The Ice Princess (22 page)

He pulled out his notebook.

‘So it was Friday the week before last, the twenty-second, that you saw Anders Nilsson come home at seven o’clock? How is it that you’re so sure of the time?’

‘I never miss
Separate Worlds
on TV. It starts at seven and it was just before that when I heard a lot of commotion outside. Nothing unusual, I must say. It’s always rather lively over at Anders’s place. His drinking buddies come and go at all hours, and sometimes the police show up as well. But I still went to check through the peephole in the door, and that’s when I saw him. Drunk as a lord, he was trying to unlock his door, but the keyhole would have had to be a metre wide for him to find it. He finally got the door open and went inside, and that’s when I heard the theme song for
Separate Worlds
and hurried back to the TV.’

She was chewing nervously on a lock of her long hair. Patrik saw that her nails were bitten down to the quick. There were traces of hot pink nail polish on what was left of her nails.

Max had steadily worked his way round the coffee table in the direction of Patrik and now took triumphant possession of his trouser leg.

‘Up, up, up,’ he chanted, and Patrik gave Jenny a questioning look.

‘Sure, pick him up. He obviously likes you.’

Patrik awkwardly lifted the boy onto his knee and gave him his bunch of keys to play with. The child beamed like the sun. He gave Patrik a big smile and showed two front teeth that looked like little grains of rice. Patrik gave him a big smile back. He felt a quavering in his chest. If things had turned out differently he could have had a boy of his own on his knee by this time. He cautiously stroked Max’s downy head.

‘How old is he?’

‘Eleven months. He keeps me busy, you’d better believe.’

Her face lit up with tenderness when she looked at her son, and Patrik saw at once how sweet she was behind the tired exterior. He couldn’t even imagine how much work it must take to be a single parent at her age. She should be out partying and living life with her friends. Instead she spent her evenings changing diapers and keeping house. As if to illustrate the tensions within her, she took a cigarette out of a packet lying on the table and lit it. She took a deep, pleasurable drag and then held out the packet to Patrik. He shook his head. He had definite views about smoking in the same room as a baby, but it was her business, not his. Personally he couldn’t understand how anyone could sit and suck on something that smelled as bad as a cigarette.

‘So couldn’t he have come home and then gone out again?’

‘The walls are so thin in this building that you can hear a pin drop out on the landing. Everyone who lives here knows exactly who comes and goes—and when. I’m quite sure that Anders didn’t go out again.’

Patrik realized that he wouldn’t get much further. Out of curiosity he asked, ‘What was your reaction when you heard that Anders was suspected of murder?’

‘I thought it was bullshit.’

She took another deep drag and blew the smoke out in rings. Patrik had to restrain himself from saying anything about the dangers of second-hand smoke. On his knee Max was fully occupied with sucking on his key-ring. He held it between his chubby little fingers and occasionally looked up at Patrik as if to thank him for lending him this fantastic toy.

Jenny went on, ‘Sure, Anders is a fucking wreck, but he could never kill anyone. He’s a decent guy. He rings my bell and asks to bum a cigarette now and then, and whether he’s sober or pissed he’s always decent. I’ve even let him babysit Max a few times when I had to run out to the market. But only when he was completely sober. Never otherwise.’

She stubbed out the cigarette in an overflowing ashtray.

‘Actually there’s nothing bad about any of the winos here. They’re just unfortunate devils, drinking away their lives together. The only people they’re hurting is themselves.’

She tossed her head to get the hair out of her face and reached for the cigarette packet again. Her fingers were yellow from nicotine, and this cigarette obviously tasted as good to her as the first one. Patrik was starting to feel smoked out and didn’t think he’d get any more useful information from Jenny. Max protested at being lifted down and handed back to his mother.

‘Thanks for the help. We’ll probably have occasion to come back again.’

‘Well, I’m always here. I’m not going anywhere.’

The cigarette now lay smouldering in the ashtray and the smoke curled towards Max, who squinted his eyes in annoyance. He was still chewing on the keys and gave Patrik a look as if challenging him to try to take them. Patrik gave a cautious pull, but the rice-grain teeth were amazingly strong. By this time the keys were covered in drool, and it was hard to get a real grip on them. He tentatively pulled a little harder and got an angry grunt in reply. Jenny, used to handling such situations, took a firm grip and managed to extract the keys and hand them to Patrik. Max shrieked at the top of his lungs to show his displeasure at how the situation had turned out. Holding the key ring between his thumb and index finger, Patrik discreetly tried to wipe it off on his trouser leg before he stuffed it back in his pocket.

