The Viper (41 page)

The backup was taking a long time. Fredrik checked his cell phone to make sure that he hadn’t missed a call. An hour and a half had gone by since Sara had contacted them.

Requisitioning a helicopter from the mainland was one option, but maybe it couldn’t fly across the sea in this weather. It was impossible for Fredrik to judge from where he was. The coast guard in Slite was the more likely alternative. Had his colleagues chosen that route, then they ought to come into view off to the north at any minute.

The
Anita
plunged down and shot up in a repeating sequence as the waves grew ever higher. The car tires groaned between the hull and the edge of the jetty. It didn’t look good.

“Rickard,” shouted Sara, “you can’t stay here. The weather’s taking a real turn for the worse. I don’t know how much longer the boat can stay here.”

It sounded painful when Sara forced those words through her abused vocal cords.

“Yeah,” Rickard answered.

Was that an answer or a question?
thought Fredrik. It sounded like a question.

“Come down so we can leave!” Sara shouted.

He moved around up there. It was impossible to hear the creaking of the floorboards now, but they could still see the dust fall with each step. Fredrik thought for a moment that he was on his way down.

“Then what?” he asked.

“You come out. We’ll take the fishing boat back to Herrvik.”

“I mean what’s going to happen?”

Sara was tired and cold, her voice was wrecked. She just wanted to get him out.

“You’ll have to return with us to Visby,” she said. “Since you’ve confessed to killing Anders and causing your mother’s death, you’ll be charged with murder or voluntary manslaughter…”

She stopped short and exchanged looks with Fredrik.

“And negligent homicide,” she answered.

Peter Klint would probably go for voluntary manslaughter there, too, but just then it seemed like the right thing to say.

“Is there anything else you’re wondering about?” she asked.

A long silence, then: “No.”

“Okay, Rickard. Are you coming down?”

He didn’t answer. No dust fell. Sara looked at Fredrik questioningly and a little hopelessly. The cold, wet wind grabbed at their clothes. There was a soft whistling sound inside the lighthouse whenever the wind blew through the half-open door and up into the stone tower.

“Are you coming down?” shouted Sara once again.

There was no answer, but they saw the dust. And then his feet came into view on the steps.

Fredrik stayed where he was by the doorjamb so that he could see Rickard. Sara moved to the side and stood out of sight with her gun drawn. Fredrik holstered his.

Rickard Traneus slowly walked down the steps. He was wearing black pants and a red-and-white windbreaker. His arms hung limply at his sides. When he’d come down far enough that they could make eye contact, he looked Fredrik right in the eye for a few seconds and then abruptly dropped his gaze. He walked straight toward the door and Fredrik backed away a little.

“Come out the door and stop next to the rock,” said Fredrik and pointed at a round, flat rock that was conveniently sticking out of the ground outside the lighthouse.

Rickard Traneus stepped carefully over the high threshold and did as he’d been instructed. Fredrik moved in behind him and took hold of his left arm at the wrist.

“I’m going to cuff you and frisk you,” he said to Rickard who just nodded silently.

Fredrik quickly put the handcuffs on him and as soon as that was done, Sara holstered her gun and came up to them.

“It was good that you came out,” she said, “so we can leave.”

Rickard turned his head toward Sara and looked at her, but said nothing. Fredrik ran his hands along Rickard’s legs, back and across his sides and stomach. He found a Swiss army knife in one of the pockets of his windbreaker, which he confiscated.

“Okay, let’s go,” said Fredrik. “It’ll take about a quarter of an hour to walk down to the boat.”

Sara and Fredrik walked on either side of Rickard Traneus, Fredrik with a firm grip on his upper arm. Fredrik squinted toward the north as they descended the bluff. He expected to see the coast guard’s blue ship surging forward through the gray sea, but still nothing.

Rickard Traneus hadn’t said a word since he stepped out of the lighthouse. Fredrik couldn’t help but wonder what he was thinking about. Was he somehow relieved that it was over, or wasn’t it over for him? Was he just as trapped now as he was before, inside his own inferno of guilt and death? Was he peering into the gray, rain-laden storm thinking that there was no place left on this earth for him? Had he ever thought that he could get away? If nobody suspected him, if his father had never been found, what would he have done with his life then?

