NIKLAS ÖHMAN – JENNY HOLGERSSON said the enamelled nameplate. He chose to use the clapper instead of the doorbell and in a way he wished that no one would open.
The door was opened with a quick movement and a man stared at Sven-Arne with astonishment.
‘What do you want?’
The directness of the question surprised Sven-Arne.
‘I… it’s a little hard to explain… but I am acquainted with the man who lived here before.’
The man looked closely at him.
‘With Dufva?’
Sven-Arne nodded.
‘That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard. He didn’t have any friends.’
‘I didn’t say friend. And to be precise he was not really my acquaintance.’
‘Are you a policeman?’
‘No, I just wanted to-’
‘Come on inside, there’s too much cold air blowing in.’
Sven-Arne hesitated. He could still extricate himself, but he was more or less physically dragged inside the house.
‘There’s something wrong with the furnace, that’s why it’s so cold. Let’s sit down in the kitchen. It’s warmer there.’
The man disappeared into the kitchen and sat down at the table. Sven-Arne followed him but ended up standing in the doorway, looking around. He could smell fish. Fresh vegetables were spread out on a countertop.
‘Sit down.’
Sven-Arne obeyed. The man, who looked to be between thirty-five and forty, grimaced, pressing his lips together as if experiencing a sudden pain.
‘I must be intruding, I see you are in the middle of preparing dinner,’ Sven-Arne said. But the man waved this away. ‘I don’t know how to express this, but Nils Dufva meant a great deal to my family. What do you know about him?’
‘Not much,’ the man said. ‘But who are you?’
‘I am Sven-Arne, but the past couple of years I have gone by the name of John for the sake of expediency. I have been away for many years and now I am trying to get some order in my life again.’
The man nodded and appeared genuinely interested. Sven-Arne was slowly starting to warm to him, considering how he had let him into his kitchen without reservations.
‘Nils Dufva was in Spain during the thirties.’
‘That’s nothing new,’ Niklas Öhman said. ‘He was always going on about Spain.’
‘So you met him?’
‘Of course. Jenny and I have been together almost twenty years. We met in school and she cleaned for the old man, bought his groceries, that kind of thing. Sometimes I helped around the house, things that Dufva couldn’t manage. Two or three times a year he would invite us to dinner, either here or at the pub. They were crazy events. The old man went on about all kinds of historical shit.’
‘What did he tell you about Spain?’
‘That he was down there fighting in the war, but it mostly came out in episodes. I’m not so sure about the facts other than that they had a civil war, and to be totally honest I didn’t listen particularly carefully.’
‘You didn’t think that there was anything out of the ordinary about the fact that he was there and-’
‘Nothing could be out of the ordinary with that old man,’ Niklas Öhman interrupted. ‘He was odd, to say the least. You know that he was in Germany later during the war?’
Sven-Arne nodded.
‘A real Hitler lover. He hated Russians and Communists. That was his thing.’
‘My uncle Ante was also in Spain.’
‘Damn. Did Dufva and your uncle know each other?’
‘Ante was a Communist.’
Niklas Öhman stared quizzically at Sven-Arne.
‘They fought on opposite sides?’
‘You’re quick on the uptake,’ Sven-Arne said. ‘Maybe they bumped into each other down there, I don’t know, but Nils Dufva was important in some way for my uncle. I came here to possibly get some clues. I knew that Jenny had moved in here after her relation died, and I thought that she might have had some information-’
‘Has your uncle died?’
‘No, he is still alive, I have just come from him at any rate, but he doesn’t tell me anything, not about Dufva at least.’
Niklas Öhman got up and walked over to the kitchen counter, took up a knife, and started to cut up what Sven-Arne believed was fennel, while he went on to talk about how they had renovated the whole house. Jenny Holgersson had developed an almost fanatical obsession with obliterating all the old traces of her relative.
‘Jenny doesn’t want to talk about him either.’
‘But she wanted to live here?’
‘The price was right. When he died Jenny had lived in rental flats for many years. To get a house was… you understand, I’m sure.’
‘So she inherited the old man? Did she get a lot?’
Niklas Öhman stopped his knife.
‘Quite a bit,’ he said, and then halved some carrots with a couple of swift slices. ‘He was richer than you would have thought. He never talked about money or…’
‘So they weren’t close?’
‘Jenny and Dufva? No, not at all, but she felt a duty to step in, with housecleaning and the like.’
‘But she stood to inherit,’ Sven-Arne observed.
Niklas Öhman glanced at him over his shoulder.
‘What do you want, anyway – I thought you wanted to find something out about Dufva?’
‘I don’t really know what I want. Perhaps get some order to the story, or to understand my uncle. The fact is that you are the first person I’ve really talked to since returning to Sweden. Besides Ante, of course.’
Up until this point in the conversation, Niklas Öhman had turned his head from time to time and looked at Sven-Arne over his shoulder, but now he put down the knife, turned, and leant up against the counter.
‘Why was Nils Dufva so important?’
‘He died,’ Sven-Arne Persson said.
‘As we all do at some point. You should ask me, I associate with human remains a great deal.’
‘Are you-’
‘Archeologist,’ Öhman said. ‘And now Dufva is a heap of bones in the earth. And that is nothing that concerns me. He is history. And that’s fine by me.’
‘Would you mind if I took a quick look around the house?’ Sven-Arne asked suddenly.
‘Why would you want to do that?’
‘I don’t know how to explain it, but it would help me understand my uncle’s argumentations.’
He felt his cheeks heat up. Perhaps the lie was too weakly constructed for Niklas Öhman to swallow.
‘I definitely don’t want to go nosing around, I don’t want you to think that. But I would like to see the room where Dufva died. I believe-’
‘What do you know about his murder?’
‘Nothing,’ Sven-Arne replied. ‘I just know that Dufva and Ante were up to something.’
Some of his confidence returned and he now launched into a wordy explanation that he deliberately left somewhat unclear. He sensed that if he presented himself as somewhat confused it might help his cause. Öhman might think he may as well authorise a short tour of the house, and then try to convince his visitor to leave.
‘I want you to be gone when Jenny gets back. She has put all that behind her. Most of all she wants to forget about the old man. It was hard enough to find him dead. He was lying in the living room with his head bashed in. She had to have therapy for a couple of years in order to try to forget and move on, and still, I can sometimes see on her face how hard it is for her and sometimes she can’t even walk into the room. She’ll never be free.’
‘Could I possibly have a carrot? I haven’t had much to eat for a while.’
Niklas Öhman stared at Sven-Arne Persson, shook his head, and gave him a peeled carrot.
‘I don’t want Jenny to become upset, that’s all.’
‘It’s okay,’ Sven-Arne said, without thinking of the fact that he was speaking English, and took a bite of his carrot.
‘Just a minute, then maybe Ante’s talk will make more sense to me.’
‘It’s okay,’ Öhman echoed. ‘I’ll show you.’