Jenny and a screaming Max followed him to the door. The last thing Patrik saw before the door closed were big tears running down the boy’s round cheeks. Again he felt an ache somewhere deep in his heart.

The house was too big for him now. Henrik wandered from room to room. Everything in the house reminded him of Alexandra. She had loved and cared for every inch of this house. Sometimes he had wondered if it was for the sake of the house that she had married him. It wasn’t until he had brought her home that their relationship had turned serious, for her. As for him, he’d been serious since the first time he saw her at a university meeting for foreign students. Tall and blonde, she had an aura of aloofness that attracted him more than anything else in his whole life. He’d never wanted anything as much as he wanted Alex. And he was used to getting whatever he wanted.

His parents had been far too preoccupied with their own lives to have time to put any energy into his. The hours that weren’t taken up by the business had been devoured by endless social events. Charity balls, cocktail parties, dinners with business associates. Henrik had to sit nicely at home with the nanny. What he remembered most about his mother was the smell of her perfume when she kissed him good-bye, in her thoughts already on her way to some elaborate party. As compensation he had only to point at something and he would have it. Nothing material had ever been denied him, but it was given with indifference, the same way one absentmindedly scratches a dog that begs for attention.

Alex had been the first thing in Henrik’s life that he couldn’t have just for the asking. She was inaccessible and contrary and therefore irresistible. He had courted her stubbornly and intensely. Roses, dinners, presents and compliments. No effort had been spared. And she had reluctantly let herself be courted and led into a relationship. Not under protest—he never could have coerced her—but with indifference. It wasn’t until he took her home to Göteborg that first summer and they walked into the house here on the island of Särö that she began to take an active interest in the relationship. She responded to his embraces with a new-found intensity, and he was happier than ever before. They were married that same summer in Sweden after knowing each other for only a few months. After they returned to France for one last year at university and graduation, they returned to the house on Särö for good.

Now that he thought back, he realized that the only time he’d seen her really happy was when she was refurbishing the house. He sat down in one of the big Chesterfield easy chairs in the library, leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Images of Alex flickered past like in an old Super 8 film. He felt the leather cool and taut under his hands and followed the winding path of an age crack with his index finger.

What he remembered best were her different smiles. When she found a piece of furniture for the house that was exactly what she’d been looking for, or when she cut away old wallpaper with a knife and found the old original wallpaper in good condition underneath, then her smile was big and genuine. When he kissed her on the nape of her neck, or caressed her cheek, or told her how much he loved her, she would also smile—sometimes. But not always. Her smile then was a smile he came to hate, a distant, preoccupied smile. Afterwards, she would always turn away, and he could see her secrets wriggling like little snakes just beneath the surface.

He had never asked any questions. Out of sheer cowardice. He’d been afraid to start a chain reaction whose consequences he was not prepared to handle. It was better at least to have her physically by his side, with the hope that she would one day be his completely. He was prepared to risk that he might never have everything, but at least he’d be sure of keeping a part of her. A fragment of Alex was enough. That’s how much he loved her.

He looked round the library. The books that covered all the walls and which she had laboriously tracked down in the antiquarian bookshops of Göteborg were only for show. Except for textbooks at university he couldn’t recall ever seeing her read a book. Perhaps she had enough of her own pain and didn’t need to read about other people’s.

What was hardest for him to accept was the pregnancy. Whenever he brought up the question of children she would shake her head vehemently. She didn’t want to bring children into a world that looked like this one, she had told him.

He’d accepted the fact that there was another man. Henrik knew that Alex wasn’t driving so eagerly to Fjällbacka every weekend to be alone, but he could live with that. Their own sex life had been dead for more than a year. He could live with that too. Even her death he could learn to live with, over time. What he couldn’t accept was that she was ready to bear another man’s child but had refused to bear his. That was what haunted him at night. In a sweat he would toss and turn between the sheets with no hope of sleep. He had developed dark circles under his eyes and lost several kilos. He felt like an elastic band that was stretched and stretched and sooner or later would reach a point where it broke with a snap. So far, he had grieved without tears, but now Henrik Wijkner leaned forward, put his face in his hands and wept.

The accusations, the harsh words, the insults all ran off him like water. What were several hours of insults compared with years of guilt? What were several hours of insults compared with life without his ice princess?

He laughed at the pathetic attempts to make him accept the blame. He saw no reason to do that. As long as he saw no reason to do so, they would not be successful
.

But perhaps she had been right. Perhaps the day of reckoning was finally here. Unlike her, he knew that the judgement would not be clothed in human flesh. The only thing that could pass judgement on him was something that was greater than humanity, greater than the flesh, but equal to the soul. The only thing that can judge me is the one who can see my soul, he thought
.

