A summer with Kim Novak (15 page)

I asked how it had gone between her and my brother. If anything had happened in the end, or if it had all run out with the sand after the Incident.

‘We did meet up eventually,’ she said after a pause. ‘Here in Göteborg. More than a year later. We didn’t dare before. Then we were together for a while. Did he never tell you?’

I shook my head.

‘I’ve barely had any contact with my brother. He moved and we moved.’

‘It never really worked,’ she continued. ‘I don’t know why, but what happened, well, it was in the way. The Incident, as you call it.’

I nodded. I understood. I could see how it would’ve been odd if it had worked out. I hadn’t thought about it that way when I was fourteen, sitting across from Detective Lindström, but now it seemed logical.

Not only that it hadn’t lasted between Henry and Ewa, but that there was a reason for it.

A kind of justice.

‘Are you married?’ I asked.

She shook her head.

‘Was. I have a fourteen-year-old daughter. That’s why I don’t have much time tonight.’

‘I remember your hands on my shoulders,’ I said. ‘And I want to make love to you tomorrow night. To try at least.’

She laughed.

‘I have time tomorrow,’ she agreed. ‘I’ll try to meet your expectations, otherwise I think it will be enough to be able to sleep together.’

Sleeping wasn’t enough. The night between
16
and
17
October I made love to Ewa Kaludis after waiting for over twenty years.

Making love to her for the first time was the most serious undertaking of my life, and I think that Ewa felt the same. Over the following year we met up a fair number of times—at ever more frequent intervals—and one month after the divorce with Ellinor came through, I moved to Göteborg. I managed to secure a decent job at a college out in Mölndal and by early
1987
we were living under the same roof.

Me, Ewa Kaludis and her daughter Karla.

‘It feels like coming home,’ I told Ewa that first night.

‘Welcome home,’ said Ewa.

Not many weeks passed before I had to tell her how Edmund and I had stood and watched while she made love with Henry that night. I’d only been an immature fourteen-year-old at the time, so I hoped she’d understand.

When I had finished the story she put her hand over her mouth and wouldn’t look at me. At first I was worried, but then I noticed that she was laughing.

‘What’s going on with you?’ I asked.

She grew serious, lowered her hand and took a deep breath.

‘I saw you,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to say, but I knew all along that you were standing there.’

‘Oh dear God,’ I moaned. ‘It can’t be. Impossible.’

‘Anything is possible,’ said Ewa Kaludis and started laughing again.

Verner Lindström hadn’t got any younger.

‘The statute of limitations will run out on the case in two months,’ he explained as he adjusted his bow tie. ‘But that’s not why I want to talk to you. I’m writing a little memoir. I retired in the spring and you have to have something to keep yourself busy.’

We sat in the inner room at Linnaeus, a restaurant on Linnégatan. As far as I knew Lindström had taken the train down to Göteborg solely for this conversation; it was obvious that he had a hard time getting through the day as a pensioner.

It is what it is, I thought. Some people never learn to enjoy their rest; others seem born for it. After we’d eaten Lindström took out his Bronzol tube. I couldn’t remember having seen those pastilles over the last ten to fifteen years, but maybe he had bought a lifetime supply in the early seventies.

‘The fact of the matter is,’ he said and put two pastilles in his mouth. ‘The fact of the matter is that I don’t have many unsolved cases to investigate. Just one murder. Bertil Albertsson.’

‘That’s how it can go,’ I said. ‘Well, you did your best.’

He chewed and rocked his head slowly from side to side like an old, tired bloodhound. ‘The result,’ he said. ‘I don’t give a toss about all the effort; it’s the result that counts. Someone murdered that damned handball player on that damned clearing twenty-five years ago and in two months he’ll get off scot-free.’

‘Someone?’ I said. ‘I thought you’d decided it was my brother? You just weren’t able to lock him up.’

Verner Lindström sighed.

‘He or she,’ he said. ‘That was the thread we were following. I should tell you that we didn’t spare her either. We spent a good part of that autumn interrogating her night and day, but she didn’t crack. Damned fine woman. I wonder what happened to her.’

‘No idea,’ I said and shrugged. ‘She probably moved overseas. She was the type.’

Lindström looked me over.

‘I’m mostly interested in knowing if you might have any new information. Now that you don’t have to protect your brother any more.’

‘There are two months left,’ I pointed out. ‘You could still put him away.’

He smiled quickly and shook the Bronzol tube a few times, most likely to get an idea of how many were left.

‘On my honour,’ he then said and put it back in his inner pocket. ‘You don’t think that these old pensioner’s hands want to dig anything up that’s been buried for all these years?’ He turned his palms up and looked at them and then at me with an expression of utter innocence. ‘Anything,’ he said. ‘I’m interested in anything at all. It’s not impossible that you held a thing or two back, you and your friend. You were only fourteen. It’s not easy to know what to do in a situation like that.’ He paused and hid his hands under the table, as if they weren’t really living up to his expectations. ‘And it’s also possible that there was another person at Gennesaret that night.’

