Some Kind of Peace (23 page)

So Marianne is working nights for Sven? Anger rises in me. As far as I know, she has never worked nights for either me or Aina.

We hang up without saying anything further about what it is Marianne so desperately has to show me right away. I return to my office, turn on my computer, and work awhile longer.

•  •  •

Marianne’s apartment is on the fourth floor of a grand fin-de-siècle building. I have been here only once before, when Aina, Marianne, and I went out to a bar in an attempt at sisterly solidarity. As I push the small brass button, the doorbell, I hear a muted vibration, but the door remains closed. Hesitantly, I place my ear against the cold, varnished oak surface and listen closely but hear only silence. No steps coming to meet me. I rub my cold hands against each other while backing up a few steps to look out the corridor window down at the street. Everything is still. The small, well-tended garden in front of the entrance is deserted, just like the neighboring yards. A pearl necklace of neat, small doormats in front of the clean buildings. Suddenly I sense a movement between the trees on the other side of the street. There! A man in a trench coat pushes a stroller and carries grocery bags as he hurries away in the darkness toward St. Eriksplan. I shake my head at my own imagination and ring Marianne’s doorbell again, to no avail.

Nothing happens, not even when I bend down to call through the mail slot. I carefully pry open the brass flap of the little slot, just enough to glimpse the outlines of the carpet inside. It is dark. The smell of coffee mixed with Marianne’s perfume seeps through the slot and out into the hallway. A faint voice murmurs monotonously from inside without paying attention to me. I assume the TV is on.

“Marianne? It’s Siri. Are you there?
Marianne?
”

Carefully, I push down the handle and the door slides open without a sound. This worries me—it is not like Marianne to leave her front door unlocked.

I grope for the light switch in the hall, and suddenly the room is
bathed in a soft yellow glow. Polished wood floors, a small rag rug on the floor, and a coatrack to the right. Mirrors cover the wall across from the door, and I am startled by my own frightened reflection. I enter quickly and shut the door behind me. It closes with a soft click.

“Marianne,” I try again, as I enter the living room on the left.

It is cozy in a way my parents would appreciate. Curved chairs upholstered in Josef Frank material, an oversized bulky leather couch, thick, welcoming carpets on the floor, brass sconces on the walls, which are decorated with large, naïf paintings in strong colors, which I know Marianne has painted herself.

“Hello!”

A Discovery Channel program is playing on the TV in front of the window, the volume turned low. I reflect once again on how little I really know about Marianne; I would never have guessed that she would be interested in science or nature programs, or in the show playing right now, a program about crime. “
The woman never suspected that her own brother could be involved in such a horrific crime…”
a nasal voice intones in a British accent.

The room is empty. I move on to the kitchen, which is also quiet and dark. Massive oak doors, a Miele stove—Marianne must have come into some money after her recent divorce, I think. On the table is a pile of papers neatly packed in a transparent plastic folder with a yellow Post-it note that says
BILLS—TO PAY.
I suddenly feel ill at ease. Something is not right.

“Marianne?”

Still no answer. No Marianne. Only the nasal voice from the living room: “
As soon as the driver arrived he understood that something was terribly wrong…”

I walk into her bedroom and hesitate in the doorway; my heart is pounding and the familiar feeling of impending catastrophe is spreading rapidly through my body like poison. I try to convince myself that this is just a normal visit with a dear colleague in her cozy apartment. Of course Marianne will show up at any moment—she wouldn’t be in the bedroom. I take a deep breath as my fingers feel for the light switch.

“…although the driver could see blood on the floor, Mary Jane was nowhere to be found…”

The room is empty.

An enormous double bed with a quilted cover and way too many pillows stuffed into white, crocheted needlepoint coverings almost takes up the entire room. There are pictures of children and friends on the nightstand. I slowly walk over to the pictures and crouch to see them. Two little boys in bathing trunks laugh into the camera, and I can see that the smaller one’s front teeth are missing. He is holding a beach ball under his skinny suntanned arm that says TEMPO on it.

Her sons, I think as I stand up with the uncomfortable feeling of having done something forbidden—like snooping in someone’s medicine cabinet or purse. All this time, I’ve had a suffocating feeling that I’m being watched, as if I was sharing Marianne’s apartment with
someone
who doesn’t want to make his presence known. That I am being seen although I myself cannot see, like being in my lit-up house at night. I wipe the sweat from my forehead with a shaky hand.

“…in the barn he finally found a trace of her…”

I return to the living room and sink down on the puffy leather couch. I remain sitting like that a long time without doing anything. Marianne is one of the most responsible people I know. I seriously cannot believe that she left her apartment after having invited me here. I start to think that she probably hasn’t run out to buy cigarettes or pastries as I had hoped, or gone down to park her car in a better spot. What do you do when someone vanishes like this? I can’t really call the police. How long do you have to wait before you know… before you know that someone has disappeared? A few hours? A whole day? A week?

On the table in front of me is a neat bundle of gold-embroidered fabric in all the colors of the rainbow—saris, I presume. Must be a present from her son and his girlfriend. Alongside it rests a large coffee cup, half empty, and I test it by resting my palm against it.

It is still hot.

“…there was blood on the floor, inside the car, and…”

Suddenly I realize that I cannot stay in Marianne’s apartment another
minute. Without looking, I rush toward the hall and the door, prepared for anything. But no one blocks my way as I force the door open with all my weight and make my way out to the stairwell.

While I rush toward St. Eriksplan, I call Aina, who does not answer; the answering machine asks me courteously to leave my name and number. She is presumably at the bar now, that is, if they haven’t left already and gone home. I shake my head and try Markus’s cell phone. No answer there either, but I leave a message anyway, no matter how confused and incoherent it may sound.

