The Night of the Fire Read online

  They had coffee, sitting in the sun against the south wall, but with their coats on. It was spring. The hedge was about to flower over and the buds of the lilac were brimming with longing, or even blossoming, but it was not long since it had snowed. For that reason the spring flowers were somewhat stressed, they did not want to be passed up by the summer flora.

  “You live alone now?”

  “Yes, Irma passed away a year and three months ago. It still feels strange.”

  Not a day passed that he didn’t think about her.

  “Was it cancer?”

  Gösta nodded. “She struggled for a long time, and we tried everything. We even traveled to a special clinic in Florida, and stayed for almost two months, but nothing helped. She died late in the winter.”

  “That must have cost a pretty penny.”

  “Yes, it was frightfully expensive, over ninety thousand dollars. And as a carpenter you don’t exactly have any reserves. I had to borrow most of it.”

  “It’s good that the bank helps out in those situations, but the interest rates must be high.”

  Gösta’s face turned bright red. Miss Gauffin observed him for a moment before she changed the subject.

  “And the police don’t know anything?”

  “No, they have no answers. You know how it is.”

  “So what are people saying? In the village, I mean?”

  “Folks don’t want to talk about the misery.”

  Should he tell what he knew? He’d asked himself that question hundreds of times, ever since the day when the last remnants of the school were still smoldering and the police investigators knocked at the door.

  “There’s so much talk,” he said at last, thereby contradicting his own statement a moment before.

  “I was thinking about sticking around the area for a while,” Miss Gauffin said, “so we’ll have more occasions to discuss.”

  “Sticking around?”

  “Yes, I write a little. My memoirs, you might say, and it struck me that it would not only be pleasant to meet some of my pupils, but also valuable so that my recollections would be richer. We remember things so differently.”

  “So you’re going to interview people?”

  “That’s going a bit far,” Miss Gauffin said.

  “How will you get around?”

  “A great-grandchild of my brother drives me. He’s unemployed and I’m paying him. He forgot his snus and went for a drive. It will probably take a while, because I saw that the store is gone.”

  The two of them, teacher and pupil, conversed a good while; it got cold around their legs. They went over who was still living in the area, who had died, and what might otherwise be of interest.

  “There’s a boy missing, isn’t there?” she suddenly interrupted the review of old pupils, bringing him back to those horrible days in January. He nodded.

  “And nothing new has come out?”

  “No, nothing new.”

  He wondered how much she knew. Two cousins had disappeared. One was located. It was Gösta who found him. It did not seem as if she knew about the circumstances, even though it had been reported, and Gösta found no reason to tell. He did not want to tell. He did not want to even think about the terrible sight that had met him early on the morning of the third of January. It was as if he was an accessory to the boy’s death. There were those in the village who implied that too.

  The young relative showed up and turned onto the driveway a bit carelessly. He nodded at Gösta but made no effort to leave the car.

  “It’s a reliable car,” Miss Gauffin said, and you could hear that she also included the driver in that assessment. She placed her hand, as if consolingly, on Gösta’s knee before she stood up.

  * * *

  Long after the car had disappeared behind Efraimsson’s workshop, Gösta remained standing under the mighty maple that his grandfather planted perhaps a hundred years ago. The visit had had a double effect; he had been enlivened, but he also felt melancholy and a trifle anxious. Unconsciously he reached out one hand and stroked the smooth trunk as if it were a woman’s skin. He ought to go in, but he knew that fresh air made it easier, as if the anxiety could be aired out.

  “Go up to Bertil’s,” he said out loud and challengingly, and obediently trotted off. It was a walk he had made thousands of times. Bertil Efraimsson was born-again, while Gösta was a dogged atheist, but they were good friends anyway and had been since they were kids. They were a week apart in age, sixty-six years old in July, and had been playmates and classmates as well as neighbors. Bertil had taken over the workshop from his father and uncle, and continued repairing everything from clocks to combines, but when the mechanics were increasingly replaced by computerization he closed down the operation. The decision was made on a Friday. He completed the few tasks he had, and on Tuesday he nailed up a sign that said CLOSED and then drove to the state liquor store in Öregrund, where he didn’t think he would be recognized. There he bought a bottle of cognac of the sort his father and uncle used to drink, the only alcohol he could identify with certainty. It was the first and so far the only time in his life he got intoxicated and boisterous. A strange and in retrospect inexplicable act, which should have led to remorse, but Bertil shrugged off the criticism and surprise of his surroundings, and in Gösta’s eyes the Pentecostalist became more human. He saw it as an act of reverence for the generation that preceded him. Bertil’s father, who was the son of a blacksmith from Lövstabruk, had slowly built up the workshop from scanty resources and it had supported two families.