“Fredrik!” shouted Sara and pointed over toward the headland where they had come ashore.

He didn’t have to ask what she was trying to tell him. The
Anita
was pulling away from the jetty, then turned slowly northward, pitching badly in the powerful waves.

“He couldn’t stay there,” said Sara.

“We’ll have to turn around,” said Fredrik.

Rickard Traneus glanced anxiously back and forth between them and Fredrik explained what had happened.

“There’s a spot behind those cliffs that’s sheltered from the wind. He can come ashore there.”

He hoped that he was right, that the wind hadn’t shifted even more and that they were stuck on the island.

“We’ll have to head straight back up the way we came,” he said.

Rickard Traneus turned around obediently and trudged off in the opposite direction. They plodded up the hill again. When they came up onto the bluff, Fredrik began to wonder what was best, to go with the fishing boat or wait for their own transportation.

“Can you call and find out what’s happened to them?” he shouted to Sara. “If they’re close by then maybe it’s better we go with them.”

But if they were delayed then maybe the fishing boat was their last chance to get off the island until the storm was over. He wasn’t looking forward to spending a stormy night in the lighthouse, least of all with a double murderer.

Sara took out her cell phone.

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to hear anything in this!” she shouted back.

The wind was blowing even harder now. They had to really lean forward in the gusts. It was impossible to be heard in a normal tone of voice unless you were standing right up against the person you were speaking to.

“I’ll give it a try, but I may have to go inside the lighthouse.”

She cupped her hand around the cell phone in order to increase the chances that the duty officer would hear her though the gale.

Beyond the cliffs, the
Anita
was rolling violently. The boat seemed like it was on its way back to Herrvik, but Söderman was probably just circling out in order not to get too close to the rocks. Fredrik turned north, squinted into the wind. Didn’t he see something there, way out in the distance? Were those breakers on a reef? No, it had the definite V-shape of a surging ship’s prow plowing through the gray sea, and was heading straight toward the island. It was the coast guard cutter KBV 181 from Slite.

“They’re coming!” he shouted to Sara. “There they are.”

Just when Fredrik pointed north, Rickard Traneus suddenly jerked his body unexpectedly. He wrenched free of Fredrik’s grip and started to run, trying to escape Fredrik thought at first, but Rickard Traneus was running straight toward the spot where the cliff plummeted most precipitously down into the raging sea.

Fredrik rushed after him.

“Rickard!” he screamed pointlessly into the wind.

Rickard had gotten a head start, but with his hands cuffed behind his back he couldn’t run all that fast without running the risk of losing his balance. Fredrik quickly gained on him and heard how Sara in turn was following close behind him. Rickard Traneus stumbled and sort of lurched forward a little. Fredrik thought that he would fall headlong onto the rocks and clumps of grass, but with a quick, skipping maneuver he managed to stay on his feet and ran on toward the edge of the cliff.

Fredrik pushed himself closer and closer. He caught up with Rickard just as they approached the brink and threw out an arm to catch and tackle him. His arm got wedged underneath Rickard’s arm just as he threw himself off, and as he twisted in the air Fredrick had no chance of freeing himself. Rickard disappeared over the edge and pulled him inexorably with him in his fall.

They plummeted. Fredrik grabbed hold of Rickard with his left hand, too, and they fell face-to-face. He fell from the cliff down toward a bluish-gray flat rock that rose out from the shingled shoreline below with Rickard Traneus’s empty gaze staring into his.

He fell and saw himself in a bed, saw a woman in a long skirt come toward him from a pair of doors that opened out onto a brightly lit corridor. At first the image was unfamiliar, then he suddenly realized that it was from a British TV series that he had long since forgotten the name of. It was set in the 1800s and the man lying there in the bed was dying, the man whose gaze was now his. The woman in the doorway went double, the image went out of focus, the dying man went out of focus. Was that the last image that would flicker before his mind’s eye? A scene from a TV series that wasn’t even worth remembering?

Then nothing more.

66.

