The Viper (16 page)

“Anders liked me. It wasn’t that he didn’t care, or treated me badly, but he was busy elsewhere,” said Inger.

“You mean he was unfaithful?” asked Fredrik and felt clumsy.

Inger shook her head again.

“No. I’m sure he wasn’t. As sure as it’s possible to be,” she said and paused, letting her right hand run over her hair. “Some people can’t move on,” she said. “Never. They’re stuck in the past.”

“Was there anything in particular that made you realize that he was
busy,
as you called it?” said Fredrik.

“Sure, you could say that. It was Rune who made me realize it. I don’t think he intended to, it was just something he said. A little thoughtless, of course, but Rune can be like that, more honest than is really healthy, without realizing it himself. It was during the Christmas holidays. We’d been having difficulties for a while. It happened every so often, but this time it had gone on for a long time. I asked Rune straight out what he thought. About Anders, that is. Why he was so distant. We’d just finished dinner at our place. It may have been the day after Christmas, and Rune and I were still sitting at the table. First he nodded, as if it didn’t come as much of a surprise, and then he began to talk about how Anders had always been a bit of a brooder and that…”

Inger stopped herself and looked at Fredrik stiffly.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m telling you all these details. I’m not feeling very well. Maybe you can understand that? I doubt that this is the sort of thing you want to hear.”

Strictly speaking that was probably true, thought Fredrik, but then again who was to say what was the best path to what they wanted to hear?

“Tell us in whatever way feels best for you,” he said.

“Right, okay,” said Inger and put her hands together again. “‘He’s never quite gotten over Kristina.’ That’s what he said. Rune. ‘He’s never quite gotten over Kristina.’ That’s what he said to me, after I’d been married to his son for twenty years. I don’t get what he was thinking, or I guess that’s just what he wasn’t doing. Thinking. He was a little drunk, too, so he was spinning around there in his own world ruminating over what he saw. It just slipped out of him. The stupid idiot! But Rune has always been clumsy. Not Anders, on the other hand.
That
he didn’t inherit. An idiot, too, maybe, but not clumsy.”

“You mean that Anders had a relationship with Kristina Traneus?”

“Yes, he did,” she said and took a deep breath. “But that was over thirty years ago.”

“That’s a long time ago,” said Fredrik.

“Yes, it’s a very long time ago,” said Inger and judging from her expression she thought it was more like an insanely long time ago.

“What do you know about their relationship?”

“Not much,” she answered, calmer now. “Essentially nothing. They were together for a while before she met Arvid.”

“But Anders never got over her, if I’ve understood you correctly?”

“You have.”

“So the cousins were rivals?”

“I don’t know about rivals. That sounds so serious. Anders wanted her, Arvid got her. I guess that makes them rivals, but whether or not it was an open rivalry … they had no contact with each other, after all.”

“Was it because of Kristina that they didn’t have any contact?” asked Fredrik.

“Among other things. Ask Rune.”

“So there were other things, apart from Kristina?” said Fredrik.

“Yes, but I don’t know anything about it. Ask Rune. You may have to drag it out of him. There are things in that family that don’t get talked about. But he’s the one who would know.”

Fredrik decided to drop that line of questioning. They would have to come back to that after they had spoken to Rune, if it proved necessary.

“So when you decided to leave Anders there was nothing specific that had happened, nothing concrete that is, but rather…”

“No,” said Inger, “nothing had happened in that sense.”

Apparently she was in the habit of answering before the person asking the question had finished talking.

“But rather Rune’s comment?”

“Not just that, of course. I spoke with Anders, threw it in his face as soon as the others had left. And for the first time he came clean. I knew about Kristina, of course, had even asked him about it several times, but he had always waved it off. This time he told me straight. Well, he wasn’t actually very clear this time, either, but he spoke about it anyway. And what he said was enough for all the pieces to fall into place. After that, there was only one thing to do and that was to leave. The children were all grown up and had moved out, so it was easy, practically speaking. But it was difficult, very difficult after more than twenty years. I was angry, sad, and…”

She broke off in mid-sentence and looked first at Fredrik, then at Gustav.

“Anyway, I guess that’s about what you needed to know?”

