The Stonecutter (12 page)

It had taken many years before they understood that there was something wrong with him. Or rather, they knew that something wasn’t as it should be, but they didn’t know what it was. He wasn’t mentally challenged, but instead extremely intelligent for his age. She didn’t think he was autistic, because he didn’t withdraw inside his shell and had no aversion to being touched. Morgan had gone to school long before ADHD and DAMP became household words, so such diagnoses had never even been considered. And yet there was no denying that something wasn’t quite right. He behaved strangely and seemed resistant to any guidance. He simply didn’t seem to comprehend the invisible communication between people, and the rules that governed social intercourse were like Hebrew to him. He kept doing and saying the wrong thing, and Monica knew that people whispered behind her back, assuming that her son’s behavior was a discipline problem. But she knew that it was more than that. Even his motor skills were erratic. His clumsiness was constantly causing mishaps. Sometimes the accidents weren’t even accidents but something he did on purpose. That was what worried her most, that it seemed impossible to teach him the difference between right and wrong. They had tried everything: punishment, bribery, threats, and promises, all the tools that parents use to instill a conscience in their children. But nothing had worked. Morgan could do the most awful things, but have no remorse when he was caught.

But fifteen years ago they’d had an improbable stroke of luck. One of the many teachers they had visited over the years had a real passion for his profession, and he read everything he could find about new research in the field. One day he told them that he’d discovered a diagnosis that fit Morgan’s condition perfectly: Asperger’s syndrome. A form of autism, but with normal to high intelligence in the patient. The burden of all those years of hardship seemed to lift from Monica’s shoulders the minute she heard the term for the first time. She had tasted it, rolled it around on her tongue with pleasure: Asperger’s. It wasn’t something they had simply imagined, nor were they at fault in failing to bring up their child properly. She had been right that it was difficult if not impossible for Morgan to comprehend what made daily life so much easier for everyone else. None of the implicit meanings in body language or facial expressions registered in Morgan’s brain. With this new diagnosis, for the first time they were finally able to offer him serious help. Or rather
she
was. To be honest, Kaj hadn’t been particularly involved with Morgan. Not since he’d announced that his son would never live up to his expectations. After that, Morgan had become Monica’s boy. So it was she who read everything she could find about Asperger’s and developed some basic tools that would help her son get through the day. Little cards that described various scenarios and how one was supposed to behave, role-playing games in which they practiced various situations, and conversations to try and get him to understand intellectually what his brain refused to assimilate intuitively. She also took great pains to speak clearly with Morgan. To clear away all the metaphors, exaggerations, and figures of speech that people used in order to give color and meaning to language. To a large degree, she had been successful. At least he had learned to function tolerably in the world, but he still kept mostly to himself. Alone with his computers.

That was why Lilian Florin had managed to transform Monica’s vague sense of irritation into hatred. She was able to put up with everything else. She didn’t give a damn about building codes and infringements and threats about one thing and another. As far as she was concerned, Kaj was just as much to blame in the feud, and she even believed that he sometimes enjoyed it. But the fact that Lilian had gone after Morgan time after time with senseless accusations made Monica furious. Just because her son was different, it seemed to give Lilian, and many others for that matter, a free hand to mock him. The mere fact that he still lived, if not at home, then on the same lot as his parents, grated on many people. But none of them was as malicious as Lilian. Many times she regretted moving to Fjällbacka. She had even tried to talk to Kaj a few times about leaving, but she knew that it was pointless. He was far too bull-headed.

She shelved the last books from the cart and made another round of the shelves to see whether there were any more to collect. But she couldn’t focus: her hands shook with rage to think of all the malicious attacks on Morgan that Lilian had instigated over the years. Not only had she run to the police a few times, she had spread false rumors in town as well, and that kind of gossip was almost impossible to refute. Where there’s smoke there’s fire, as they say. Even though everybody knew that Lilian Florin was a regular gossipmonger, her words gradually became accepted as truth, through the sheer force of repetition.