I go down to the subway with a gnawing feeling that something horrible has happened this evening, and that I, in some way, am an accessory to it.

The next morning I arrive at the practice earlier than usual. The clump in my stomach has been replaced by nervous energy—I have to find out where Marianne is.

Aina meets me in the corridor with a broad smile.

“I don’t want to know,” I say, shaking my head.

“Are you sore?”

Aina looks surprised and hurt.

“Is Marianne here yet?”

“No. It’s really strange—she hasn’t come in and she hasn’t called. It’s not like her to just… just not show up.”

I tell her about yesterday evening, and Aina’s eyes open wide as they do when she is worried or scared. The corner of her eye twitches a little as she slowly takes hold of my arm.

“Have you called the police?”

“No, she’d only been gone half an hour or so.”

“Why didn’t you call Markus, or Christer?”

There is something accusatory in her voice.

“I don’t have Christer’s number. I don’t even know his last name. I called Markus, but I couldn’t get hold of him—
or you
.”

“Oh.” Aina blushes slightly and lets go of my arm.

“As I said, I don’t want to know. I’m much too worried about Marianne to hear about your escapades.”

My voice is unnecessarily harsh. I know it’s petty of me, but sometimes I just can’t indulge Aina in the quick adventures she lives for. It’s as if I wanted her to promise me that she will share my solitude.

“At the reception desk,” Aina interrupts my train of thought.

“Reception desk?”

“The binder with emergency contact numbers. Don’t you remember?” I remember. Marianne, who had attended a class on the role of the
secretary in crisis management, had collected names and numbers of our closest relatives “in case something happens.”

I go around the reception desk and start searching among Marianne’s neatly arranged, color-coded binders. Farthest down in a slender binder marked
IMPORTANT PAPERS
I find the sheet of numbers. By Marianne’s name, Christer and both sons are listed as relatives. I take the phone and dial Christer’s number. He answers at the first ring.

•  •  •

We are sitting in the cafeteria near the large foyer at South Hospital. An unending stream of people come and go around us. Nursing staff dressed in white walk with rapid, self-assured steps toward the counter, serve themselves the daily special, and continue to the cash register. Worried relatives sit in silence with a cup of coffee, looking straight ahead in a daze. Talkative senior citizens seem to have experienced the high point of the week with their hospital visit. An older woman carefully feeds a man who sits shaking in a wheelchair. My guess is that it is her husband who suffers from Parkinson’s.

Christer sits across from me. His eyes are red rimmed and it is apparent that he hasn’t gotten much sleep. He constantly rubs his hands together. I notice that the cuticles on his thumb and index finger are torn apart far down and that an ugly, inflamed red color is starting to spread there.

“A hit-and-run accident?”

I hear doubt in my voice.

“A hit-and-run accident,” Christer confirms. “The police are quite certain. There are witnesses, too.”

“What happened? I mean, I spoke with Marianne yesterday evening. She wanted me to stop by, but she wasn’t there when I arrived.”

“They think she ran down to pick something up at the 7-Eleven. She was there right before the accident. A bunch of kids who were sitting nearby eating cinnamon rolls saw her. She was just going back home, you know. Took a shortcut across Odengatan. There was a red light, and
she had no reflectors on. I think she found that sort of thing was… unnecessary.”

Christer interrupts himself and I can see the tears well up in his eyes again.

“A car came, probably driving too fast, and didn’t have a chance to stop. Not a chance.”

Christer shakes his head and starts working on the cuticle of his middle finger, slowly pulling away a long piece of skin so that the flesh is exposed. He doesn’t seem to feel the pain.

“There were witnesses,” he repeats. “They saw that she flew through the air. Several… several yards, they say.”

He sounds strangely practical and collected, but I have met people in shock before and know that he probably still can’t fully grasp the consequences of what has happened. Near us, the man with Parkinson’s starts weeping loudly. His wife looks around apologetically, gets up, and starts pushing his wheelchair. They quickly disappear through the exit.

“And yes, the car kept going. Maybe it was someone who was drunk, or didn’t have a driver’s license, or who just got scared. But he ran away. No one was able to get the license plate number.”

“So how is Marianne doing?”

“She has head injuries. They gave her, what’s it called, an MRI. Apparently they didn’t see any bleeding, but the brain is swollen. That’s why she’s still unconscious.”

“So she’s going to be all right?”

“It’s more serious than it sounds. They have to reduce the swelling. If they don’t, she may have lasting brain injuries, or, in the worst case, die. I’ve been up with her. She’s lying there like she’s tied up, with tubes and IVs and all kinds of contraptions.”

Christer sighs and his eyes begin to shine again.

“I should have been there. I should have gone shopping for her. I don’t get why she suddenly had to go out in the darkness and… without reflectors. She didn’t have any reflectors. I was at a business dinner. I was sitting there having scallops in wine sauce, then the police called me on
my cell phone. It’s too terrible. I was eating scallops, did I say that? In wine sauce. And she… she…”

Christer clenches his jaws and I can’t help but take his hand. Squeeze it lightly.

“I am so sorry,” I murmur.

“I’m glad you came.” Christer looks up at me. “Thank you, Siri,” he whispers, squeezing my hand back.

I pull myself together and try to find the right words without seeming intrusive.

“Do you know what Marianne wanted to talk about with me?”

Christer turns to me, and his red-rimmed eyes wander as if he can’t understand this irrelevant question.

“No idea. Does it still matter now?”

I shake my head slowly and lightly squeeze his hand again.

“No, it doesn’t matter anymore.”