Open Grave: A Mystery (Ann Lindell Mysteries) Read online

  * * *

  It was not until twilight came that he straightened up, set aside the spade, and surveyed the situation. It was at moments like this that he wished he still smoked. The thought came to him every day, even though he quit more than ten years ago.

  The planting was intended to cover about fifteen square meters and more than half of that was dug up. He kicked at a stone on the bottom of the excavation and it obligingly loosened from the grip of the clay. He took it as a good sign. Tomorrow he would finish the excavation and then refill it with his own mixture for acid soil plants, needles, cones, and branches from spruce, peat, leaves, compost, and a little gravel. The proportions varied from time to time, it was not that exact, he worked by feel, tossing in what might be suitable at the moment. If he came across a rotten log or stump he threw that in too. This time he would layer the mixture with twigs from the pruned spindle tree in the front.

  It struck him that there must be an excess of beech leaves on the neighbor’s property. He had glimpsed the stately beech above the roof. Should he perhaps ask whether he could gather some leaves in sacks and carry them over?

  He peered up toward the tower. The “tower man,” somewhat hidden behind plants but completely visible, stood observing him. He raised his hand, but the old man withdrew without responding to the greeting.

  A lonely old fogey, he thought, while he gathered up his tools and turned the wheelbarrow over, but he can probably part with a few leaves.

  * * *

  Once again he observed the excavation and made the association that he was standing before an open grave. Most recently it was at the burial of his mother; that was also a rainy day, six months ago. Those who were assembled huddled under umbrellas, a woman whispered something inaudible, another nodded at him, before they all dropped off, apparently reluctant to prolong the ceremony and their own presence more than necessary. And he appreciated that, no gathering had been arranged, no uncertain, wary talk over clattering coffee cups and saucers. There were too few mourners, five besides the minister. His mother’s lonely life would have stood out as more pitiable if they had exerted themselves to observe convention with a funeral reception.

  But afterwards, when the grave was filled in and the few wreaths and flowers laid out, when everything was quiet in the little cemetery, he thought, What memories did the others have of his mother? And then he regretted that they hadn’t gathered to talk for a little while. It did not have to be strained, he could simply have been able to express his gratitude for their presence in a more emphatic way, perhaps coax out a few remembrances. He had no idea, however, who two of the guests were.

  And those who were not present, what did they have to tell? There were many gaps in his mother’s own story and now there was no one who could fill them in. The war years she had talked very little about, perhaps out of consideration for his father, and he understood that quite well. But her early years? He knew so little.

  Now it was too late, was his only thought, as he stood in the rain in the cemetery. Was that perhaps only an expression of self-pity? His own solitude stood out as even more obvious now that his mother was gone. And she had actually expressed a wish to “be able to end it,” tormented as she was the last years by rheumatism and migraine-like headaches.

  Not only was it too late to fill in the gaps in mother’s life, it was also too late for himself, for as far as he knew no one was interested in his own story. Even fewer would come to his funeral, he was sure of that—a thought that made him stop on the gravel path. A few broken lines from a hymn his mother used to sing when he was a child came to him. He wanted to cry but pulled himself together.

  From where he was standing in the cemetery he could see how the caretakers were waiting in the background, they had observed him, quietly curious. One was sitting in a garden tractor, the other was standing alongside with a shovel in his hand, perhaps they had things to take care of, he thought, but did not want to get started until he was gone.

  He started to leave, as controlled as he could, nodded to the caretakers, stepped out through the gate and caught sight of his car. At the same moment the tractor started up. He suppressed the impulse to return to the cemetery, go up to the caretakers, shake their hands, say something appreciative and then some small talk about the weather or about the signs of spring that were also to be seen in a cemetery.

  Instead he jumped into the car and drove to his mother’s small apartment on Norrtäljegatan to start clearing up and cleaning out. There, in a drawer under the kitchen counter, strangely enough, he found the diaries, eleven small notebooks with black, soft covers of a kind he had not seen in many years. The slightly wavy lines were filled with his mother’s barely legible scribbling. He realized that what he thought had been his mother’s handwriting during old age had already been established in her youth.

  Considering where he found them, in direct proximity to the garbage can, he got the idea that she had intended to discard them, but death in the form of a massive heart attack had intervened.

  It’s strange, he thought then with rising irritation, collapsed on a kitchen chair, how everyone hides their lives. Not just strange, but also dreadful, as if no intimacy was possible.

  “It was just the two of us,” he sobbed.

  He had become agitated, not because she kept a diary, but because she did not have the sense to get rid of them in time, her typical indecisiveness, many times stemming from a kind of fatalistic passivity that always annoyed him. If she had not wanted to share while she was still alive, shown him that confidence, then why deliver a few limp notebooks reeking of garbage in a kind of scornful afterbirth?

  * * *

  Since then, after the initial irritation in his mother’s apartment, he had been reconciled with her. He had read the diaries, depressed and confounded, but also filled with a mournful gratitude when little by little he realized her greatness.

