The Intruder (9 page)

The mere thought of acquaintances who wrestled with shale and grass roofs on, practically speaking, medieval houses left him in a cold sweat. They were forced to gather a whole neighborhood council and at least one wise old man as soon as anything had to be repaired. People to whom they then owed return services for all eternity.

Fredrik got out of the car with a pike in a plastic bag. Out of nowhere he had gotten the idea to fix quenelles for dinner. He had stopped by the fish market in Hemse on his way home and asked if they had pike.

The man in the fish market opened a door to the nether regions of the store, pulled a pike out of a plastic tank like a large garbage can, more or less wrestled the fish down onto the floor, and killed it with a wooden club.

Fredrik had almost recoiled behind the glass counter. He was aware in principle that the animals he ate had been killed at some point and had no problem either with fishing or then killing and taking out the catch. But when he stepped into a fish market he didn’t really expect to witness an execution.

Now, in any event, he was at home with a very fresh pike and hoped that he could transform it into quenelles before it got too late and Ninni and Simon were too hungry.

The pike in the bag aroused no enthusiasm from Simon. Fredrik’s explanation that quenelles were like fish balls although much tastier did not make things any better. But he felt sure of himself. Once the quenelles had melted in their mouths, along with a mousseline sabayon sauce, not even Simon could complain.

Food had been an important part of Fredrik’s rehabilitation after the accident. He refused to look in his old cookbooks. Convinced that it must be possible to coax the know-how out of the reluctant convolutions of his brain, he had cut loose in the kitchen without any guidance other than feeling. After a few initial catastrophes, it was as if his senses showed him the right way: tastes and aromas, the color of the raw materials, the very feeling of an avocado against his fingertips or the sound of a pepper being slapped down on the cutting board. The tears in his eyes from a finely chopped onion.

Sometimes he wondered whether the fall and the injury had affected his sense of taste. That it had become more sensitive. Or just different. It was an interesting, slightly strange thought. That what tasted one way for most other people tasted completely different, or at least more, in his mouth.

He quickly filleted the fish and assembled the meat grinder. That was the trick. An ordinary food processor would mercilessly transform the pike into a tough, unappetizing mess.

When, a short time later, he was whisking the sauce over a water bath, Joakim called his cell phone. Fredrik decided to answer and somehow managed the sauce with one hand.

“Hey, how’s it going?” Joakim said happily.

“Fine,” he answered. “How’s everything with you? You sound upbeat.”

Joakim had been accepted to the Nyckelvik School’s photography program, and today had been the first day at school. His boisterous tone of voice sounded promising.

“It’s going fine.”

“Cool. Any decent classmates?”

Fredrik felt divided, had a bad conscience because he couldn’t really concentrate on the call.

“Yeah, they’re really nice,” said Joakim. “But I’ve already met most of them.”

“You have?” said Fredrik with surprise.

“One guy, Johann, set up a Facebook group when the admissions were done. We went out a couple of times last week.”

“That’s great,” said Fredrik. “Then you don’t need to have acclimatization, where you roll around on the floor in sweat suits and hug each other for two days.”

Joakim giggled into the receiver, then he briefly cleared his throat and his tone of voice became more serious.

“Well, I was wondering … Could I borrow a thousand for rent? It’s just temporary, until my student loan arrives. That will take about a week.”

“Of course,” said Fredrik without even thinking about it. “I’ll transfer the money to your account after dinner.”

“Thanks. That’s really nice.”

“I’m happy to do it, but now I have to go before I completely destroy this sauce.”

“Okay, but we’ll be in touch,” said Joakim.

Fredrik ended the call and removed the water bath and saucepan from the stovetop.

Photographer. Fredrik didn’t know whether that was something Joakim saw as his future, or just something he wanted to try out. Considering what he had seen today, it seemed to be a profession that a person could live on. But perhaps Henrik Kjellander was an exception. Like all artistic professions it was certainly tough.