  Bertil was standing in the yard talking out loud to himself, unaware that his neighbor was approaching. Gösta stopped but his hearing was too poor to make out more than scattered words. Bertil had changed recently, becoming withdrawn and taciturn, even if he had never been a vivacious joker. “Secretive” was a word that occurred to Gösta, as if his neighbor was unwilling to share. Had he also seen something during the night of the fire? Over the years they had always talked with each other, had discussions, supported each other, but now it seemed as if the line was broken. Bertil was increasingly unwilling to socialize, the joint coffee breaks in his kitchen had unexpectedly ceased. He became contrary and strange, and yet another bewildering matter was Bertil’s new evening habits. Before he always used to turn off the lights after the nine o’clock news, now the lamps might burn until midnight and even later. Sometimes he could be glimpsed passing like a shadow in one of the windows. Gösta had not wanted to ask what he was doing up so late, but it was strange that a creature of habit like Bertil started behaving in a completely new way. Was it perhaps some illness that was sneaking up?

  And then these frequent trips with the car, even into Uppsala, which he previously despised visiting. Now he took off all the time and returned with bags and boxes with unknown contents. Once when Gösta openly showed his curiosity, Bertil said something to the effect that he was “in the process of inventing something.”

  Bertil was tall, and he still looked imposing, standing there in his yard. Next to him, Gösta had always felt like a leprechaun at five foot five in stocking feet. His profile was like a Mohican, with an aquiline nose and sturdy forehead, his dark hair combed back. In his youth he was called “the Indian.” There was a time when women happily stopped by Efraimsson’s, on the pretext of buying eggs from Bertil’s mother or some other everyday errand, and if possible exchange a few words with the son. He mostly stayed in the workshop, however, and was unapproachable. In the congregation too he kept his distance from women, and gradually the courting ceased. He remained a bachelor.

  Gösta coughed and Bertil turned around.

  “You scared me,” he said. “It’s not often—”

  “We’re still alive,” said Gösta, “but it’s starting to thin out.”

  They shook hands, a custom they’d had since their youth. After that they stood silently a moment and observed the road and the few cars that passed.

  “It’s strange,” said Bertil. “The bla
ckbird that always stayed at the top of the spruce has fallen silent. This year I haven’t heard a single warble.”

  “Either your hearing has gotten worse or else it’s dead,” said Gösta.

  “My hearing is worse, I know that, but I hear other birds. And dead?” He snorted. “New generations come, they always have, but now it’s probably over.”

  Gösta changed tack. “I had a visitor.”

  “Who might that be?”

  “Miss Gauffin.”

  “It’s not possible.”

  “Old as the hills.”

  “That was strange. What did she want?”

  “She’s going to write her memoirs, as she said.”

  “And then you’ll be included?”

  “Well, it’s probably more the school and such. She came of course as a brand-new teacher and stayed until retirement. There’s quite a bit to remember.”

  They both looked toward the scene of the fire.

  “I saw the one who set it, in any case one of them,” Gösta said quite unplanned, immediately bothered about what had popped out of him. Bertil stared at him, speechless.

  “And you’re saying that now?!” he exclaimed at last. He seldom raised his voice, but now was such an occasion. “But you told the police that you were in bed asleep.”

  “Yes, I misspoke.”

  “Misspoke? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  Gösta turned away; he couldn’t bear his friend’s agitated expression. He knew himself that it was an extremely idiotic statement.

  Bertil took hold of his shoulders, shook him, and forced him to raise his eyes. “You know who it was, don’t you?”

  “Let go of me,” Gösta said. “We’ve never quarreled and there’s no reason to start now.”

  “It was arson. People died.”

  Gösta nodded mutely.

  “It’s someone you know,” Bertil observed. “Someone from the village, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it right now,” Gösta said, releasing himself and fleeing with big strides. He cursed his own indiscretion. Why in the world he’d blurted out something he’d kept quiet about for months, he didn’t understand. Was it perhaps, in some strange way, Miss Gauffin’s influence?

  Bertil was shouting something after him, but he couldn’t make out what. He didn’t want to hear, didn’t want to look back. It was painful to be at odds with his friend, and he understood that the matter was not over and done with. Bertil was stubborn and would go at him again, try to get him to speak up.

  “Maybe it’s the only right thing,” he muttered as he passed through his gate. It was a sentence he repeated numerous times, but the fear of having to come forward and testify was too great. He knew that he would lose everything. Now admittedly he had lost his honor and had to live with a burning sense of shame, but he could still live in the village and in his house. And what good would it do if he testified? It wasn’t a certainty that the arsonists would be convicted anyway. Clever lawyers would be sure to question his credibility and do everything to decimate his testimony, even more so if he came forward five months after the fire.

  Five

  Sammy Nilsson was puzzled. He thought he recognized the voice, but he just couldn’t place it in either time or space.

  After the brief conversation, when he repeated the receptionist’s information that there was no Ann Lindell in the building, he took the elevator down to Regina Rosenberg to hear what she had to say. She reported what the man had said, that it was Ann Lindell he wanted to speak with, that she was the only one it was possible to talk with.

  “He didn’t say anything about how or where he got to know her?”

  Regina shook her head.

  “Lindell is a former colleague, I understand.”

  “She worked in the building. One of our best.”

  “And now she’s sitting in meetings in Stockholm every single day.”

  Sammy Nilsson laughed. Regina had learned quickly.