  And now he could stand by an open grave, which would soon be filled with rhododendron and other lime-intolerant plants, without introverted anger or tears, instead filled with resolve to let her life shine, just light up the dark corners where the “educated and cultivated” tried to hide their dirty laundry.

  Her words, obviously written down in a mixture of resolve and terror, would grant her an hour of remembrance, he would see to that. For he had understood that much later, the thin figures at her mother’s funeral were of the same make as his mother. Then they had looked like pathetic and pitiable individuals who by chance had been blown into the cemetery. Now they stood out for him as the only allies he had.

  He smiled to himself, spat toward the birches, leaned over, picked up a stone, big as a fist, moved into the shadow of a bush where four lots met, weighed the stone in his hand before with a powerful discus throw he sent it away in a wide arc toward and over Ohler’s house. He followed its track, a granite comet toward the dark sky, just as elated as when as a child one early May Day morning he pushed an abandoned baby buggy, filled to the brim with empty bottles he had picked up after the students’ Walpurgis festivities the night before, bottles that he intended to redeem at Uno Lantz’s junkyard in Strandbodkilen. The buggy rolled a little hesitantly to start with down the hill, before it took heart, picked up speed and became a projectile. In line with the statue depicting a student singer the buggy swerved, listed severely, and spewed out liquor bottles in a magnificent slow-motion movement.

  The effect this time was not as noisy, but when the stone fell down on the roof on the front side of the house it produced a crashing sound anyway and then rolled clattering down the roof tiles. Then silence took over the block again.

  He disappeared from publisher Lundquist’s garden after, in his opinion, a job well done.

  Ten

  The attack on the Ohler house was followed the next morning by another. If a thrown stone, in human history perhaps the most original form of attack, hits its mark, it can fell a giant.

  An article in a German newspaper can hardly produce anythin
g so drastic, but well formulated and buttressed with factual arguments in a clever sequence it can shake things up properly. The fact was that it struck like a bomb, and that it exploded besides during the All-German Medical Association’s annual meeting in Düsseldorf did not lessen the effect.

  The association, which was formed as early as 1768, was considered one of the most influential within its field in Western Europe. Its membership directory included such significant names as Waller, Haagendorf, and Schütze.

  Over three hundred medical doctors were gathered and Horst Bubb could tell his friend Gregor Johansson that Wolfgang Schimmel’s devastating criticism, published in Frankfurter Allgemeine, had great impact. The news the day before had dominated the informal discussions during the convention and Horst thought that the majority supported the article’s main thesis: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences was compromised, not to say corrupt. Now, through the selection of the prize winner, it had used up the last remnants of its credibility.

  The associate professor noted without difficulty with what excited delight his German colleague accounted for the atmosphere at the hotel’s conference facility. Bubb saw no complications in an “overwhelming majority” so quickly and resolutely managing to assess that the Nobel Prize would end up in the wrong hands and wallet.

  “It is, however, slightly annoying that we are meeting in Düsseldorf in particular,” was his only more worried comment, but he did not explain why. It was after all his home town, he ought to be proud of being the host, but Associate Professor Johansson sensed that the city presumably was not associated with the scientific brilliance and weight that the sometimes rather vain and arrogant Professor Bubb perhaps considered necessary for such a distinguished group of scientists.

  For fifteen minutes they discussed the effect the article might conceivably have, or rather it was Bubb who babbled on, convinced that the Academy of Sciences would now be forced to realize its blunder, review its decision, and perhaps let Ohler share the prize with Ferguson. The associate professor considered such a retreat completely inconceivable but expressed it a bit more guardedly. Out of sheer friendliness he did not want to undercut the German’s enthusiasm, and for that reason not prolong the discussion either. He had not even had time to have his morning coffee before the call came from Germany.

  Bubb was also seeking support from Sweden and inquired whether the associate professor had possibly taken some initiative, which of course he had not. He had been fully occupied with leaf raking, he thought about adding jokingly, but refrained.

  He felt yesterday’s listlessness and now, having a bad conscience, he felt all the more anxious to end the conversation and digest the information. He felt he was being disloyal, most of all considering the activity that the colleagues in Germany were developing, that they were actually also fighting for his cause, albeit indirectly. It was a disruptive feeling, he did not want to feel like a traitor, he simply wanted peace and quiet, but was unable to say anything about his irresolution to Horst Bubb.

  Instead he inquired about his wife’s health.

  “Unchanged,” Bubb said curtly.

  “I think the doorbell rang,” the associate professor said mendaciously. “It may be the media wanting a comment. Perhaps they’ve been contacted by—”

  “Excellent,” Bubb exclaimed. “Let him have it! Don’t hesitate to stress your own contribution. Do that, Gregor, speak out.”

  “Thanks, I’ll do that,” said the associate professor.

  After hanging up the phone he remained standing awhile by the kitchen table, unable to sort his thoughts. The only feeling he could register for certain was discomfort. There was something in Horst Bubb’s voice that he could not come to terms with, a kind of shrill fervor, not magnificent, righteous revenge, but instead a petty revanschism, an attitude he was mortally tired of.