‘Another person?’ I asked. ‘You mean Ewa Kaludis?’

He sighed again.

‘No, the fact of the matter is that we never were sure if she was there or not. Even that is a mystery. She denied it. Henry denied it. It doesn’t need to be more complicated than that. We could never prove that she was with him. But in any case there were indications that Henry had company.’

I thought for a few seconds. Mostly about the word ‘indications’.

‘Who might that have been?’

‘That’s what I was hoping you could tell me,’ said Lindström.

‘Haven’t the foggiest,’ I said. ‘It would be better if you contacted Edmund. He was awake for a while that night.’

Lindström picked up a handkerchief and blew his nose.

‘I’ve already spoken to him,’ he explained somewhat impatiently. ‘Twice.’

‘Did he give you anything?’

‘Hmm,’ said Lindström. ‘Priests are some of the worst to interrogate. Lucky that they’re not often involved … Priests and pimps, I can’t tell which I like less.’

‘All right, then,’ I said.

We sat in silence for a moment. Lindström had a college-ruled notebook lying next to his plate. He ceremoniously folded his handkerchief and looked at it, deep in thought. He didn’t seem to be any happier for it, or more illumined. A sense of gloom spread across the table.

‘Most unsolved murders have a number of factors in common,’ he finally said and closed the pad.

‘Really?’ I said. ‘What are they?’

‘First and foremost: simplicity,’ said Lindström. ‘With Berra Albertsson … all the murderer needed to do was take two steps forward and then whack him with the hammer. Or the sledgehammer or whatever it was. One single blow, then it’s done. Bury the murder weapon and forget about it … Maybe hope for rain during the morning hours, and rain it did.’

He fell silent and speared a few stray peas with his fork. He took a long look at them—as if he’d suddenly realized that Berra Albertsson’s murderer was hiding inside one.

Being a detective your whole life must make you a bit strange, I thought. Another half-minute passed.

‘How could the murderer know that Albertsson was going to be there?’ I asked. ‘It seems odd. I’ve always wondered.’

‘There’s another possible scenario,’ said Lindström. ‘Berra Albertsson could have been hit by a person who was in the car with him. Someone who might have been in the back seat, for example.’

‘Why?’ I said. ‘Who would that have been?’

‘Good question,’ said Lindström. ‘Regardless of who hit him, the motive is problematic.’

‘If it wasn’t Henry?’

‘Or Ewa Kaludis,’ said Lindström.

I thought a while.

‘How do you know that an unknown person was at Gennesaret that night?’ I asked.

Lindström hesitated.

‘An eye-witness account.’

‘An eye-witness account? And whose was that?’

‘I can’t reveal that,’ said Lindström and shrugged apologetically. ‘I’m sorry.’

I stared at him, surprised.

‘And the forensic evidence,’ I asked. ‘Clues and murder weapons and what not, how did that turn out?’

‘Poorly,’ said Lindström. ‘On all accounts. The rain destroyed all the evidence at the crime scene. It wasn’t even possible to see which of the cars had arrived first, your brother’s or Berra’s. Even if their positioning suggested that Henry had arrived earlier.’

‘And the weapon?’

‘It was never found,’ Lindström stated. ‘No, it is what it is. As long as no one comes forward, Bertil Albertsson’s assailant will go free. In two months he’d be free in any case … but it would be a bonus to be able to write in my memoir that the case is solved. And I know who did it. That’s why I’m here. Hmm.’

He paused again. Drank the last drop of wine and wiped his mouth. Collected himself before making his final plea.

‘And you don’t have anything that might shed some light on the story? Something you held back or that you remembered later?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ve thought about this for twenty-five years and I know as little today as I knew then. A madman who carried out the murder by chance, that’s my suggestion. Have you explored that possibility thoroughly?’

Lindström didn’t answer.

‘Of course I would have come to the police if I’d known anything,’ I added.

By now Lindström was starting to look resigned and I noticed that I didn’t have much left of the respect that I had felt for him at the start of the sixties. I also understood that you’re probably not a very good judge of character at fourteen, even though my brother had complimented me on it.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m very sorry, but it looks like this trip to Göteborg is going to be a waste of your time.’

‘Don’t say that,’ said Lindström. ‘The food wasn’t bad and I have another conversation scheduled.’

‘Oh?’ I said. ‘With whom?’

He adjusted the Bronzol tube in his breast pocket and looked out of the window.

I never worked out if Verner Lindström really did have another subject to interview during his Göteborg trip, but two months later the Bertil Albertsson case was statute-barred. It was September
1987
, and only afterward did Ewa and I discover that on the same night as the statute of limitations ran out we’d shared a lobster and a bottle of champagne.

