Kitabı oku: «The Sandman», sayfa 8
35
It’s too hot to talk in the sauna. Gold-coloured light is shining on their naked bodies and the pale sandalwood. It’s 97 degrees now and the air burns Reidar Frost’s lungs when he breathes in. Drops of sweat are falling from his nose onto the white hair on his chest.
The Japanese journalist, Mizuho, is sitting on the bench next to Veronica. Their bodies are both flushed and shiny. Sweat is running between their breasts, over their stomachs and down into their pubic hair.
Mizuho is looking seriously at Reidar. She has come all the way from Tokyo to interview him. He told her good-naturedly that he never gives interviews, but that she was very welcome to attend the party. She was probably hoping he would say something about the Sanctum series being turned into a manga film. She has been here four days now.
Veronica sighs and closes her eyes for a while.
Mizuho didn’t take off her gold necklace before entering the sauna, and Reidar can see that it’s starting to burn. Marie only lasted five minutes before she went off to the shower, and now the Japanese journalist leaves the sauna as well.
Veronica leans forward and rests her elbows on her knees, breathing through her half-open mouth as sweat drips from her nipples.
Reidar feels a sort of brittle tenderness towards her. But he doesn’t know how to explain the desolate landscape inside him, and that everything he does now, everything he throws himself into, is just random fumbling for something to help him survive the next minute.
‘Marie’s very beautiful,’ Veronica says.
‘Yes.’
‘Big breasts.’
‘Stop it,’ Reidar mutters.
She looks at him with a serious expression as she goes on:
‘Why can’t I just get a divorce …?’
‘Because that would be the end for us,’ Reidar says.
Veronica’s eyes fill with tears and she is about to say something else when Marie comes back in and sits down next to Reidar with a little giggle.
‘God, it’s hot,’ she gasps. ‘How can you sit here?’
Veronica throws a scoop of water onto the stones. There’s a loud hiss and hot clouds of steam rise up and surround them for a few seconds. Then the heat becomes dry and static again.
Reidar is hanging forward over his knees. The hair on his head is so hot he almost scalds himself when he runs his hand through it.
‘No, that’s enough,’ he gasps, and climbs down.
The two women follow him out into the soft snow. Dusk is spreading its darkness across the snow, which is already glowing pale blue.
Heavy snowflakes drift down as the three naked people pound through the deep snow.
David, Wille and Berzelius are eating dinner with the other members of the Sanctum scholarship committee, and the drinking songs can be heard all the way out to the back of the garden.
Reidar turns and looks at Veronica and Marie. Steam is rising from their flushed bodies, they’re enveloped in veils of mist as the snow falls around them. He is about to say something when Veronica bends over and throws an armful of snow up at him. He backs away, laughing, and falls onto his back, vanishing under the loose snow.
He lies there on his back, listening to their laughter.
The snow feels liberating. His body is still scorching hot. Reidar looks straight up at the sky, the hypnotic snow falling from the centre of creation, an eternity of drifting white.
A memory takes him by surprise. He is peeling off the children’s snowsuits. Taking off hats with snow caught in the wool. He can remember their cold cheeks and sweaty hair. The smell of the drying cupboard and wet boots.
He misses the children so much that his longing feels purely physical in its intensity.
Right now he wishes he was alone, so he could lie in the snow until he lost consciousness. Die, surrounded by his memories of Felicia and Mikael. Of how they had once been his.
He gets to his feet with an effort and gazes out across the white fields. Marie and Veronica are laughing, making angels in the snow and rolling around a short distance away.
‘How long have these parties been going on?’ Marie calls to him.
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Reidar mumbles.
He is about to walk off, drink until he’s drunk, then tie a noose round his neck, but Marie is standing in front of him, legs akimbo.
‘You never want to talk. I don’t know anything,’ she says with a laugh. ‘I don’t even know if you’ve got children, or—’
‘Just leave me the fuck alone!’ Reidar shouts, and pushes past. ‘What is it you want?’
‘Sorry, I …’
‘Leave me the fuck alone,’ he snaps, and disappears into the house.
The two women walk shivering back into the sauna. The steam on their bodies runs off as the heat closes round them again, as if it had never been gone.
‘What’s his problem?’ Marie asks.
‘He’s pretending to be alive, but feels dead,’ Veronica replies simply.
36
Reidar Frost is wearing a new pair of trousers with a double stripe, and an open shirt. The back of his hair is damp. He is clutching a bottle of Château Mouton Rothschild in each hand.
That morning he had been on his way to the room upstairs to remove the rope from the beam, but when he reached the door he had been filled instead with an aching sense of longing. He stood with his hand on the door handle and forced himself to turn round, go downstairs and wake his friends. They poured spiced schnapps into crystal glasses and rustled up some boiled eggs with Russian caviar.
