The Cruel Stars of the Night (29 page)

“Why did you kill your father?”

“Oh, you found him, did you? I didn’t kill him. I strangled him.”

Her voice echoed in the basement.

“Did he abuse you?”

“You’ve already asked me that.”

“If that is the case then the repercussions will be much less severe. I’m sure you know that. Don’t make it worse now. You will not be able to get off entirely but someday will be able to live your life as you please.”

Lindell heard how hollow her words sounded but it was the only thing she could think of to get Laura thinking in a different direction.

“You must think I’m stupid.”

Lindell shook her head.

“On the contrary,” she said. “I think you’re a smart woman.”

Laura snorted.

“Tell me about your mother. Even if you don’t think so maybe I’ll understand. We are both single women. I have been thinking about you so much.”

The silence made Lindell sweat. This was the moment of judgment. Either Laura would slam the door shut or she would start to talk. She kept her hand on the door handle. Lindell thought the strip of light on the basement floor grew thinner.

“Laura,” she said and tried to keep her voice steady, “where does your rage come from?”

“I’ve grown up with the black death,” she said and Lindell didn’t know what she was talking about but hoped she would keep talking.

“Petrus Blomgren killed my mother, you know?”

“Indirectly, you mean?”

“He broke into her life. A farmer who thought he was some kind of Casanova. Do you realize how much pain he caused? He inserted a wedge in our lives, lured her away to Mallorca of all places, and then dumped her. He deserved to die, it’s that simple.”

“Jan-Elis Andersson, did he also deserve to die?”

“Did you find the chess piece?”

“We did,” Lindell said and felt as if the air in the basement was running out. “Why a chess piece?”

“My father and I used to play chess in the cottage. That was when he taught me everything I know about chess.”

“Which cottage?”

Laura told her about the only happy summer with Ulrik, when he was like a real father, and how Jan-Elis Andersson turned them out and put an end to the idyll.

“Why did you have to move?”

Ann was trying to keep Laura talking.

“He said he had to prepare the house for a relative but I know why he threw us out. He tried to feel me up. The second time I said I would tell Ulrik. That scared the old bastard.”

“But why the chess piece?”

“When I was throwing out Ulrik’s old things I found the chessboard and the box, and then when I drove out to Alsike I took a pawn with me. Like a reminder. A detail that was important to me. Did it confuse you?”

“Yes. We only found it today.”

“How careless you are.”

Lindell was prepared to agree. She thought of the photo at Blomgren’s house. If Fredriksson had found it the first time they would perhaps have had a chance of stopping the murders of Andersson and Palmblad.

“So there was no larger scheme involving chess?” she asked.

“Why would there be?”

Lindell couldn’t help feeling a certain measure of satisfaction. The chess theory had been plucked out of thin air. The threat against Queen Silvia was nonexistent.

“One of my colleagues had an idea,” Lindell said.

Could she make it up the steps before Laura had time to close and lock the door?

“So Laura,” she said and climbed a step at the same time, “why Palmblad?”

“Oh yes, ‘The Horse.’ Not that he looks like a horse anymore. It’s strange what the years can do. I hardly recognized him, but he recognized me.”

“Why was he an enemy?”

Lindell took another step.

“There are eleven steps left. You’ll never make it,” Laura said. Lindell saw that she was smiling.

“You can think about it down there. You have plenty of time. Have a little wine. Acquaint yourself with Ulrik. He’s better dead.” “There are rats down here.”

“That’s good company for Ulrik. He loved to kill mice.” Laura pushed the door shut and turned the lock.

Forty-one

It’s strange how quickly one’s values can change, Stig Franklin thought, fastening the last straps on the tarpaulin that covered the boat. Only a few weeks ago this boat had been his all. During difficult moments at work the thought of the cruising yacht had been his comfort. It was his escape from melancholy. After he and Jessica quarreled he would turn his mind to contemplating the elegant lines of the boat, the beauty of the mahogany, or something he wanted to get for it.

He was still very fond
ofEvita.

“You’re doing that at the last minute,” a man observed as he walked by.

Stig, who was vaguely acquainted with him, nodded.

“Yes, but I did beat the snow.”

“That’s a good-looking vessel,” the man said.

Stig nodded.

“If you have to go to the bottom of the sea it should be in that kind of beauty,” the man went on.

Stig saw that the man would have liked a chat so he turned his back on him and pretended to be very busy with stretching the tarp even tighter.

The man watched him for a few seconds before moving on.

“Have a nice weekend!” Stig shouted after him and the man held up his hand without turning back.

He had bought the yacht cheaply from an alcoholic lawyer who had lost his docking privileges at the Gräddö Marina. Then he had renovated
Evita
for two years and put her to sea the same year he met Jessica.

And certainly,
Evita
was still the apple of his eye, but somehow he didn’t feel the same joy now as before. Jessica had never been particularly interested in the sea. She became seasick easily and it was rare that he could tempt her out onto longer trips. They had gone to Gotland two years ago. After that holiday she had suggested that he sell the cruiser but he had just laughed and dismissed it.

Now it felt as if Jessica had won. All happiness had been swept away. Even the thought that it would soon be spring and that he would soon be taking the covers
off Evita
and putting her in the sea felt meaningless.

He studied the contours of the yacht under the tarp. He would be able to take her far away. The thought had been there. The Mediterranean, the Canary Islands, maybe even the Caribbean. Through the Panama Canal. Öquist, who had docked beside him at Skärholmen a few years ago had sold everything he owned and sailed away. Sometimes a postcard landed in his mailbox, the last time from an unknown harbor on the west coast of Africa.

