Dark Secrets Read online

  He had solved the problem by taking back what he had said. Denying the whole thing. Saying that he had been misunderstood. He restored order. He did not want to lose his father. His family. He could bear the blows. But not the thought of losing him. They had moved to a different place. His father had appreciated his denial. His lies. They had grown closer to each other, he could feel it. The blows did not diminish—rather, the opposite—but to the boy it felt easier. And he kept quiet. Grew stronger. Nobody understood what a gift his father had given him. He himself had barely understood it at the time. But now he could see it: the ability to rise above chaos and act. The man who was not a murderer smiled. He felt closer to his father than ever.

  Sebastian had woken just before 4:00 a.m. in one of the hard, narrow single beds upstairs. His mother’s, he assumed, judging by the rest of the room. His parents had not been sleeping in separate bedrooms when Sebastian had left home, but he wasn’t surprised at the new arrangement. Voluntarily climbing into bed next to his father night after night couldn’t reasonably be described as sane behavior. Clearly his mother had reached the same conclusion.

  Sebastian usually got up when he was woken by the dream, regardless of the time. Usually, but not always. Sometimes he stayed where he was. Closed his eyes. Felt the cramp in his right hand slowly ease as he invited the dream back into his consciousness.

  Sometimes he longed for these mornings. Longed for and feared them. When he allowed the dream to gain a foothold again, when he milked the pure, unadulterated feeling of love from it, then his return to reality afterward was significantly more difficult and suffused with fear than when he simply let go, got up, and moved on. Generally it wasn’t worth it. Because after the love came the pain.

  The loss.

  Unerring, every time.

  It was like a form of addiction. He knew the consequences. He knew that afterward he would feel so bad he could hardly function.

  Hardly manage to breathe.

  Hardly manage to live.

  But he needed it from time to time. The pure core. The stronger, truer feeling that his memories could no longer give him. His memories were, after all, only memories. Compared to the emotions he felt in the dreams they were pale, almost lifeless. Nor were they all real—he was certain of that. He had taken away here, added there. Consciously and unconsciously. Improved and strengthened certain parts, toned down and pared away others. The memories were subjective. His dream was objective. Implacable.

  Unsentimental.

  Unbearably painful.

  But alive.

  This morning in his parents’ home he stayed in bed and allowed himself to embrace the dream again. He wanted it. Needed it. It was easy; it was still there within him like an invisible entity, and all he needed to do was give it a little renewed strength.

  And when he did, he could feel her. Not remember her. Actually feel her. He could feel her small hand in his. He could hear her voice. He could hear other voices, other sounds. But, most of all, her. He could even smell her. Baby soap and sunscreen. She was there with him in his half sleep. Properly. Again. His big thumb moved unconsciously over the cheap little ring on her index finger. A butterfly. He had found it in a pile of cheap trash at a crowded market. She had loved it at once. Never wanted to take it off.

  The day had begun in slow motion. It was late by the time they got outside. The plan was to stay at the hotel and relax by the pool all day. Lily had gone for a run. A belated, truncated run. Once they got outside Sabine didn’t want to spend all day lying around by the pool. No—her legs were full of energy, so he decided they would go down to the beach for a while. Sabine loved the beach. She loved it when he held her in his arms and played in the waves. She screamed with joy when he swung her little body between sea and air, wet and dry. On the way down they passed several other children. It was the day after Christmas and the children were trying out their new toys. He carried her on his shoulders. A little girl was playing with an inflatable dolphin, pale blue and beautiful, and Sabine reached out toward it. “Daddy, I want one of those.”

  That was to be the last thing she ever said to him. The beach was a bit beyond a large sand dune, and he headed there quickly so that she would have something other than pale blue dolphins to think about. It worked, and Sabine laughed as he trudged through the warm sand. Her soft hands on his stubbly cheek. Her laughter when he stumbled and almost fell.

