less than a Cadillac convertible. It cost more than he made in a whole year, and he lay awake night after night as he wracked his brain, trying to figure out how to get the money. While he was going through this agony Maud would pout and hint in more and more obvious terms that if he didn’t get the car, there were certainly other guys who could treat her the way she deserved to be treated. Then jealousy was added to the torment of those sleepless, anxious nights, and finally he couldn’t stand it any longer.
On 10 September 1954, at precisely two o’clock in the afternoon, he went into the bank in Tanumshede, armed with an old army pistol his father had kept at home for years, and wearing a nylon stocking over his head. Nothing had gone right. The bank tellers had tossed banknotes into the bag he brought with him, but not nearly as much as he had hoped. Then one of the customers, the father of a classmate of his, recognized Bengt despite the nylon stocking. Within an hour the police were at his parents’ flat and found the bag of money under the bed in his room. Bengt never forgot the expression on his mother’s face. She had been dead now for many years, but her eyes still haunted him whenever the alcoholic gloom kicked in.
Three years in prison had killed all hope of a future. When he got out Maud was long gone. He didn’t know where, and he didn’t care. All his old friends had gone on to secure jobs and family life and didn’t want anything to do with him. His father had been killed in an accident while Bengt was inside, so he moved in with his mother. With cap in hand he tried to find work, but was met by rejection everywhere he went. No one wanted to hire him. What finally drove him to seek his future in the bottom of a bottle were all the looks that kept following him.
For someone who had grown up in the close-knit confines of a small town where everyone says hello to each other on the street, the feeling of being frozen out was just as painful as physical torture. He had thought about moving away from Fjällbacka, but where would he go? It was easier to stay and let himself sink into a blissful alcoholic torpor.
He and Anders had found each other at once. Two poor fucks, they used to say, laughing bitterly. Bengt harboured an almost fatherly affection for Anders and felt greater sorrow over his fate than over his own. He often wished that he could have done something to turn Anders’s life in a different direction. But because he also knew the seductive siren song of alcohol, he knew how impossible it was to tear yourself away from the demanding lover that booze had become over the years. She demanded everything and gave nothing back. All he and Anders could do was give each other a little consolation and companionship.
The path up to the front door of Anders’s building had been carefully sanded. So Bengt didn’t have to tread cautiously because of the bottle in his inside pocket, as he had done many times during the hard winter just past, when the ice lay shiny and slick all the way to the stairs.
The two flights up to Anders’s flat were always a challenge. There was no lift. Several times he had to stop to catch his breath, and twice he made sure to take a bracing swig from the bottle in his inside pocket. When he finally stood outside the door to Anders’s flat he was panting hard. He leaned against the door jamb for a moment before he opened the door, which he knew Anders never locked.
It was quiet in the flat. Maybe Anders wasn’t home. If he was sleeping it off, his deep breathing and snuffling snores could usually be heard all the way out in the hall. Bengt looked in the kitchen. Nobody there, except for the normal colonies of bacteria. The bathroom door stood wide open, and there too it was empty. When he turned the corner he had a horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach. The sight in the living room made Bengt stop short. The bottle he was holding in his hand fell to the floor with a heavy clunk, but it didn’t break.
The first thing he saw was the feet dangling freely a bit above the floor. The naked feet swung slightly, swaying back and forth. Anders had trousers on but nothing on his upper body. His head hung at an odd angle. His face was swollen and discoloured, and his tongue looked too big for his mouth as it stuck out between his lips. It was the saddest sight Bengt had ever seen. He turned and quietly left the flat, but not before he picked up the bottle from the floor. He tried to find something inside himself to grab hold of, but found only emptiness. Instead he grasped at the only lifeline he knew. He sat down on the threshold of Anders’s flat, put the bottle to his mouth, and cried.
It was doubtful whether he had a legal blood alcohol content, but Patrik wasn’t worrying about that right now. He drove a little slower than usual for safety’s sake, but since he was dialling numbers on his mobile and talking on the phone, it was debatable how much help that was to traffic safety.
His first call was to TV4, which confirmed that Separate Worlds had been cancelled on Friday the twenty-second because of the hockey match. Then he rang Mellberg, who not unexpectedly was overjoyed to hear the news. He demanded that Anders immediately be brought back in. With his third call, Patrik got the backup he requested and drove straight towards the residential complex where Anders lived. Jenny Rosén must have simply mixed up the days. Not an uncommon occurrence among witnesses.
Despite his excitement at a possible break in the case, Patrik couldn’t really focus on the task. His thoughts kept returning to Erica and the night they had just spent together. He caught himself grinning like a fool from ear to ear, and his hands involuntarily drummed little rhythms on the steering wheel. He turned on the radio to an oldies station and got Aretha Franklin with ‘Respect’. The upbeat Atlantic sound fit his mood perfectly and he turned up the volume. At the refrain he sang along at the top of his lungs and danced as best he could from a sitting position. He thought he sounded damned good, at least until the radio cut out and he heard only his own voice roaring ‘R-E-S-P-E-C-T’. His eardrums reverberated, but not in a good way.
The entire past night felt like an intoxicated dream, and it wasn’t only because of the amount of wine they had drunk. It was as though a veil or hazy curtain of emotion, love, and sex had settled over those night-time hours.
He was reluctantly forced to put aside his thoughts of yesterday as he turned into the car park at the residential complex. The backup patrol cars had arrived unusually fast. They must have been in the vicinity. He saw two cars with blue lights flashing and frowned slightly. Typical that they would misconstrue the instructions. He’d asked for one car, not two. As he approached he saw that there was an ambulance behind the police cars. Something wasn’t right.
He recognized Lena, the blonde policewoman from Uddevalla, and went over to her. She was talking on a mobile phone, but as he approached she signed off. He heard ‘Bye’ and she stuffed the phone into a holder she wore on her belt.
‘Hi, Patrik.’
‘Hi, Lena. What’s going on?’
‘One of the winos found Anders Nilsson hanged in his flat.’ She nodded in the direction of the main door. Patrik got an ice-cold feeling in his stomach.
‘You haven’t touched anything?’
‘No, what do you think we are? I just talked to dispatch in Uddevalla and they’re sending over a team to examine the crime scene. We also talked to Mellberg, so I assumed you came because he rang you.’
‘No, I was on the way over here anyway to bring Anders in for more questioning.’
‘But I heard he had an alibi?’
‘Yes, that’s what we thought, but it just fell apart so we were going to bring him back in.’
‘Well, this is fucking bad luck then. What the hell do you think it means? I mean, the probability that there would suddenly be two murderers here in Fjällbacka must be almost zero. He must have been killed by the same person who killed Alex Wijkner. Do you have any other suspects besides Anders?’
Patrik
