Some Kind of Peace (39 page)

I think about Peter Carlsson all the time. It’s impossible to see through a person. You can’t tell from the outside whether someone has performed evil actions or had evil thoughts. If a person has decided to conceal or withhold parts of himself, it is extremely difficult to see through the lies and discover the omitted truth. I’m a psychologist, not a mind reader. I remember Vijay’s words: “You can’t know, Siri. It is impossible for you to know for sure.” Once Peter Carlsson decided to trick me, there was nothing to prevent him from succeeding.

I shake my head and shudder slightly, despite the oppressive heat on the bus. Maybe I can spend the evening looking through the video recordings of my conversations with him. All the tapes are still locked up in my safe out in the cottage. Maybe if I see them again I will understand. Understand evil.

As I walk from the bus to the cottage, my thin, worn boots sink down through the snow crust, wetting my ankles. The sun is shining through the pine and spruce, and I can see that the path ahead of me is pristine.
Surrounded by the sounds of the forest and with my nose filled by the cold, odorless air, I stop for a second when I catch sight of the cottage and the water in the bay, which is covered by ice and snow. This is something I had never seen before at this time of year.

The house is resting peacefully between the snow-covered rocks. Not a movement is visible. No tracks in the snow to give away the animals’ secret trails.

When I come up to the door, I have to try several times before the key finally slides into the old-fashioned lock. My frozen fingers are that stiff.

Inside, the air is lukewarm and dense with dust and humidity. I set the supermarket bag down on the floor and go from room to room, turning on the radiators and checking that all the lights work.

In the kitchen, the fridge and freezer are on, but moldy vegetables and spoiled milk betray my hasty departure. I pour out the gelatinous clump of milk in the sink and slowly start emptying the fridge of its contents. I lift up a bottle of Amarone from the bottom shelf in the kitchen. I want to indulge myself with something more than the usual red from a box. It is Christmas Eve, after all. It is Christmas Eve and I am at home in my cottage. The relief of returning is almost physical. My body feels light and warm. I realize how much I missed my home. It is paradoxical that I can feel so safe here, when everyone else perceives me as so vulnerable. Perhaps it is Stefan. He is in all the rooms in the house, tangibly present in the gently sanded moldings and carefully painted walls. I find a glass and a corkscrew and serve myself the strong red wine, raise the glass toward my reflection in the windowpane, and take a sip. A delicious, smooth warmth spreads in my body like rings on water.

I am home.

Wineglass in hand, I take out my cell phone and start making the calls that are expected of me. I talk with my sisters, their children, and Mom and Dad, wish them all a merry Christmas, explain again that Aina would be all alone if I didn’t spend Christmas with her. I don’t have a bad conscience about lying to my parents. They never understood my need for solitude, much less now. I think about how easy it is for me to
get them to believe me, as if they desperately want what I say to be true. They say that of course Aina is welcome at their home in Huddinge, but I am quick to explain that Aina probably needs a little peace and quiet right now. Christmas can be a difficult time if you’re at odds with those close to you, a sentiment my mom agrees with. She wishes us a pleasant Christmas Eve, reminds me to watch the classic Christmas cartoons on TV, and says good-bye. I can sense that Mom is grateful that Aina is with me and suspect that she really thinks I’m the one who needs calm, peace, and human closeness of the unconditional variety. My thoughts from the bus return—about how hard it is to see through someone who doesn’t want to be exposed. I pour myself another glass of wine and cut a thick slice of cheese. It’s time to look at the videos.

Peter’s face fills the screen before me. Nervous and unhappy, he glances across the table toward me, my back to the camera. Dark-gray suit, blue-striped tie, nothing that sticks out, only well-tailored elegance from head to toe. For a second, he looks right into the camera and the look in his eyes resembles that of a wild animal. There is something there that makes me think he wants to escape from the office, tear off his suit, throw away the blue-striped tie, and take to the woods. I press Pause and think a little about my own initial reaction to the news. Maybe it is due to the contrast between his well-groomed, civilized exterior and his words, which reflect another side of him, a side that is about impulse and compulsion, that reeks of sweat and animals.

          
“I get thoughts, images inside my head. And they scare me.”

          
“Can you describe these thoughts?”

          
“It’s… so hard.”

I stop the tape again and Peter’s body freezes in a peculiar position, half turned away, half leaning forward with both hands in front of his face. He is desperate and disconsolate. He feels completely alone and exposed in my green consultation room with its bland paintings and the little
table where I sit, almost like a life buoy with the box of Kleenex available for meek consolation.

You have to trust your own eyes, your intuition, and your combined experience, Stefan always said, and he was a brilliant clinician. If I were to dare trust my own senses, they would tell me that Peter Carlsson could not have killed Sara, that he could not have injured Marianne or staged a plot against me. Peter is not a murderer; he is only an ordinary half-nutty, neurotic person. He is one of the many who have to gather courage to hold their lives together, to give structure to their days and nights. One of the many helpless people who have to take life one moment at a time and, in that way, force time to move ahead and give it a direction. Someone like me.

I close my eyes and run my hand across the videotapes that are spread out on the floor beside me. Here they are, all the compulsive thoughts, all the anxiety, all the tears. Here is Sara’s slender body dressed in black, her scarred arms, green nails, and signature cigarette. Here is Charlotte’s pearl necklace and dress suits, and her well-articulated, patient answers to my intrusive questions. Here is the man with big muscles and a beard who drives a Harley-Davidson but is afraid of ants (“and other small creatures with a lot of spindly legs”). Here is the mother who hid all the knives and scissors in the garden shed, because she had compulsive thoughts about cutting her son’s eyes. Here is the corporate executive who was compelled to count to a hundred every time he went up a staircase, who always went sideways through doors and needed to park his car in a spot whose number was evenly divisible by three. All these people—no stranger than me, not crazy or evil—just trying to hold the seams together around their inner abyss. People who cautiously maneuver around catastrophe every day.