It was strange the way completely opposite emotions could be combined into a whole new feeling. Love and hate became indifference. Vengeance and forgiveness became decisiveness. Tenderness and bitterness became sorrow, so great that it could crush a man. For him she had always been a remarkable mixture of light and darkness. A Janus face that alternately judged and understood. Sometimes she covered him with hot kisses despite his repulsiveness. Sometimes she reviled and hated him for the same reason. There was no rest or peace to be found in opposites
.

The last time he saw her was the time he loved her most. Finally she was completely his. Finally she belonged to him totally, to do with as he pleased. To be loved or hated. Without the chance of once again countering his love with her indifference
.

Before it had been like loving a veil. An elusive, transparent, seductive veil. The last time he saw her the veil had lost its mystique and all that remained was the flesh. But that made her accessible. For the first time he thought that he could know who she was. He had touched her stiff, frozen limbs and felt the soul that was still thrashing inside its frozen prison. Never had he loved her as much as he did then. Now it was time to meet his fate, eye to eye. He hoped that fate would prove to be forgiving. But he didn’t believe it would
.

The telephone woke her. To think that people couldn’t ring at a sensible hour.

‘Erica Falck.’

‘Hi, it’s Anna.’ Her tone was wary. With good reason, Erica thought.

‘Hi.’ Erica didn’t intend to let her off easily.

‘How’s it going?’ Anna was treading softly on a minefield.

‘Fine, thanks. How about you?’

‘Thanks, things are going fine. How’s the book coming?’

‘It’s a little up and down. But it’s progressing, at least. Everything all right with the kids?’ Erica decided to throw her a sop, at least.

‘Emma has a bad cold, but Adrian’s colic seems to be improving. So now I get to sleep an hour a night anyway.’

Anna laughed but Erica thought she heard an undertone of bitterness.

There was a moment of silence.

‘You know, we have to talk about this thing with the house.’

‘Yes, I think so too.’ Now it was Erica’s turn to sound bitter.

‘We have to sell it, Erica. If you can’t buy us out then we’ll have to sell it.’

When Erica didn’t reply, Anna babbled on nervously. ‘Lucas has talked to the estate agent, and he thinks we should set the asking price at three million. Three million, Erica, can you imagine that? With a million and a half as your share you could write in peace and quiet without having to worry about finances. It can’t be easy for you to make a living as a writer. What sort of printings do you have for each book? Two thousand? Three thousand? And you probably don’t make too many kronor per book, do you? Don’t you understand, Erica, this is your big chance too. You’ve always talked about wanting to write a novel. With this money you can take the time. The agent thinks we should wait to show the house until at least April or May to get the most interest, but once we list it the house should sell in a couple of weeks. You understand that we have to do this, don’t you?’

Anna’s voice sounded imploring, but Erica wasn’t in a sympathetic mood. Her discovery from the day before had kept her awake and worrying half the night. She felt betrayed and grumpy in general.

‘No, I don’t understand it, Anna. This is our parents’ home. We grew up here. Mamma and Pappa bought this house when they were newlyweds. They loved this house. And I do too, Anna. You can’t do this.’

‘But the money—’

‘I don’t give a shit about the money! I’ve managed fine so far, and I intend to continue doing so.’ Erica was so angry now that her voice was shaking.

‘But Erica, you must understand that you can’t make me keep the house if I don’t want to. Half of it is mine, after all.’

‘If you were the one who wanted to do this, I’d think it was very, very sad, but I would accept your point of view. The problem is that I know that it’s somebody else’s opinions I’m hearing. Lucas is the one who wants to do this, not you. The question is whether you even know what you want. Do you?’

Erica didn’t bother waiting for Anna’s reply. ‘And I refuse to let my life be controlled by Lucas Maxwell. Your husband is a big fucking shithead! And you bloody well ought to come over here and help me go through Mamma and Pappa’s things. I’ve been at it for weeks, trying to organize everything, and I’m only halfway done. It’s not fair that I have to do it all by myself! If you’re so tied to the stove that you aren’t even allowed to help with your parents’ estate, then you ought to give serious thought to whether this is how you want to live the rest of your life.’

Erica slammed down the phone so hard that it almost flew off the nightstand. She was so furious she was shaking.

In Stockholm Anna was sitting on the floor with the phone in her hand. Lucas was at work and the children were asleep, so she had taken the opportunity to ring Erica now that she had some time to herself. It was a conversation she’d been putting off for several days, but Lucas had been nagging her to ring Erica about the house. Finally she gave in.

