The Drowning (49 page)

‘What didn’t he understand?’ asked Patrik, leaning forward.

Ragnar gave a start and woke up from his reverie. He looked at Patrik.

‘Would you like to meet Alice? I think you need to meet her in order to understand.’

‘Yes, we’d like to meet Alice.’ Patrik couldn’t hide how agitated he felt. ‘When can we do that? Where is she?’

‘We can go there now,’ said Ragnar, getting to his feet.

Patrik and Paula exchanged glances as they walked to the car. Was Alice the woman they were looking for? Were they finally going to put an end to this case?

She was sitting with her back to them when they came in. Her long hair reached past her waist. Dark and gleaming.

‘Hi, Alice. It’s Pappa.’ Ragnar’s voice echoed in the very plain room. Someone had made a half-hearted attempt to add some cosy touches, but without entirely succeeding. A drooping potted plant stood on the windowsill, and a poster for the film
The Big Blue
hung on the wall above a narrow bed with a worn coverlet. There was also a small desk with a chair placed in front of it. That was where she was sitting. Her hands were moving, but Patrik couldn’t see what she was doing. She didn’t react when her father spoke to her.

‘Alice,’ he repeated, and this time she slowly turned around.

Patrick looked at her in surprise. The woman in front of him was stunningly beautiful. He quickly calculated that she must be about thirty-five, but she looked at least ten years younger. There wasn’t a wrinkle on her oval face. Her eyes were enormous and very blue, with thick black lashes. He found himself staring at her.

‘She’s a beautiful girl, our Alice,’ said Ragnar, going over to her. He placed his hand on her shoulder, and she leaned her head against him. Like a kitten pressing close to its master. Her hands lay limply on her lap.

‘We have visitors, Alice. This is Patrik and Paula.’ He hesitated. ‘They’re friends of Christian’s.’

A glint appeared in her eyes when she heard her brother’s name. Ragnar gently stroked her hair.

‘So now you know. Now you’ve met Alice.’

‘How long?’ Patrik couldn’t stop staring at her face. The resemblance to her mother was striking. Yet there was something very different about the way Alice looked. All the malevolence that had become etched into her mother’s face was absent from this … magical creature. He realized that was a strange way to describe her, but he couldn’t think of anything better.

‘A long time. She hasn’t lived at home since the summer she turned thirteen. This is the fourth place she’s lived. I didn’t much care for the others, but this one is quite nice.’ He leaned forward and kissed his daughter on the top of the head. There was no reaction in her face, but she pressed closer to him.

‘What …?’ Paula didn’t know how to formulate her question.

‘What’s wrong with her?’ said Ragnar. ‘If you ask me, there’s nothing at all wrong with her. She’s perfect. But I know what you mean. And I’ll tell you in a minute.’

He squatted down in front of Alice and spoke to her gently. Here, with his daughter, he was no longer in visible. His posture was more erect and his eyes were clear. Here he was somebody. He was Alice’s pappa.

‘Sweetheart, Pappa can’t stay very long today. I just wanted you to meet Christian’s friends.’

She looked at him. Then she turned around and took something from the desk. A drawing. She held it up for him to see.

‘Is that for me?’

She shook her head, and Ragnar’s shoulders sagged a bit. ‘Is it for Christian?’ he asked in a low voice.

She nodded and held it out again.

‘I’ll send it to him. I promise.’

The shadow of a smile. Then she turned back to the desk, and her hands began moving again. She had started on a new drawing.

Patrik cast a glance at the paper in Ragnar Lissander’s hand. He recognized the drawing style.

‘And you’ve always kept your promise, haven’t you? You sent her drawings to Christian,’ he said after they’d left Alice’s room.

‘Not all of them. She makes so many. But occasionally, so that he’d know she was thinking about him. In spite of everything.’

‘How did you know where to send the drawings? From what I understood, Christian had broken off all contact with you and your wife when he turned eighteen,’ said Paula.

‘Yes, he did. But Alice really wanted Christian to have her drawings, so I tried to find an address for him. I suppose I was a bit curious too. At first I searched for him under our surname, but without success. Then I tried with his mother’s last name and found an address in Göteborg. For a while I lost track of him because he moved and the letters came back, but then I found him again. Living on Rosenhillsgatan. But I didn’t know that he had moved to Fjällbacka. I thought he was still in Göteborg, since the letters weren’t returned.’

