She lay down, and was already dead by the time he asked if she wanted him to turn the television on.
So now it’s just him and fat Lizzy.
He can go weeks without talking to anyone. Sometimes he worries that his voice has disappeared.
One of the few people he sees at all is the girl who looks after the pool. She walks around in jeans and a gold-coloured bikini top, and seems very uncomfortable when he tries to talk to her.
The first time he attempted to say anything to her she looked at him like he was ninety years old or had a serious mental illness.
The people who bring his food are always in a rush. They barely get his signature before hurrying away. And the physiotherapist, an angry, large-breasted woman, just does her job. She gives him curt commands and pretends not to hear his attempts to make conversation.
Only the Iranian man from the garden-maintenance company has any time for him. Ali sometimes comes in for a cup of coffee.
It’s really for his sake that Nils keeps the pool open, but he still hasn’t plucked up the courage to ask if he’d like a swim.
Ali works hard, and often gets sweaty.
Nils knows that he books him far too often, which is why the garden looks the way it does, with precisely clipped shrubs and hedges, leafy archways and perfectly swept paths.
It’s quiet. It’s always so quiet here.
Nils shivers and pushes himself over to the jukebox.
He bought it when he was twenty years old: a genuine Seeburg, made by the Swedish Sj?berg company.
He used to change the singles from time to time. He would make new labels on his typewriter and slip them in under the glass top.
He inserts the coin into the slot, hears it rattle down and activate the mechanism before rolling out into the tray again.
He’s used the same coin all these years.
He taps the buttons for C7 with his shaking hand. The machine whirrs as the record is placed on the turntable.
Nils rolls away as the fast drum intro to ‘Stargazer’ starts to play. He is thrown back in time to when he saw Rainbow live at the Concert Hall in Stockholm in the late 1970s.
The band were over an hour late starting, but when Dio walked on and started to sing ‘Kill the King’, the audience moved as one towards the stage.
Nils goes over to the big windows. Every afternoon he lowers the shades on the west-facing windows to protect his paintings from the strong light.
Through the nylon gauze the window looks even darker and greyer.
To Ali, this whole place must look like a tragic manifestation of the absence of children and grandchildren.
Nils knows that the house is ridiculously showy, that the park is overblown, and that no one ever uses the pool.
His company produces advanced electronics for radar and electronic guidance systems. He’s had good government contacts and has been able to export dual-use products for almost twenty years now.
His arms suddenly shiver.
Over the loud music he thinks he can hear a small child chanting a nursery rhyme.
He turns the wheelchair and makes his way out into the hall.
The voice is coming from the abandoned upper floor. He rolls over to the staircase that he hasn’t climbed in many years, and sees that the door to the bedroom at the top is standing ajar.
The music from the jukebox stops. There’s a clicking sound as the single is slotted back into place among the others, and then silence descends.
Nils started to be afraid of the dark six months ago, after having a nightmare about his wife. She came back from the dead, but could only stand upright because she was impaled on a rough wooden post that ran between her legs, right through her body and neck, and out through her head.
She was angry that he hadn’t done anything to help her, that he hadn’t called for an ambulance.
The bloody pole reached all the way to the floor, and Eva was forced to walk with a strange, bowlegged gait as she came after him.
Nils puts his hands on his lap. They’re twitching and shaking, darting about in exaggerated gestures.
When they are still again he tightens the strap around his waist that prevents him from sliding out of the chair.
He rolls into the living room and looks around. Everything looks the way it always does. The chandelier, the Persian rugs, the marble table and the empire-style sofa and armchairs that Eva brought from her childhood home.
The phone is no longer on the table.
Sometimes Eva’s presence in the house is so real that he thinks her older sister has a spare key and is creeping around like in some Scooby-Doo cartoon in order to scare him.
He sets off towards the kitchen again, then thinks he sees something out of the corner of his eye. He quickly turns his head and imagines he sees a face in the antique mirror, before realising that it’s just a blemish in the glass.
‘Lizzy?’ he calls out weakly.
One of the kitchen drawers clatters, and then he hears footsteps on the floor. He stops, his heart pounding, turns the chair and imagines the blood running down the pole between Eva’s legs.
He presses on silently, rolling towards the big double doors, the wheels making a faint sticky sound on the hardwood floor.
Now Eva is walking bowlegged through the kitchen. The pole is scraping across the slate floor, leaving a trail of blood before catching on the threshold to the dining room.
The stupid nursery rhyme starts up again.
The radio in the kitchen must be switched on.
The footrest of the wheelchair hits the back door with a gentle clunk.
He looks towards the closed door to the dining room.
His hands are shaking, and the stiffness in his neck makes it hard for him to lean forward and press the button controlling the shades.
With a whirr, the grey nylon fabric glides up like a theatre curtain, and the garden gradually brightens.
The garden furniture is set out. There are pine needles gathering in the folds of the cushions. The lights around the pool aren’t switched on, but mist is rising gently from the water.
As soon as the shade has risen enough, he’ll be able to open the door and go outside.
He’s decided to wait outside for Ali, ask him to look through the house. He’ll admit that he’s scared of the dark, that he leaves the lights on all night, and maybe pay him extra to stay longer.
He turns the key in the lock with shaking hands. The lock clicks and he tugs the handle and nudges the door open.
He reverses, looks over towards the dining room and sees the door slowly open.
He rolls into the patio door as hard as he can. It swings open and he catches a glimpse of a figure approaching him from behind.
Nils hears heavy footsteps as he rolls out onto the deck and feels the cool air on his face.
‘Ali, is that you?’ he calls in a frightened voice as he rolls forward. ‘Ali!’
The garden is quiet. The tool-shed is locked. The morning mist is drifting above the ground.
He tries to turn the wheelchair, but one of the tyres is caught in the crack between two slabs. Nils can hardly breathe. He tries to stop himself from shaking by pressing his hands into his armpits.
Someone is approaching him from the house and he looks back over his shoulder.
A masked man, carrying a black bag in his hand. He’s walking straight towards him, disguised as an executioner.
Nils tugs at the wheels to pull himself free.
He’s about to shout for Ali again when cold liquid drenches his head, running through his hair, down his neck, over his face and chest.
It takes just a couple of seconds for him to realise that it’s petrol.
What he thought was a black bag is actually the lawnmower’s petrol tank.
‘Please, wait, I’ve got lots of money … I promise, I can transfer all of it,’ he gasps, coughing from the fumes.
The masked man walks around and tips the last of the petrol over Nils’s chest, then drops the empty container on the ground in front of the wheelchair.
‘God, please … I’ll do anything …’
The man takes out a box of matches and says some incomprehensible words. Nils is hysterical, and he can’t make sense of what the man is saying.