The Blood Spilt (3 page)

The older associates had been staying in their summer cottages on the west coast, or in Skåne, or out in the archipelago. Arne Eklöf had lost his mother, and told Rebecka quite candidly how he’d spent the summer quarrelling about her estate.

“It’s bloody true,” he said. “When the Lord turns up with death, the devil turns up with the heirs. Can I get you another?”

He nodded toward her glass. She refused. He gave her a look that was almost angry. As if she’d refused further confidences. Presumably that was exactly what she’d done. He stomped off toward the drinks table. Rebecka stayed where she was, gazing after him. It was a strain chatting to people, but it was a nightmare standing there on her own with an empty glass. Like a poor pot plant that can’t even ask for water.

I could go to the bathroom, she thought, glancing at her watch. And I can stay in there for seven minutes if there isn’t a queue. Three if somebody’s waiting outside the door.

She looked around for somewhere to put her glass down. Just at that moment Maria Taube materialized at her side. She held out a little dish of Waldorf salad.

“Eat,” she said. “Looking at you frightens me.”

Rebecka took the salad. The memory of last spring flooded through her when she looked at Maria.

* * *

Harsh spring sunshine outside Rebecka’s filthy windows. But she has the blinds pulled right down. In the middle of the week, on an ordinary morning, Maria comes to visit. Afterward Rebecka wonders how come she opened the door. She should have stayed under the covers and hidden.

But. She goes to the door. Hardly conscious of the doorbell ringing. Almost absentmindedly she undoes the security lock. Then she turns the catch of the lock with her left hand while her right hand pushes down the door handle. Her head isn’t connected to anything. Just like when you find yourself standing in front of the refrigerator with the door open, wondering what you’re doing in the kitchen anyway.

Afterward she thinks that maybe there’s a sensible little person inside her. A little girl in red Wellingtons and a life jacket. A survivor. And that little girl had recognized those high heels tip-tapping along.

The girl says to Rebecka’s hands and feet: “Ssh, it’s Maria. Don’t tell her. Just get her up and make sure she opens the door.”

Maria and Rebecka are sitting in the kitchen. They are drinking coffee, just on its own. Rebecka doesn’t say much. The pyramid of dirty dishes, the drifts of post and junk mail and newspapers on the hall floor, the crumpled sweaty clothes on her body say everything there is to say.

And in the middle of all this her hands begin to shake. She has to put her coffee cup down on the table. They are flailing about like mad things, like two headless chickens.

“No more coffee for me,” she tries to joke.

She laughs, but it comes out more like a discordant hacking noise.

Maria looks her in the eyes. Rebecka feels as though she knows. How Rebecka sometimes stands out on the balcony looking down at the hard asphalt below. And how she sometimes can’t make herself go out and down to the shops. But has to live on whatever she happens to have in. Drink tea and eat pickled gherkins straight from the jar.

“I’m no shrink,” says Maria, “but I do know things get worse if you don’t eat and sleep. And you have to get dressed in the mornings and go out.”

Rebecka hides her hands under the kitchen table.

“You must think I’ve gone mad.”

“Honey, my family is crawling with women who’ve got Nerves. They faint and swoon, have panic attacks and hypochondria the whole time. And my aunt, have I told you about her? One minute she’s sitting in a psychiatric ward with somebody helping her get dressed, the next she’s starting up a Montessori nursery. I’ve seen it all.”

The following day one of the partners, Torsten Karlsson, offers to let Rebecka stay in his cottage. Maria used to work with Torsten in the business law section before she moved over and started working for Måns Wenngren with Rebecka.

“You’d be doing me a favor,” says Torsten. “It would save me worrying whether somebody had broken in, and driving up there just to do the watering. I ought to sell the place really. But that’s a load of hassle as well.”

She should have said no, of course. It was so obvious. But the little girl in the red Wellingtons said yes before she’d even opened her mouth.

R
ebecka ate some of the Waldorf salad dutifully. She started with half a walnut. As soon as she got it into her mouth, it grew to the size of a plum. She chewed and chewed. Got ready to swallow. Maria looked at her.

“So how are things?” she asked.

Rebecka smiled. Her tongue felt rough.

