“I love you, Rebecka,” pleads Sanna. “Don’t you understand that it’s a gift? I’ll help you to…”
She stops speaking as Rebecka looks at her with contempt.
“I know,” she says quietly. “You don’t think I’m even capable of looking after myself and Sara.”
Sanna buries her head in her hands and begins to weep inconsolably.
Rebecka leaves the flat. Rage is pounding through her body. Her fists are clenched inside her gloves. It feels as if she could kill someone. Anyone.
When Rebecka has gone, Sanna picks up the telephone and dials. It is Thomas Söderberg’s wife, Maja, who answers.
Patrik Mattsson was woken at quarter past eleven in the morning by the sound of a key being turned in the outside door of his flat. Then his mother’s voice. Fragile as ice in the autumn. Full of anxiety. She called his name, and he heard her go through the hall and past the bathroom where he was lying. She stopped at the door of the living room and called again. After a while she knocked on the bathroom door.
“Hello! Patrik!”
I ought to answer, he thought.
He moved slightly, and the tiles on the floor laid their coolness against his face. He must have fallen asleep in the end. On the bathroom floor. Curled up like a fetus. He still had his clothes on.
His mother’s voice again. Determined hammering on the door.
“Hello, Patrik, open the door, there’s a good boy. Are you all right?”
No, I’m not all right, he thought. I’ll never be all right again.
His lips formed the name. But no sound was allowed to pass his lips.
Viktor. Viktor. Viktor.
Now she was rattling the door handle.
“Patrik, either you open this door right now or I’m ringing the police and they can kick it in.”
Oh, God. He managed to get to his knees. His head was pounding like a pneumatic drill. The hip that had been resting on the hard tiled floor was aching.
“I’m coming,” he croaked. “I’ve… not been too well. Hang on.”
She backed away as he opened the door.
“You look terrible,” she burst out. “Are you ill?”
“Yes,” he replied.
“Shall I ring up and say you’re not coming in?”
“No, I’ve got to go now.”
He looked at the clock.
She followed him into the lounge. Flowerpots lay smashed on the floor. The rug had ended up in one corner. One of the armchairs had been tipped upside down.
“What’s been going on here?” she asked weakly.
He turned and put his arm around her shoulders.
“I did it myself, Mum. But it’s nothing for you to worry about. I’m feeling better now.”
She nodded in reply, but he could see that tears weren’t far away. He turned away from her.
“I must get off to the mushroom farm,” he said.
“I’ll stay here and clean up for you,” his mother said from behind him, bending down to pick up a glass from the floor.
Patrik Mattsson defended himself against her submissive concern.
“No, honestly, Mum, you don’t need to do that,” he said.
“For my sake,” she whispered, trying to catch his eye.
She bit her lower lip in an attempt to keep the tears at bay.
“I know you don’t want to confide in me,” she went on. “But if you’d just let me tidy up, then…”
She swallowed once.
“… then at least I’ll have done something for you,” she finished.
He dropped his shoulders and forced himself to give her a quick hug.
“Okay,” he said. “That would be really kind.”
Then he shot out through the door.
He got into his Golf and turned the key in the ignition. Let the engine race with the clutch down to drown out his thoughts.
No crying now, he told himself sternly.
He twisted the rearview mirror and looked at his face. His eyes were swollen. His lank hair was plastered to his head. He gave a short, joyless bark of laughter. It sounded more like a cough. Then he turned the mirror back sharply.
I’m never going to think about him again, he thought. Never again.
He screeched out onto Gruvvägen and accelerated down the hill toward Lappgatan. He was almost driving from memory, couldn’t see a thing through the falling snow. The snowplow had been along the road in the morning, but since then more snow had fallen, and the fresh snow gave way treacherously beneath his tires. He increased the pressure on the accelerator. From time to time one of the wheels went into a spin and the car slid over to the opposite side of the road. It didn’t matter.
At the crossroads with Lappgatan he didn’t stand a chance, the car skidded helplessly straight across the road. Out of the corner of his eye he could see a woman with a kick sledge and a small child. She pushed the sledge over the mound of snow left by the plow, and raised her arm at him. Presumably she was giving him the finger. As he drove past the Laestadian chapel, the road surface altered. The snow had become packed together under the weight of the cars, but it was rutted, and the Golf wanted to go its own way. Afterward he couldn’t remember how he’d got over the crossroads at Gruvvägen and Hjalmar Lundbohmsvägen. Had he stopped at the traffic lights?
Down by the mine he drove past the sentry box with a wave. The guard was buried in his newspaper and didn’t even look up. He stopped by the barrier in front of the tunnel opening that led down into the mine. His whole body was shaking. His fingers wouldn’t cooperate when he fumbled for a cigarette in his jacket pocket. He felt empty inside. That was good. For the last five minutes he hadn’t thought about Viktor Strandgård once. He took a long pull on the cigarette and inhaled deeply.
Keep calm, he whispered reassuringly, just keep calm.
Maybe he should have stayed at home. But shut in the flat all day, he’d have jumped off the balcony, for sure.
Oh, who are you kidding, he sneered at himself. As if you’d dare. Smashing teacups and chucking flowerpots on the floor, that’s all you can manage.
He wound down the window and stretched out his hand to insert his pass card into the machine.
A hand grabbed his wrist and he jumped, the hot ash from the cigarette falling on his knee. At first he couldn’t see who it was, and his stomach cramped with fear. Then a familiar face appeared.
“Rebecka Martinsson,” he said.
The snow was falling on her dark hair, the flakes melting against her nose.
“I want to talk to you,” she said.
He nodded toward the passenger seat. “Hop in, then.”
Rebecka hesitated. She was thinking about the message someone had left on her car. “You will surely die,” “You have been warned.”
“It’s now or never, as The King says,” said Patrik Mattsson, leaning over the seat and opening the car door.
Rebecka looked at the mine entrance in front of her. A black hole, down into the underworld.
“Okay, but I’ve got the dog in the car, I’ll have to be back in an hour.”
She walked around the car, got in and shut the door.
Nobody knows where I am, she thought as Patrik Mattsson stuck his card into the machine and the barrier that barred the way down into the mine slowly lifted.
He slipped the car into gear and they drove down into the mine.
Ahead of them they could see the reflectors shining on the walls; behind them a dense darkness descended like a black velvet curtain.
Rebecka tried to talk. It was like dragging a reluctant dog along on its lead.
“My ears are popping, why does that happen?”
“The difference in altitude.”
“How far down are we going?”
“Five hundred forty meters.”
“So you’ve started growing mushrooms, then?”
No reply.
“Shiitake, I’ve never actually tried those. Is it just you?”
“No.”
“So there are a few of you, then? Anybody else there at the moment?”