The Viper (36 page)

“Ugh,” she whined and shut the window.

“You know, I’ve been thinking about those diaries,” said Fredrik. “Kristina Traneus’s diaries. You got a few of them to read, too, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you look at them?”

“Sure, I read them,” she said.

“Did you find any clues as to where we might be able to find him?”

“Rickard? No. I would have thought of that. I mean, at the time of course we were looking for his father, but still.”

“There was something in one of the books, one of the ones that Lennart had, about a sailing trip. They had a boat called the
Adventure
that the whole family used to go sailing in together. It seemed to be a recurring event, something they did every summer with the kids.”

“Oh, yeah?” said Sara and stared out through the window.

“That’s the only place I’ve found any reference to, apart from the house, that seems to have had any significance, or emotional attachment for them. They never had a summerhouse, never kept coming back to some particular travel destination. The sailing trips on the
Adventure
were the only thing.”

“So, what are you saying,” said Sara, “that you want us to look for a sailboat?”

“No, there’s no point in that. It doesn’t even belong to the family anymore. But the notes in the diary said something about an island … I have to take another look at exactly what she wrote, but I think it might be worth checking out. Do you mind if we swing past Lennart’s place? I think he still has the books,” said Fredrik.

“Me? Are you crazy?” said Sara.

“Come on,” said Fredrik, “he could do with a bit of cheering up.”

“I understand if you don’t want to go on your own, but…”

Sara suddenly got a strange look in her eye.

“Could you pull over?” she asked.

“What?”

“Can you stop the car?”

“Stop? Where? You mean here?” asked Fredrik and pointed out at the deserted landscape dotted with summer cabins that they were just passing.

“Just stop, anywhere!” she shouted in a shrill tone that made Fredrik jam on the brakes.

Sara had already taken off her safety belt, threw open the door, and was out of the car the moment it came to a halt. She took a few unsteady steps out across the shoulder, bent forward, and threw up in the ditch. A single, retching cascade, and then it was over.

She sank down onto her haunches and took a few deep breaths, steadied herself with one hand against the ground.

The whole thing had gone very fast and only now did it occur to Fredrik to get out. He rounded the car and hurried over to her. She waved at him to stay where he was.

“Can I do anything?” he asked.

Sara shook her head cautiously and wiped away the tears that had squeezed out of the corner of her eyes. Fredrik felt helpless, but managed to find a piece of paper that she could use to wipe her mouth. After a while he held his hand out to her. She took it and slowly rose to her feet.

“Want me to drive you home?” he asked when they were back in the car.

She shook her head again.

“I’m okay. Let’s go see Lennart,” she said.

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah. It would be great if you could just stop somewhere so I can buy a bottle of water.”

“Sure,” he said and started the car.

He looked at her again as he pulled back out onto the road.

“I think it was the lunch,” she said. “That’s the last time I’m eating in the station cafeteria.”

“You ought to call and complain.”

“M-hm, definitely,” Sara mumbled and looked out the window.

54.

Elin sat in one of the red armchairs in the stern lounge and watched Visby and Gotland slowly recede into the distance. The captain’s welcome-aboard announcement droned from the ceiling’s hidden loudspeakers. The voice fluctuated strangely between sincere enthusiasm and casual nonchalance. The winds were modest but increasing, and the crossing could be a little choppy if the wind continued in its current direction.

It could go ahead and blow, as far as Elin was concerned. She didn’t easily get seasick. None of them ever had any trouble with seasickness. Not her, not Ricky, and not Stefania. Mother had been a little more sensitive. Especially if it was blowing the first day they were out, before she’d gotten used to it.

The distance between the ferry and the island grew ever larger.

She needed a sea between herself and him.

That was how she had always thought about it whenever she saw Gotland get swallowed up by the horizon, and the world, for a moment, consisted of nothing but water. She needed a sea. Two continents wasn’t enough, she needed that sea, too. Used to need it.

He had returned from Tokyo. Ten years after he’d left for the first time he’d come back and was murdered in his own house.

