Authors: Hakan Ostlundh
The wind came in gusts through the rolled-down window, smelling of seawater and diesel. Malin was sitting in the car on
Bodilla
’s deck, the children belted tight in the backseat. To the north Hau rävlar and Lansaholm reached out to each other, leaving only a glimpse of sea in the narrows. To the south, on the other hand, the view opened out toward the Baltic. The sun-glistening surface of the sea was subdued into darker, dull patches when the wind picked up.
Malin had been worried that it would be hard to drive with her injured foot, but it went fine. It hurt more when she walked, even though she limped along on the toes of her right foot.
“Mommy, can I play with Lisa today?” Ellen asked from the backseat.
Malin turned around and smiled between the neck rests. Axel was sitting with his nose pressed against the window, staring at a big yellow-beaked gull that was following the ferry.
“I’ll have to call her mom, then we’ll see.”
Ellen cheered and tugged on the seat belt.
“Ellen, it’s not for sure. We’ll see, I said.”
It was complicated to have friends in Fårösund when you lived on Fårö. If Ellen wanted to go home with someone after school it had to fit more or less with Axel’s schedule, otherwise Malin had to spend the better part of the day driving and taking the ferry back and forth between Fårösund and Kalbjerga.
When they moved to Fårö the municipal day care center was in the process of being shut down and the new parents cooperative only existed on paper. They chose Fårösund instead. In the first place, because Henrik refused to share a parent cooperative with Elisabet and Alma, secondly because it had seemed so vague. If Malin had more faith in the new day care center maybe she could have convinced him. But considering what happened later, with the inheritance and the lawsuit, it was probably best as it was. Sometimes they got sour comments from parents on Fårö who thought it was treachery to choose the day care in Fårösund. But they didn’t have the whole picture. They didn’t understand.
Sure, day care on Fårö would have been easier. They would have saved a lot of time. On the other hand if they overslept and missed the school transport, like they did today, they could console themselves that they had to go into Fårösund anyway.
Just think that they ended up here. Malin was actually more surprised that Henrik had wanted to than that she herself said yes. When she met Henrik he was still on his way to Los Angeles. He would go out into the world; was already out in the world, just not a hundred percent there yet. All that was left of that today was that awful picture that David LaChapelle had taken of him. The one he proudly hung up in the workroom. Why hadn’t the tenants stolen that instead? Henrik happily grinning, in Las Vegas, on the one side entwined with an almost-naked photo model who was at least a head taller than him and on the other side being hugged by an over-the-hill Elvis impersonator of the overweight variety.
Malin realized, of course, that the picture was not just awful. She understood its ingenuity and that Henrik wanted to display it. If only to impress his clients. It was also on his website, of course. But how did you get from that picture to Kalbjerga, Fårö? What had happened? She could not completely understand it.
Malin settled back in the seat again and looked over toward the ferry pier that was slowly growing larger. In the fishing harbor was a small, light blue fishing boat with the black flags of the fleet fluttering in the wind. Behind it the tugboat could be glimpsed as a speck of bright orange.
They had made a police report. A detective would come up and talk with them and look at the picture this morning. Malin could not stop thinking about the portrait with the eyes poked out. For brief periods she managed to think of something else, but before long the image was back. She was seething with discomfort. She had a hard time sleeping. After the first night they had replaced the beds with two from the only finished room in the guest wing. She could not make herself lie in the same bed one of those crazy people had been in. The poopers. The glass trap-setters. The eye poker-outers.
She had cleaned the whole house, scoured the floors, wiped down cupboards and woodwork, gone over every cranny, and almost scrubbed the enamel off the bathtub.
Now she was satisfied. It felt like her house again. Almost. The uneasiness was still there, even if the sticky disgust had subsided.
Bodilla
glided in between
Kajsa-Stina
and the old lime kiln that bluntly pointed toward the sky. Malin drove off the ferry, turned left at once onto Strandvägen, and continued toward the school. The large stone buildings that stood closely along the first two blocks always made her feel secure. They were presumably built in the mid-nineteenth century or perhaps even in the late eighteenth century and could just as well have been on Södermalm or in Old Town in Stockholm. They were city buildings. It made her feel at home. She assumed that the majority around there thought exactly the opposite. The city made them uncertain, while the countryside stood for security.
After the first blocks, more modern apartment buildings and single-family houses took over. Along the shore pleasure boats large and small were bobbing. They passed a few of Ellen’s classmates on the sidewalk and Ellen waved frenetically through the rear window.
Malin stopped the car on the street outside the red, barracks-like building that housed Axel’s day care. Ellen gave her a quick hug and scooted off toward the white school building a hundred feet from there.
“Shouldn’t I go in with you?” Malin called after her.
“No, that’s not necessary,” Ellen called back.
“I’ll call Lisa’s mother.”
Ellen waved to her before she disappeared behind the big school building.
“You have to go with me,” said Axel.
He looked worriedly at her.
“Yes, of course I will,” she answered.
She took him by the hand and started walking toward the day care entrance.
“You should pick me up early.”
Axel’s lower lip pushed out a little extra, but she knew he wasn’t sad for real. He had learned to play on her feelings, little as he was.
“Are you sure of that? Don’t you want to be with your friends at day care? You haven’t seen them in a really long time.”
Axel’s eyes moved back and forth under lowered eyebrows. That was evidently something for him to think about.
“No, you should pick me up early,” he then said.
“Okay, I’ll do that.”
The sun warmed pleasantly during the brief walk. The last week in August. And September was one of the best months on Gotland, she had learned. Still summer, sunny and nice for swimming and empty of tourists. With a little luck October was almost as nice. Two long months to make the most of before the drudgery with overalls and rain pants started up.
