Dark Secrets (64 page)

“Why didn’t you call the police? Your son calls to tell you that he’s shot his friend by accident. Why didn’t you just call the police?”

Ulf met Torkel’s curious gaze. This was simple. If Torkel was also a father, he would understand.

“Johan didn’t want me to. He was petrified. If I’d called the police, I would have been letting him down. I’d done that once already. When I left. This time I had to help him.”

“Four people are dead, you’re going to end up in prison, and he’s completely traumatized. In what way were you helping him?”

“I failed, I admit that. I failed. But I did everything in my power. I just wanted to be a really good father.”

“A good father?” The dubious tone of Torkel’s voice was met by a gaze that radiated absolute conviction.

“I wasn’t around for some of the most important years. But I don’t believe it’s ever too late to be a good father.”

Ulf Strand was taken away. He would be charged later that evening. The job was over. Sebastian sat in the room next door, watching as Torkel and Vanja gathered up their things. They were chatting happily about going home. Vanja was hoping to catch a late train that evening, unless Billy was planning to drive back to Stockholm. Torkel would be staying on for a day or two, as would Ursula. Torkel would tie up all the loose ends, while Ursula would go through the Strands’ house to make sure all the angles were covered when it came to the forensic evidence. The last thing Sebastian heard before the door closed behind them was Torkel expressing the hope that there would be time for them to have dinner together before Vanja left.

There was a lightness about them. In their voices, their movements. Relief. Good had triumphed. Mission accomplished. Time to ride off into the sunset with a song on their lips.

Sebastian didn’t feel like singing. He didn’t feel like celebrating. He didn’t even feel like having sex any longer.

He could think about only two things:

Storskärsgatan 12, and Ulf’s voice.
I don’t believe it’s ever too late to be a good father.

The strange thing was that Sebastian realized he had already decided, more or less. Not expressly, not consciously, but deep down inside he was pretty sure that he wouldn’t go looking for Anna Eriksson and/or her child when he got back to Stockholm. Pretty sure, and happy with the decision his subconscious had made on his behalf.

He couldn’t see the positive aspect.

What it could give him.

What it might lead to.

Anna would never be another Lily. The child would never be another Sabine. And they were the ones he missed. They were the ones he wanted back. They were the only ones he cared about. Lily and Sabine.

But, in spite of himself, Ulf’s words had touched something within him. Not what he said, but the way that he said it.

The certainty.

The conviction. As if it was an incontrovertible fact. A universal truth.

It’s never too late to be a good father.

Sebastian had a son or a daughter. He had a child who, in all probability, was still alive. There was someone out there who was half made up of him.

Who was his.

It’s never too late to be a good father.

Those simple words posed difficult questions.

Was he really going to let yet another child slip through his fingers?

Could he do that?

Did he want to?

Sebastian was becoming more and more convinced that the answer to all three questions was “no.”

The train that would take Sebastian back to Stockholm would be leaving in an hour. It had been almost three days since he had walked out of the police station with Ulf’s words still ringing in his ears and headed back to his parents’ house. He had had no further contact with Torkel or Ursula, even though he knew they were staying in town for a few days. He didn’t know whether they were still around. The investigation was over. No one seemed to feel the need to keep in touch outside work. Fine by Sebastian. He’d gotten what he came for.

Two days ago the agent had returned and they had done everything necessary so that the house could be sold. In the evening Sebastian had dug out the piece of paper with the name and phone number of the woman who had been reading her book on the train to Västerås. An encounter that seemed like an eternity ago. She had been dubious when he called. He apologized. Explained that he had been up to his neck in work. That murder investigation she had perhaps heard about. The dead teenager from Palmlövska High. Exactly as he had expected, she had been curious and agreed to meet up the following day. Yesterday. They had ended the evening at his house. He hadn’t managed to get rid of her until this morning. She wanted to see him again. He made no promises. If he didn’t call her, then she would call him, she said with a smile. He wouldn’t get away, not now she knew where he lived. Three hours later Sebastian had taken everything he wanted from the house, locked the door, and walked away, never to return.

Now he was standing in a place he never thought he would visit. To tell the truth, he had sworn never to come here. Never to visit him again. Now they were both lying there. In the churchyard. His parents’ grave.

The funeral flowers had wilted. The grave looked shabby. Sebastian wondered why no one had taken away the dead wreaths, the floral arrangements that had been knocked over and half eaten by deer. Was
there a form he had to sign in order to get the church to tend to it? He certainly wasn’t going to look after it. He wouldn’t have done it even if he’d been living in Västerås. As things stood, it was completely out of the question.

The red granite gravestone depicted a sun rising, or possibly setting, behind two majestic pine trees. The inscription read
Bergman Family Plot
, and beneath that was the name of his father:
Ture Bergman
. Esther’s name hadn’t yet been added. The grave would be allowed to settle properly before they moved the stone to add a new inscription. Six months, Sebastian had heard somewhere.

Ture had died in 1988. She had been alone for twenty-two years. His mother. Sebastian wondered whether she had ever considered coming to see him. Reaching out to him. If she had, would he have taken her hand?

