Bad Intentions (8 page)

At this point Axel looked up at the mourners and he saw that they were mesmerized. He could also see what they were thinking. That this Frimann, this friend of Jon's, was indeed a good-looking man, well-dressed, articulate, sincere. He granted Ingerid Moreno, who was sitting in the front pew, a sympathetic smile.

"You asked much of yourself and others," he said. "You were a good friend. You were honest, patient and extremely sensitive. Your sensitivity made it difficult for you to enjoy both the big and the little things in life. Eventually it got too much for you. While we were sleeping, you were swept away by your own black thoughts. We don't understand and we're completely at a loss. What was it we failed to see? What was it we did not understand?"

Axel turned to the coffin and bowed respectfully.

"As long as there is breath in us, we will remember the good times," he said. "Jon Moreno. We thank you."

They carried Jon to his grave to the tune of Madrugada's "Highway of Light." Axel and Reilly walked at the front; behind them were Jon's cousin and the diminutive Tony Moreno in his white suit. At the back were two colleagues from Siba Computers. The six men struggled to find their rhythm, but after a clumsy start they managed to carry their burden with the speed and dignity that suited someone's final journey.

They came out into the blinding light. Reilly tried to adapt his pace. From time to time he would peek at Axel who was walking steadily on the left. Far away someone slammed a car door. They continued their slow progress. Reilly shifted his gaze from the vicar's cassock, which undulated in front of him, and he recognized Molly Gram. She was wearing a green dress and with her white hair she reminded him of a dandelion in seed. She was not with the other mourners. She stood to one side with Melis on her arm. Reilly could see it was struggling to be let loose. She must have left the dog in the car while they had been inside the church, he thought, and now that it was all over, she had gone to get it. It really was very shaggy. It reminded him of one of those mops you use to wash floors.

He stared ahead once more, at the vicar's back, and rediscovered his rhythm. They did not have far to go now, he could see the black grave and the sight of it made him feel weak. For the second time he sensed movement and he realized Melis must have jumped down from Molly's arm. The terrier raced toward them and everything happened incredibly quickly. Overjoyed at seeing him again it latched on to Reilly's trouser leg with great determination. The terrier got hold of the cord running through the drawstring hem of his trouser leg. Reilly tried to shake his foot loose, but in the process he shifted the coffin's center of
gravity, and the broken rhythm spread to the other pallbearers. Axel, on the left-hand side, got into trouble and the cousin and the two colleagues from Siba Computers shifted from foot to foot to maintain their balance. Tony Moreno ended up squatting. He squeezed the brass handle so hard his hand grew white from lack of circulation. A hush of fear went through the mourners. All six men staggered hopelessly back and forth as the little dog yanked and tugged at Reilly's trousers. The mourners at the rear stopped, some clasped their mouths and others clutched their chests. Molly started shouting and the coffin began to slide forward. A violent struggle followed to keep it in position, but the disaster was inevitable. Jon's coffin sloped mercilessly toward the ground. A corner of it hit the slate-covered path with a crack. The flowers skidded off and arranged themselves in a heap at the feet of the vicar, a sea of roses, lilies and white ribbons. With love. From all of us.

Melis let go and rushed quick as lightning back into Molly's arms. The men lifted up the coffin again. One corner of it was damaged: the jagged wood glowed bright, but no one said a word. Later Reilly remembered that Tony Moreno made the sign of the cross.

The wake was held in the church hall.

Tony Moreno appeared in the doorway. He stared at the buzzing crowd, then hesitated before he turned around and left. People looked after him as he hurried off, a small man in a crumpled suit. Axel told funny stories, Ingerid cried, but she had to laugh, too, because he was a great storyteller, and even better at making things up, Reilly thought. After all, he had played a part in most of the incidents Axel described and he barely recognized them. In Axel's embellished version everything was wilder and madder.

It did Ingerid good to laugh, the color returned to her cheeks. After they had been chatting for a while, she remembered something important. Her bag was on the floor, and now she dipped into it to show them something. Her hand brought out a book. Its cover was made from coarse red fabric.