Ten years after Stefania’s death.

What did it mean for her that he didn’t exist anymore? That he was dead, out of her life? It was too complicated for her to think about. The fact that Mother was also gone made it even more impossible.

If he had been the only one to die, then everything could have been different. They would have been able to breathe. For a moment they would have been able to take long, deep breaths. Mother would’ve been able to breathe, speak, move, look wherever she wanted. You couldn’t think like that, wish for your own father’s death. Sure you could, it was the most natural thing in the world, nothing to be ashamed of.

It wasn’t complicated. It was only natural.

She fumbled for the lever that tipped the chair back, pulled it and pushed back against the chair. The glass with ice-cold, sour red wine vibrated on the tray table in front of her. There weren’t many people in the stern lounge. A few rows to the left of her, a woman was trying to get a little baby to go to sleep that had a gray bonnet tied underneath its chin.

Father had flown back when the doctors had said that Stefania probably wouldn’t make it. Mother had called and called and called. In the end, he had caught a plane. Stefania had fallen asleep for the last time when he was somewhere above Siberia, over six miles up in the air. He had stayed for three days, taken care of everything, spoken to the undertakers, set a date for the funeral, done everything that had to be done. Then he had left again, hadn’t been able to stay any longer, but would be back for the funeral. It couldn’t be done any other way.

The funeral had taken place three weeks later. A cold, clear day in November with just a few yellow leaves dangling from the sprawling tree branches. An empty day, completely empty and awful. Levide church felt wrong and unfamiliar, standing as it did wedged in among a few houses on the wrong side of the road. Elin remembered that she had thought that it was the wrong place for Stefania, that the entire funeral was one big betrayal.

She and Ricky had stood there on either side of Mother in front of the casket, laid down their flowers. The casket had been made of oak with brass handles. Father’s choice. But he hadn’t been there. They had stood there alone, by the casket. Something had come up. His situation had become completely untenable, he had explained to Mother. If he had left Tokyo at that moment, then he might just as well have given up altogether, packed his bags, and gone home for good, shut up shop. No one would have trusted him again after that. She remembered clearly how Mother screamed and sobbed on the phone. It was the one time that she could remember Mother raising her voice at him. She didn’t know if there had been any consequences when he came home ten days after the funeral, but it didn’t really make any difference. The consequences were of no consequence anyway.

Elin kicked off her shoes and put her heels up on the seat cushion of her chair. She flipped absentmindedly through the tabloid newspaper that she had bought at the same time she purchased the ice-cold glass of wine, but no longer had any interest in reading it. She rolled the thin pages diagonally from the upper right-hand corner, rolled them one by one into thin newspaper logs.

They had stood on either side of Mother, she and Ricky, and she had tried to imagine the whole time how it would feel to be lying dead there inside that casket. It was the only thing she could think of throughout the entire funeral service, what it would be like to be dead inside that casket. But it was impossible to imagine. She just got this strange image of herself lying naked beneath a wooden lid. She had imagined death as being naked, because no matter how many clothes you had on, you somehow could never be dressed anymore once you were dead. And the lid you were lying beneath could be pulled away at any moment, and you’d be lying there naked in front of the entire congregation. It was embarrassing and cold and threatening. Naked in a box in front of an audience, unable to cover yourself or run away. That was death.

Today of course she understood that it had nothing to do with death. That naked, frightened, and embarrassed girl underneath the lid of the casket lid was her. That was it.

Now it was her turn to choose the casket. Oak with brass handles? Speak to the undertakers, organize everything that had to be organized. She and nobody else. She wasn’t surprised that Ricky had run away from it all. It wasn’t the first time. She had told the police about the time he had run off when his studies broke down and Father had to transfer money to a bank in Portugal so he could fly home. God only knows what he had been doing down there. Partying? Having a panic attack? Feeling sorry for himself? Everything at once maybe. After three weeks anyway, his money had run out.

