The Darkest Room (36 page)

The wind stayed away
and the sun kept on shining over Eel Point for the next few days.

The snow didn’t start to thaw, but now and again a piece of the white edging hanging from the roofs came loose and fell soundlessly into the drifts on the ground. The garden birds were back outside the kitchen window, and on the morning of the twenty-sixth the isolation from the outside world was broken when a truck with a huge plow in front of it drove over from Marnäs. It kept going in a straight line out along the coast road, but looked as if it were rolling along through a white sea.

When he got out the blower and starting blowing away the snow leading from the house, Joakim’s goal was to reach the plowed main road in an hour. It took more than two hours, but after that they could get out easily once again.

Joakim put new batteries in his flashlight, went out onto the veranda steps and over to the barn.

The staircase leading to the loft was black and in pieces after the fire, but there was no sign of any smoke anywhere.

He looked over toward the other end of the barn. He hesitated, but then went over and crawled in under the false wall.

Inside the hidden room he switched on the flashlight and listened for sounds from the upper floor, but there was nothing. Then he climbed up the ladder.

Pale sunlight filtered in through the cracks in the wall as he pulled himself up into the prayer room.

Everything was quiet. The letters and mementos still lay on the old wooden benches, but no one was sitting there.

He started to move along the rows. When he reached the front, he saw that both the Christmas present for Katrine and Ethel’s jacket were still there.

But the parcel had been opened. The tape had been pulled away and the paper folded to one side.

Joakim left the parcel where it was; he didn’t dare look to see if the green tunic was gone.

Instead he picked up Ethel’s denim jacket for the first time—and suddenly his fingers felt a small, flat object sliding around inside the fabric.

Joakim had placed the
denim jacket in a plastic bag when Inspector Göte Holmblad arrived in his own car, two days after Christmas.

By this time an ambulance and a breakdown truck had already been to Eel Point and taken away the body of the last suspect. The crime scene team had also been there, digging for bullets in the snow. On the local radio news, Tommy had been reported as one of two deaths at the house during the snowstorm, although he wasn’t mentioned by name. The storm over northern Öland was already being referred to as “the Christmas blizzard,” and was classed as one of the worst snowstorms since the Second World War.

Holmblad got out of the car and wished Joakim season’s greetings.

“Thanks, same to you,” he said. “And thank you for coming.”

“I’m actually on leave until New Year’s,” said Holmblad. “But I wanted to see how you were getting on out here.”

“Everything’s very calm now,” said Joakim.

“I can see that. The storm has passed.”

Joakim nodded and asked, “And Tilda Davidsson … how’s she doing?”

“Pretty good, considering,” said Holmblad. “I spoke to her yesterday … she’s left the hospital and is at home with her mother at the moment.”

“But she was here alone? It wasn’t a colleague who …”

“No,” said Holmblad, “it was her tutor from the police academy … a father of two, it’s a real tragedy. He shouldn’t really have been here.” The inspector looked thoughtful, and added, “Of course, things could have gone very badly for Davidsson too, but she coped very well.”

“She did,” said Joakim, opening the door to the house. “I’ve got a few things I’d really like to show you—would you like to come in for a while?”

“Sure.”

Joakim led the inspector into the kitchen, where he had cleared the kitchen table.

“There,” he said.

On the table lay the bag containing Ethel’s denim jacket, and the items he had found in the jacket. There was the handwritten note—and a small gold case that had been tucked inside the lining of the jacket.

“What’s this?” said Holmblad.

“I’m not sure,” said Joakim. “But I hope it’s evidence.”

When Holmblad had left
, Joakim took a rucksack and went down through the snow to the northern lighthouse.

On the way there he glanced over toward the forest in the north. Most of the trees seemed to have survived the storm, apart from a few of the older pines closest to the shore, which were lying on the ground.

The white tower sparkled against the dark blue sky. Before he even set off along the stone jetty, he could see that it would be difficult to get inside it. The waves had crashed over the islands during the blizzard, and both lighthouses where encased in chalk-white ice. It looked like plaster that had set, and extended around the lower part of the tower in an arctic embrace.

Joakim put his rucksack down outside the door and unzipped it. He took out the keys to the lighthouse, along with a large hammer, a spray can of oil for the lock, and three thermos flasks full of boiling water.

It took him almost half an hour to get rid of all the ice around the door and undo the lock. It was still only possible to open the door a little way, but Joakim managed to squeeze through the gap.

He had the flashlight with him, and switched it on when he got inside.

Every little sound the soles of his shoes made on the cement floor echoed up into the tower, but he didn’t hear any footsteps on the stairs. If some old lighthouse keeper was still up there Joakim didn’t want to disturb him, so he stayed downstairs.