I prepare my Christmas dinner carefully. I turn on the oven, cut bread into thin slices to cover with chèvre and honey, take out the store-bought dolmas and the hummus. I turn on the CD player and let the music of Belle & Sebastian fill my cottage. Outside, it is starting to get dark. The bay is sleeping under its shimmering deep blanket of snow. The pines around the rocks are a black outline against the darkening sky. I am glad I came out here.

I don’t belong in the city.

By the time the velvety darkness of Christmas Eve completely envelops my cottage, I have long turned on every lamp, lit up every corner, and filled the table with candles. I lie on my bed and look at the black windows, which reflect the contours of the room like a mirror. The flashlight is in my hand. The wine has made me sleepy. I close my eyes and let my body release.

I dream that I am celebrating Christmas with Stefan. The floor is covered with packages of various sizes and colors. Stefan is busy in the kitchen and I arrange the packages in a long row. A colorful snake of presents winds from the living room all the way into the bedroom. I can clearly smell the aroma of the ham that Stefan is baking in the oven from the bedroom, as I bend over the row of presents. When I open my eyes, the scent of ham remains, and I can hear a faint scraping sound from the kitchen.

At once, I know that something is wrong, but I have a hard time working up the usual fear. The whole thing is too absurd. Has someone come to cook ham for me in the middle of the night?

I fumble for my cell phone to check the time but notice that it is out of power. Slowly, I get up on unsteady legs, still a little tipsy, and go out to the kitchen.

I am so taken aback by the golden-brown ham baking in the oven that I don’t see him at first.

“Hi, Siri.”

There he stands, leaning against the window in a relaxed, laid-back pose that makes his gangly body look even taller than it is. He is the same as always: the reddish-brown hair, the regular features, the slender body. His mouth is broad and he smiles a little, stroking his goatee lightly as he inspects me.

It’s Christer. Marianne’s Christer.

“Take a seat! I’ve made dinner.”

His tone is neutral and friendly, but I don’t dare say no. Slowly, I walk over to the kitchen table on legs that struggle to support me and sink down on one of the gray wood chairs. I glance at the wall clock: one thirty.

“I thought about making some meatballs, too. They seem to fit. But I have to admit I’m not big on cooking, so I bought some at the store.”

Christer smiles at me and goes to the stove and busies himself with the meatballs and something else I can’t recognize. My insides are in turmoil—what does he want from me? In the middle of the night.

Christmas Eve night.

An unpleasant feeling is growing stronger and soon becomes a certainty. Something is terribly wrong with Christer. I should—no, I must—get out of here before… well, before
what
?

It strikes me that I ought to try to talk to him, figure out his intentions and, if possible, find an escape route, but my throat is tied up and my mouth is dry. I fold my hands under the table to keep them from shaking.

“How many meatballs would you like?”

The question is strangely friendly and his expression reveals nothing about his intentions.

“These are
real
meatballs, no bread crumbs and crap like that for filler, just one hundred percent ground beef and spices. Maybe egg, too—I don’t really know. Do you have to use egg?”

“What do you want from me?”

It is no more than a whisper, but I am certain that he hears me. He
looks at me but does not answer. In the frying pan, the butter has started to sizzle, and he adds the meatballs one by one in silence.

“Here, you can open the wine.” He hands me a bottle of red wine and an opener.

“You do like red wine, don’t you?”

My fingers are numb as I take the bottle. I look at it as if I don’t understand what it is and rest it on my lap.

“What do you want?” I repeat, my voice steadier now.

“I am Christer Andersson. Good Lord, you still don’t get it do you, Siri?”

I look confused at his gangly figure as he stirs the meatballs at my stove. I still cannot fully take in this improbable appearance in my kitchen, and the wine I drank earlier makes me lethargic. So Christer is standing in my kitchen at one thirty on Christmas morning, frying meatballs. And I think—no, I
know
—that he is Sara’s murderer.

I shake my head in response to his question:
No, I still don’t get it
.

Christer sighs and turns toward me, a spatula in his hand.

“I’m Jenny’s dad. Jenny Andersson’s dad.”

The bottle slips from my grasp and splinters on the floor, wine splashes over my feet, but I feel nothing as I sit petrified on the chair.
He is Jenny’s dad
.

Long red hair, fingers constantly drumming against her thighs in time with inaudible melodies, milky-white skin covered with freckles, a skinny girl’s body dressed in jeans and a tight sweater with a leather strap around her neck
.

Jenny Andersson—my patient who committed suicide. Her father found her with slashed wrists under an apple tree in the yard. And here he is now in my kitchen, frying meatballs. Suddenly, everything is painfully clear to me. He is avenging his daughter’s death. In his eyes, I am the guilty one.

“Is it starting to come back now? I guess maybe she was just one of many patients, one in the crowd. It’s not so easy to remember them all, perhaps?” He grins, but there is pain in his voice.

“Of course I remember Jenny,” I whisper, rubbing my shaking hands
against each other under the table, above the Bordeaux-colored stain growing into a lake. On the blood-colored surface I can see my own reflection. Leaning forward, I huddle on the chair as if to instinctively signal physical submissiveness and thereby appease Christer’s wrath.

“So you also understand why I’m here? You killed my daughter with your carelessness and your incompetence.”

“Christer, I did not kill your daughter. Just as—”

Swoosh. The blow comes without warning and strikes me in the face. I can feel something warm running down my cheek, but I feel no pain, only shock and despair.