  It had been Lily’s idea to go away for Christmas. He hadn’t put up much of a fight. Big occasions weren’t Sebastian’s specialty, besides which he found her family quite difficult, so when she suggested a trip he had agreed immediately. Not because he actually liked sun, sea, and sand, but because he realized that Lily, as always, was trying to make life a little easier for him. Besides, Sabine loved the sun and the sea, and everything Sabine loved, he loved. It was a relatively new sensation for Sebastian. Doing things for other people. It had arrived with Sabine. A good feeling, he had thought as he stood there on the beach, gazing out over the Indian Ocean. He put Sabine down and she immediately ran toward the water on her little legs. It was considerably shallower than it had been on previous days, and the shoreline was farther out than usual. He assumed it was the tide that had pulled the water so far back. He ran to the water with her. It was slightly overcast, but the temperature of the air and water was perfect. Without a care in the world he kissed her one last time before lowering her into the warm water up to her tummy. She screamed out loud and then laughed, because to her the water was both frightening and wonderful, and for a second Sebastian thought about the psychological term for their game. “Trust exercises.” Daddy doesn’t let go. The child becomes more and more daring. A simple term whose true meaning he had never really put into practice before. Trust. Sabine screamed with a mixture of fear and joy, and at first Sebastian didn’t hear the roar. He was completely absorbed by the trust between the two of them. When he did hear the noise, it was too late.

  That day he learned a new word.

  A word that he, who had read so much, had never heard before.

  “Tsunami.”

  On those mornings when he invited the dream in, he lost her again. And the grief tore at him so that he thought he would never be able to get out of bed.

  But he did.

  Eventually.

  And the thing that was his life went on.

  Leonard! Clara Lundin knew it was about her son as soon as she saw the young couple on the steps. She knew before they introduced themselves and showed her their ID that they were neither Jehovah’s Witnesses nor people trying to sell something. She had known this day would come. She had known, and a ball of anxiety formed in her stomach. Or perhaps it merely intensified. Clara had felt that pressure in her midriff for so long that she hardly noticed it anymore. When the phone rang during the evening. When she heard sirens on weekends. When Leonard woke her up coming home with his mates. When she checked her in-box and saw there was an e-mail from the school.

  “Is Leo in?” asked Vanja, putting away her ID card.

  “Leonard,” Clara corrected her automatically. “Yes, he is… What do you want with him?”

  “Is he ill?” Vanja asked, ducking the question about the reason for their visit.

  “No, I don’t think so… What do you mean?”

  “I’m just wondering why he’s not in school.”

  It struck Clara that she hadn’t even given it a thought. She worked irregular hours at the hospital, and she wondered less and less often about her son’s school career. He came and went more or less as he wished. Did most things more or less as he wished.

  Everything, in fact.

  She had lost control. That was how things were. All she could do was admit it. Lost control completely. In less than a year. The books she had borrowed and the advice columns she had read said it was only natural. This was the age at which boys started to free themselves from their parents and tentatively began to investigate the adult world. It was a question of loosening the reins a lit
tle, while still holding on to them firmly, and above all you had to provide them with security in the knowledge that you were always there for them. But Leonard never did anything tentatively. He jumped. From one day to the next. As if he were leaping into a black hole. Suddenly she had lost him, and no reins in the world were long enough to hold him. She was there but he no longer needed her. Not at all.

  “He’s resting. What do you want?”

  “We’d like to see him, if you don’t mind,” Billy insisted as they stepped into the hallway.

  Once inside, the bass beat they had heard as soon as they approached the L-shaped one-story detached house was even louder. Hip-hop. Billy recognized it.

  DMX. “X Gon’ Give it to Ya.”

  2002.

  Old school.

  “I’m his mother and I want to know what he’s done.” Vanja noticed that she didn’t want to know what they thought or suspected her son had done. She simply assumed he was guilty.

  “We’d like a word with him about Roger Eriksson.”