“Actually, I have absolutely no idea.”

“But you’re okay about being here this evening?”

Rebecka shrugged her shoulders.

No, she thought. But what can you do? Force yourself to go out. Otherwise you’ll soon end up sitting in a cottage somewhere with the authorities after you, terrified of people, allergic to electricity and with a load of cats crapping indoors.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It feels as if people are checking me out when I look away. Talking about me when I’m not there. As soon as I come along, the conversation kind of starts afresh. You know what I mean? It seems as if it’s ‘Tennis, anyone?’ in a mad panic as soon as they see me coming.”

“Well, it is,” smiled Maria. “You’re the firm’s very own Modesty Blaise. And now you’ve gone to stay out at Torsten’s place and you’re getting more and more isolated and peculiar. Of course everybody’s talking about you.”

Rebecka laughed.

“Oh, thanks, I feel much better now.”

“I saw you talking to Johan Grill and Petra Wilhelmsson. What did you think of Miss Spin? I’m sure she’s very nice, but I just can’t take to somebody whose backside is up between her shoulder blades. Mine’s like a teenager. It’s kind of liberated itself from me and wants to stand on its own two feet.”

“I thought I heard something dragging along the grass when you turned up.”

They fell silent and gazed out over the channel where an old Fingal was chugging along.

“Don’t worry,” said Maria. “People will soon start to get really pissed. Then they’ll come weaving over to you wanting to chat.”

She turned to Rebecka, leaned in close and said in a slurring voice:

“So how does it actually feel to kill somebody?”

* * *

Rebecka’s and Maria’s boss Måns Wenngren was standing a little way off, watching them.

Good, he thought. Nicely done.

He could see Maria Taube was making Rebecka Martinsson laugh. Maria’s hands were waving in the air, twisting and turning. Her shoulders moved up and down. It was a wonder she could keep her glass under control. Years of training with upper-class families, presumably. And Rebecka’s posture softened. She looked brown and strong, he noticed. Skinny as a rake, but then she always had been.

Torsten Karlsson was standing a little way to the side behind Måns studying the barbecue buffet. His mouth was watering. Indonesian lamb kebabs, kebabs of beef fillet or scampi with Cajun spices, Caribbean fish kebabs with ginger and pineapple, chicken kebabs with sage and lemon, or Asiatic style, marinated in yogurt with ginger, garam masala and chopped cucumber, along with lots of different sauces and salads. A selection of red and white wines, beer and cider. He knew they called him “Karlsson on the roof” at the office, after the character in Astrid Lindgren’s books. Short and stocky, his black hair sticking up like a scrubbing brush on top of his head. Måns, on the other hand, always looked good in his clothes. There was no way women told him he was sweet, or that he made them laugh.

“I heard you’d got a new Jag,” he said, pinching an olive from the bulgur wheat salad.

“Mmm, an E-type cabriolet, mint condition,” answered Måns mechanically. “How’s she getting on?”

For a split second Torsten Karlsson wondered whether Måns was asking how his own Jag was getting on. He looked up, followed the direction of Måns’ gaze and landed on Rebecka Martinsson and Maria Taube.

“She’s staying up at your place,” Måns went on.

“She couldn’t stay cooped up in that little one room apartment. She didn’t seem to have anywhere to go. Why don’t you ask her yourself? She’s your assistant.”

“Because I’ve just asked you,” snapped Måns.

Torsten Karlsson held up his hands in a don’t-shoot-I-surrender gesture.

“To be honest, I don’t really know,” he said. “I never go out there. And if I am there we talk about other things.”

“Like what?”

“Well, about putting fresh tar on the steps, about the red Falun paint, about her plans to replace all the putty round the windows. She works all the time. For a while she seemed to be obsessed by the compost.”

The expression on Måns’ face encouraged him to go on. Interested, almost amused. Torsten Karlsson pushed his fingers through the black mop of hair on his head.

“Well,” he said, “first of all she set about building. Three different compost bins for garden and household waste. Bought the rat proof kind. Then she built a rapid compost heap. She practically made me write down how you had to layer it all with grass and sand—pure science. And then, when she was supposed to go on that course on corporate taxation in Malmö, you remember?”

“I do, yes.”