Anna felt torn into a thousand pieces, all being pulled in different directions. She loved Erica and she also loved the house in Fjällbacka. What Erica didn’t understand was that she had to put her own family first. There was nothing she was not prepared to do or sacrifice for her children, and if that meant keeping Lucas happy at the cost of her relationship with her big sister, then so be it. Emma and Adrian were the only reason she got up in the morning, the only reason to continue living in this world. If she could only make Lucas happy, everything would work out. She knew that. It was because she was so difficult and didn’t do what he wanted that he was forced to be so hard on her. If she could give him this gift, sacrifice her parents’ home for him, then he would understand how much she was prepared to do for him and her family. And everything would be good again.

But somewhere deep inside her a voice was saying something entirely different. Anna hung her head and wept, and with her tears she drowned out that faint voice. She left the phone lying on the floor.

Erica kicked off the covers in annoyance and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. She regretted her hard words to Anna, but she was already in a bad mood, and lack of sleep had made her lose her head completely. She tried ringing Anna back to try and patch things up, but got a busy signal.

‘Shit!’

She gave the stool in front of the vanity table an undeserved kick, but instead of feeling better Erica stubbed her toe so badly that she hopped about howling on one foot, holding her sore toe. She was very doubtful that even childbirth could be this painful. When the pain finally ebbed away she got onto the scale against her better judgement.

She knew that she shouldn’t, but the masochist inside her forced her to find out for sure. She took off the T-shirt she slept in. It always added a few extra ounces, and she even wondered whether her knickers would make any difference. Probably not. She stepped on with her right foot first but kept some of her weight on the left foot that was still on the floor. Gradually she transferred her weight to the right foot, and when the needle reached sixty kilos she wished she could let it stay there. But no. When she finally put all her weight on the scale, it mercilessly read seventy-three. Okay. As she had feared, over one kilo worse. She had guessed about one, but the scale showed over two kilos more than the last time she weighed herself, which was on the morning she found Alex.

Since then, she had felt it was very, very unnecessary to weigh herself. Not because she hadn’t noticed from her waistband that she had gained weight, but up until the moment when she saw it in black and white, denial was a welcome companion. Dampness in the closet or shrinkage due to excessive washing temperature had served her well as excuses countless times in the past. Right now it merely felt hopeless, and she had a good mind to cancel dinner that evening with Patrik. When she saw him she wanted to feel sexy and pretty and thin, not bloated and fat. She gloomily looked at her stomach and tried sucking it in as far as she could. Useless. She looked at herself in profile in the full-length mirror and tried instead to pooch out her stomach as much as she could. There, that’s the image that matched how she felt right now.

With a sigh, she pulled on a pair of loose jogging trousers with a forgiving stretch waistband and put on the same T-shirt she’d slept in. She promised herself that on Monday, she’d do something about her weight again. Starting now was no good, she’d already planned to serve a three-course dinner tonight and she had to admit: if you want to dazzle a man with your cooking, then cream and butter are essential ingredients. Besides, Monday was a good day to start a new life. For the hundred-thousandth time she made a solemn promise to herself that on Monday she would start exercising and stay on her Weight Watchers diet. But not today.

A bigger problem was the reason why she’d almost worried herself sick since yesterday. She had turned over all the options, pondering what she should do, but without coming up with any solution. She suddenly knew something that she sincerely wished she had never found out.

The coffee began to smell good from the coffeemaker, and life seemed a shade brighter. Amazing what a little of that hot beverage could do. She poured a cup and drank it black with great enjoyment as she stood by the kitchen worktop. She had never been much for breakfast; that would save her a few calories for this evening.

When the doorbell rang she was so startled that she spilled a little coffee on her T-shirt. She swore out loud, wondering who it could be at this hour of the morning. She glanced at the kitchen clock. Eight-thirty. She set down the cup and opened the door. There on the porch stood Julia Carlgren slapping her arms to keep warm.

‘Hi.’ Erica’s voice was inquisitive.

‘Hi.’ Then silence from Julia.

Erica wondered what Alex’s little sister was doing on her front porch so early on a Tuesday morning, but her good breeding asserted itself and she asked Julia to come in.

Julia tramped briskly inside, hung up her coat and scarf, and preceded Erica into the living room.

‘Do you think I could have a cup of that wonderful coffee I smell?’

‘Oh, sure, I’ll get you one.’

Safely out of Julia’s sight in the kitchen, Erica poured a cup of coffee and rolled her eyes. Something wasn’t quite right with that girl.

