Let the Old Dreams Die (30 page)

I estimated that the man was about my own age, and the woman a few years older—so well past the stage where most couples abandon that kind of physical closeness in public. There are exceptions, of course, but these days it seems as if not even young people bother holding hands any longer, at least not if they’re over the age of ten.

But as soon as this middle-aged couple set foot outside the door they took each other by the hand, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Sometimes of course they were alone, and they didn’t always hold hands when they were walking together, but almost always. It made me feel happy, somehow, and I caught myself looking up from my book as soon as I heard their door open.

Perhaps it’s a drawback of my profession, but I am in the habit of studying people, trying to guess who they are and putting two and two together from the various occasions on which I have the opportunity to observe them from my ticket booth.

Since the couple spent a great deal of time on their ground floor balcony that summer, I had plenty of chances to gather facts in order to draw my conclusions.

They often read aloud to one another, a virtually obsolete form of entertainment. The distance prevented me from hearing what they were reading, and I had to stop myself from fetching my binoculars when they left a book on the table. There is a difference between observation and spying. When a pair of binoculars enters the picture, that line has been crossed. So no binoculars.

They drank a fair amount of red wine, and they both smoked. One of them would roll a cigarette while the other was reading. Sometimes they stayed up quite late with a cassette player on the table between them. From what I could hear, they played mainly popular old songs. Siw Malmquist, Östen Warnerbring, Gunnar Wiklund. That kind of thing. And Abba. Lots of Abba.

Occasionally they would dance together for a little while in the limited space available, but when that happened I would look away and busy myself with my own affairs, because it felt as if that was
private
in a way I can’t really explain.

OK. Let me tell you what conclusions I drew before I got to know them. I thought the man worked in some kind of service industry, and the woman was a librarian. I decided they had met at a mature age, and this was their first apartment together. I felt they had both had their own dreams, but now those dreams had been put on ice so that they could invest their energy in their relationship, their love.

Not bad, as you will see.

I was completely wrong on just one point, as you already know.
The woman was a police officer, not a librarian. If someone had asked me to describe my idea of a female police officer, I would probably have said something about short black hair, prominent cheekbones and sinewy muscles. Karin didn’t look like that. She had thick, fair hair that hung right down her back; she was comparatively short and very pretty in an appealing way, with lots of laughter lines. Just the kind of person you would happily ask for advice about which book to read next, in fact.

You could ask Karin that question, of course, but if she were really to be on home ground you would have to ask her about the development of scar tissue, the psychology of murderers and the density of ammunition in handguns. Her area of particular expertise was interrogating witnesses and the verbal collection of information, but she was also well versed in ballistics and blood-spatter analysis. ‘Although that’s mainly just as a hobby,’ as she once explained.

I found out what Stefan did for a living at the same time as our embryonic friendship began.

After the Proust I turned to a biography of Edvard Munch. I had just finished it when my holiday started at the end of July, and I decided to take a trip to Oslo to visit the Munch museum. That’s one of the advantages of being alone. You get an idea, and the very next day you can put it into practice.

I took the morning train so as to arrive in the afternoon, and when the ticket collector came along, who should I see decked out in his cap and full uniform but my new neighbour? So we had more or less the same profession. A profession that definitely counts as part of a
service industry
, wouldn’t you say?

As I held out my ticket he frowned and looked at me as if he were searching for something. I helped him out.

‘We’re neighbours,’ I said. ‘And I’m on the ticket barrier at the station. In Blackeberg.’

‘That’s it,’ he said, punching my ticket. ‘Thanks for telling me.
I’d have been wondering all day otherwise.’

There was a brief silence. I felt as if I wanted to say something more, but I couldn’t come up with anything that wouldn’t seem intrusive. I could hardly ask what books they read, or which was his favourite Abba track. He came to my rescue with the only neutral fact available at the time.

‘So,’ he said. ‘You’re off to Oslo?’

‘Yes. I thought I’d go and have a look round the Munch museum. I’ve never been.’

He nodded to himself, and I wondered if I should have specified
Edvard
. Perhaps he had no interest in art. So it came as a bit of surprise when he asked, ‘
The Kiss
. Have you seen that one?’

‘Yes. But not the real thing.’

‘That’s in the museum.’

He looked as if he were about to say something else, but the passenger in front of me was waving his ticket. The man I would later come to know as Stefan clicked his hole punch a couple of times in the air and said, ‘It’s a wonderful museum. Enjoy yourself,’ then carried on with his rounds.

When I visited the museum the following day I couldn’t avoid paying particular attention to
The Kiss
, especially as it was already one of my favourites. As I have already said I have a tendency to speculate, and it was impossible not to interpret the painting in the light of what I thought I knew about my hand-holding neighbours.

It’s more a matter of two bodies
melting together
, rather than a kiss. On the one hand the painting depicts the kiss above all other kisses, the union that makes two drift together and become one. On the other hand the painting is very dark, and there is something tortured about the position of the bodies, as if we are witnessing something inexorable and painful. Whatever it’s about, it shows two people who are completely absorbed in one another and who have ceased to exist as separate individuals.

I thought I had learned something about my neighbours, but at the same time I told myself not to read too much into it. After all, even I had liked the picture, and I was all alone.

One amusing detail I would like to mention, in the light of what happened later: I spent a long time standing in front of the painting entitled
Vampire
. Here again we have a kind of kiss, bodies melting together. But is this about consolation, or a fatal bite? Is the woman’s red hair enveloping the man in oblivion and forgiveness, or is it actually blood flowing? At any rate, we see the same faceless individuals as in
The Kiss
, the same blind and tortured symbiosis.