“Yes, I guess it is,” said Fredrik. “I realize that this is difficult for you, but just one last thing.”

Inger nodded weakly.

“After you got divorced, do you know if Anders reestablished contact with Kristina?”

“It sure looks that way. I mean, they died together. But, no, it was nothing I knew anything about. I understand that men are drawn to Kristina. She’s like that. But I don’t understand how anyone can cling to the memory of her for half a lifetime. She’s not worth that. Maybe nobody is, but she definitely wasn’t.”

She paused for a moment and then continued clearly and resolutely:

“Kristina wasn’t a good person. She wasn’t worthy of all his longing.”

24.

“It seems as if Anders Traneus finally got what he wanted,” said Gustav when Fredrik returned from having seen Inger Traneus out.

“Slow and steady wins the race,” said Fredrik.

He stood there silently for a moment in the doorway to Gustav’s room. Gustav didn’t say anything, either. Cynicisms had no place here, they just felt sordid.

“What can you say?” said Fredrik.

“Yeah … what can you say?”

Fredrik leaned his shoulder against the doorjamb. Any attempt to sum it up or make a comment just felt petty. And the whole time he saw before him that abyss. Precipitous, dark, and impossible to cross.

“So what do we do now,” asked Gustav, “should we go see the father?”

“Yeah, let’s head over there and see how he’s doing. If he seems okay, then we’ll bring him back here. It’ll probably be a little chaotic over there otherwise, what with children and grandchildren and everything.”

*   *   *

ELIN TOOK THE
heavy paper bag and carried it to the sink.

“Are you still shopping at ICA?” she said when he had untied his shoes and came into the kitchen.

“What?”

“ICA! You still don’t dare shop anywhere except at ICA?”

“What do you mean, don’t
dare
?” said Ricky and straightened his sweater that had been turned inside out down at the hem.

“You know what I mean. That Father always warned us about that pinko co-op Konsum.”

“As it happens, I do shop at Konsum on occasion. Especially in the summer. The lines are much shorter there,” said Ricky and took the tabloids that lay in the top of the bag.

“Sure,” said Elin and started putting the groceries away.

The bag was neatly packed with milk at the bottom and vegetables at the top.

“I still don’t understand if he meant that communists shopped there, or that Konsum itself was a bunch of communists who stole market share from private retailers.”

Ricky held up both papers in front of him and scanned the front pages.

“Since when did you become such a lefty?” he asked, no longer fully engaged in the discussion.

“Ricky, it’s not about politics. It’s about the fact that I want to be able to go and buy a carton of milk without Father looking over my shoulder.”

Ricky turned the newspapers around so that Elin could read.

MURDER DRAMA ON GOTLAND

MULTIMILLIONAIRE ON THE RUN FROM POLICE

DOUBLE MURDER A CRIME OF PASSION?

THEY LAY IN EACH OTHER’S ARMS

“Hemse wasn’t a hell of a lot of fun. I didn’t get a chance to think too much about which supermarket to go to.”

Elin took the
Expressen
newspaper from him and quickly flipped through the pages dealing with the murder of their mother and her alleged lover.
They lay dead in each other’s arms.

“I can’t read this.”

She tossed aside the newspaper onto the table and wrapped her arms around herself, as far as she could. She was cold and everything seemed unreal.

“Strange that they haven’t started pestering us yet,” said Ricky with his nose in the
Aftonbladet
.

“Well, we pulled the phone jack out yesterday, after that…”

“Oh, yeah, that’s right.”

Elin left the kitchen, and went into the bedroom and started rooting around among Ricky’s clothes.

“Could I borrow one of your sweaters?” she called out.

She pulled on a black fleece sweater that was far too big.

“Sure, but could you stop running around?”

“But I’m cold.”

“Yeah, but can’t you just sit down, or stand still at least.”

Elin came back into the kitchen, sat down on a chair with her arms crossed.

“So how was it, in Hemse?”

“Strange. Fucking strange. First the news bills and then … well, you can imagine. People started coming up to me. And the ones that didn’t stared. I was barely able to finish shopping. I just wanted to drop the basket and run away.”