"Look what Hanna Wigert gave to me," she said. "It was in a drawer in Jon's room. It's a diary. He wrote a diary all the time he was at Ladegården."

Axel gave her a baffled look. Reilly felt a blow to his stomach. A diary. Goddamn it.

"Hanna wanted to give it to me personally," Ingerid said.

Axel nodded. He was gripping the edge of the table. Ingerid put the book back in her bag and clicked it shut.

"I will copy Jon," she said. "I'll put it in my desk drawer. One day, when I'm feeling very brave, I'll read it. Jon may not have wanted me to—after all, a diary is a private thing—but I might find some answers."

Axel finally leapt into action. You could see him preparing for an attack. He drew his chair closer, leaned forward over the table and placed a hand on her arm. It was golden against her white skin, a strong, tanned hand with clearly visible veins.

"Think twice before you read it," he said. "Perhaps there were things he wanted to spare you."

She looked surprised. Her eyebrows shot up.

"What would they be?"

"Well," Axel hesitated. "Those confessions may not be intended for our eyes. For yours, I mean."

"But he's my son," she said, "and now I've got nothing left. Only his thoughts in that diary and I so want them."

Axel tightened his grip on her arm.

"But the things you write in a diary are the very things you want to keep secret," he said.

Ingerid Moreno started to waver.

"I know that. But Jon took his own life. He left me all alone again. Who is going to bury me now, can you tell me that? Do
you know what this means? I'll have to die among strangers. I'll forgive Jon, but only if he had good reason."

"Well." Axel nodded. "As long as you're not disappointed. As long as it doesn't make matters worse."

Ingerid Moreno freed her arm from Axel's grip.

"Jon would never disappoint me," she said. "I'm sure of that."

Axel was always the driving force in our little engine, Philip Reilly mused. He was in charge of operations and maintenance. He got us out of every scrape. Whenever it started rattling in one place, he would be there in a split second and tighten a bolt.

Whenever they needed forgiveness for some boyish prank, he would charm people into submission, men and women alike. They had been able to get away with anything. Axel Frimann had his own light, an overwhelming aura of warmth, and when he looked at people, their sense of self-worth would instantly soar. Now he had lost his usual composure. Axel was normally a man of action. He could turn every situation to his own advantage. He had no time for people who surrendered to their fate. But now it appeared that Jon's innermost thoughts were to be found inside that diary, and he was no longer in control.

"You know what this means, don't you?"

"You leave Ingerid alone," Reilly said.

Axel stopped pacing. What had Ingerid said? That she would do as Jon had done and put the diary in a drawer. And then, when she summoned up the courage one day, she would read it.

"There's a desk just inside the front door," he said. "I bet the diary is in one of the drawers."

Reilly gave him a horrified look. The ideas taking shape in Axel's head were more than he could tolerate.

"We need that diary," Axel said.

"And here I was thinking I was the crazy one," Reilly said. "It
is completely out of the question and I sincerely hope that you understand that."

"The diary is evidence."

"That depends on what Jon wrote in it," Reilly said. "Don't underestimate him."

Axel crossed to the open window. He stared out of it, both hands planted firmly on the windowsill. His muscles bulged under his shirt and Reilly was reminded of an ox in front of a closed gate.

"Deep down you're really very naive," he said. "You think we've got a chance to get away with it all, but we don't. And that might be just as well. I've always known that this day would come. But then again, I'm not the one worrying about a top job with Repeat."

"No, you live in a hovel," Axel said. "And you've got a crap job."

"I like my hovel. I like moving beds around."

Over at the window Axel groaned loudly. His broad back was outlined by the light from outside.

"Do you know what occurred to me in the church today?" he asked. "Jon wouldn't have made it anyway. Jon was constantly on edge, breathless, practically. You would have thought he had a heart defect."

Reilly was pondering something else.

"What do you think it looks like inside his coffin?" he asked.

"What are you talking about now?"

"It hit the ground. Jon must have skidded forward. Perhaps he's squashed up in a corner."