Stig Franklin smiled to himself. Maybe it wasn’t completely meaningless, with the boat, with life, simply because he no longer wanted to live with Jessica.

Maybe Laura would come with him? Hadn’t she been talking about some harbor? To leave on his own was out of the question. The yacht needed at least two, ideally three or four on board. It would be too hard, and above all too lonely otherwise.

Uplifted by the thought of an extended boat trip—that suddenly felt more possible than ever—he walked to the car. Regardless of how things turned out with Laura, he was grateful to her. She had acted as a kind of catalyst, set his thoughts and his slumbering dreams in motion. He could see her before him, recalled her furious frenzy as they made love, and became horny all at once. It’s not over for me, he thought, I’m still a man with force. Why would I settle for a boring and predictable existence in a house in Sunnersta?

The thought suddenly appeared preposterous. He steered the car as if in a trance, unaware of the traffic and the dramatic developments in the sky where the rain clouds were arranging themselves in dark columns.

He parked on the street. Stig felt like a young man. He got out of the car, let the door fall shut of its own accord, and locked it nonchalantly. His body was light as a feather, he walked with rapid steps toward the house and smiled to himself.

Perhaps it was his outfit that made him feel so good—his “boating gear” as he called the spotted and bleached-blue overalls and the checkered shirt that had been with him all the years he had owned
Evita.
They gave him a feeling of ease and freedom. He could almost smell the sea in the often-washed clothes.

“Never again a suit,” he said quietly although he knew it was an untruth, but he liked it: saying the words, releasing the ties, and tasting freedom.

He turned into the garden and walked up the stone paved path, increasingly aroused, like an animal approaching its prey. He saw himself pulling down the suspenders and climbing out of the pants in one move, pulling Laura close and taking her.

The index finger that he used to press the doorbell was trembling. Laura opened at once, stared at him in amazement for a second, and then ran back into the house. Stig heard something that sounded like a scream before the sound of an opera boomed through the loudspeakers and filled the whole house.

“It’s my way of celebrating,” Laura said fervently and pulled him into the hall.

“Does it have to be so loud?”

His glow was going out as if the opera music was a bucket of water thrown over a fire.

“I’m on a high,” she said. “I’m ecstatic.”

He stared at her in wonder. Her unruly hair, glistening forehead, and glassy gaze bore out her words.

“Are you drunk?”

Laura shook her head.

“No,” she said, “I’m just happy.”

She danced around the hall, pulling him to her, letting go of him as quickly, ending up standing in front of him, her arms hanging at her side.

“Now we can travel soon,” she whispered.

“What?”

The symphony orchestra in the living room thundered on with undiminished strength. The kettledrum rolls went through the house like waves of rumbling thunder. Laura’s eyes were on fire. The strings burst into a showdown. Stig stood there paralyzed.

“Can’t you turn it down?” he yelled.

Laura didn’t answer, just grabbed Stig by the arm, led him to the kitchen, closed the door, and looked at him eagerly.

Even though the volume was somewhat lower in the kitchen the contrast between the peace at the shipyard and the chaos in the house was overwhelming. All his feelings of freedom and longing for Laura were blown away, but when she crept into his lap, put her arms around his neck, and pressed her body against his, the paralysis brought on by the music lifted and became a vibrating backdrop to his growing lust.

It’s remarkable how she affects me, he had time to think before desire took over and made him tug at her clothes with impatience and excitement.

“You are a magical creature,” he whispered and she nodded eagerly with her mouth attached like a suction cup to his neck.

He groaned with pleasure. The image
of Evita
returned.

“We’ll go away together,” he muttered and she moved his suspenders out of the way, unbuttoned his shirt, and pulled it down over his shoulders with surprising force.

“We’ll go away together,” he repeated as she licked his chest and nibbled his stiff nipples.

It was over in a few minutes in a crescendo that made Stig cry out and Laura beat her hands on the kitchen table so that glasses and bottles rattled, tipped over and rolled over the edge, and shattered into a cascade of slivers against the floor.

Laura swept her arms over the table and swept it clean. The smell of wine and desire mingled, and they sank exhausted onto the table.

Ann Lindell registered all of the sounds as she stood on the uppermost step. The sound of the doorbell, a man’s voice and Laura’s overwrought tone, the music that came crashing on, the banging on the table against the wall, the scream, and bottles shattering.

She could imagine what was going on up there. Despite her predicament she felt a twinge of envy toward Laura. This must be the man she had talked about, the married colleague. What was it Laura had said his wife’s name was? Jessica. Laura said something about it being her task to solve the problem, to separate the two of them, that the man was too weak and afraid for something like that.

Suddenly Lindell was convinced that Laura was going to murder Jessica. In light of what had transpired and in light of Laura’s complete lack of empathy her comment could not be interpreted in any other way. Was the man in on this? Perhaps two people had been involved in the murders of Blomgren, Andersson, and Palmblad?

When the sounds of intercourse had ceased Lindell thought about resuming her attempts of trying to make herself heard, but realized the senselessness of screaming to the point of exhaustion. She would not be heard and perhaps it wouldn’t matter anyway if the man was part of it.

Then it struck her: Laura turned on the music to cover her screams. The man was unaware that Laura was keeping Lindell imprisoned in the basement. The music could not be interpreted any other way.

She summoned her courage, started beating on the door with her left hand, and screamed.

Stig Franklin stepped out onto the stairs. He carefully closed the door behind him. The music was still thundering in the house. He smiled to himself. The fact was that it worked with the music. After the initial shock and displeasure over the volume he found that opera was a great background for making love.

He checked the time. A quarter to five. Jessica usually came home around five. Now is the time, he thought and walked swiftly to the car.