David Jordan has suffered from narcolepsy and cataplexy for seven years. Whenever he gets upset or scared, he loses control of certain muscles and falls asleep.
According to his doctor, the disorder – which is inherited – was probably triggered by strep throat, even if he prefers to say that it’s because he was part of some secret experiment when he was in the military.
He sits up. His mouth feels completely dry. He leans on the floor with both hands, gets to his feet, head throbbing, and gazes out at the sea.
He tries to gather his thoughts before looking at the leather folder again.
His hands are shaking as he opens it and pulls out the contents.
He leafs through the information about Carl-Erik Ritter. His heart is beating so hard that his ears roar as he stares at the photograph.
He tries to find some sort of inner calm, and concentrates on reading.
After a while he has to put the documents down, go over to the cupboard and pour himself a glass of Macallan.
DJ drinks it, then refills the glass.
He’s thinking about his mother, and closes his eyes tightly to hold back the tears.
He isn’t a good son. He works too hard and doesn’t visit her nearly enough.
She’s ill, he knows that, but he still has difficulty accepting her dark moods.
He feels ashamed that his visits always make him feel so awful.
Most of the time she doesn’t say a word to him, doesn’t even look at him, just lies there in bed staring out of the window.
Throughout David Jordan’s childhood his mother received treatment for depression, delusions and self-destructive behaviour. A year ago he had her moved to an exclusive clinic that specialises in long-term psychiatric care.
There her depression is being treated as a side-effect of chronic PTSD. Her medication and therapy have been drastically adjusted.
The last time he visited she was no longer lying passively in bed. She took the flowers he had brought and put them in a vase with shaking hands. The illness and various medications have made his mother look very old.
They sat at a small table in her room drinking tea from cups with deep saucers, and eating ginger biscuits.
She kept repeating that she should have cooked him a proper meal, and each time he replied that he’d already eaten.
A film of raindrops covered the little window.
Her eyes were timid and embarrassed, and her hand fluttered anxiously over the buttons of her cardigan when he asked how she was, if the new medication was better.
‘I know I haven’t been a good mother,’ she said.
‘Yes, you have.’
He knew it was because of the altered medication, but this was the first time in many years that his mother had spoken directly to him.
She looked at him and explained in an almost scripted way that her suicide attempts when he was young were a reaction to trauma.
‘Have you started to talk to your therapist about the accident?’ he asked.
‘Accident?’ she repeated with a smile.
‘Mum, you know you’re not well, and sometimes you weren’t able to take care of me, so I went to live with Grandma.’
Slowly she put her cup down on the saucer, then told him about the horrific rape.
She described the whole sequence of events in a subdued voice.
The fragments of memory were sometimes chillingly precise, and sometimes she sounded almost delusional.
But suddenly everything made sense to David Jordan.
His mother never let him see her naked when he was little, but he still managed to catch glimpses of the scars on her thighs and her damaged breasts.
‘I never reported it,’ she whispered.
‘But …’
He remembers how she sat there with her thin hand over her mouth, sobbing, then whispered the name Carl-Erik Ritter.
His cheeks flushed. He tried to say something, but suffered his worst ever attack of narcolepsy.
DJ woke up on the floor to find his mother patting his cheek. He almost couldn’t believe it.
He had spent his entire adult life being disappointed in his mother for not fighting harder against her depression.
A car crash can be a terrible thing, but she had survived, after all. She got out OK.
Now he could see how fragile she was. Her aged body was still frightened, still flinched instinctively, always expecting violence and pain.
Some times were better than others, and sometimes they lived almost normally, but then she would fall into a deep hole, and it had been impossible for her to take care of him.
He feels so incredibly sorry for his mother.
Even though he knows there’s no point, he has tracked down Carl-Erik Ritter in order to be able to look into his eyes. Maybe that’s enough. Maybe DJ doesn’t even need to ask Ritter if he ever thinks about what he did, if he has any idea of the suffering he caused.
While Carl-Erik Ritter’s life went on, the rape condemned his mother to a life of recurrent depression and multiple suicide attempts.
Ritter might deny everything. The event is buried deep in the past, and the statute of limitations on the crime has long since passed. But DJ can still tell him that he knows what happened.
Since Ritter has nothing to fear legally he may even be prepared to talk.
He turns over the picture and looks at the face again.
David Jordan knows that the meeting probably won’t grant him any relief, but he can’t stop thinking about it. He needs to face his mother’s attacker.
31
It’s almost eleven o’clock at night, and a cold wind is blowing around the flat buildings near Axelsberg metro station. David Jordan crosses the square, heading for a neighbourhood bar, El Bocado, where Carl-Erik Ritter goes most evenings.
DJ tries to breathe calmly. He knows that emotional turbulence can trigger a narcoleptic attack, but the pills he took back at home ought to keep him awake for several more hours.
On the other side of the square a drunk man is shouting at his dog.
The urban landscape is dominated by hulking tower blocks and a red-brick shopping centre.
He glances at the newsstand, the hair salon and the dry-cleaner’s next to the bar.
Black mesh is visible behind the newsstand’s window, along with a faded poster advertising a big lottery jackpot.
Two women in their forties finish smoking outside the hairdresser’s and go back inside the bar.
Heavy traffic thunders past on the overpass above the square, and old McDonald’s wrappers swirls around an overflowing dustbin.
David Jordan takes a deep breath, opens the door to the bar and walks into the gloom and hubbub. The air smells like fried food and damp clothes. The whitewashed walls above the booths and tables are cluttered with old garden tools and paraffin lamps. An illuminated green emergency exit sign hangs from the low ceiling, and cables running from the dusty stereo are taped to the beams.
Two couples are sitting at a table by the door having a loud argument.
Under a little tiled roof a group of middle-aged customers is lined up along the tatty bar, drinking and talking. A yellowing sign advertises the full menu, as well as a special offer on meals for pensioners.
David Jordan asks for a bottle of Grolsch and pays cash. He takes a first, soothing swig and watches as a man with a ponytail tries to show an older woman something on his phone.
A man wipes beer from his lips and laughs at another man trying on a pair of sunglasses.
DJ turns and looks the other way, and finds himself staring at the man he has come here to see.
He recognises him immediately from the photograph.
Carl-Erik Ritter is sitting at the back of the room with one hand around a beer glass. He’s wearing a pair of worn jeans and a knitted sweater with holes at the elbows.
DJ picks up his beer and pushes his way through the crowd, apologising as he goes. He stops at the last table.
‘OK if I sit down?’ he asks, sliding into a chair across from Carl-Erik Ritter.
The man looks up slowly and peers at him with watery eyes, but doesn’t answer. DJ’s heart is beating way too fast. A dangerous tiredness sweeps over him and the bottle comes close to slipping from his hand.
DJ closes his eyes for a moment, then puts the bottle down on the table.