Joakim had truly changed. It was as if a kind of castling had occurred in the family. Only a couple of years ago Joakim was always sitting in his room in front of the computer with the door closed while Simon was the happy and outgoing one, still with a focus on Ninni and Fredrik. Now it was the other way around. Joakim had suddenly become a responsible, talkative, and independent adult. Perhaps not so much with focus on his parents, but in any event present when they met. Simon had taken over Joakim’s old role and closed the door to the boys’ room.

“How’s it going?” asked Ninni.

She rounded the table, picked up a magazine from the pile on one of the chairs, and was about to sit down.

“Almost ready,” said Fredrik, “I’m just going to simmer the quenelles. It would be great if you could set the table.”

Ninni tossed the magazine aside on the table with a mock sigh. She opened the cupboard and took out three of the light yellow plates.

“Could we use the white ones instead?” said Fredrik. “The sauce disappears on those.”

“Yes, boss.”

She put the yellow plates back and took out the white ones.

“So it was fish balls you thought of to celebrate?”

“Listen, this is culinary art of a higher school,” said Fredrik, pointing to the quenelles waiting to be put into the pan. “Ask anyone at all who knows a little about food.”

“And I don’t?”

“Okay, ask anyone at all who knows a little more about food.”

Ninni put the plates on the table and took out glasses and silverware.

“Wait till you taste them,” he added.

“How was it then, the first day?” said Ninni while she put out the three place settings.

“Good. It was really good. Not a remarkable job. Sara and I were on a quiet tour to Fårö.”

“Sounds like a real vacation. And female companionship besides.”

Fredrik made a face.

“That was a joke.”

“I hope so,” he said.

There was silence. Why did she have to say that? Today of all days.

“It really was just a joke,” she repeated. “I’m happy that you’re back at work. It will do you good. You can see it already.”

“Okay, I believe you. Anyway it felt really good.”

Fredrik removed finished quenelles from the pan with water and put in the last batch. He observed the pile of newspapers on the chair while he waited for the quenelles to float up. He did not like that pile, it had started since Joakim moved to Stockholm. He did not like the pile of newspapers and he did not like that the table was only set for three. There was something gloomy about that. In one stroke the house had become much too large and quiet. They had barely managed to get their existence in order before conditions changed again.

At the same time that Joakim was accepted at the Nyckelvik School’s photography program, his girlfriend of two years had been accepted in the general studies program at the same school. They had arranged for an apartment for themselves in Stockholm. A microscopic studio at Gärdet, only one subway station from Ropsten where they took the bus to school. He did not doubt that Joakim would manage in Stockholm. Besides, both his grandmothers were in Gustavsberg and his paternal grandfather in Nacka. It wasn’t that. But it was sad not having him at home. Sad above all to have him so far away that he could not even come home on weekends. More than occasionally. It made him feel old.

Or did it have nothing at all to do with age and the empty fourth chair? Perhaps it was in his head, something to do with all the shit. The hell of Östergarnsholme. The accident.

“Simon,” he called out to the second floor. “Time to eat.”

He got no answer. One who moved out and one who closed the door.

“Simon,” he called again.

Louder this time. The scraping of a chair being pushed back was heard faintly through the ceiling.

*   *   *

The first day. Maybe she should have made dinner, not him. At least she ought to have thought of a little surprise.

Instead she had reminded him about that old infidelity. Completely unintentionally, she could swear to that. Or not old. It wasn’t really all that long ago. It only felt that way. The accident and the long period Fredrik had been on sick leave were like a boulder of eternity between the present and everything that happened before.

When Ninni tried to think back to what it had been like before the accident, it was like peering out over the sea in dense fog. It was as if it had lost its significance, vanished somewhere far away, and was something you could barely get hold of any longer. And yet that stray comment. Today of all days.