Probably not.

Sebastian was standing a few yards from the neglected grave. Irresolute. He was surrounded by stillness. The spring sun warmed his back through his coat. A lone bird was singing in one of the birch trees planted here and there among the graves. A woman and a man biked past along the path. She was laughing at something. Bubbling, sparkling laughter that seemed misplaced as it rose into the clear blue sky. What was he doing here? He really had no desire to get any closer to the grave than this. At the same time there was something doubly tragic in the fact that his mother’s final resting place looked like a compost heap, when she had been such a tidy person.

Sebastian stepped up to the grave and crouched down. Clumsily he started gathering up the wilted flowers.

“I bet you never thought this would happen, Mom. I bet you never thought I’d come.”

The sound of his own voice surprised him. Confused him. He had never thought of himself as the kind of person who would end up crouching down and tidying a grave while talking to his dead mother. What on earth had happened to him?

It was something to do with those numbers.

1988.

Twenty-two years.

Alone. Birthdays, weekdays, Christmas, holidays. Even with friends around, alone in the silence of that big house most of the time. Plenty of time to think.

About what had been.

About how things had turned out.

Her pride greater than her longing.

The fear of being rejected stronger than her need for love.

The mother of a son she never heard from. Grandmother for a few short years to a child she never got to see. Sebastian gave up on his inept attempt at tidying and got to his feet. He reached into his pocket for his wallet and took out the photograph of Sabine and Lily that had been on the piano in his parents’ house.

“You never got to see her. I made sure of that.” His right hand tightened on the wallet. He could tell that the tears were not far away. The grief. Definitely not for his father. Not for his mother, either, even if he was able to feel a certain sorrow when he thought about how meaningless their conflict seemed in relation to the consequences it had had. He wasn’t even weeping for Lily and Sabine. He was weeping for himself. For the realization.

“Do you remember what you said the last time we saw each other? You said that God had left me. That he had taken his hand away from me.”

Sebastian looked at the picture of his dead wife and his dead child, at the unfinished gravestone in the churchyard in the town where he had grown up, where no one knew him, no one asked after him, no one missed him. A state of affairs that was true of every town. Sebastian wiped his cheeks with the back of his left hand.

“You were right.”

S
TORSKÄRSGATAN 12
.

He had ended up there after all. Outside the imposing functionalist building. Sebastian knew nothing about architecture, nor did he have any interest in learning more, but he did know that the buildings to the west of Gärdet were examples of functionalism.

He knew that Anna Eriksson lived in the apartment block in front of him. Anna Eriksson, the mother of his child.

Hopefully.

Really?

Sebastian had been back in Stockholm for almost a week now. He had walked past Storskärsgatan 12 every single day. Sometimes several times. So far he hadn’t been inside. The closest he had come was to peer through the main entrance to see if he could catch a glimpse of the list of residents that was on the wall in the entrance hall. Anna Eriksson lived on the third floor.

Should he?

Shouldn’t he?

Sebastian had been wrestling with this issue ever since he got home. In Västerås it had all seemed more abstract, somehow. A mind game. He could weigh up the pros and cons. Make a decision. Change his mind. Change his mind again. Without any consequences.

Now he was here. The decision he made might be irrevocable.

Turn and walk away. Or not.

Make himself known. Or not.

He kept on changing his mind. Several times a day. The arguments were the same as those he had gone over and over in Västerås. Nothing new occurred to him. No fresh insights. He cursed his indecisiveness.

Sometimes he walked over to Gärdet convinced that he was going to march straight in, walk up the stairs, and ring the doorbell. But then he didn’t even turn into Storskärsgatan.

On other occasions, when he had no intention of making himself known, he would end up standing outside the dark wooden door for hours. It was as if someone else were directing his actions. As if he had no real say in what he did. But he hadn’t been inside the building. Not yet.

Today, however, he was going to do it. He could feel it in his bones. He had managed to hold a steady course. He had left his apartment on Grev Magnigatan and headed along Storgatan. Turned right onto Narvavägen and up toward Karlaplan, past the Fältöversten shopping mall, then across Valhallavägen, and he was there. No more than a fifteen-minute walk. And Anna Eriksson lived there. He wondered whether she had been living there when the child was younger. If so, they might have seen each other in the shopping mall. His child and the child’s mother might have stood in front of him in the queue for the deli counter in Sabis. These thoughts filled Sebastian’s mind as he stood in the street looking at Storskärsgatan 12.

Twilight was beginning to fall. It had been a beautiful spring day in Stockholm. You could almost feel the warmth of early summer.

Today he would make himself known.

Today he would speak to her.

He had made up his mind.

He crossed the street and headed toward the front door. Just as he was wondering how he was going to get inside, a woman in her thirties emerged from the elevator in the lobby and came toward the door. He took this as a sign that he really was meant to meet Anna Eriksson today.

He got there just as the woman stepped out onto the pavement, and grabbed the door as it began to close behind her.