Just looking.
Not buying.
*
Jana Berzelius took an extra long shower and let the hot water loosen up the last of her tension from the night before. She had hardly slept, but had gotten up at dawn and run fifteen kilometers. Too far, too fast. It was as if she was trying to run away from what had happened. But she couldn’t. The image of the dead man came back to her. For the last kilometer she had run so fast that her nose started bleeding. But even though the blood was dripping onto her windcheater she had sprinted the last hundred meters. Back in her flat, she had in some strange way felt strong and she managed to do twenty-three chin-ups on her bar. She had never managed that before.
Now she stood in the shower and thought about Thomas Rydberg. What was it about those combinations that had made him so desperate? Something had obviously caused him to panic.
Her thoughts moved on to the sudden attack that she made on him. She had reacted so coldly and instinctively, and that perplexed her. The way she had hit out had come just at the right moment. From inside her. Almost practiced. And besides, her blows had struck home perfectly, and even more remarkable was that the violence had made her feel good.
Who am I? she wondered.
*
Karl Berzelius stood by the window in his study, the telephone in his hand. The display had long since turned itself off. The voice at the other end was silent. His white shirt was buttoned up to his neck and tucked into the neatly pressed trousers. His hair was gray, thick and combed back.
Outside, the rays of the sun had pierced the heavy clouds. Like spotlights on a stage, all the light fell on a single point, a tree with buds.
But Karl didn’t see the sun. He didn’t see the tree. He had his eyes closed. When he slowly opened them, the light was gone. Only grayness was left.
He wanted to move, but was unable to do so. It was as if the parquet floor was ice and his feet had frozen in it, and he was a prisoner of his own thoughts. He thought about the conversation he had just had with Chief Public Prosecutor Torsten Granath.
“It’s a difficult investigation,” Torsten had said with the sound of his car engine in the background.
“I understand,” Karl had answered.
“She’ll manage it.”
“Why shouldn’t she?”
“It’s taken a turn.”
“Yes?”
“The boy...”
“I’ve read about him, yes. Go on.”
“Has Jana told you about him?”
“She never tells me anything, you know that.”
“I know.”
Torsten had then told him in detail where the boy had been found dead. He had described an arm at a strange angle, a gun and all the rest of what was in the police report. After a thirty-second pause, his voice sounded troubled. The background noise got worse and Karl had to concentrate to hear what he said.
“The strange thing is that everything points to him.”
Karl had scratched his forehead and pressed the phone even harder against his ear.
“It seems as if he is the perpetrator. And that it was he who killed Hans Juhlén.”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t think anything. But what is even more remarkable about this boy is that he has something carved on his neck. It’s a name, a name of some god, a god of death.”
Karl’s heart started to race. He found it hard to breathe. The floor rocked. Torsten’s words echoed like a shout from a deserted tunnel.
A name.
On his neck.
He opened his mouth but couldn’t recognize his own voice. It was alien, distant and cold.
“On his neck...”
Then he fell silent. Before Torsten could say anything else, he ended the call. He had never before hung up in the middle of a conversation. But nor had he ever before had such a suffocating feeling.
I must get some air, he thought now, and pulled open the top button on his shirt. The cloth seemed to cling to him as he struggled with the next button. He tugged so hard that it came loose and fell to the floor. He inhaled deeply as if he had been holding his breath.
The thoughts whirled around inside his head. He saw the picture of a neck, with light skin and black hairs in vertices. He saw letters, pinkish-red deformed letters. But he didn’t see the picture of a boy.
He saw the picture of a girl.
The picture of his daughter.
The child had been nine years old and completely bothersome. She hadn’t slept at night and at breakfast had talked about dreams which could only have been pure lies and the product of a sick imagination. He quite simply didn’t want anything to do with her flights of fancy, and one morning he had had enough. He got hold of her thin arms and demanded that she should be quiet. She did become quiet. Even so, he had taken a firm grip of her neck to force her into her room. That was when he had felt the uneven skin. He pushed her hair aside to see what it was, and the sight of those three letters was something he would never forget. He had swallowed. He felt sick.
Just as suddenly as now.
Karl shut his eyes.
He had insisted that she should get the scars removed. He had visited dermatologists and even tattoo parlors and been told that it would be difficult to remove them. They couldn’t say in advance how many treatments would be necessary. And all of them wanted to see the scars first. Karl hadn’t dared say that it was a name carved into the skin. Let alone dare show his daughter’s neck to anybody. What would people think?
He opened his eyes.
He had decided that the carved letters would have to stay. With harsh words he had told her never to show them to anybody, and he ordered Margaretha to buy Band-Aids and polo sweaters. Her hair was to be worn long, and not be put up. After that they never spoke about it again. It was over. It had been dealt with. And that was that.
Now there was a boy with a name carved on his neck.
Should he say anything to Jana? And what would he say? They had already dealt with this issue between them years ago. Filed it away. There was no more to add. It was her own private business now. Not his.
Karl’s heart beat fast.
The telephone vibrated in his hand and Torsten’s name appeared again in the display. He didn’t answer.
Just squeezed the telephone and let it go on ringing.
*
Nils Storhed stood on the port bridge walkway holding his little dog in his arms. To Henrik Levin, who was walking toward him, he looked like a Scot with his tartan beret, lace-up shoes and dark green overcoat.
“He looks like he comes from Scotland,” said Gunnar, who was walking next to Henrik.
“My thought exactly,” said Henrik and smiled.
The port bridge was a heavy concrete construction which linked Jungfrugatan to ?stra Promenaden across the water. There was always a lot of traffic on the major road across the bridge, and this day there were lines of Saturday motorists. The noise from the traffic and the shrieking of the seagulls could be heard together.
Nils Storhed leaned against the railing and with a view of the rowing club and the bustle of the city behind him. In front of him lay the docks and on his left side the district heating power station towered up against the gray sky.
The little dog in his arms panted heavily and its winter coat was shedding. It left lots of white hairs on Nils’s coat.
“Is your dog tired?” said Gunnar after they had introduced themselves with their full names.
“No, she’s freezing. Her paws don’t like the cold,” said Nils.
Neither Henrik nor Gunnar had time to say anything before Nils went on.“Yes, well, I’m sorry. I know I ought to have called you sooner.”
“Yes, right...” said Gunnar.
“I didn’t think it was so important but now I realize it is, and yes, my wife’s been nagging me all week saying I should phone, but I’ve had lodge meetings here and dinners there, so it wasn’t until this morning I pulled myself together. One doesn’t want to hear any more nagging either, if you know what I mean,” said Nils and gave them a wink.
“Okay, then...” said Gunnar.
“Yes, so I called in and said how it was.”
“You saw Hans Juhlén?” said Gunnar.