“Listen, I—”

She stopped short and looked out the window when she heard a car slow down. A red station wagon with the TV4 logo on the doors rolled slowly up to the gate while the driver pressed his nose up against the side window.

“Journalists,” she said and nodded out the window.

“Really?”

Ricky turned around and looked out.

“Yeah, really. From TV. I can’t believe this is happening to me. It’s like being in a film.”

“What do we do?” asked Ricky and pulled away from the window.

“Nothing,” said Elin. “We don’t open. I don’t want to speak to anyone. I just don’t have the energy.”

Ricky looked around then rushed out to the entrance hall and locked the door.

“Let’s go upstairs,” he said, “then they won’t see us.”

They hurried up the stairs and slipped into the study.

“We’ll be all right here,” said Ricky.

They sat down on the guest bed, Elin farthest back in the corner, and Ricky in the middle.

The doorbell rang out through the house.

They looked at each other uneasily. The doorbell rang again. A moment later, a couple of insistent knocks were heard on the window of the front door. Ricky reached out and gave the study door a shove. They sat there silently, stared at the wall opposite them and listened. Somebody spoke, but they couldn’t tell whether it was directed to them or if the ones standing outside the door were simply speaking among themselves.

“I called Åhlbergs,” said Elin.

“Åhlbergs, you mean the undertak—”

“Yes.”

“I see.”

“I called while you were out shopping.”

“Were they the ones who drove Mother to … well, wherever it was they took her?”

“No, apparently there’s someone over in Kräklingbo who handles that kind of … transport. Anyway, I thought we ought to find out what’s going on.”

“Do they work on Saturdays?”

“I don’t fucking know, I called home.”

“Calm down.”

“Yeah, well you’re asking such stupid questions.”

Elin sighed, but continued.

“They said that it might be a while before we can bury Mother, since the police have requested that she be taken to Stockholm for an autopsy.”

“Do you have to say that?”

“What, autopsy? What am I supposed to say?”

Ricky didn’t answer.

“You promised to take care of it. To keep after them so we know when they’re done, so we don’t have to think about it.”

“All right,” said Ricky mutedly.

They sat there quietly again. The doorbell rang.

25.

How old would he have been? Ten?

Could just as well have been eight or eleven. There was no time in the usual sense when the forty-four footer put out to sea from the pleasure boat harbor in Klinte, with its sails up, and soon enough the spinnaker, too, that swelled up like a huge multicolored beach ball against the deep-blue sky.

Ricky stood at the bow holding onto the railing that extended out beyond the pulpit. Like a figurehead: a roaring lion, a pirate, a mysterious mythical hero. There were thousands of games to play, like shipwreck, fending off pirates, or pretending they were being chased by a terrible deep-sea monster, but all the games had one thing in common: The island meant salvation.

Balmy winds swept around him, Mother and Father, Stefania, and Elin.

The summer sailing trips could be long or short, go to Finland, Åland, or the Stockholm archipelago, sometimes all the way to Denmark, or the West Coast. But they always began the same way. With a counterclockwise lap around Gotland and a one-night sleepover on the island. Or actually they began when Father took out the sea charts the night before they were supposed to set off. Ricky got to locate the little island that lay all by itself just east of the much bigger Gotland. It wasn’t much more than a speck on the charts. A speck with a thin promontory, like an appendix toward the south.

They never called it anything except the island, even though of course it had a name. That made it mysterious and full of secrets. The island belonged to them alone. That’s how it had always been, ever since Stefania was a little girl, when the boat was also a lot smaller and the sailing trips rarely ever went farther out than to the island.

The first hours were always the same. Father at the helm. Mother and Stefania stretching their legs out in the cockpit, basking in the sun in their bikinis. Elin with a book, first on a mattress up on deck, then down in the cabin once she’d had enough of the sun, as long as the sea wasn’t too rough, because then you got seasick down there.

Ricky would rush around, stand up at the pulpit, give Father a hand with things he didn’t actually know how to do, but Father helped him and acted as if Ricky had done it. He got hoisted aloft in the boatswain’s chair, or surfed behind the boat on a big black inner tube. Sometimes Elin was along, too.