Frozen Moment (15 page)

    The
lock clicked and the door opened.

    'This
is really kind of you, Seja. Åke's in town changing a part for some drill or
other that wasn't working properly. And I was just about to have a cup of
coffee when I realised we're completely out of sugar.'

    'No
problem.'

    Seja
handed the bag of sugar to Kristina, who moved away from the door and waved her
inside.

    'Come
on in. It's all ready; I just needed the sugar.'

    Seja
suppressed a sigh. She had thought it was a bit odd, given that Åke had
finished work and therefore had all the time in the world to go shopping. Now
she realised the sugar was just a ruse.

    'I've
got quite a bit to do, Kristina.'

    
Which was actually true.
She ought to be studying, ought to
be writing the kind of things that would generate some income. Ought to change
the rotten plank in the wall of Lukas's box, change the washer in the
constantly running shower, which had caused a minor flood behind the house.

    But
Kristina was already on her way into the kitchen. Seja kicked off her boots,
promising herself she wouldn't stay long, wouldn't allow herself to be drawn
into anything.
Because she had an idea of where this was
going.

    In
the dining room Kristina had laid out cups and saucers and a plate of ginger
biscuits and some raspberry cakes. She was pouring the sugar into a bowl.

    'You
hardly ever come up here nowadays, Seja,' she said, lowering herself
laboriously into the armchair at the end of the table. 'It's mostly you and Åke
who meet up. I think one should take care of one's neighbours.'

    Seja
didn't reply. She had made a couple of dutiful attempts to invite Kristina over
to her cottage but she had refused politely but firmly, blaming her aches and
pains. Seja had the feeling that her resistance went much deeper; Kristina
simply preferred not to leave her own home.

    Kristina
wiped an invisible drop of sweat from her brow as she caught sight of the
coffee pot, still standing in the kitchen. Seja stopped her as she moved to get
up.

    'It's
OK, I'll get it.'

    By
the sink she drank a glass of water. There was a pot plant in full flower standing
in the bowl, a wax plant. She followed a trickle of muddy water with her eyes.

    'The
police phoned,' she heard Kristina's voice behind her.

    This
was it.

    'They…
they wanted to speak to Åke.' The voice had a falsetto tone.

    Seja
turned and leaned against the draining board. There was a serving hatch between
the kitchen and dining room, which framed Kristina as she sat at the table.

    So
this is what I'm supposed to do now,
Seja caught herself thinking.
Is it
my job to calm this woman? Haven't I got enough, dealing with my own anxiety?

    Kristina
Melkersson's expression was pleading. The chubby thighs spread wide apart, the
hands clutching at the kneecaps, the double chins wobbling - her whole posture
suddenly seemed entreating.

    'Åke,
he… he doesn't tell me anything.'

    Seja
walked slowly back into the dining room. 'There's nothing to tell.'

    
A little too brusque.
She poured coffee and cream into both
cups and pushed one over to Kristina. 'There was a man at a car repair
workshop. He was already dead when Åke got there. Åke called the police. That's
all.'

    'But
he'd been murdered!'

    Seja
avoided Kristina's agitated gaze and fixed instead on a framed photograph that
stood on the sideboard: a young woman with her hair piled high, a bouquet held
just beneath her chin.
A wedding photo.
The dimples,
Kristina still had those. Apart from that, the years and the drugs she took for
her aches and pains had made her face unrecognisable.

    Seja
tried to quell the impulse to pull away as a swollen hand was placed on top of
her own.

    'But
what do they want with Åke?'

    Seja
freed her hand on the pretext of taking a sip of her coffee. She had worked
hard to leave the image of the dead man in a closed room, carefully separated
from everyday life. In time, through the written word, the crime scene would
reappear so that she could work on it.
Could put it behind
her.
The synonyms became a constant mantra:
isolate it, put it behind
you,
deal
with it.
Until it was
no longer dangerous.
She had already established a routine for her work:
research through other crime reports.
In the early morning
when the approaching daylight brought a sense of security.
A cup of steaming Rooibos tea, the warmth of the cat on her knee.
All the lamps lit.
The words tumbling easily across the
screen.

    Now
Kristina's anxiety was upsetting this hard-won balance, touching Seja's
shoulders and the back of her neck like a cold gust of wind. The empathy the
older woman's fear usually aroused in her dissipated.

    'It's
just police routine, that's all. He found the body. I should think they just
want to go over how it happened. There's nothing strange about it, that's what
they do.'

    She
no longer cared about the sharpness in her voice. She wanted to get out of
there, so she stood up and forced a half-hearted smile.

    
'Seriously, Kristina.
You need to talk to Åke about this.'

    'But
he won't say anything! He doesn't want to worry me, but nothing worries me more
than not knowing because then I imagine the worst. And because I know that if
the worst did happen, he still wouldn't tell me anything!'

    'Like
what?' Seja said involuntarily. She stopped and made herself sit down again.

    Kristina
Melkersson's frown drew a line across the bridge of her nose.

    'Anyway,
what were you doing there?'

    'Kristina…'

    There
was something touching about the woman's utter confusion. It was clearer than
ever, the way her fear of a world that was rapidly changing had eaten into her.
Seja looked at the wedding photograph again, at the dimples.
The
timidity.