Just a chance
, Gerlof Davidsson had said.
My brother Ragnar had the keys to the lighthouses, so there’s just a chance that they might be there
.

There was a small wooden door leading into the space under the staircase, a storeroom on the ground floor of the lighthouse. Joakim opened the door and walked in, stooping low.

A calendar from 1961 hung on the stone wall. Gas cans, empty booze bottles, and old lanterns stood on the floor. The collection of objects in here made him think of all the old
stuff piled high in the hayloft. But this was a little more organized, and along the curve of the outside wall stood several wooden boxes.

The lids weren’t secured. Joakim lifted up the closest one and shone the flashlight into the box.

He saw metal pipes—sections of old drainpipes approximately three feet long, piled up at the bottom of the box. They would have been fixed together and put up around the house at Eel Point several decades earlier, if Ragnar Davidsson hadn’t stolen them and hidden them in the lighthouse.

Joakim put his hand in and carefully lifted out one of the pipes.

“Where are we going?”
asked Livia as they drove away from Eel Point the day before New Year’s Eve, with the car packed full.

She was still in a bit of a bad mood, Joakim noticed.

“We’re going to see your grandmother in Kalmar, then we’re going up to see your other granny in Stockholm,” he said. “But first of all we’re going to visit Mommy.”

Livia didn’t say any more. She just rested her hand on Rasputin’s cat basket and looked out at the white landscape.

Fifteen minutes later they pulled up at Marnäs church. Joakim parked, took a bag out of the car, and opened the wooden gate.

“Come on,” he said to the children.

Joakim hadn’t been there many times during the fall—but it felt better now. A little better.

There was just as much snow in the churchyard as
everywhere else along the coast, but the main pathways had been cleared.

“Are we going far?” asked Livia as they walked along the side of the church.

“No,” said Joakim, “we’re almost there now.”

At last they were standing in a row in front of Katrine’s grave.

The gravestone was covered in snow, like all the others in the churchyard. There was only one corner showing, until Joakim bent down and quickly swept it clean with his hand, so that the inscription could be seen.

KATRINE MÂNSTRÂLE WESTIN
, it said, along with her dates.

Joakim took a step backwards and stood between Livia and Gabriel.

“This is where Mommy is,” he said.

His words didn’t make time stop, but the children stood motionless beside him.

“Do you think it … looks nice?” asked Joakim in the silence.

Livia didn’t reply. It was Gabriel who reacted first.

“I think Mommy will be cold,” he said.

Then he walked cautiously up to the grave in his father’s footsteps and silently began to brush away all the snow. First of all from Katrine’s headstone, then from the ground below it. A bunch of shriveled roses appeared. Joakim had placed them there on his last visit, before the snow came.

Gabriel seemed happy with the result. He rubbed his nose with his gloved hand and looked at his father.

“Well done,” said Joakim.

Then he took a grave lantern out of the plastic bag. The ground was frozen, but it was still possible to push it down firmly. Inside he placed a thick candle. It would burn for five days, into the new year.

“Shall we go back to the car?” Joakim asked, looking at the children.

Gabriel nodded, but bent down and started to tug at
something lying beneath the snow next to Katrine’s headstone.

It was a piece of pale green fabric, stiff and frozen to the ground. A sweater? The strip Gabriel had hold of looked like a sleeve.

Joakim felt a sudden icy chill down his back. He took a step forward.

“Leave that, Gabriel,” he said.

Gabriel looked at his father and let go of the material. Joakim bent down quickly and covered it with a layer of snow.

“Shall we go?” he said.

“I want to stay for a little while,” said Livia, her gaze fixed on the headstone.

Joakim took Gabriel by the hand and walked back to the main path. They waited there for Livia, who was still standing looking at the grave. After a few minutes she joined them and the family walked back to the car in silence.

Gabriel fell asleep in his seat after just a few minutes.

Livia didn’t start talking to Joakim until they were back on the main highway, and she didn’t mention Katrine. She asked how many days of the holiday were left, and talked about what she was going to do when preschool started again. Just small talk, but Joakim was happy to listen to her.

They arrived in Kalmar
at about twelve o’clock and rang Mirja Rambe’s doorbell. She hadn’t made a special effort to clean up the apartment for Christmas—quite the opposite, the piles of books on the dusty parquet floor had grown even higher. There was a Christmas tree in the main room, but it had no decorations on it and the needles had already started to fall.

“I had intended to come out and see you all on Christmas Day,” said Mirja as she met them in the hallway. “But I didn’t have a helicopter.”

Ulf, Mirja’s young boyfriend, was at home and seemed really pleased to see them, especially the children. He took Livia and Gabriel into the kitchen to show them some toffee that he was in the middle of making on the stove.

Joakim took
The Book of the Blizzard
out of his bag and gave it back to the author.

“Thanks for the loan,” he said.