Now of course, she had the town’s sympathy as well. With her granddaughter’s death, much of Lilian’s nastiness had been forgiven in one blow. But even that couldn’t make Monica feel sorry for her. No, she was saving her sympathy for the daughter. How Charlotte could be Lilian’s child was a mystery. It would be hard to find a nicer person, and Monica felt so sorry for Charlotte that she thought her heart would break.

But she didn’t intend to waste a single tear on Lilian.

Aina was surprised when the doctor showed up at the clinic at his usual time, eight in the morning.

‘Hi, Niclas,’ she said hesitantly. “I thought you were going to come in late today.’

He just shook his head and went into his examination room. He didn’t have the energy to explain. He simply couldn’t stand to be at home for a minute longer, despite the enormous guilt he felt at leaving. But that was better, more manageable, than the worse guilt he felt when he was at home. A guilt that made his throat tighten so he found it hard to breathe. If he had stayed in that house any longer he would have suffocated, he was sure of it. He couldn’t even look at Charlotte’s face, or meet her gaze. The despair in her eyes, together with his own guilt-ridden conscience, was more than he could bear. So he fled to his job instead. It was cowardly, he knew. But he had long since lost all illusions about himself. He was neither strong nor courageous.

Still, he hadn’t intended for Sara to be affected. He hadn’t intended for anyone to be affected. Niclas pressed his hand to his chest as he sat paralyzed behind his big desk, cluttered with casebooks and other papers. The pain was so sharp that he could feel it racing up and down his veins and collecting in his heart. Suddenly he understood how a heart attack must feel. That pain surely couldn’t be any worse than this.

Niclas ran his hands through his hair. What had happened, what needed to be resolved, lay before him like a baffling riddle. And yet he had to solve it. He needed to do something. Somehow he had to get out of the bind he was in. Everything had always gone so well before. Charm, adroitness, and an open and honest smile had saved him from most of the consequences of his actions over the years, but perhaps he had finally come to the end of the road.

The telephone began to ring in front of him. Consultation hours had begun. Now, despite his own devastation, it was time to go and heal the sick.

With Maja in a baby sling on her stomach, Erica was making a desperate attempt to clean the house. She had her mother-in-law’s previous visit fresh in her mind, as she manically pushed the vacuum cleaner round the living room. Hopefully Kristina would have no reason to go upstairs, so if Erica managed to make the ground floor presentable before she arrived, everything would be fine.

The last time Kristina came over, Maja had been three weeks old, and Erica was still in a stunned fog. The dust bunnies had been as big as rats, and the dirty dishes were piled up in the sink. Of course Patrik had made some attempts to start cleaning up, but since Erica flung Maja into his arms as soon as he came home, he hadn’t gotten any further than to take the vacuum cleaner out of the broom cupboard.

Kristina had looked disgusted the minute she walked in the door, and it was only the sight of her granddaughter that had made her smile. For the next three days Erica had been forced to listen through her mental haze as Kristina muttered that it was certainly good she had come, or else Maja would soon develop asthma in all this dust. She said that in her day nobody sat staring at the TV all day long. Women managed to take care of a baby and a number of siblings, clean house, and also see to it that a good meal was on the table when the husband came home. Fortunately Erica had been much too weak to be irritated. Honestly, she had even been grateful when her mother-in-law proudly went out with Maja in the stroller or helped bathe and change the baby. But by now Erica had regained some of her strength, and she was determined to avoid any criticism that would make her now constant melancholy any worse.

Erica looked at the clock. An hour before Kristina was scheduled to arrive, and she still hadn’t done the dishes. She probably ought to dust as well. She glanced down at her daughter, who had fallen asleep contentedly to the sound of the vacuum cleaner. Erica wondered if they should try this at bedtime. She had read somewhere that babies liked to fall asleep to white noise, like the vacuum cleaner or a clothes dryer. It was worth a try, at least. For the time being the only way to get their daughter to sleep was to have her lie on Erica’s stomach or at her breast, and that was beginning to be intolerable. Maybe she ought to test the methods she’d read about in
The Baby Book,
the excellent book about child care by Anna Wahlgren, mother of nine. She had read it before Maja was born, along with a stack of other books, but as soon as a real baby appeared on the scene, all theoretical knowledge flew out of the window. Instead, she and Patrik practiced a sort of ‘survival from one minute to the next’ philosophy with Maja. Erica had begun to feel that it was time to retake control. It didn’t make sense that a baby two months old could dominate the whole house to such a large extent. If Erica had been feeling better, that would be one thing, but she sensed herself gradually slipping further into the darkness.