Erica handed the cup to Julia and asked her to have a seat on the wicker sofa on the veranda. They drank their coffee in silence. Erica decided to wait her out. Julia was going to have to broach the subject herself and explain why she was here. It took a couple of tense minutes before Julia spoke.

‘Are you living here now?’

‘No, actually. I live in Stockholm but I’m here straightening out everything with the house.’

‘Yes, I heard. I’m sorry.’

‘Thank you. My condolences to you too.’

Julia gave an odd little laugh that Erica found surprising and misplaced. She recalled the document she had found in the wastebasket at Nelly Lorentz’s house and wondered how the pieces fit together.

‘You’re probably wondering why I’m here.’ Julia looked at Erica with her strange, steady gaze. She blinked very seldom.

It struck Erica again how diametrically opposite she was to her big sister. Julia’s skin was pitted with acne scars, and her hair looked as if she’d cut it herself with nail scissors. Without a mirror. There was something unhealthy about the way she looked. A sickly pallor had settled like a dirty grey film over her skin. Nor did she appear to share Alex’s interest in clothes. Her outfits looked as though they had been bought in shops catering to little old retired ladies. Her clothes were as far from the style of the day as they could get without crossing the line to become masquerade costumes.

‘Do you have any photos of Alex?’

‘Excuse me?’ Erica was startled by the direct question. ‘Photos? Yes, I suppose I do. Quite a few, even. Pappa loved taking pictures, and he took a lot of us when we were kids. Alex was over here so often that she’s probably in a lot of the pictures.’

‘Could I see them?’ Julia gave Erica a reproachful look, as if admonishing her for not going to fetch the photos already. Grateful for any excuse to escape Julia’s penetrating gaze for a moment, Erica went to get the photo albums.

The albums were in a chest up in the attic. She hadn’t had a chance to clean there yet, but she knew exactly where the chest was. All the family photographs were stored inside; she had shuddered at the thought of sitting down to go through them. A large part of the photos were in unsorted piles, but she knew that the ones she was looking for had been carefully put into albums. She paged through them systematically, starting at the top of the stack. In the third album she found what she was looking for. The fourth album also had pictures of Alex, and clutching both albums she cautiously climbed down the attic stairs.

Julia was sitting in exactly the same position as before. Erica wondered whether she had moved at all while she was gone.

‘Here’s something that should interest you.’

Erica was out of breath. She dropped the thick photo albums on the coffee table so hard that dust flew.

Julia eagerly began looking through the first album while Erica sat down next to her on the sofa to describe what was in the pictures.

‘When was this one taken?’

Julia was pointing at the first photo she found of Alex, two pages into the album.

‘Let me see. This must be…1974. Yes, I think that’s right. We were about nine then, I think.’

Erica ran a finger over the photo and felt a strong sense of melancholy in her stomach. It was so long ago. She and Alex stood naked in the garden on a warm summer day. If she remembered correctly they had been naked because they were running back and forth through the water spraying from the garden hose. What seemed a bit odd about the picture was that Alex was wearing winter mittens.

‘Why does she have mittens on? This looks like it’s in July or something.’ Julia turned an astonished face to Erica, who laughed at the memory.

‘Your sister loved those mittens and insisted on wearing them, not only all winter long but also for large parts of the summer. She was as stubborn as a mule, and nobody could convince her to put away those darn disgusting mittens.’

‘She knew what she wanted, didn’t she?’

Julia looked at the picture in the album with an almost tender expression. The next second it was gone, and she impatiently moved on to the next page.

The photos felt like relics from another lifetime for Erica. It was so long ago, and so much had happened since then. Sometimes it felt as if the childhood years with Alex were only a dream.

‘We were more like sisters than friends. We spent all our waking hours together, and we often slept over at each other’s house too. Every day we used to compare notes on what was for dinner and then we picked the house with the best food.’

‘In other words, you often ate here.’ For the first time a smile crept onto Julia’s lips.

‘Yes, say what you will about your mother, she could never have made a living on her cooking.’

One particular photo caught Erica’s eye. She touched it gently. It was an incredibly lovely photograph. Alex was sitting in the stern of Tore’s boat, laughing boisterously. Her blonde hair was flying round her face, and the silhouette of all of Fjällbacka was spread out behind her. They must have been on their way out for a day of sunshine and swimming on the skerries. There had been many such days. Her mother had not come along, as usual. She had always blamed a host of small matters she had to attend to, and chose to stay home. That’s how it always was. Erica could easily count on the fingers of one hand the excursions that had included her mother Elsy. She chuckled when she saw a picture of Anna from the same boat trip. As usual, she was playing monkey; in this picture she was hanging daringly outside the railing and making faces at the camera.