved.

On the morning of Christmas Eve
it was still dark at Eel Point. The power hadn’t been restored, and outside the windows huge banks of snow rose up.

Three police officers and a search dog had arrived in the all-terrain vehicle during the night and searched all the buildings without finding Martin Ahlquist’s murderer. Joakim had given them permission to look wherever they liked. After about three o’clock, when they had left for the hospital with Tilda Davidsson and the guy who had been stabbed, he actually managed to sleep for a few hours.

For the first time in several weeks he slept peacefully, but when he woke up at around eight in the silent house he couldn’t get back to sleep. The rooms were still pitch black, so Joakim got up and lit a couple of paraffin lamps. An hour later a stronger light penetrated the snow-covered windows.

It was the sun, rising over the sea. Joakim wanted to see it, but had to go upstairs, open the window on the landing, and
knock aside one of the shutters in order to be able to look out toward the sea.

The coast had been transformed into a winter landscape with a deep blue sky above sparkling snow dunes. The red walls of the barn looked almost black against the dazzling snow.

There was an arctic silence all around the place. There wasn’t a breath of wind—perhaps for the first time since Joakim had moved in.

The blizzard had blown itself out. Before moving on, it had hurled up a three-feet-high wall of sea ice down by the shore.

Joakim looked toward the shore. He had read about old lighthouses that tumbled into the sea during fierce storms, but the twin lighthouses had survived the blizzard. The towers rose above the banks of ice.

Joakim lit fires in the tiled stove at around nine, driving the cold out of the house. Then he woke the children.

“Happy Christmas,” he said.

They had fallen asleep with their clothes on in Gabriel’s bed. That was how he had found them when he came in from the barn the previous night. He had covered them with blankets and let them sleep on.

Now Joakim was ready for questions about what had happened during the night, about the noise of shooting and all the rest of it, but Livia merely stretched.

“Did you sleep well?”

She nodded. “Mommy was here.”

“Here?”

“She came in to see us while you were gone.”

Joakim looked at his daughter, then at his son. Gabriel nodded slowly, as if everything his sister said was true.

Don’t tell lies, Livia
, Joakim wanted to say.
Mommy can’t have been here
.

But instead he asked, “So what did Mommy say?”

“She said you’d come soon,” said Livia, looking at him. “But you didn’t.”

Joakim sat down on the side of the bed. “I’m here now,” he said. “I’m not going to disappear again.”

Livia looked at him suspiciously and got out of bed without a word.

Joakim woke Freddy
, who was a quiet, calm young man without his brother. There hadn’t been room for him in the army vehicle, so Freddy had stayed behind, handcuffed to one of the radiators in the hallway.

“Still no sign of your brother,” said Joakim.

Freddy nodded wearily.

“What were you actually looking for?”

“Anything … valuable paintings.”

“By Torun Rambe?” said Joakim. “We’ve only got one. Were you looking for more in the barn?”

“There were no more in the house,” said Freddy. “They were somewhere else, the board said. So we went out and set fire to the staircase.”

Joakim looked at him. “But why?”

“Don’t know.”

“Are you going to do it again?”

Freddy shook his head.

Tilda had given Joakim the keys to the handcuffs, and he decided to show a little good faith and trust this Christmas Eve. He released Freddy from the radiator.

When the power came back on at about eleven, Freddy settled down in front of the television to watch Christmas programs while he waited for the police to come and take him in. With a mournful expression he gazed at cartoons about Santa, live broadcasts showing people dancing around Christmas trees, and a cooking show filmed in some snow-covered mountain chalet.

Livia and Gabriel sat down beside him, but none of them spoke. There was still a kind of Christmas community spirit, and they all seemed to relax.

Joakim went and sat in the kitchen with the notebook he had found next to Ethel’s jacket. For an hour he read Mirja Rambe’s dramatic accounts of life at Eel Point. And the story of what had happened to her there.

At the end there were some blank pages, then a couple that had been written by someone other than Mirja.

Joakim looked more closely and suddenly recognized Katrine’s handwriting. Her notes were scrawled, as if she had been in a great hurry.

He read them several times, without fully understanding what she meant.

At twelve o’clock
Joakim prepared Christmas rice pudding for everyone.