"There's no room for movement inside a coffin," Axel said. "They're made to measure. And even if he did bump his head against a corner, there's no one to see it anyway."

Reilly did not reply. But the thought that Jon was not lying as he should haunted him for a long time.

T
HE REMAINS OF
the summer's floral splendor glowed against the red walls of Mrs. Moreno's house. Above the doorbell was a porcelain sign in the shape of a salmon.
INGERID AND JON LIVE HERE.
Sejer and Skarre waited. It took some time before Ingerid opened the door and when she finally emerged, she did not speak a word. She disappeared inside.

"How are you?" Sejer asked.

She collapsed into an armchair, picked up a cushion and held it in front of her like a shield.

"How am I? I've lost Jon, and I've lost the rest of my life."

Sejer protested. "Don't think about the rest of your life," he said. "No one can look ahead when they're down." He placed his hand on her arm.

"Jon kept a diary," she said. "Hanna Wigert brought it to the funeral yesterday. She found it in his room, in a drawer. It's on my bedside table." Abruptly she got up from the armchair and went to her bedroom to fetch it.

Sejer touched the cover. The red fabric was coarse and quite plain.

"May I read it, please?" he asked.

"What good would that do?"

"We need it."

She looked baffled.

"We'll talk more about it later," he said. "But first tell us about the funeral, please. Did you give Jon a lovely service?"

She pondered this for a while.

"I met Molly," she said. "She and Jon were very good friends. She brought along a terrier which caused something of a commotion. Have you heard about it?"

"Yes," Sejer said. "We've heard. How do you feel about what happened?"

"I thought it might be a sign. That all of us who knew Jon, we couldn't manage to hold on to him while he was alive. He got ill and he slipped through our fingers. And we didn't manage to keep hold of him in death either. We lost him to the earth, plain and simple. It says something about us."

"What does it say?" Sejer asked.

"That we're all to blame."

She fell silent. She waited for Sejer to move the conversation forward.

"When Jon was growing up, were you ever worried about him?" Sejer asked.

She smiled bleakly.

"Of course I was. He was my child. Is there anything we do but worry about them? There's so much they have to cope with," she said. "They have to find a space for themselves among their siblings, and in the classroom, and they have to survive in the playground. They have to find a peer group to belong to and a couple of close friends. They need an education and a job, and
they need girlfriends. And children. Do you have children?" she asked.

"I have a daughter and a grandchild. They have managed all the things you mention. But I've never taken it for granted."

He looked at her gravely.

"Ingerid. You need to listen to me. There is something I have to tell you and it's very confusing."

She did not reply, but the cushion was now back in her lap.

"There are some details about Jon's death which we find unusual. We can't pinpoint anything in particular, yet we suspect that this case might be different, or that there's more to it than we first thought."

"I don't follow," she said.

"There are a few things about Jon's suicide which we don't understand."

She let go of the cushion.

"What are you talking about? A few things? Are you saying someone else was involved? But there was no one up there, only Axel and Reilly. And they're his friends," she said. "They were very close. Are you out of your mind?"

Sejer placed his hand on the red diary.

"How much have you read?" he asked.

"Nothing," she replied. "Not a single line."

"Are you scared?"

"Yes, I am."

Memories from her own past surfaced and disturbed her. The summer she had traveled around Europe with a friend. One day they had found a wallet in a toilet. It had contained a thick bundle of notes, which after a brief discussion they chose to keep and later spent in an expensive restaurant. She remembered when she had had an abortion at nineteen. She was not even sure who the father was. Twice during her marriage to Tony Moreno she
had been unfaithful. Both episodes had occurred when she had been traveling alone and she was drunk. When she recalled these incidents she felt woozy, and it struck her that she had not felt any remorse. Merely faint irritation, a slight jolt to the system. She had never, ever confided in anyone, simply stored it somewhere and later dismissed it as insignificant. But she remembered it now. She looked at the red diary. Did she have any sort of right to read Jon's confessions? She opened it up at the first page and read a few lines. Then she put it away, quickly, as though she had burned herself.