She wasn’t worried about him. Well, of course, she was concerned that he felt so depressed, but not in any other way. She was expecting that she’d get a call. Because she was the one he had to call, now that everyone else was gone. It might take a week or two, but then he would call and tell her some convoluted and largely made-up story that would end with her having to send him money so that he could come home.

Elin pushed her feet into her shoes and grabbed the empty glass to go and fill it up. More cold, sour wine.

*   *   *

LENNART SVENSSON WAS
sitting there looking at
The Misfits
with Marilyn Monroe when Fredrik and Sara rang the doorbell. He had paused the DVD and they could see Clark Gable’s face frozen on the TV screen when they entered the house. A tall, straight-backed chair stood awkwardly placed between the couch and the TV.

“I got a Marilyn Monroe box set as a birthday present from my stepdaughter,” said Lennart and pointed at the TV screen. “But there are really only a couple of them that are any good. This one’s one of the better ones I guess.”

On a white-lacquered shelf underneath the TV stood two tightly packed rows of DVDs. Fredrik scanned the titles. They were mostly classics from the forties, fifties, and sixties along with the occasional colorful Walt Disney spine, which he guessed were to entertain visiting grandchildren.

“How’s the back?” he asked.

“It’s getting there,” said Lennart.

He put his hands on his hips and stretched.

“When I can sit through an entire film without a break, then it’s time to go back to work. But I’m not quite there yet.”

“Poor bastard, having to sit here the whole day watching half a movie at a time,” said Sara and nodded at the well-filled DVD shelf.

“Yeah, it’s hell,” said Lennart with a grin.

He turned his back to Sara and disappeared into an adjacent room where Fredrik saw a dining table through the doorway.

It was a modern house with light, but not especially big rooms. The living room was white with varying shades of blue. Thin curtains filtered the light from the high windows that looked out onto a deck made of pressure-treated wood. Fredrik had expected something else. He couldn’t exactly say what, but something that was more … Lennart Svensson.

“Seriously kids, be happy as long as your backs are okay. It may look silly, but it’s sure as hell no laughing matter,” said Lennart when he returned with the two diaries in his hand.

“My grandfather’s also got back trouble, so I know what it can be like,” Sara said.

Lennart looked at her, narrowed his eyes slightly, then let out a short, almost silent laugh.

“That’s it, kick a man when he’s down.”

He held out the diaries.

“Here you go.”

Fredrik took the two books, which were bound in cloth with a black lace-patterned print.

“Maybe I should have come in with them, but I haven’t wanted to get in the car if it wasn’t absolutely necessary. The car is a killer for the back. And since you called, nobody’s asked about them,” said Lennart.

“Nah, I doubt if anyone’s missed them,” said Fredrik.

He handed one of the books to Sara.

“Check July and August,” he said.

He opened the book he’d kept and flipped forward to the day that Lennart had read from over the phone.

“Here it is. ‘The seventh of July. Today we sailed out to the island. We put out early from Klintehamn. Good winds. We sailed the whole way. Arvid said that the gods were with us. I think so, too. An amazing day, clear blue sky, nice and balmy. We had a following wind the whole way from Hoburgen.’”

He looked up at Sara and Lennart.

“Which island can she have meant? If you set sail from Klintehamn and head around Hoburgen, then you’re headed north along the east coast, right?”

“Unless they were heading over to the Estonian archipelago?” said Sara.

“That’s true, that’s quite conceivable. That definitely sounds like more of an adventure, more to Arvid Traneus’s taste maybe.”

“But if we stick to Gotland, then Östergarnsholm is almost the only island on the east side,” said Lennart. “There are a few small islets out there—flat patches of grass full of angry seagulls—but nothing that would really qualify as a final destination.”

Fredrik continued reading.

“There’s not much to go on here. She writes about the kids, the food, the weather. ‘We went ashore next to the lighthouse. Rickard and Elin were ashore before Arvid even had time to moor the boat properly.’”

“Could be anywhere,” said Lennart.

“Here,” said Sara, “this is a year earlier, ninety-three. It says something here about the
Adventure
.”