  The dead boy. Why did the police want to talk to Leonard about the dead boy? Her stomach was definitely contracting in a series of cramps. Clara merely nodded silently, stepped aside to let in Billy and Vanja, then disappeared to the left, walked through the living room, and went up to a closed door. The door she was not allowed to open without knocking. Which was what she did now.

  “Leonard. The police are here and they’d like to talk to you.”

  Billy and Vanja waited in the hallway. Small and tidy. Hooks on the wall to the right with three jackets on coat hangers, two of which seemed to belong to Leonard. A solitary handbag dangled on the fourth hook. Down below, a little shoe rack with four pairs of shoes, two of them sneakers. Reebok and Eck, Billy noticed. On the opposite side a small chest of drawers with a mirror above it. The top of the chest was empty apart from a small mat and a bowl of everlasting flowers. Beyond the chest of drawers the wall soon ended and the living room took over. Clara was knocking on the closed door once again.

  “Leonard. They want to have a word with you about Roger. Could you come out, please?”

  She knocked again. In the hallway Billy and Vanja looked at each other and reached a silent decision. They wiped their shoes on the doormat and walked through the living room. Just by the kitchen door there was a simple dining table on a yellow rug with a pattern of brown squares and one of two sofas with its back to the table. The other sofa stood opposite, with a low coffee table made of some kind of pale wood between them. Birch, Vanja guessed, although she had no idea. There was a TV on the wall. No movies, even though there was a DVD player on a low shelf beneath it. No game consoles or games. The room was clean and tidy. It didn’t look as if anyone had sat on the sofas for a long time. The sofa pillows were perfectly arranged, a blanket folded up, the two remotes lying neatly side by side. Behind the second sofa the entire wall was covered in bookshelves, with hardcovers and paperbacks in perfect rows, interspersed here and there with well-dusted knickknacks. Vanja and Billy went over to Clara, who was starting to get worried.

  “Leonard, open this door!” No reaction. The music continued at the same volume. Perhaps it was even louder, Vanja thought. Or perhaps it was just because they were closer. Billy knocked. Hard.

  “Leo, could we have a word, please?” No reaction. Billy knocked again.

  “That’s odd. It sounded as if he was turning the key.”

  Vanja and Billy looked at Clara. Billy pushed the handle down.

  Exactly.

  Locked.

  Vanja glanced quickly through the living room window. Suddenly she saw a well-built red-haired boy land softly on the grass outside and set off running across the lawn in his stockinged feet, out of her field of vision. The whole thing happened at lightning speed.

  Vanja ran toward the closed patio door, shouting, “Leo! Stop!”

  Which Leo had absolutely no intention of doing. In fact, he increased his speed. Vanja turned back to a somewhat surprised Billy.

  “Take the front!” she yelled from the patio door as she struggled to open it. A short distance away she could just see the fleeing boy. She wrenched open the door and stepped quickly over the flower beds. Then she sped up. And shouted to the boy again.

  By eight o’clock Sebastian had gotten up, showered, and taken himself off to the Statoil gas station a few hundred yards away. He bought breakfast and a latte and ate there as he watched the morning commuters buying cigarettes, coffee, and unleaded. When he got back to his temporary accommodation he gathered up the newspapers, letters, bills, and junk mail from the overflowing mailbox. He dropped everything except for that day’s paper in a recycling bag he had found neatly folded in the cleaning cupboard. He hoped that real estate agent would call soon, so that he didn’t have to make a habit of eating Statoil food. Feeling bored, he went and sat outside at the back of the house, where the sun had already begun to warm up the recently laid wooden deck. When Sebastian was little there had been paving stones here. The ones with pebbles forming a relief pattern; everybody had had them in those days, he remembered. Now everybody seemed to have decks instead.