Reidar is walking barefoot along a corridor lined with dark portraits.
The snow outside is casting an indirect light, like a pale darkness.
In the reading room with its shiny leather furniture he stops and looks out of the huge window. The view is like a fairytale. As if the king of winter had blown snow across a landscape of apple trees and fields.
Suddenly he sees flickering lights on the long avenue leading from the gates to the front of the house. The branches of the trees look like embroidered lace in the glow. A car approaching. The snow swirling into the air behind it is coloured red by its rear-lights.
Reidar can’t recall inviting anyone else to join them.
He is just thinking that Veronica will have to take care of the new arrivals when he sees that it’s a police car.
Reidar stops and puts the bottles down on a chest, then goes back downstairs and pulls on the felt-lined winter boots beside the door. He heads out into the cold air to meet the car as it arrives in the broad turning circle.
‘Reidar Frost?’ a woman in plain clothes says as she gets out of the car.
‘Yes,’ he replies.
‘Can we go inside?’
‘Here will do,’ he says.
‘Would you like to sit in the car?’
‘Does it look like it?’
‘We’ve found your son,’ the woman says, taking a couple of steps towards him.
‘I see,’ he sighs, holding up a hand to silence the police officer.
He is breathing, feeling the smell of the snow, of water that has frozen to ice high up in the sky. Reidar composes himself, then slowly lowers his hand.
‘So where did you find Mikael?’ he says in a voice that has become strangely calm.
‘He was walking over a bridge—’
‘What?! What the hell are you saying, woman?’ Reidar roars.
The woman flinches. She’s tall, and has a long ponytail down her back.
‘I’m trying to tell you that he’s alive,’ she says.
‘What is this?’ Reidar asks uncomprehendingly.
‘He’s been taken into Södermalm Hospital for observation.’
‘Not my son, he died many years—’
‘There’s no doubt whatsoever that it’s him.’
Reidar is staring at her with eyes that have turned completely black.
‘Mikael’s alive?’
‘He’s come back.’
‘My son?’
‘I appreciate that it’s strange, but—’
‘I thought …’
Reidar’s chin trembles as the policewoman explains that his DNA is a one hundred per cent match. The ground beneath him feels soft, rolling like a wave, and he fumbles in the air for support.
‘Sweet God in heaven,’ he whispers. ‘Dear God, thank you …’
His face cracks into a broad smile and he looks completely broken, and he stares up at the falling snow as his legs give way beneath him. The policewoman tries to catch him, but one of his knees hits the ground and he falls to the side, putting his hand out to break his fall.
The police officer helps him to his feet, and he is holding her arm as he sees Veronica come running down the steps barefoot, wrapped in his thick winter coat.
‘You’re sure it’s him?’ he says, staring into the policewoman’s eyes.
She nods.
‘We’ve just had a one hundred per cent match,’ she repeats. ‘It’s Mikael Kohler-Frost, and he’s alive.’
Veronica has reached him. He takes her arm as he follows the policewoman back to the car.
‘What’s going on, Reidar?’ she asks, sounding worried.
He looks at her. His face is confused and he suddenly seems much older.
‘My little boy,’ he says simply.
37
From a distance the white blocks of Södermalm Hospital look like gravestones looming out of the thick snow.
Moving like a sleepwalker, Reidar Frost buttoned his shirt on the way to Stockholm and tucked it into his trousers. He’s heard the police say that the patient who has been identified as Mikael Kohler-Frost has been moved from intensive care to a private room, but it all feels as if it’s happening in a parallel reality.
In Sweden, when there are grounds to believe someone is dead, the relatives can apply for a death certificate after one year even though there is no body. Reidar had waited six years for his children’s bodies to be found before he applied for death certificates. The Tax Office authorised his request, the decision was taken, and the declarations became legally binding six months later.
Now Reidar is walking beside the plain-clothed officer down a long corridor. He doesn’t remember which ward they’re on their way towards, he just follows her, staring at the floor and interwoven tracks left by the wheels of countless beds.
Reidar tries to tell himself not to hope too much, that the police might have made a mistake.
Thirteen years ago his children disappeared, Felicia and Mikael, when they were out playing late one evening.
Divers searched the waters, and the whole of the Lilla Värtan inlet was dragged, from Lindskär to Björndalen. Search parties had been organised and a helicopter spent several days searching the area.
Reidar provided photographs, fingerprints, dental records and DNA samples of both children to assist in the search.
Known offenders were questioned, but the conclusion of the police investigation was that one of the siblings had fallen into the cold March water, and the other had been dragged in while trying to help the first one out.
