The Stonecutter (3 page)

She pushed aside the troubling thoughts and shifted Maja from one breast to the other, which made the baby fuss a bit. Listlessly she picked up the remote and changed the channel.
Glamour
was about to start. After that, the only thing she had to look forward to was this afternoon’s coffee break with Charlotte.

Lilian stirred the soup with brisk strokes. She had to do everything in this house. Cook, clean, and take care of the kids. At least Albin had finally gone to sleep. Her expression softened at the thought of her grandson. He was a little angel. Hardly made a peep. Not at all like the other one. She frowned and stirred faster, sending little drops of soup splashing over the edge where they sizzled and stuck to the surface of the stove.

She carefully carried the pot over to the tray she had prepared on the countertop and poured the hot soup into the bowl. The warm aroma rising with the steam made her smile. Chicken soup, Stig’s favorite. She hoped he would feel like eating today.

She cautiously picked up the tray and, using her elbow, pushed open the door to the stairs. Always this dashing up and down stairs, she thought peevishly. Some day she’d end up lying at the bottom with a broken leg, and then they’d see how hard it was to get along without her. She did everything for them, like a house slave. Right now Charlotte was downstairs in the basement loafing in bed, pretending to have a migraine. What bloody rubbish. If there was anyone with a migraine around here it was Lilian herself. She didn’t see how Niclas could stand it. All day long he worked hard at the clinic, doing his best to support the family, and then came home to the basement where it looked like a bomb had gone off. Just because they were living there only temporarily didn’t mean they couldn’t keep the place tidy. And Charlotte had the nerve to insist that her husband help her take care of the kids when he came home in the evening. What she ought to do instead was let him rest after a hard day’s work, let him sit in peace in front of the TV and keep the kids away as best she could. No wonder little Sara was so impossible. No doubt she could see how little respect her mother showed her father. That could lead to only one thing.

Lilian climbed the last steps to the top floor, taking the tray to the guest room, where she installed Stig when he was sick. It wouldn’t do to have him moaning and groaning in the bedroom. If she was to take care of him properly, she had to get a good night’s sleep.

‘Dear?’ She cautiously pushed open the door. ‘Wake up now, I’m bringing you a little something. It’s your favorite: chicken soup.’

Stig weakly returned her smile. ‘I’m not hungry, maybe later,’ he said.

‘Nonsense, you’ll never get well if you don’t eat properly. Come on, sit up a little and I’ll feed you.’

She helped him up to a half-sitting position and then sank down on the edge of the bed. As if he were a child, she fed him soup and wiped off what ran out of the corners of his mouth.

‘See, that wasn’t so bad, was it? I know exactly what my darling needs, and if you just eat properly you’ll be back on your feet in no time, you’ll see.’

Once again the same wan smile in reply. Lilian helped him lie back down and pulled the blanket over his legs.

‘The doctor?’

‘But sweetie, have you entirely forgotten? We have our very own doctor right here in the house now. I’m sure Niclas will look in on you this evening. He just had to go over his diagnosis again, he said, and consult with a colleague in Uddevalla. It will all work out very soon, you’ll see.’

Lilian fussily tucked in her patient one last time and took the tray with the empty soup bowl. She headed for the stairs, shaking her head. Now she had to be a nurse as well, on top of everything else that needed her attention.

She heard a knock at the front door and hurried down the stairs.

Patrik’s hand struck the door with a sharp rap. Around them the wind was coming up quickly, rising to gale force. Droplets of rain pelted them from behind, as the stormy gusts whipped up a fine mist from the ground. The sky had turned dark, its usual gray now streaked with darker gray clouds, and, far from the summery blue sparkle, the dirty brown of the sea was now covered in whitecaps scudding along. There were white geese on the sea, as Patrik’s mother used to say.

As the door opened, both Patrik and Martin took deep breaths, summoning extra reserves of strength. The woman standing before them was a head shorter than Patrik and very, very thin. She had short hair curled in a permanent and tinted to an indeterminate brown. Her eyebrows were too severely plucked and had been replaced by a couple of lines drawn with a kohl pencil, which gave her a slightly comical look. But there was nothing funny about the situation they were now facing.

‘Hello, we’re from the police. We’re looking for Charlotte Klinga.’