A quick rap at the door interrupted her thoughts. Either an hour had passed in record time, or her mother-in-law had arrived an hour early. The latter was more likely, and Erica looked around the room in dismay. Oh, well, nothing to be done about it now. She just had to put on a smile and let her mother-in-law in. She opened the front door.

‘But my dear, you’re standing there with Maja in the draft! She’ll catch a cold, you know.’

Erica closed her eyes and counted to ten.

Patrik hoped that things would go well when his mother came to visit. He knew that she could be a bit … overwhelming, one might say. Even though Erica usually had no problem dealing with her mother-in-law, she hadn’t been herself since Maja was born. But she needed a break, and since he couldn’t provide it for her, they had to make use of the resources that were available. He wondered again whether he ought to try and find someone Erica could talk to, a professional. But who? No, it was probably best to let her work through things on her own. The depression would surely pass as soon as they got a routine established. At least that was what he tried to believe. But he couldn’t prevent a little nagging suspicion from creeping in, a suspicion that maybe he was choosing to believe this because it required the smallest amount of effort on his part.

He forced himself to focus on the notes he had before him. He had called a meeting in his office for nine o’clock, which was in five minutes. As he suspected, Mellberg hadn’t objected to involving additional personnel; he seemed to view it as inevitable. Anything else would have been idiotic, even by Mellberg’s standards. How could they have conducted a homicide investigation with just two detectives, Ernst and himself?

First to arrive was Martin, who sat down in the only visitor’s chair in the room. The others would have to bring their own chairs.

‘How’d it go with the flat?’ Patrik asked. ‘Was it any good?’

‘It was fantastic!’ said Martin, his eyes shining. ‘We took it on the spot. Weekend after next, you can come and help carry cartons.’

‘Oh, is that right?’ Patrik laughed. ‘How nice of you. I’ll have to get back to you on that, after conferring with the boss at home. Erica’s being a little stingy with my time right now, so I can’t promise you anything.’

‘I understand,’ said Martin. ‘I have a number of favors I can call in from people I’ve helped move, so we’ll probably manage fine without you.’

‘What’s this I hear about moving?’ Annika asked, sweeping in with a coffee cup in one hand and notebook in the other. ‘Should I really believe my ears? Are you finally going to join the rest of us and settle down, Martin?’

He flushed, as he always did when Annika teased him, but he couldn’t help smiling.

‘Yeah, you heard right. Pia and I found a flat in Grebbestad. We’re moving in two weeks from today.’

‘Well, I’m certainly glad to hear it,’ said Annika. ‘It’s about time, too. I’d been worrying that you were going to end up gathering dust on the shelf. So … when are we going to hear the pitter-pat of little feet?’

‘Oh, give me a break,’ said Martin. ‘I remember the way you badgered Patrik when he met Erica, and now look how things have turned out for him. That poor guy felt so much pressure to propagate with his woman, and now he sits here looking ten years older.’ He winked at Patrik to show that he was joking.

‘Well, let me know if you need any tips on how to do it,’ Patrik offered cheerfully.

Martin was working on a witty rejoinder when Ernst and Gösta crashed into each other behind him, having simultaneously tried to wedge through the doorway with their chairs. Grumbling, Gösta slipped past Ernst, who nonchalantly took a place in the middle of the room.

‘It’s going to be tight with the whole crowd in here,’ said Gösta, glowering at Martin and Annika, who scooted their chairs over.

‘There’s always room for one more, as my mother used to say,’ Annika commented a bit sarcastically.

Mellberg came sauntering in last of all; he was content to lean against the door jamb.