“Well, she rang me up and said she couldn’t go, because the compost was, now how did she put it, there was something the matter with it, not enough nitrogen. So she’d fetched some household waste from a nursery nearby, and now it was too wet. So she’d have to stay at home and scatter and drill.”

“Drill?”

“Yes, I had to promise to go out there during the week she was away and drill down through the compost with an old hand drill— the kind you use to make holes in the ice. Then she found the former owners’ compost heap a little way into the forest.”

“And?”

“There was all sorts in there. Old cat skeletons, broken bottles, all kinds of shit… so then she decided to clean it. She found an old bed behind the outhouse with a kind of mesh base. She used that as a huge sieve. Shoveled the stuff onto the bed and shook it so the clean compost fell through. I should have brought along some of our clients and introduced them to one of our promising young associates.”

Måns stared at Torsten Karlsson. He could see Rebecka in his mind’s eye, rosy cheeks, hair standing on end, frantically shaking an iron bed on top of a pile of earth. Torsten down below with wide-eyed clients dressed in dark suits.

They both burst out laughing at the same time and almost couldn’t stop. Torsten wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

“Although she has calmed down a bit now,” he said. “She isn’t so… I don’t know… the last time I was there she was sitting out on the steps with a book and a cup of coffee.”

“What book was it?” asked Måns.

Torsten Karlsson gave him an odd look.

“I didn’t think to look,” he said. “Talk to her.”

Måns knocked back his glass of red wine.

“I’ll go and say hello,” he said. “But you know me. I’m crap at talking to people. And even worse at talking to women.”

He tried to laugh, but Torsten wasn’t smiling.

“You have to ask her how she is.”

Måns blew air down his nose.

“I know, I know.”

I’m better at short-term relationships, he thought. Clients. Cab drivers. The checkout girl in the local shop. No old conflicts and disappointments lurking just under the surface like tangled seaweed.

* * *

Late summer’s afternoon on Lidö. The red evening sun settling over the gentle contours of the rocks like a golden bowl. One of the archipelago cruise boats slips by out in the channel. The reeds down by the water put their heads together and rustle and whisper to each other. The sound of the guests chatting and laughing is carried out over the water.

Dinner has progressed to the stage where cigarette packets have appeared on the tables. It was okay to stretch your legs before dessert, so it wasn’t quite so crowded around the tables. Sweaters and cardigans that had been tied around waists or slung over shoulders were now slipped over arms chilled by the evening air. Some people were paying a third or fourth visit to the buffet, standing and chatting to the cooks who were turning the spitting kebabs over the glowing charcoal. Some were well on the way to being drunk. Had to hold on to the railings when they went up the steps to the toilets. Waving their arms about and spilling cigarette ash all over their clothes. Talking just a bit too loudly. One of the partners insisted on helping a waitress carry out the desserts. With great authority and a gentlemanly flourish he relieved her of a big tray of vanilla cream tartlets with glazed red currants. The tartlets slid alarmingly toward the edges of the tray. The waitress gave a somewhat strained smile and exchanged a look with the cooks who were busy at the barbecue. One of them dropped what he was doing and hurried to the kitchen with her to fetch the rest of the trays.

Rebecka and Maria were sitting down on the rocks. The stones were releasing the heat they’d stored up during the course of the day. Maria scratched a mosquito bite on the inside of her wrist.

“Torsten’s going up to Kiruna next week,” she said. “Did he tell you?”

“No.”

“It’s this project with the Jansson Group Auditors. Now that the Swedish church has separated from the state, it’s an interesting client group to link up with. The idea is to sell a legal package, including accounting and auditing of the Swedish church assets all over the country. Offer help with just about everything, ‘how do we get rid of Berit and her fibromyalgia,’ ‘how do we reach an economically sound deal with entrepreneurs,’ the whole package. I don’t really know, but I think there’s a long-term plan to work together with a broker and grab the capital administration. Anyway, Torsten’s going up to give the sales pitch to the church council in Kiruna.”

“And?”

“You could go with him. You know what he’s like. He’d think it was really nice to have some company.”

“I can’t go to Kiruna,” exclaimed Rebecka.

“No, I know that’s what you think. But I’m wondering why.”