A few days after my return from Oslo, I passed the balcony where Stefan was sitting reading Dostoevsky’s
The Idiot
. It would have been impolite not to speak, so I said something and he said something about Dostoevsky and I said something about Munch and he asked if I’d like a cup of coffee and that was how it started. To cut a long story short, there were more cups of coffee on other days, and in September I was invited to dinner.

I must apologise for this lengthy detour to Oslo with the sole aim of explaining how our friendship started, but as I said: with hindsight it doesn’t seem to me to be entirely without significance. The end was already encapsulated in the beginning, so to speak.

It was easy to spend time with Stefan and Karin. We had similar interests, and more importantly the same sense of humour. Like me they enjoyed turning ideas and orthodoxies inside out, and for example we could spend a considerable amount of time speculating on what would happen if islands weren’t fixed, but just floated around. How those in power would formulate their immigration policy, and so on and so on.

One evening when we were sitting on the balcony sharing a bottle of wine, I asked how they had met. They suddenly looked quite secretive, and glanced at one another with an expression that
suggested they might be sharing a private joke. Eventually Karin said, ‘We met…during the course of the investigation.’

‘What investigation?’

‘The one in Blackeberg.’

‘The swimming pool…incident?’

‘Yes. Stefan was a witness and I interviewed him.’

‘A witness?’ I looked at Stefan. ‘But you weren’t living here then, were you?’

Stefan glanced at Karin as if he was requesting permission to talk about an ongoing investigation, and she gave a brief nod.

‘Oskar Eriksson,’ said Stefan. ‘I punched his ticket. On the train. The day after it all happened. So I was kind of the last person who definitely saw him.’

‘Were there other people who saw him?’

‘You’d have to ask Karin about that.’

‘Sorry,’ said Karin, pouring more wine into my glass by way of compensation. ‘It’s an ongoing investigation and I can’t…you understand.’

‘But I mean it’s…what is it…five years ago?’

‘It’s an ongoing investigation.’

And that was the end of that. For the time being.

This was an unusually striking example, because it was to do with a professional code of conduct, but I noticed that in general terms there were clear delineations with both of them when it came to boundaries. What they were prepared to say and what they were not prepared to say, particularly in matters to do with their relationship. During the twenty-three years of our friendship I never asked a question about their sex life, for example. The way they touched one another, the looks and the snatched kisses indicated that they probably had quite an active one, but I instinctively knew it wasn’t something they wished to discuss with other people.

I have never met a couple with such integrity, such closeness as
those two. They comprised their own little universe. I won’t deny that I sometimes felt quite sad in their company, especially if we’d had a few glasses of wine. We would sit there having a lovely time, chatting and laughing, but I was the one who had to get up and go home alone at some point. However much we all liked each other, I was on the outside.

They weren’t perfect by any means. More than once I thought that part of the reason they valued my company was that they wanted a witness. Someone who would gaze appreciatively at their love and confer the seal of approval. They lapped it up like cats when I said something about how terrific they were together, what a miracle it was that two people…and so on. A kind of vanity. Look how wonderful we are together.

But that’s just a footnote. The love was there, and it was a great and true love, and even love can be permitted a certain amount of conceit, after all.

The years passed and we grew closer. They didn’t spend much time with other people; they seemed perfectly content in each other’s company, and I think I can say with confidence that I was the only one they let into their life to any extent.

In 1994 Karin retired. I apologise if that comes as something of a shock, but I felt the same when I found out about the age difference between them. Stefan was born in 1945, which meant he was a year younger than me, while Karin was born in 1929. My initial impression was that there were perhaps seven or eight years between them. But in fact it was sixteen. The combination of her bright eyes and long blonde hair had misled me, coupled with the fact that Stefan had something of the old man about him.

So Karin retired while Stefan carried on travelling around on the trains, principally the route from Stockholm to Oslo and back. As I said I worked mainly evenings and nights, so I had quite a bit
of spare time during the day. Karin and I weren’t quite as easy with each other when it was just the two of us as Stefan and I were, but after a year or so and a number of shared coffee breaks, we had reached a level with which we were both comfortable.

In fact it was while we were having coffee one day that she told me the Oskar Eriksson case was still occupying her mind, in spite of the fact that it was no longer her job. Perhaps because she had retired she felt able to disclose a little more.

‘It’s not true at all,’ she said. ‘The official version, it’s not true at all.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked tentatively, anxious not to break the atmosphere that had led her to bring up the subject.

‘First of all, there was blood on the ceiling in the swimming pool. On the
ceiling
. And it was directly above the water. Five metres above the water. Given the way it had spurted, someone would have had to climb up a ladder to splash it on the ceiling. A ladder that was standing in the actual pool. The blood came from the victim whose head was torn off.’

‘Chopped off, you mean?’

‘No. Torn off. And you can’t imagine the strength it would take to do that. Try pulling apart a Christmas ham with your bare hands—and you don’t even have a skeleton to contend with in that case. You know the old custom of executing people by getting horses to pull them apart?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s just a form of torture. Horses aren’t capable of pulling off even an arm or a leg. You have to help out by chopping. And that’s
horses
.’

‘Which are very strong animals.’

‘Yes. Elephants can do it. But not horses. And most definitely not people.’

‘So what did happen, then?’

Karin sat without speaking for a long time, gazing out of the window as if she was trying to use X-ray vision to penetrate the buildings that prevented her from looking into the boarded-up swimming pool four hundred metres away.

‘There was a blow, a cut,’ she said eventually. ‘Which allowed the tearing-off process to begin, so to speak. But it wasn’t done by a knife. We also found another victim, an elderly man, in an apartment…’ The latter remarks were made mostly to herself, and she blinked a couple of times as if she were waking up. She looked at me. ‘Oskar Eriksson. You saw him once, didn’t you?’