Ragnar went back into Alice’s room to say goodbye, and then led the way along the corridor as Patrik told him about the man who had taken care of the letters for Christian. Then the three of them sat down in a big, bright room that functioned as both a dining room and cafeteria. It had an impersonal air, with big palm plants that were clearly lacking both water and attention, just like the plant in Alice’s room. They had the whole place to themselves.

‘She cried a lot,’ said Ragnar, stroking the pastel-coloured tablecloth. ‘Presumably due to colic. During her pregnancy,
Iréne had already lost interest in Christian, so when Alice was born and became so demanding, my wife had no time for the boy. And he was already in a fragile state because of what had happened to him before.’

‘What about you?’ said Patrik. When he saw Ragnar’s expression, he realized that he’d hit on a sensitive point.

‘Me?’ Ragnar stopped moving his hand on the table. ‘I closed my eyes and refused to see. Iréne has always been the one who makes the decisions. And I’ve let her do it. It’s just been easier that way.’

‘Didn’t Christian like his little sister?’ asked Patrik.

‘He used to stand next to her cot and stare at her. I saw the dark expression on his face, but I never thought that … I just had to leave the room to open the door when the bell rang.’ Ragnar sounded distracted, and he was staring at a spot somewhere behind them. ‘I was only gone a few minutes.’

Paula opened her mouth to ask a question, but decided not to interrupt. He should be allowed to tell the story at his own pace. It was obvious that Ragnar was having a hard time formulating his words. His whole body was tensed, his shoulders hunched.

‘Iréne had gone upstairs to take a nap, and for once I was put in charge of Alice. Otherwise Iréne never let anyone else take care of her. She was such a sweet baby, even though she cried all the time. It was as if Iréne suddenly had a new doll to play with. A doll that she refused to share with anyone else.’

Another pause, and Patrik had to make a real effort not to coax the man to get on with his story.

‘I was only gone a few minutes …’ Ragnar repeated. It was almost as if he’d got stuck. As if it was impossible for him to put the rest into words.

‘Where was Christian?’ asked Patrik calmly, wanting to help the man along a bit.

‘In the bathroom. With Alice. I was giving her a bath. We had one of those contraptions that you could put the baby in, and that way you’d have both hands free to wash her. I filled the tub with water and then put her in the baby seat. And that’s where Alice was sitting.’

Paula nodded. They had a similar device for her son Leo.

‘When I came back to the bathroom … Alice was … She wasn’t moving. Her head was all the way under the water. Her eyes were … open, wide open.’

Ragnar swayed a bit in his chair. It was obvious that he had to force himself to go on, to confront those awful memories and images.

‘Christian was just sitting there, leaning against the bathtub and looking down at her.’ Ragnar fixed his eyes on Paula and Patrik, as if he’d suddenly returned to the present. ‘He was sitting very still, and he was smiling.’

‘But you saved her, right?’ Patrik could feel the goose bumps on his arms.

‘Yes, I saved her. I got her breathing again. And then I saw …’ He cleared his throat. ‘I saw the disappointment in Christian’s eyes.’

‘Did you tell Iréne what happened?’

‘No, that would never … No!’

‘Christian tried to drown his little sister, and you didn’t tell your wife?’ Paula looked at him in disbelief.

‘I felt like I owed him something, after everything he’d been through. If I had told Iréne, she would have sent him away at once. And he wouldn’t have survived that. Besides, the damage was already done.’ He sounded as if he were pleading with them. ‘I didn’t know how serious it was at the time. But it didn’t really matter, because there was nothing I could do to change things. Sending Christian away wouldn’t have made it any better.’

‘So you pretended that nothing had happened?’ said Patrik.

Ragnar sighed, slumping forward even more. ‘Yes, I pretended that nothing had happened. But I never allowed him to be alone with her again. Never.’

‘Did he try anything else?’ Paula’s face was pale.

‘No, I don’t think so. Somehow he seemed satisfied. Alice stopped crying so much. She mostly just lay still and was not at all demanding.’

‘When did you and your wife notice that something was wrong?’ asked Patrik.