Reidar secretly commissioned a private detective agency to investigate other possible leads, primarily everyone in the children’s vicinity: all their teachers, football coaches, neighbours, postmen, bus drivers, gardeners, shop assistants, café staff, and anyone the children had come into contact with by phone or on the internet. Their classmates’ parents were checked, and even Reidar’s own relatives.
Long after the police had stopped looking, and when everyone with even the faintest connection to the children had been investigated, Reidar began to realise that it was over. But for several years after that he carried on walking along the shore every day, expecting his children to be washed ashore.
Reidar and the plain-clothes officer with the blonde ponytail down her back wait while a bed containing an old woman is wheeled into the lift. They head over to the doors to the ward and pull on pale blue shoe-covers.
Reidar staggers and leans against the wall. He has wondered several times if he’s dreaming, and daren’t let his thoughts get carried away.
They carry on into the ward, passing nurses in white uniforms. Reidar feels composed, he’s clenched tight inside, but he can’t help walking faster.
Somewhere he can hear the noise of other people, but inside him there is nothing but an immense silence.
At the far end of the corridor, on the right, is room number four. He bumps into a food trolley, sending a pile of cups to the floor.
It’s as if he’s become detached from reality as he enters the room and sees the young man lying in bed. He has a drip attached to the crook of his arm, and oxygen is being fed into his nose. An infusion bag is hanging from the drip-stand, next to a white pulse-monitor attached to his left index finger.
Reidar stops and wipes his mouth with his hand, and feels himself lose control of his face. Reality returns like a deafening torrent of emotions.
‘Mikael,’ Reidar says gently.
The young man slowly opens his eyes and Reidar can see how much he resembles his mother. He carefully puts his hand against Mikael’s cheek, and his own mouth is trembling so much that he can hardly speak.
‘Where have you been?’ Reidar asks, and realises that he’s crying.
‘Dad,’ Mikael whispers.
His face is frighteningly pale and his eyes incredibly tired. Thirteen years have passed, and the child’s face that Reidar has hidden in his memory has become a man’s face, but he’s so skinny that he looks like he did when he was newborn, wrapped in a blanket.
‘Now I can be happy again,’ Reidar whispers, stroking his son’s head.
38
Disa is finally back in Stockholm again. She’s waiting in his flat, on the top floor of number 31 Wallingatan. Joona is on his way home from buying some turbot that he’s planning to fry and serve with remoulade sauce.
Alongside the railings the snow is piled about twenty centimetres deep. All the lights of the city look like misty lanterns.
As he passes Kammakargatan he hears agitated voices up ahead. This is a dark part of the city. Heaps of snow and rows of parked cars throw shadows. Dull buildings, streaked with melt-water.
‘I want my money,’ a man with a gruff voice is shouting.
There are two figures in the distance. They’re moving slowly along the railings towards the Dala steps. Joona carries on walking.
Two panting men are staring at each other, hunched, drunk and angry. One is wearing a chequered coat and a fur hat. In his hand is a small, shiny knife.
‘Fucking bastard,’ he rattles. ‘Fucking little—’
The other one has a full beard and a black overcoat with a tear on one shoulder, and is waving an empty wine-bottle in front of him.
‘I want my money back, with interest,’ the bearded man repeats.
‘Kiskoa korkoa,’ the other man replies, spitting blood on the snow.
A thickset woman in her sixties is leaning against a blue box of sand for the steps. The tip of her cigarette glows, lighting up her puffy face.
The man with the bottle backs in beneath the snow-covered branches of the big tree. The other man stumbles after him. The knife blade flashes as he stabs with it. The bearded man moves backwards, waving the bottle and hitting the other man in the head. The bottle breaks and green glass flies around the fur hat. Joona has an impulse to reach for his pistol, even though he knows it’s locked away in the gun cabinet.
The man with the knife stumbles but manages to stay on his feet. The other is holding the jagged remains of the bottle.
There’s a scream. Joona jumps over the piled-up snow and ice from the gutters.
The bearded man slips on something and falls flat on his back. He’s fumbling with his hand on the railings at the top of the steps.
‘My money,’ he repeats with a cough.
Joona sweeps some snow off a parked car and presses it to make a snowball.
The man in the chequered coat sways as he approaches the prone man with the knife.
‘I’ll cut you open and stuff you with your money—’
Joona throws the snowball and hits the man holding the knife in the back of the neck. There’s a dull thud as the snow breaks up and flies in all directions.
‘Perkele,’ the man says, confused, as he turns round.
‘Snowball fight, lads!’ Joona shouts, forming a new ball.
The man with the knife looks at him and a spark appears in his clouded eyes.
Joona throws again and hits the man on the ground in the middle of the chest, spraying snow in his bearded face.
The man with the knife looks down at him, then laughs unkindly:
‘Lumiukko.’