As if we’d known about the date and deemed it worthy of celebration, somehow.

The real reason was that Karla had travelled up to her dad’s in Eslöv and for once we had the flat on Palmstedtsgatan to ourselves.

Then the years passed and some things slipped into oblivion. Ewa Kaludis and I never had any children: for that time was too short. She was forty-seven when we met again and we both felt it was too risky. Her daughter Karla lived with us until about
1990
, when she went off to study something or other in Paris, met a dark, wavy-haired Frenchman, and stayed. The frequency of my own children’s visits increased at about the same rate as Ellinor’s ire dissipated, and my eldest son Frans lived with us for a few months one autumn during his first term at the journalism college.

Even though Ewa’s periods stopped a few months after she turned fifty, our love life didn’t go through any corresponding changes. As far as I could tell, from discreet conversations I had with colleagues and others, we had an unusually robust sex life. No one ever guessed that there were ten years between us; I often have a hard time getting my head around it myself.

I suppose that’s how it is. Some people aren’t touched by the years, and on others you can count them double or triple.

The final chapter in the history of Gennesaret—or the Incident, as I liked to call it once upon a time—was written in the spring and summer of
1997
.

One day in early May, from my ex-wife Ellinor, I found out that Father Wester up in Ånge had suffered a heart attack and was in hospital at Östersund. He was most likely on his deathbed, and because he still had Ellinor’s phone number from the visit twelve years before, he’d called her and expressed a desire to speak to me.

I wasn’t surprised that Edmund had had a heart attack; I thought about his enormous body and I decided to travel up to Östersund as soon as possible.

The opportunity arose a few days later, on Ascension Day, and I had four days of leave. I considered my travel options—plane, train or automobile—and settled on taking the car. I set off early on Thursday morning and about ten hours later I took my place in a tubular steel chair by Edmund’s side.

He hadn’t got any smaller since our last meeting; he lay beneath a yellow blanket like a stranded walrus and a considerable number of tubes were stuck into his arms and legs, pumping nourishment through his tremendous body. His face was a greyish purple like a mouldering plum, and it was hard to tell if he would survive or not.

Whatever the case, he seemed relieved to see me.

‘So, tell me: how did things go with your father?’ I said. ‘Your real one. Did you ever look him up?’

Edmund gave a quick, strained smile.

‘Yes, I looked him up,’ he said. ‘He was in a home outside Lycksele. Didn’t recognize me. I don’t think he remembered that he had a son—alcoholism and neglected diabetes. He died a few months after.’

I nodded. Of course it would end up that way. It was typical, somehow. Edmund was reluctant to talk about it; he had neither the desire nor the energy. There was a more pressing matter to attend to before it was too late.

A little over half an hour into our conversation, he grew too weak to continue. When we were done Edmund looked as peaceful as only the dead and severely ailing can. One of the last things he said was: ‘It was still a brilliant summer, Erik. In spite of the Incident, it was a brilliant summer. I’ll never forget it.’

‘Neither will I,’ I promised and patted him between two of the needles. ‘Not for as long as I live.’

‘Not for as long as I live,’ Edmund repeated matter-of-factly.

And then he fell asleep. I stayed a while and watched him, and suddenly I was sure he was no longer in the hospital bed, but floating on his back in the lake at Gennesaret that balmy night after the pageantry of love in the window.

And I wished dearly for him to stay there.

I left with a sense of closure. Checked out of Hotel Zäta and headed south again. During the drive through the forests in Dalarna and Värmland, I decided to write down this entire story. Write it down and try to get it the right way around. If what I read somewhere is true, that every person has a book inside of them, then mine would be the story of the murder of Berra Albertsson.

But it wasn’t mine alone.

I started on it as soon as we broke up for the summer holidays, and at the end of June—the week after Midsummer—I took a research trip back to the landscape of my childhood. Ewa vacillated about whether or not she should join me, but in the end she decided to stay at home; Karla had gleefully announced that she was thinking of coming for a visit with her Frenchman.

I hadn’t set foot in the town on the plain since we moved away in the early sixties, and when the beautiful jasmine-scented summer night came rolling into my car as I drove along Stenevägen, I felt myself sinking into the well of time.

So much had changed and yet most of it was the same as ever. The exterior of the house on Idrottsgatan had been renovated, but the colours were the same and in our kitchen window facing the street were two pelargoniums, as before. I parked the car, walked out through the stretch of woodland and found the culvert in the ditch.

No one had touched it for thirty-five years. I had to crouch to fit, but never mind; I lit a cigarette, a Lucky Strike I’d bought at the railway station kiosk in Hallsberg. I shut my eyes and sat inside, smiling and close to tears.

What is a life? I thought. What the hell is a life?

I thought about Benny and Benny’s mum; about Arse-Enok and Balthazar Lindblom and Edmund.