“Was it any good?”

“Sure,” said Joakim. “And I understand some things much better now.”

Mirja Rambe leafed through the handwritten pages in silence.

“It’s a book of facts,” she said. “I started writing it when Katrine told me you were going to buy Eel Point.”

“Katrine wrote a couple of pages at the end,” said Joakim.

“About what?”

“Well … it’s a kind of explanation.”

Mirja placed the book on the table between them. “I’ll read it when you’ve gone,” she said.

“I did wonder about one thing,” said Joakim. “How could you know so much about the people who’d lived at Eel Point?”

Mirja gave him a forbidding look. “They used to talk to me when I lived there,” she said. “Have you never talked to the dead?”

Joakim couldn’t answer that one.

“So it’s all true?” he said instead.

“You can never be sure of that,” said Mirja. “Not when it comes to ghosts.”

“But all the stuff you were involved in … did that actually happen?”

Mirja lowered her eyes. “More or less,” she said. “I did meet Markus one last time down at the café in Borgholm. We talked … then I went back to his place. His parents were out. We went up to the apartment, and he pulled me down onto the floor. Not exactly a romantic seduction, but I let him do it—I mean, I thought it proved that we … that we were a couple.
But when Markus got up afterward and I’d pulled my crumpled skirt back on, he wouldn’t look me in the eye. He just said he’d met someone else on the mainland. They were getting engaged. Markus referred to what we’d done in his room as saying goodbye.”

There was silence in the room.

“So your boyfriend Markus was Katrine’s father?”

Mirja nodded. “He was a young man on his way out into the world … who closed the chapter involving me in an appropriate way. Then he moved on.”

“But he didn’t die in a ferry accident, did he?”

“No,” said Mirja. “But he should have done.”

They fell silent again. Joakim could hear Livia laughing in the kitchen. It sounded like a lighter version of her mother’s laugh.

“You should have told Katrine who her father was,” he said. “She had the right to know.”

Mirja merely snorted. “We get by …I didn’t know who my father was either.”

Joakim gave up. He nodded and stood up. “We’ve brought some Christmas presents,” he said. “I need some help to carry them up.”

“Ulf will help,” said Mirja. “Are the presents for me?” Joakim looked over at her studio, with all its bright summer paintings.

“Oh yes,” he said. “Lots of presents.”

Five hours after leaving
Mirja’s apartment, Joakim and the children arrived in Stockholm. It was almost as cold there as on Öland. The area where Ingrid Westin lived was quiet and calm. She was the direct opposite of Mirja Rambe; her house had been cleaned to within an inch of its life, ready for the new year.

“I’ve got a job,” Joakim told her as they were having dinner.

“On Öland?” said Ingrid.

He nodded. “They called yesterday … I’m going to be filling in as a craft teacher down in Borgholm starting in February. I can carry on working on the house in the evenings and on weekends. I want to make the outbuilding and the upper floor look nice so that people can stay there.”

“Are you going to have summer visitors staying?” said Ingrid.

“Maybe,” said Joakim. “We need more people at Eel Point.”

Afterward they exchanged Christmas presents in Ingrid’s little living room. Joakim handed her a large, long package.

“Happy Christmas, Mom,” said Joakim. “Mirja Rambe wanted you to have this.”

The package was almost three feet long and was wrapped in brown paper. Ingrid opened it and looked inquiringly at him. It was one of the drainpipes Ragnar Davidsson had hidden in the lighthouse.

“Look inside,” said Joakim.

Ingrid turned one end of the pipe to face her. She peered inside, then reached in and pulled out a rolled-up canvas. She opened it out carefully and held it up in front of her. The oil painting was large and dark, and showed a foggy winter landscape.

“What’s this?” said Ingrid.

“It’s a blizzard painting,” said Joakim. “By Torun Rambe.”

“But … is it for me?”

Joakim nodded. “There are lots more … almost fifty of them,” he said. “A fisherman stole the canvases and hid them inside one of the lighthouses at Eel Point. And that’s where they’ve been for more than thirty years.”

Ingrid gazed at the big painting in silence.

“I wonder what it’s worth?” she said finally.

“That doesn’t matter,” said Joakim.

In the evening
Livia and Gabriel went outside to make snow lanterns with their grandmother.

Joakim went upstairs. He went past the closed door of the room that had been Ethel’s many years ago and into the room that had been his own bedroom when he was a teenager.

All the posters and most of the furniture had gone, but there was a bed and a bedside table and an old tape player. The black plastic casing was cracked from falling on the floor during some party, but it still worked. It was possible to open the slot.

Joakim inserted a cassette. It had arrived at Eel Point in the mail a couple of days earlier. It was from Gerlof Davidsson.

He settled down on his old bed and pressed Play so that he could hear what Gerlof had to say.