‘She’s my daughter. What is this regarding?’

Her voice was shrill. Patrik had heard about Charlotte’s mother from Erica; he could only imagine how trying it must be to listen to her all day long.

‘We’d appreciate it if you could let her know that we’d like to talk to her.’

‘Of course, but what’s this all about?’

Patrik insisted. ‘We would like to speak with your daughter first. If you wouldn’t mind—’ He was interrupted by footsteps on the stairs, and a second later he saw Charlotte’s familiar face appear in the doorway.

‘Well, hi, Patrik! How nice to see you! What are you doing here?’

As she saw their faces her own expression changed. ‘Has something happened to Erica? I spoke to her just a few minutes ago and she sounded all right, I thought …’

Patrik held up his hand. Martin stood silently at his side with his eyes fixed on a knothole on the floor. He usually loved his job, but at the moment he was cursing the day he’d decided to become a cop.

‘May we come in?’

‘Now you’re making me nervous, Patrik. What’s happened?’ A thought struck her. ‘Did Niclas have an accident, or something?’

‘Let’s go inside first.’

Since neither Charlotte nor her mother seemed capable of moving, Patrik took charge and led them into the kitchen with Martin bringing up the rear. He noted absently that they hadn’t taken off their shoes and were surely leaving wet footprints behind. But soon no one in this house would care.

He motioned to Charlotte and Lilian to take a seat across from them at the kitchen table, and they silently obeyed. Patrik and Martin sat down across from them.

‘I’m sorry, Charlotte, but I have …’ he hesitated, ‘terrible news for you.’ The words lurched stiffly out of his mouth. Saying it this way felt wrong, but was there any right way to say what he had to say?

‘An hour ago a lobsterman found a little girl drowned. I’m so, so sorry, Charlotte …’ Then he found himself incapable of going on. The words were so horrific that they refused to come out. But he didn’t need to say any more.

Charlotte gasped with a wheezing, guttural sound. She grabbed the tabletop with both hands, as if to hold herself upright, and stared at Patrik with empty eyes. In the silence of the kitchen that single breath seemed louder than a scream. Patrik swallowed to hold back the tears and keep his voice steady.

‘It must be a mistake. It couldn’t be Sara!’ Lilian looked wildly back and forth between Patrik and Martin, but Patrik only shook his head.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, ‘but I’ve seen her and there’s no doubt it’s Sara.’

‘But she said she was just going over to Frida’s to play. I saw her heading that way. There must be some mistake. I’m sure she’s over there.’ As if in a trance, Lilian got up and went over to the telephone on the wall. She checked the address book hanging next to it and briskly punched in the numbers.

‘Hello, Veronika, it’s Lilian. Listen, is Sara over there?’ She listened for a second and then dropped the receiver so it hung from the cord, swaying back and forth.

‘She hasn’t been there.’ She sat down heavily at the table and stared helplessly at the police officers facing her. Martin stepped across the room to return the phone to its cradle.

The shriek came out of nowhere, and both Patrik and Martin jumped. Charlotte was screaming, motionless, with eyes that didn’t seem to see. It was a loud, primitive, piercing sound. The raw pain in the scream gave both officers goosebumps.

Lilian threw herself at her daughter, trying to put her arms round her, but Charlotte brusquely batted her away.

Patrik tried to talk over the scream. ‘We’ve tried to get hold of Niclas, but he wasn’t at the clinic. We left him a message to come home as soon as he can. And the pastor is on his way.’ He directed his words more to Lilian than to Charlotte, who was now beyond their reach. Patrik knew that he’d handled the situation terribly. He should have made sure that a doctor was present to administer a sedative if needed. Unfortunately, the only doctor in Fjällbacka was the girl’s father, and they hadn’t been able to get hold of him. He turned to Martin.

‘Ring the clinic on your mobile and see if you can get the nurse over here at once. And ask her to bring a sedative.’

Martin did as he asked, relieved to have an excuse to leave the kitchen. Ten minutes later, Aina Lundby came in without knocking. She gave Charlotte a pill to calm her down, and then with Patrik’s help led her into the living room, so she could lie down on the sofa.