Göran Eide was standing outside the ER entrance at Karolinska University Hospital smoking a cigarette. It tasted like shit and was completely irresistible.

When he had been informed about what had happened out on Östergarnsholm he had done three things. One: made sure that the ambulance helicopter was on its way out to the island. Two: made sure that Gustav drove down to inform Fredrik’s wife about the accident and then drove her back to Visby. Three: politely asked a uniformed officer to run over to the supermarket to buy a pack of Camel Lights. That was over seven hours ago. Once the decision had been made to take Fredrik to Karolinska, Göran had flown up to Stockholm on the same plane as Ninni.

He didn’t like to stand outside a hospital’s emergency room and wait. He didn’t actually like smoking, either. But right now he was doing both.

Two years earlier he had stood outside the entrance to Visby hospital after having visited an injured officer. Then he had stood there trying to work out what had gone wrong and what he could do to make sure that he would never have to stand there again.

Fredrik Broman had somehow been pulled over the edge of a cliff when he had tried to stop Rickard Traneus from throwing himself off it. Both of them had plunged down the precipice on Östergarnsholm and landed right on top of a slab of exposed bedrock below. Rickard Traneus on the bottom, had died instantly, with Fredrik on top of him. “They lay there as if they’d been sacrificed at some kind of altar,” Sara had said in a quavering whisper when she returned to Visby deathly pale and frozen stiff.

Fredrik was badly injured. They had made a quick assessment in Visby, stabilized him and sent him on to Karolinska. It wasn’t clear whether he would make it. This was considerably more serious than the incident two years ago. Göran shut his eyes. How the hell could things have gone so terribly wrong? Had Fredrik made a mistake, been careless or tried to play the hero? Or was it Sara? Or was it he himself? Or was it just one of those things?

To hell with it. The most important thing right now was that Fredrik pulled through.

Göran took a deep drag from his cigarette and noticed how the door to the ER opened. It was Ninni. She came up to him, walking with short, slow steps.

Without thinking about it he held out the pack of cigarettes to her. She took it without saying anything, shook out a cigarette, and let him light it. He made sure that it had really taken before he blew out the match.

They both smoked their cigarettes almost all the way down to the filter without saying a word to each other.

67.

Sara had added a few days of vacation to extend her three days of sick leave. Now that the investigation was over, it didn’t really make any difference if she took a few extra days off. Her own procedure had been overshadowed by what had happened in the storm out on the island. It had just become something that had to be dealt with quickly. And nobody had asked any questions.

She had thought that she was well prepared for the meeting with Fredrik, had spoken to both Göran and Ninni, but she had still stopped short just inside the doorway, dumbstruck. The body lying on the bed was heavy and unresponsive, its gaze had no focus. He wasn’t unconscious, and yet he wasn’t there, either. Where was he in that case? Was he in there at all? Had the fall from the cliff expunged the person she knew as Fredrik Broman and just left behind a few remaining bodily functions such as breathing and a beating heart? The hospital had little useful to say about it.

They were told they just had to wait and see. It sounded vague, but the very vagueness itself inspired a kind of hope. Surely they wouldn’t raise people’s hopes for no reason?

Ninni was with him when Sara entered. She saw how her gaze clung to her oblivious husband’s face, filled with despair but also something else, an involuntary loathing toward everything. The hospital room, the seemingly lifeless body, the bandages, and the IV. Well, maybe not toward everything, but above all toward that inert, limp, silent, helpless body. She saw it and understood her, didn’t judge her.

She offered to sit with him for a while. Ninni could go down to the cafeteria for a bit, or go out for a walk, or whatever she needed to do. For a moment Sara was afraid that she had been too forward, crossed some line, but Ninni accepted her invitation with a grateful smile.

Ninni went off leaving her alone in the room with Fredrik. Sara regarded her colleague. Or that mute shell that bore a physical resemblance to him. What would she say to him? What would she do?

68.

Elin Traneus looked out from her balcony on the sixth floor of the Hotel Okura. The hotel lay in Tokyo’s Minato district, not many blocks from the building where her father had spent a large part of the last three years of his life.