  “No, on the contrary you might say.”

  Regina waited for him to continue, but Sammy Nilsson thought it was a little embarrassing to tell what his former colleague worked with, and he was ashamed that he felt that way.

  He missed Lindell. She was good, a little uneven perhaps, and he blamed that on unhappy love and wine, but she had added something, a kind of awareness of vulnerability. She never got thick-skinned; on the contrary, she was constantly surprised and upset about the abominations they had to deal with. She had shared this with Ottosson, onetime head of the unit and her protector. There were those who whispered that he was a dirty old man and for that reason looked the other way when her missteps became all too obvious. He wanted everyone to “get along” and for the atmosphere in the unit to be “convivial.” And the fact was that it often worked. During his regime personnel turnover was remarkably low.

  And then there was Berglund, the most experienced of them, with an extended, fine-mesh network in the Uppsala he knew so well. He had a way of talking that got people to listen and then talk themselves, perpetrators as well as crime victims and valuable witnesses. He could dig up some superannuated school janitor who could contribute a few puzzle pieces in a “rowdy” student’s youth, pieces that might give a hint about where the police should search for answers. Vital information could be obtained from a construction worker with a father who, like Berglund’s, had worked at the Ekeby mill, and that solely thanks to the phrasing in his distinctive Uppsala dialect, and with a common circle of acquaintances that was thoroughly thrashed out over a couple of cups of coffee. He did have a weak point and that was the opposite sex; what he so masterfully executed in his contacts with men he never really succeeded in where women were concerned.

  Ottosson and Berglund were gone now, both from the force and from earthly life. Sammy thought that had contributed to Lindell quitting as a police officer. She had been dependent on those two father figures, in many people’s opinion.

  The Violent Crimes Unit had gotten younger. He himself was one of the veterans, but he didn’t feel any more secure because of that; on the contrary. These were new times, a new language, new codes for how society and the mutual relationships of people could be understood. Berglund would have immediately embarrassed himself, and the fact was that Sammy Nilsson had thought about resigning. But where would he go?

  “There was something in his voice that made me scared,” Regina said, interrupting Sammy’s train of thought. “It was serious, maybe someone would die.”

  “How old do you think he is?”

  “Between twenty-five and thirty-five, no older. It was the way he talked, this was a young person. A desperate young man. Certainly born, in any event raised in Sweden, in Uppsala actually. No dialect, no accent.”

  Sammy Nilsson agreed. That was his conclusion too.

  “Someone is going to die,” Regina said, and he understood that she would brood a lot about that call. She would receive more, she would get to hear a lot of frightening things, but this was her first truly scary call, one that suggested a future violent crime and a person’s death.

  They listened to the short exchange of words together, one time, twice.

  “Maybe that Lindell woman will have an idea.”

  “I’ll talk with her.”

  “Does she still live in town?”

  Sammy only smiled in response.

  “Can you make me a copy of the call?”

  Six

  She sniffed the bare skin on her forearm to confirm that she was no longer a police officer. It smelled different. Everything was different. Sammy Nilsson’s call hadn’t changed that, of course, but even so it felt a little strange. Like in the past, a message on the phone, a colleague who peeked in and told her something. Ottosson asking her to come to his office. A new investigation, fresh excitement, worry. She’d loved it. Until the love ended, and she went her way. Now it was there again, the curiosity and along with it the worry. Sammy would come out in the afternoon and have a vo
ice sample with him. He didn’t want to say what it concerned, other than that someone had been looking for her, and only her.

  * * *

  Outside the window spring was singing; she had also experienced it that way the first time she was here. Then a real estate agent was standing behind her, talking uninterruptedly. She asked him to stop, said that she wanted to observe the view for herself, in silence. The whole landscape was singing. She understood immediately, after a lengthy search, that this was the cottage she had to buy. At first it was a summer cottage, before she moved there for good. Then she’d received a half promise of work, 528 steps, and 22 mailboxes in a due-north direction.

  She put a post in the ground, set up her own mailbox with her name in red: Ann Lindell. The moving truck came, the three Estonians loaded her household goods in no time. She lit a fire in the newly inspected and approved fireplace. “This is probably the twentieth fireplace by the same mason,” the chimney sweep said. “Lundin was his name. My name’s Sundin.” It was these kinds of contexts and information she liked and had missed.

  The first evening the loneliness struck her with full force, but she knew that she would manage it. Maybe. The clock was ticking toward ten when she opened a bottle of wine, even though she’d promised herself to abstain.

  * * *

  Sometimes she thought about Edvard, in some periods fairly often. He’d come to visit a few times. “You can spend the night” had come out of her mouth the last time. Then he was in a hurry to leave.

  They were both free to do what they wanted. He hesitated, looked lost the way he had fifteen years ago, but departed, under the pretext that he had things to do on Gräsö early the next morning.

  The other day she’d sent a message, asked if he might be in the neighborhood. He had replied that he would come on the weekend. “I’ll bring Baltic herring,” he’d added, and she had herself a good laugh. That was typical Edvard, who always had to see to the “use” of a trip, or a visit.