‘It gradually became obvious. She didn’t learn things at the same pace as other kids. When I finally got Iréne to admit to it, and we had Alice examined … well, the doctors concluded that she was suffering from some sort of brain damage, which would most likely keep her at a child’s level, mentally speaking, for the rest of her life.’

‘Did Iréne suspect anything?’ asked Paula.

‘No. The doctor even said that Alice had probably been that way since birth. It just wasn’t noticeable until after she started to develop.’

‘How did things go as the two children grew up?’

‘How much time do you have?’ said Ragnar, smiling. But it was a sad smile. ‘Iréne cared only about Alice. She was the prettiest child I’ve ever seen, and I’m not just saying that because she’s mine. Well, you’ve seen what she looks like.’

Patrik thought about those enormous blue eyes.

‘Iréne has always loved anything beautiful. She herself was very beautiful as a young woman, and I think that she saw Alice as an affirmation of her own beauty. She devoted all her attention to our daughter.’

‘And what about Christian?’ said Patrik.

‘Christian? It was as if he didn’t exist.’

‘That must have been terrible for him,’ said Paula.

‘Yes,’ said Ragnar. ‘But he staged his own little revolt. He loved to eat, and he put on weight very easily. He
probably inherited that tendency from his mother. When he noticed that his eating habits annoyed Iréne, he started eating even more and got even fatter, just to spite her. And it worked. The two of them waged a constant battle over food, but for once Christian was able to defeat her.’

‘So Christian was always overweight when he was growing up?’ asked Patrik. He tried to picture the slim, adult Christian that he knew as a plump little boy, but he couldn’t do it.

‘He wasn’t just chubby, he was fat. Really fat.’

‘How did Alice feel about Christian?’ asked Paula.

Ragnar smiled, and this time the smile was also evident in his eyes. ‘Alice loved Christian. She adored him. She was always following him around like a little puppy dog.’

‘And how did Christian react to that?’ Patrik asked.

Ragnar paused to think. ‘I don’t think he really minded. He mostly left her alone. But occasionally he looked a bit surprised by the love she showered on him. As if he didn’t understand why.’

‘Maybe he didn’t,’ said Paula. ‘Then what happened? How did Alice react when he moved away?’

A curtain seemed to fall over Ragnar’s face. ‘A lot happened all at once. Christian disappeared, and we couldn’t take care of Alice any more – not the way she needed.’

‘Why not? Why couldn’t she live at home any longer?’

‘She was practically grown up, and she needed more support and assistance than we could give her.’

Ragnar Lissander’s mood had suddenly changed, but Patrik didn’t know why.

‘Has she never learned to talk?’ he interjected. Alice hadn’t spoken a word while they were in her room.

‘She can talk, but she doesn’t want to,’ said Ragnar with the same closed expression on his face.

‘Is there any reason why she might hold a grudge
against Christian? Would she be capable of harming him? Or anyone else close to him?’ In his mind Patrik again pictured her – the girl with the long dark hair, her hands moving over the white piece of paper, drawing pictures that might have been done by a five-year-old.

‘No, Alice wouldn’t hurt a fly,’ said Ragnar. ‘That’s why I wanted to bring you here, so you could meet her. She could never hurt anybody. And she loves … loved Christian.’

He took out the drawing that she’d given him and placed it on the table in front of them. A big sun at the top, green grass with flowers at the bottom. Two figures: one big and one small, happily holding hands.

‘She loved Christian,’ he repeated.

‘Does she even remember him? It was so many years ago that they last saw each other,’ Paula pointed out.

Ragnar didn’t reply. He just motioned towards the drawing. The two figures. Alice and Christian.

‘Go ahead and ask the staff here if you don’t believe me. But Alice is not the woman you’re looking for. I don’t know who would want to harm Christian. He disappeared out of our lives when he was eighteen. A lot must have happened since then, but Alice was the one who loved him. She still does.’

Patrik looked at the little old man. He knew that he would have to do as Ragnar had suggested. He needed to question the staff here. Yet he was convinced that Alice’s father had spoken the truth. She was not the woman they were looking for. They were back to square one.

‘I have something important to report,’ Mellberg interrupted Patrik just as he was about to present the new information. ‘I’m going to cut back my work hours to part-time for a while. I’ve realized that my leadership has been so successful here at the station that I can now
entrust all of you with certain tasks. My knowledge and experience can be put to better use elsewhere.’