About my mother and father.

And Henry.

About the day a thousand years ago that Ewa Kaludis came riding into Stava School on her red Puch. Kim Novak.

And about my father’s words:
It’s going to be a difficult summer. Let’s face it.

My mother’s listless hair and dying eyes in the hospital. What is a life?

The pattern of tiles in the loo. The tiny scars on Edmund’s feet, proof that he’d once been in possession of twelve toes.

Ewa Kaludis. Her warm, strong hands on my shoulders and her naked body.

She’s all I have left.

All I have managed to keep, I thought, is Ewa’s beautiful body.

It could have been worse.

On the way out of town, I took Mossbanegatan south. Karlesson’s shop was where it always had been, but the gum dispenser was no longer there. However, it had been extended as a corner cafe; the whole thing was called Gullan’s Grill and I didn’t feel like stopping.

The Kleva hill was as steep as before, even if it was less noticeable sitting in the car. I could still identify the place where Edmund had lain down and been sick after his valiant effort to conquer it in one go, and the way through the forest to Åsbro was the same down to every last bend. In the village itself they’d built a petrol station, but overall it was as I remembered it. I stopped outside Laxman’s. I went in and bought a Ramlösa and an evening paper. The heavy-set woman at the till was in her fifties and had blooms of sweat under her arms, and there was nothing to contradict the notion that this was Britt Laxman.

A number of new summer houses had been built along Sjölyckevägen, but when I entered the forest I recalled every twist and dip of the winding gravel path. The Levis’ house looked boarded up, but it had been like that then, too. I remembered the incantation as I drove past. Cancer-Treblinka-Love-Fuck-Death. I thought of Edmund’s real dad who sat at the edge of his bed and cried for himself and for his abused boy, and then the memories began to flood in, and I didn’t know I’d arrived at the parking area until I was standing on it.

The clearing seemed to have shrunk. Weeds and brushwood had encroached on its edges; maybe this was temporary but it seemed to be disused. I climbed out of the car and took in the start of both paths: the left down to the Lundins’ was nearly overgrown; the right to Gennesaret looked trodden on and used. After a moment’s hesitation I followed it down to the lake.

Gennesaret was where it had been, too. The same warped little hovel, but repainted and with a new roof. A garden shed out on the lawn and white garden furniture instead of our old rickety brown set. An outdoor grill and a TV antenna.

Nineties versus sixties. Forty-nine instead of fourteen.

Both the door and the kitchen window were open, so I knew that people were home. I didn’t want to have to explain my errand, so I stayed on the path. Looked at everything through a lens thirty-five years thick; both the privy and the tumbledown shed were still there, and—above all—the floating dock. I was startled by my residual pride and before the tears started to fall, I turned on my heels and went back up the path to the parking spot.

I took the spade out of the boot of the car, walked straight across the road, measured between the trees and easily found the small, soft, moss-covered hollow.

I drove the spade into the earth and dug out a few shovels’ worth. By the third shovel, I had hit the shaft. I wedged the blade under and soon I was standing there with the sledgehammer in my hands.

It was lighter than I remembered, but less ravaged by time than anything else I had seen that day. It was exactly as I remembered it. I gingerly brushed the shaft and the head clean. When the earth was gone, it could just as well have been lying with the rest of the tools in the shed all this time. Or it could even have been manufactured as recently as a few years ago.

If it weren’t for a brownish-black, dried-up blotch on one end of the sledgehammer’s head. It’s incredible how some things endure. Sink their teeth in and endure.

I shunted the mounds of earth back into the hole and covered them with moss. Stuffed the sledgehammer in my black plastic bag. Tossed it into the footwell of the car on the passenger’s side and drove away.

Two hours later I watched the bag sink to the bottom of a dark and muddy lake in the woods of Skara. The sun had started to set and the midges buzzed around my head, but I stood there a long while and tried to discern where the sledgehammer had broken through the water’s surface. When there was no trace of it left, I shrugged and started the journey back to Göteborg.

A few days later Ewa and I lay awake one night after making love. We had the window propped wide open; it was one of those rare summer nights that only comes two or three times a year in Sweden. Music and laughter were spilling in from some sort of garden party at the neighbours’.

‘That book you’re writing?’ Ewa asked and cautiously ran her hand over my stomach. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Well enough,’ I answered. ‘It’s coming along.’

She was silent for a while.

‘I’ve always wondered something.’

‘Oh?’ I said. ‘What?’

‘Who actually killed Berra? You or Edmund? It had to be one of you.’

I turned around and buried my face between her breasts.

‘Truer words were never spoken,’ I said. ‘It had to have been one of us.’

And then I told her who.

‘What?’ said Ewa. ‘I can’t hear what you’re saying. Look at me.’

I breathed her scent in deeply and then that cloud unfurled inside me. It’s remarkable how some clouds linger.