The man on the ground throws some loose snow up at him. He backs off, putting the knife away and forming a snowball. The bearded man rises unsteadily, clinging to the railing.
‘I’m good at this,’ he mutters as he forms a snowball.
The man in the chequered jacket takes aim at the other man, but abruptly turns round instead and throws a ball that hits Joona on the shoulder.
For several minutes snowballs fly in all directions. Joona slips and falls. The bearded man loses his hat and the other man rushes over and fills it with snow.
The woman claps her hands, and is rewarded with a snowball to her forehead which sits there like a white bump. The bearded man bursts out laughing and falls backwards into a pile of old Christmas trees. The man in the chequered jacket kicks some snow over him, but gives up. He’s panting as he turns to look at Joona.
‘And where the hell did you come from?’ he asks.
‘National Criminal Police,’ Joona replies, brushing the snow from his clothes.
‘The police?’
‘You took my child,’ the woman mutters.
Joona picks up the fur hat and shakes the snow off it before handing it to the man in the jacket.
‘Thanks.’
‘I saw the wishing star,’ the drunken woman goes on, looking Joona in the eye. ‘I saw it when I was seven … and I wish you’d burn in the fires of hell and scream like—’
‘You shut your mouth,’ the man in the chequered jacket shouts. ‘I’m glad I didn’t stab you, little brother, and—’
‘I want my money,’ the other man calls with a smile.
39
There’s a light on in the bathroom when Joona gets home. He opens the door slightly and sees Disa lying in the bath with her eyes closed. She’s surrounded by bubbles and is humming to herself. Her muddy clothes are in a big heap on the bathroom floor.
‘I thought they’d locked you up in prison,’ Disa says. ‘I was all prepared to take over your flat.’
Over the winter Joona has been under investigation by the Prosecution Authority’s national unit for internal investigations, accused of wrecking a long-term surveillance operation and exposing the Security Police rapid-response unit to danger.
‘Apparently I’m guilty,’ he replies, picking her clothes up and putting them in the washing machine.
‘I said that right at the start.’
‘Yes, well …’
Joona’s eyes are suddenly grey as a rainy sky.
‘Is it something else?’
‘A long day,’ he replies, and goes out into the kitchen.
‘Don’t go.’
When he doesn’t come back she climbs out of the bath, dries herself and puts on a thin dressing gown. The beige silk clings to her warm body.
Joona is standing in the kitchen, frying some baby potatoes golden brown when she comes in.
‘What’s happened?’
Joona glances at her.
‘One of Jurek Walter’s victims has come back … he’s been held captive all this time.’
‘So you were right – there was an accomplice.’
‘Yes,’ he sighs.
Disa takes a few steps towards him, then gently rests her palm flat against the small of his back.
‘Can you catch him?’
‘I hope so,’ Joona says seriously. ‘I haven’t had the chance to question the boy properly, he’s in a bad way. But he should be able to lead us there.’
Joona takes the frying pan off the heat, then turns and looks at her.
‘What is it?’ she asks, suddenly looking worried.
‘Disa, you have to say yes to the research project in Brazil.’
‘I’ve told you, I don’t want to go,’ she says quickly, then realises what he means. ‘You can’t think like that. I don’t give a damn about Jurek Walter. I’m not scared, I won’t be governed by fear.’
He gently brushes aside the wet hair that has fallen over her face.
‘Only for a little while,’ he says. ‘Until I get this sorted out.’
She leans against his chest and hears the muffled double beat of his heart.
‘There’s never been anyone but you,’ she says simply. ‘When you stayed with me after your family’s accident, well, that was … you know, that was when I … lost my heart, as they say … but it’s true.’
‘I’m just worried about you.’
She strokes his arm and whispers that she doesn’t want to go. When her voice breaks, he pulls her to him and kisses her.
‘But we’ve seen each other all the way through,’ Disa says, looking up into his face. ‘I mean, if there is an accomplice who’s a threat to us, why hasn’t anything happened? It doesn’t make sense …’
‘I know, I agree, but … I have to do this. I’m going after him, and now is when it’s all happening.’
Disa can feel a sob rising in her throat. She fights it back down and turns her face away. Once she had been Summa’s friend. That was how they met. And when his life fell apart, she was there.
He moved in and stayed with her for a while when things were at their very worst for him.
At night he would sleep on her sofa, and she would hear him moving about, and knew that he knew she was lying awake in the next room. That he was looking at the door to her bedroom and thinking about her lying in there, more and more confused and hurt by how distant he was being, how cold. Until one night he got up, got dressed and left her flat.
‘I’m staying,’ Disa whispers, wiping the tears from her face.
‘You have to go.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I love you,’ he says. ‘You must know that …’
‘Do you really think I’d go now?’ she asks with a broad smile.
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