School had actually already started last Thursday. Ellen had a couple extra days off. Otherwise they wouldn’t have managed the whole mainland tour. And they couldn’t have rented out the last week, either. What if they hadn’t bothered about that anyway? Then they would have escaped that lunatic who had been there and …
She stopped the thought. It could not just be by chance, not so simple that none of this would have happened if they had simply not rented out their house. Or what? Her head just got more and more jumbled.
They came into the day care center. Malin talked awhile with Jenny, one of the aides, and left things in Axel’s cubby that they had brought home over the summer. Raingear, stuffed animal, the photo album with pictures of the family and relatives. Her relatives. Henrik had none, other than on paper. Then it was time for the waving ritual in the window. Malin had been worried that it would be drawn out and tearful, but it went surprisingly well. She avoided leaving with the anxiety of being a bad mother, which to her was like a spear in the back.
She had six hours to herself before she had to return to pick up Axel. Minus travel and lunch, this meant four and a half hours of actual time. She had to plan the week’s menus for the blog, but suspected that it would be hard to concentrate before the police had been there.
Malin had started up Malin’s Table right after they moved to Fårö. She had done it mostly to heal the loss of Kakan, the café she ran on Borgmästargatan in Stockholm. And to maintain contact with her friends on the mainland.
Her long-term plan was to start up a little restaurant during the summer in connection with the guest operation. But that would have to wait, of course. When things started getting difficult financially she had been quite prepared to take a job at a café or restaurant in Visby. Not because she was sure there were any jobs to be had. During the winter, Gotland’s restaurant and café life shriveled to a small flickering flame compared with the fiery, at times crazy outdoor life during the summer months.
But then came the blog. She had thought that in the best case she might get a few hundred readers, friends and old faithful café customers, but word had spread and after only a couple of months she had thousands of readers every day. She got additional publicity when she was awarded a blog prize, and soon they were calling from Coop, asking to have her on their website. There was not much to think about. Coop offered her more for blogging about food on their site than she would earn at a café in Visby. She avoided commuting besides.
Malin looked toward the day care center one last time to make sure that Axel had not come back for a final wave, but the window was empty. She unlocked the SUV and had climbed up with her left foot on the running board when a sense of being watched made her stop. She looked back over her shoulder. About fifty feet behind her a light-haired woman stood watching her. Or was she looking at something else? Malin looked toward the day care again to see whether there was someone or something there that could have made the woman so curious.
There was not a person on the street and no one was visible in the windows.
Malin pretended to fish for her car keys in her jacket pocket, but at the same time studied the woman in the side mirror of the SUV. She was dressed in jeans and a short military-green jacket and was partly hidden by a small white car gray with dust. The light, slightly reddish hair shone in the sun. She was glaring right in Malin’s direction. Malin stood a long time and studied her in the rearview mirror. The woman did not move so much as a finger.
Malin turned around and looked straight at the blonde, and then started calmly and unmistakably walking in her direction. It took five or six steps before the woman reacted. Malin noticed how her facial features changed, but she was too far away to be able to see what they expressed.
When Malin had come a little closer, so close that she could see that the woman was her own age, the woman turned around abruptly, hurried over to the driver’s side, opened the door, and slipped in. The next moment the engine started and the car drove off. Malin could only watch while it disappeared, the woman a dark silhouette behind the wheel.
Malin started feeling cold out in the sunshine and noticed how her field of vision narrowed as if she were in a tunnel. She closed her eyes and felt the hairs rising on her arms. There was a metallic taste in her mouth. She wasn’t about to faint, was she?
She took a couple of deep breaths.
Someone stood and stared at her in Fårösund. What about it? Maybe people were curious about strangers. Maybe it was someone who read her blog? Maybe it was a fan?
But, she thought as she got in the car and closed the door, who was it? She had never seen her before. It could not be the mother of one of the children in the school. No one new had started that she did not already know. And why the sudden flight? Even if you overlooked the curious staring, it was definitely strange to take to your heels when the person you had been looking at tried to make contact.
She should have taken down the number on the license plate. But she had not even thought about looking at it.
August 24
I was there in your house. It felt good. It was like I was living there. Sat in the armchairs, turned on the TV, opened the refrigerator, slept in your bed. Looked at everything that was yours. Like the child in the fairy tale about the bears.
I hardly remember what I did. The days passed. I didn’t dare go outside. Thought that someone might see me and that their eyes could burn right through me. Expose me. They would despise me. Because I care. You shouldn’t care. Not care at all. Whatever people do to you. You have to go on. Get a life, like.
But I’m not like that. Maybe I wish that I was. How easy everything would be. Or would it? What is it like to live that way? Don’t you run around at last and smile, full of wounds, like a leper who doesn’t feel it when he injures himself?
No point in thinking about it. That can never be me, anyway. You are who you are. And I’m the sort who never forgets. My wounds heal slowly. And they hurt. They torment me. They made me come here—to you. No, that’s wrong. It was you who made me come here. You.
Fredrik took the keys to the car he had reserved and wrote his name on the whiteboard. He and Sara continued over to the garage. After five years in the renovated building, the corridors and fixtures had acquired, in Fredrik’s eyes at least, an attractive patina. A bit worn, a bit used, in a pleasing way. It was no longer like working in a furniture store display.
Take Sara with you up there, Göran said. Fredrik had not really seen the interview with the possibly threatened Fårö family as a job for two people. He had nothing against riding with Sara, on the contrary, but he had a definite feeling that Göran wanted her along more to keep an eye on him than to do police work.
They found the car almost at the opposite end of the dusty garage, by the door, and got in on either side.
“I don’t know if he was being nice to me to send you along as chaperone or if he was being mean to you to have you sit alongside and wait for me to have a stroke and drive into a ditch,” said Fredrik as he adjusted the rearview mirrors.