  He picked up the paper and was about to start on the Culture section when he heard a woman’s voice shouting “Leo! Stop!” and a few seconds later a tall, redheaded teenager emerged through the evergreen hedge next door, ran across the narrow bike-and-pedestrian path separating the two properties, and with a quick leap cleared the three-foot-high white fence and landed in Sebastian’s garden. After him came a woman in her thirties. Fast. Agile. She wasn’t far behind as she broke through the hedge, steadily catching up to the young man. Sebastian watched the chase and silently placed a bet with himself that the lad wouldn’t reach the fence on the other side of the garden. He was right. Just a few yards before the fence the woman put on a burst of speed and took him down with a well-aimed tackle. To be fair, she had the advantage on the soft surface because she was wearing shoes, Sebastian thought as he watched them both roll over a couple of times thanks to their momentum.

  The woman quickly seized the young man’s arm and twisted it behind his back. Police. Sebastian stood up and took a few steps across the lawn. Not that he had any intention of intervening in any way; he just wanted to get a better view. The woman appeared to have the situation under control, and if she hadn’t then a man of about the same age was running from the opposite direction to help her. Evidently he was a police officer as well, because he took out a pair of handcuffs and started to secure the young man’s arms behind his back.

  “Let me go! I haven’t fucking done anything!” The red-haired boy twisted and turned on the grass as best he could in the woman’s firm grip.

  “So why run?” asked the woman, pulling the teenager to his feet with her colleague’s help. They set off toward the front of the house and a waiting car, Sebastian presumed. During the short walk the woman noticed they were not alone in the garden. She looked over at Sebastian, whipped an ID card out of her pocket, and flipped it open. From that distance it might just as well have been a library card. Sebastian had no chance of reading a single word.

  “Vanja Lithner, Riksmord. Everything is under control. You can go back inside.”

  “I wasn’t inside. Is it okay if I stay out here?”

  But the woman had obviously finished with him. She put away her ID card and grabbed the boy’s arm once more. He looked like one of those boys whom life had sent off on a downward path at an early stage. So this was doubtless neither the first nor the last time he would be led to a waiting police car. Another woman was coming along the pavement. She stopped; her hands flew to her mouth to suppress a scream as she saw what was happening on Sebastian’s lawn. Sebastian gazed at her. The mother, of course. Red hair in soft, pretty curls. Around forty-five. Not very tall—five foot four maybe. Looked pretty fit. Probably a regular at the gym. She must be the neighbor from the other side of the hedge. When Sebastian used to live here a German couple with two schnauzers had occupied the house. They were
old even then. Bound to be dead by now.

  “Leonard, what have you done? Where are you taking him? What’s he done?” The woman appeared to be ignoring the fact that no answers were forthcoming; the questions just kept bubbling out. Rapid and strained, in a voice that was approaching a falsetto. Like the safety valve on a pressure cooker. If she had kept the questions inside, she would have exploded with anxiety. The woman advanced across the grass. “What’s he done? Tell me, please! Why do you always end up in trouble, Leonard? What’s he done? Where are you taking him?”

  The female police officer let go of the boy’s arm and took a few steps toward the worried mother. The male officer kept on walking.

  “We just want to talk to him. His name came up in the course of our inquiries,” she said, and Sebastian noted the calming hand on the agitated woman’s upper arm. Physical contact. Good. Professional.

  “ ‘Came up’? What do you mean, ‘came up’? In what way?”

  “We’re taking him to the station now. If you come down in a little while we can go through everything quietly and calmly.” Vanja broke off, ensuring that she made eye contact with the woman before continuing. “Clara, we don’t know anything at the moment. Don’t get upset for no reason. Come down to the station, ask for me or Billy Rosén. My name is Vanja Lithner.” Vanja had, of course, introduced herself when they arrived at the Lundin house, but it was by no means certain that Clara had remembered or even picked up her name. Vanja therefore produced one of her cards and handed it over. Clara took it with a nod, too shocked to protest. Vanja turned and left the garden. Clara watched her disappear around the corner by the flowering currant. For a moment she simply stood there. Utterly lost. Then she turned to the nearest port of call, which happened to be Sebastian.

  “Can they do that? Can they just drive off with him, without me? I mean, he’s still a minor.”