She was clearing up after dinner. There were never many dishes when Fredrik was cooking. During his training at cooking school, which he dropped out of after three months, he had learned to do dishes and clean up in the short breaks while you waited for something to be done. When the food was on the table the kitchen was often just as sparkling clean as when he started. She was the exact opposite. Left behind an explosion of saucepans, sticky beaters, and peelings.

She was happy for his sake, she really was. But if she were honest the feeling was mixed. Back on patrol duty. That meant risks, you couldn’t ignore that.

Fredrik had been checked up and down by doctors, psychiatrists, and psychologists, and they had taken their sweet time. There was no one who said okay, let’s test and see how it goes. She understood that. She was not worried that he wasn’t ready. But there was a different worry. That he would stretch the limits a little too much, not think enough about himself, and for that reason something would happen to him again. The danger was just as much him, the person he was, as the risk the job entailed.

Of course he ought to have learned something from what had happened. Ninni had spoken with him about it countless times. His memories from the accident itself were incomplete and his conclusions not completely clear. Not to her anyway. She had even talked with Sara about it on several occasions and she could not really get the pictures to fit together. Sara had hinted in some way that Fredrik had done more than he really needed to. In the heat of the moment, of course, there were difficult considerations, but if Ninni understood Sara correctly she thought that Fredrik could just as well have let the man they arrested at Östergarnsholme get away. He could have let him jump off the cliff if that was what he wanted. It involved an unreasonably large risk to try to stop him. No one had demanded that of Fredrik. No one would have held him accountable.

Ninni dried her hands on the linen towel with Grandmother’s monogram. She looked out the window. August. It was still light. And then a darkness opened below her without warning. That accursed anxiety.

She took a few quick steps across the floor, as if she could get away from her inner darkness through a quick maneuver in the kitchen, and it actually worked. It usually did.

13.

Little puffs of fog were creeping across meadows and fields when Fredrik peered out the kitchen window on Tuesday morning. They looked beautifully elfin as they hovered in the blue light of dawn. The light Charoles cattle stood motionless in the ribbons of fog, the calves still with the cows. It would be a few months before they would become beef for twelve hundred kronor a pound.

Fredrik showered, got dressed, got the newspaper, and set the table for breakfast. Ninni came in as usual just as the last drips of coffee ran through the filter.

“Is anything going on?” she said, pointing to the disarray of newspaper supplements on the table.

“Doesn’t seem like it,” he said. “It was an unusually quick read today.”

Ninni sat beside him on the kitchen bench, as close as possible without sitting on his lap. She looked at him, smiled broadly, and then gave him a kiss. A friendly morning kiss.

He could not help but wonder how she had endured these two years. The last year perhaps had not been so bad, in and of itself. Perhaps even better than a normal year considering that he was home so much. But those first six months. How did she manage?

*   *   *

When he was in the car on his way into Visby a little later, the fog was gone, burned off by the sun.

Yesterday had been a long day, his first on patrol duty in almost two years. Back and forth to Fårö, then intensive work at the computer and on the phone, and then straight home to the stove with the newly clubbed pike. Yet he had not felt the slightest bit tired, more like the contrary. Presumably it was the kick of being a policeman for real again that kept him going.

He drove north without really seeing the landscape he was passing. He must have driven this same stretch more than a thousand times, back and forth. Hemse, Linde, Lojsta, Hejde, Väte … What he actually saw was a mixture of memories that were stored on one another like double exposures. A black-tarred church steeple; a big lifeboat that, according to rumor, belonged to someone who was waiting for the Flood; the closed shops, of which there were more and more; the military-green back loaders rusting alongside the road; and the sign with the tennis court that pointed right into the forest. And after what sometimes felt like two hours, sometimes ten minutes, the sign with V
ISBY
8 showed up. Then he was there. He did not even notice the last few miles.

*   *   *

Fredrik had parked the car and was rounding a corner in the corridor on the ground floor when he almost ran into Eva Karlén.

“Oh, hi,” she gasped, backing up.

She nervously stroked her blond shoulder-length hair and flashed a smile that she immediately tightened up as if she wanted to take it back.