  He understood that the cure this time too was coffee and then work in the garden. Yesterday’s rain had accelerated the falling of the leaves, and then there was the compost to tend to. And he should prepare the winter covering of the Gloire de Dijon, one of the most beautiful roses he knew of.

  A sudden movement caused him to look out the window. A police car came slowly cruising up the street. It was a remarkable sight, one the associate professor could not recall ever having seen in the vicinity of the house. It slowed down in front of Bunde’s gate. Had he really called the police? thought the associate professor. The man whom the neighbor had seen “sneaking around” was a gardener and nothing else, that was quite clear. The associate professor had been able to study him yesterday—the gardener was industrious, as it was an effort to dig in the Uppland clay. Gregor knew that from his own experience.

  But the car cruised farther and finally stopped in front of Ohler’s house. Two uniformed policemen got out. He positioned himself as close to the window as possible to see what was happening. The policemen walked slowly up the path toward the house. They gave an impression of being hesitant, as if they were not sure they had come to the right place. Or else they were simply impressed by the grand entryway—the flight of steps and floor in Jämtland dark shale, four cream-white pillars, without exaggerated details, which held up a balcony with a pointed wrought-iron fence, and a wide, dark brown door in some type of foreign wood with a brass knocker.

  The associate professor had to resist the desire to open the front door and peek out. Then he realized that he had a better view from the tower and hurried as best he could up the stairs.

  Once there he could see the professor himself, standing on the lawn in front of the house. He was pointing toward the house and then down in the grass. The associate professor, who knew him well, saw immediately that he was worked up. His white hair was sticking up in all directions, his one hand once again was pointing toward the house while the other waved at the street with irritation.

  One of the policemen leaned over and studied something in the grass that was impossible for the associate professor to make out.

  The policeman returned to the car and came right back with what the associate professor perceived as a bag. The object of their interest was picked up and disappeared down into it.

  The professor continued his expressive gestures and his energetic speech. One policeman took notes on a pad. The other, bag in hand, took the opportunity to look around. He disappeared around the side of the house and when he had made his rounds and come out at the opposite end his colleague put away his pad and then saluted.

  The associate professor was astonished. Salute! The policemen lingered on the sidewalk a minute or two before they left the street. The visit had lasted about fifteen minutes.

  But what was it about? The associate professor thought and speculated while he made his way down the stairs to the kitchen, to finally make himself a cup of coffee. What sort of thing was that on the grass? Had there perhaps been a break-in?

  He realized that the only way to find out what it was all about was to ask Ohler, and that was unthinkable. Hope rested in Bunde, but asking him, and thereby openly showing his curiosity, was an almost equally unpleasant alternative.

  Then it struck him that the housekeeper, Agnes, naturally knew what this was about. With a little luck perhaps he could nab her as she went past on the sidewalk.

  He set out a cheese sandwich that he had made the night before and put in the refrigerator. He did not like doing too much in the morning. Perhaps it was an inheritance from his childhood, the thing with the sandwich.

  Mostly his father had left for work by the time Gregor woke up. He went off on his bicycle already at five o’clock. If there was snow on the ground he skied through the forest.

  His mother had gotten up earlier, heated coffee and made breakfast, and then also made a sandwich for Gregor. The mornings when he woke up early were the best, his parents quietly talking in the kitchen, careful not to waken him.

  When he sat up on the kitchen bench his mother handed him the sandwich and a cup of milk, and they sat gathered around the kitchen t
able awhile. During the dark time of the year his father might turn up the wick on the kerosene lamp a little. If it was summer the birds chirped so invitingly, as they never would later in life.

  * * *

  The associate professor worshipped his father, but on one point he had never relied on his father’s judgment, and that concerned politics. After growing up in a cottage in the shadow of an aristocratic estate, it seemed inconceivable to him, almost a parody, that there could be a society where everyone had equal value.

  Take the old crone Hult, half crippled and completely crazy, or Hanna Björk in Sandbacken, who used to watch him when his parents went off by themselves somewhere, or the always filthy woodworker Kumlin, or for that matter Uncle Kalle in Selknä and the other workers on the Roslag line. Could they step forward as equal to the count, or to the manager, or even the inspector?

  It spoke for itself, thought the teenage Gregor Johansson, that it was an irrational thought, more a fairy tale, like one of the tall tales his father liked to tell.

  It never came to a conflict between father and son. Gregor listened to his expounding but never made any objections.

  Every month, always on a Sunday, collectors came from the various farms in the parish with the subscription, the membership fee, for the union. His father was treasurer in the division in Rasbo.

  The board of the division also gathered regularly in the cottage, all of them young or middle-aged men, often serious, but just as often a little exhilarated. A certain optimism prevailed after the difficulties and setbacks of the pioneer years. A labor government was in power, there was talk that the old farm worker system would soon go to the grave, there was talk about statutory vacation and much else. Books started showing up, other than hymnals and collections of sermons, in rural workers’ homes. Victories great and small that were commented on in the little cottage. It was harvest time.