‘I’ll need a sedative too,’ said Lilian. ‘I’ve always had bad nerves, and something like this …’

The district nurse, who looked to be about the same age as Lilian, merely snorted and continued tucking a blanket round Charlotte with maternal care as she lay there, teeth chattering as if she were freezing.

‘You’ll survive without it,’ she said, gathering up her things.

Patrik turned to Lilian and said softly, ‘We’ll probably have to talk to the mother of the friend Sara was going to visit. Which house is it?’

‘The blue one just up the street,’ said Lilian without looking him in the eyes.

By the time the pastor knocked on the door a few minutes later, Patrik felt that he and Martin had done all they could. They left the grief-stricken house and got into their car in the driveway. But Patrik didn’t start the engine.

‘Bloody hell,’ said Martin.

‘Bloody hell indeed,’ said Patrik.

Kaj Wiberg peered out the kitchen window facing the Florins’ driveway.

‘I wonder what the old cow’s up to now?’ he muttered petulantly.

‘What?’ his wife Monica called from the living room.

He turned halfway in her direction and shouted back, ‘There’s a police car parked outside the Florins’. I bloody well bet there’s some mischief going on. I’m paying for my sins by having that old woman as a neighbor.’

Monica came into the kitchen combing her hair and looking worried. ‘You really think it’s about us? We haven’t done anything.’ She stopped with the comb in mid-air to peer out of the window.

Kaj snorted. ‘Try to tell
her
that. No, just wait till the small claims court agrees with me about the balcony. Then she’ll be completely humiliated. I hope it’ll cost her a bundle to tear it down.’

‘Do you think we’re really doing the right thing, Kaj? I mean, it only sticks over a few centimeters into our property, and it’s not really bothering us. And now poor Stig is sick in bed and everything.’

‘Sick, oh yeah, thanks a lot. I’d be sick too if I had to live with that damn bitch. What’s right is right. If they build a balcony that infringes on our property, they’re either going to have to pay or tear the bloody thing down. They forced us to cut down our tree, didn’t they? Our fine old birch, reduced to firewood, just because Lilian Florin claimed it was blocking her view of the sea. Or am I wrong? Did I miss something here?’ He turned spitefully toward his wife, incensed by the memory often years of injustices inflicted by their neighbors.

‘No, Kaj, you’re quite right.’ Monica looked down, conscious that retreat was the best defense when her husband got in this mood. For him Lilian Florin was like a red flag to a bull, and it was no use talking reason with him once her name came up. Though Monica had to admit that the trouble wasn’t all Kaj’s fault. Lilian wasn’t easy to take, and if she’d only left them in peace it never would have come to this. Instead she had dragged them through one court appearance after another, for everything from incorrectly drawn property lines, to a path that went through the lot behind her house, to a garden shed that she claimed stood too close to her property, and finally the wonderful old birch tree she’d forced them to cut down a couple of years ago. And it had all started when they began building their new house. Kaj had just sold his office supply business for several million kronor, and they had decided to take early retirement, sell the house in Göteborg, and settle down peacefully in Fjällbacka where they had always spent their summers. But they certainly hadn’t found much peace. Lilian had voiced a thousand objections to the new construction. She had organized petitions and collected complaints to try and prevent them from building there. When that failed, she’d begun to quarrel with them about everything imaginable. Exacerbated by Kaj’s volatile temperament, the feud between the neighbors had escalated beyond all common sense. The balcony that the Florins had built was only the latest battle. The fact that it looked as though the Wibergs would win this round had given Kaj the high ground, and he was happy to exploit it.

Kaj whispered excitedly as he stood peering out behind the curtain. ‘Now two guys are coming out of the house and getting in the police car. Just you wait, now they’re going to come knock on our door any minute. Well, whatever it’s about, I’m going to tell them the facts. And Lilian Florin isn’t the only one who can file a police report. Didn’t she stand there screaming insults over the hedge a couple of days ago, saying she’d make sure I got what I deserved? Illegal intimidation, I think that’s what it’s called. She could go to jail for that …’ Kaj licked his lips and prepared for the coming skirmish.

Monica sighed, pocketed her comb, and went back to the easy chair in the living room. She picked up a women’s magazine and began to read. She no longer had the energy to care.

‘We might as well drive over and talk to the friend and her mother, don’t you think? As long as we’re here.’