The telephone was working, and the first call came after lunch. Joakim answered and heard Gerlof Davidsson’s quiet voice:

“So now you know what a real blizzard is like.”

“Yes,” said Joakim, “we sure do.”

He looked out of the window and thought about last night’s visitors.

“It was expected,” said Gerlof. “By me, anyway. But I thought it would come a bit later. … How did you cope?”

“Pretty well. All the buildings are still standing, but the roofs are damaged.”

“And the road?”

“Gone,” said Joakim. “There’s just snow.”

“In the old days it used to take at least a week to get through to some properties after a blizzard,” said Gerlof. “But it’s quicker these days.”

“We’ll be fine,” said Joakim. “I did as you said and bought plenty of tinned stuff.”

“Good. Are you and the children alone now?”

“No, we still have one guest here. We did have several visitors, but they’ve gone. …It’s been quite a difficult Christmas.”

“I know,” said Gerlof. “Tilda called me this morning from the hospital. She’d been catching burglars out at your place.”

“They came here to steal paintings,” said Joakim. “Torun Rambe’s paintings … They’d got it into their heads that they were here somewhere.”

“Oh?”

“But we only have one painting here. Almost all the others were destroyed, but not by Torun or her daughter Mirja. It was a fisherman who threw them in the sea.”

“When was that?”

“Winter 1962.”

“Sixty-two,” said Gerlof. “That was the year my brother Ragnar froze to death on the coast.”

“Ragnar Davidsson … was he your brother?” said Joakim.

“My older brother.”

“I don’t think he froze to death,” said Joakim. “I think he was poisoned.”

Then he told Gerlof what he had read in Mirja Rambe’s book about her last night at Eel Point, and about the eel fisherman who set off into the storm. Gerlof listened without asking any questions.

“It sounds as if Ragnar drank wood alcohol,” was all he said. “It’s supposed to taste like ordinary schnapps, but of course it makes you ill. It kills you, in fact.”

“I suppose Mirja saw it as some kind of fair punishment,” said Joakim.

“But did he really destroy the paintings?” said Gerlof. “I’m just wondering. If my brother got hold of something, he kept it … he was too mean to destroy things.”

Joakim was silent. He was thinking.

“There was something else, before I forget,” said Gerlof. “I’ve recorded something for you.”

“Recorded?”

“I’ve been sitting here doing some thinking,” said Gerlof. “It’s a tape with a few ideas about what happened at Eel Point … you’ll get it when they start delivering the mail again.”

Half an hour after
Gerlof had hung up, the police called from Kalmar to say they would be coming to collect the suspect from Eel Point—if Joakim could just find them a piece of flat, open ground near the house where a helicopter could land.

“We’ve got plenty of flat ground around here,” said Joakim.

Then he went out and shoveled a square in the field behind the house, hacking away the ice so that a black cross in the frozen ground marked the spot. When he heard a throbbing sound in the southwest, he went in and interrupted Freddy’s viewing.

“Are those your cars?” Joakim asked as they were waiting out in the field. He pointed to a couple of curved mounds of snow on the road down to Eel Point. A few blunt metal corners were protruding from the drifts.

Freddy nodded. “And a boat,” he said.

“Stolen?”

“Yeah.”

Then the helicopter swept in over the field and it was impossible to talk anymore. It hovered for a moment, whirling white clouds up from the ground, before landing in the center of the cross.

Two police officers wearing helmets and dark jumpsuits climbed out and came over to them. Freddy went along with them, without making any kind of protest.

“Are you all okay here now?” shouted one of the police officers.

Joakim simply nodded. Freddy waved, and he waved back briefly.

When the helicopter had vanished in the direction of the
mainland, Joakim plowed back through the snow, over toward the road and the two snow-covered vehicles.

He brushed away the snow from the sides of the largest of them, a van. Then he peered inside.

Someone was sitting in there, motionless.

Joakim seized the handle and opened the door.

It was a man, curled up as if he had desperately tried to preserve the warmth in the driver’s seat.

Joakim didn’t need to feel the man’s pulse to realize he was dead.

The key was in the ignition and it was switched on. The engine must have been ticking over until it stopped sometime during the night, and the cold began to creep back into the van again.

Joakim closed the door gently. Then he went back to the house to call the police and tell them the last burglar had been found.