    'Death-watch
beetle,' said Kristina Melkersson.
'No, a world war.
Cancer,
or the lad dying in a car accident.
Or the grandchildren.'

    'What?'

    'You
asked me what the worst thing would be.'

    Seja
sighed again. 'I really do have to go now. I've got a lot to do. But I can come
again. Give me a ring if you need help with anything.'

    She
felt inadequate, but Kristina Melkersson merely shrugged her shoulders. All of
a sudden she seemed distant, as if she no longer cared.

    Seja
rinsed the cups under the tap and put the carton of cream in the fridge before
she left. By the time she walked past the dining-room window, Kristina had
drawn the flowery curtains, as she always did when night began to fall. It was
because of the chandelier. So it wouldn't be seen from outside.

    Seja
took a short cut across the lawn.

    Beckman
tossed the morning paper aside. There was nothing about the murder in Björsared
apart from a vague item about a farmer who had been found dead at a garage in
Olofstorp and was presumed to have been murdered.

    She
poured the first cup of coffee of the day in the hope that it would perk her
up. Today was not a good day. A miserable drizzle became apparent as the sky
lightened, lying like a damp mist over Fiskebäck and the neglected patch
outside her kitchen window. She hadn't bothered switching on the rope light
running around the patio fence for several days. In addition, the tension pains
had come back, shooting out from her spine like poisonous arrows, up between
her shoulder blades and across one side of her face, over her jaw and temples,
concentrating beneath her left eye. She massaged her temples for a long time,
but only managed to achieve a very temporary numbing of the pain. She was
coming down with something, all because Karlberg hadn't had the sense to stay
at home with his cold.

    True,
she had been putting up with the pain in the back of her neck and her shoulders
for a long time.
Far too long.
She could no longer
remember when she first began to experience the long drawn- out process of
writing reports as torture, or to put it more accurately, even more of a
torture than it had been without the pain. Meetings that went on and on often
found her sitting there, working out an excuse to leave before they were over.
Sitting still was the worst, but if she was particularly stressed, even her
coat resting on her shoulders felt as heavy as lead. As if the stiffness had
made her skin sensitive too.

    The
police physiotherapist was just about ready to retire, an old- fashioned severe
woman in a white coat with an unpleasant way of seeing right through a person,
in Beckman's opinion.

    'It's
as if your head is completely separate from your body,' she had said as Beckman
lay on her stomach, naked to the waist. 'You seem to live in a completely
theoretical zone. As if you have no contact at all with this body of yours. As
if you don't want to acknowledge it. That's why it's protesting.'

    Beckman
had felt embarrassed and annoyed. Was this woman a physiotherapist or a fortune
teller? And it got worse as she massaged Beckman's wronged body with alternate
hard and soft strokes.

    'Unspoken
truths often settle in the muscles and turn into pain. Things you want to say,
but don't have the courage.
Particularly in the musculature
at the back of the neck and in the face.
Many people experience pain in
the jaw and even the teeth. When the mouth refuses to form those liberating
words, they gather around it like an indefinable pain that refuses to go away.
There are tensions in your body that have turned into inflammations. If you're
not careful, you could end up with a chronic condition. It's also not unusual
for a person to burst into tears when someone touches them, if they're not used
to it.
Linking the body to the brain.'

    Beckman
never went back. Instead she went to a doctor and got a prescription for
Diclofenac.

    'Start
doing some exercise,' he advised. 'It's the only thing that will help. Go to
the gym or take up swimming.'

    She
had swum a few lengths after work on a couple of occasions, but concluded that
feeling guilty about yet another thing she hadn't got around to was hardly
likely to have a positive influence on her symptoms. She had, however, thought
about playing tennis with someone, combining usefulness with pleasure and thus
avoiding the aerobics culture that frightened her.

    Beckman
had played a lot of tennis when she was young and sometimes she missed that
feeling of physical exertion. The feeling of being right there in the moment.
She could ask someone from work, but most of her colleagues' activities seemed
to be firmly established.

    She
couldn't help wondering if Christian Tell played tennis. She really liked him
as a colleague. They were compatible, so to speak. Despite the fact that he
could sometimes walk all over her, she was aware that he respected her. However,
the idea of spending time with Tell outside work bordered on the absurd. It was
probably the very concept of Christian Tell as a real individual that seemed
absurd, if he even existed. He never talked about his private life at work and
it was easier to believe that he didn't actually have anything significant in
his life apart from the job. Then again, what did she know?

    She
wondered for a moment what her colleagues imagined her private life to be like.
Presumably she too was perceived as fairly reticent. Had she always been that
way? She was suddenly unsure, just as she felt unsure about most things that
had happened before she met Goran - had they really happened, or were they just
part of a diffuse and distant dream she thought she recalled because others
reminded her of it from time to time? And now, since her mother had begun to
disappear into the incomprehensible world of dementia for long periods, there
was no longer anyone who reminded her directly of these things.

    Beckman
had got to know the few friends she spent time with after she and Goran had got
together ten years ago. At least she had started to spend time with them before
she had children and life was transformed into a totally unrealistic timetable
with no margin for error.