‘The names of the couple who died in the fire were Bengt and Birgitta Bergman, and what looked at first to be an accident seems to be rather more complicated.’
Jeanette asks him in, apologising for not having done so before.
‘Let’s sit in the kitchen. Coffee?’
‘No, I can’t stay long.’
‘So … why are you here?’ Jeanette goes in and sits down at the kitchen table. The policeman follows her example.
‘I checked them out and saw straight away that you questioned Bengt Bergman regarding an alleged rape.’
Jeanette nodded. ‘Yes, that’s right. But it didn’t lead anywhere. He was released.’
‘Yes … and now he’s dead … When I called the daughter and told her what had happened, she reacted … How shall I put it …?’
‘Oddly?’ Jeanette thinks of her own conversation with Victoria Bergman.
‘No, more like indifferently.’
‘Sorry, G?ran.’ Jeanette is beginning to get impatient. ‘But why have you come to see me?’
G?ran Andersson leans over the table and smiles.
‘She doesn’t exist.’
‘Who doesn’t exist?’ Jeanette is starting to feel uneasy.
‘There was something about the daughter that made me curious enough to check her out.’
‘What did you find?’
‘Nothing. Zilch. No records, no bank account. Nada. Victoria Bergman has left no trace of her existence for the past twenty years.’
The Chapel of the Holy Cross
A PROPER SUMMER storm would have been a more suitable backdrop to the interment of Bengt and Birgitta Bergman’s remains, but the sun is shining and Stockholm is looking its very best.
The trees in the park next to Hammarbyhamnen are showing off every sort of colour, from soft golden brown to dark purple, the most beautiful being the dark green maple leaves.
There are a dozen or so cars at the Forest Cemetery, but she knows none of them belongs to anyone taking part in the ceremony. She’s going to be the only person present.
She switches off the engine, opens the door and gets out. It’s chilly, and she takes a few deep breaths of the fresh air.
She can see the priest in the distance.
Sombre, with his head bowed.
On the ground in front of him stands an urn large enough for two people’s ashes.
Dark red cherrywood. A degradable material, it had said on the undertakers’ website.
A little over a thousand kronor.
Five hundred each.
They’re the only ones there. She and the priest. That’s what she decided.
No death notice, nothing in the papers. A quiet farewell without tears or strong emotions. No soothing talk of reconciliation, no feeble attempts to elevate the dead to something they never were.
No eulogy ascribing virtues to them that they never possessed, nothing to make them sound like angels.
No new gods are going to be created here.
She says hello, and the priest explains what’s going to happen.
Since she declined any funeral service, only the obvious phrases will be spoken.
Their delivery into the hands of God the creator, and the prayer about Christ’s death and resurrection being fulfilled in those created by God in His image have all been got out of the way before the cremation, without Sofia.
Dust you are, to dust you shall return.
Our Lord Jesus Christ shall awaken you at the end of days.
It will all be over in less than ten minutes.
Together they walk past a small pond and in among the trees of the cemetery.
The priest, a tall, skinny man of an indeterminate age, carries the urn. His thin frame has the slowness of an ageing man combined with eyes that suggest a young boy’s curiosity.
They don’t speak, and she has trouble tearing her eyes from the urn. Inside it is what remains of her parents.
After cremation the charred bones were left in a tray to cool. Anything that hadn’t burned, like Bengt’s hip replacement, had been removed before the bones were crushed in the mill.
Paradoxically, when her father died he also came to life for her. A door had been opened, as if a hole had been cut in the air. It’s open wide in front of her, offering freedom.
Impressions, she thinks. What impressions have they left behind? She remembers something that happened a long time ago.
She was four years old, and Bengt had laid a new floor in one of the rooms in the basement. The temptation to press her hand down on the smooth, thick cement had been stronger than her fear of the anger she knew she would get. The little handprint had been there right up to the fire. It was probably still there, under the ruins of the burned-out house.
But what is left of him?
Everything physical he has left behind has been destroyed, sold or sent to auction, scattered on the wind. Soon to be anonymous objects in the possession of total strangers. Things with no known history.
The impression he has left inside her, on the other hand, will live on in shame and guilt.
A guilt she will never be able to atone for, no matter how hard she tries.
It will only go on growing and growing for her.
What did I actually know about him? she wonders.
What was hiding in the depths of his soul? What did he dream of? Long for?
He was driven by a constant lack of gratification. No matter how hot he was, he was also shaking with cold. No matter how much he ate, his stomach was always stinging with hunger.
The priest stops, puts the urn down and lowers his head in prayer. A piece of green cloth with a hole in its centre has been spread out in front of a headstone of red granite from V?nga.
Seven thousand kronor.
She tries to catch the priest’s eye, and, when he finally raises his head, he looks at her and nods.
She takes a few steps forward, walks round the piece of cloth, bends over and takes hold of the cord fastened to the red urn. The first thing that strikes her is how heavy it is, and the rope digs into her hands.
Carefully she goes over to the hole, stops and slowly lowers the urn into the black hole. After a brief pause she lets go of the cord, letting it fall to land on the lid of the urn.
Her palms sting, and when she holds her hands up she sees an angry red mark on each hand.
Stigmata, she thinks.
Free Fall
THE MOST POPULAR attraction at the Gr?na Lund fair is a renovated viewing tower, one hundred metres tall, visible from large parts of Stockholm. Passengers are pulled up to a height of eighty metres, where they hang for a moment, then fall back down at a speed of almost one hundred and twenty kilometres an hour. The fall takes two and a half seconds, and as the ride brakes, passengers are subjected to a force equivalent to three and a half Gs.
In other words, when it lands each human body weighs more than three times as much as normal.
Body weight matters on the way down.
A person travelling at a speed of a hundred kilometres an hour weighs over twelve tons.
‘You know they closed Free Fall last summer?’ Sofia laughs.