Marklund just nodded.
‘Have you found the driver?’ said Per.
‘Not yet, but we’re examining the motorway and we’ve found some tyre marks. The car must have been damaged, so we’re checking garages too. And we’re looking for witnesses.’
Per glanced towards Jerry’s room. ‘It must have been someone Jerry knew... I mean, he was getting out of the car when I spotted him. So he must have gone along with whoever it was of his own free will.’
‘Did you recognize the driver?’
Per shook his head.
‘Did you get the number?’
‘I was too far away; the car was up above me on the bridge. I could see it was dark-red... I think I saw one like it driving past our cottage on Öland a few days ago.’
Marklund took out his notebook. ‘Can you remember any details?’
‘Not many... It was a Swedish number plate, and I think it was a Ford Escort, a few years old.’ He looked wearily at the inspector. ‘Is that any help?’
Marklund closed the notebook. ‘You never know.’
But Per realized it was no help at all.
Jerry was sinking deeper and deeper into unconsciousness, but his eyes occasionally moved behind his eyelids. His breathing was shallow, and he mumbled disjointed words. They sounded like a long series of Swedish names, many of them women: ‘Josefine, yes... Amanda... Charlotte?... Suzanne, what do you want?’
He never mentioned Per’s mother Anita, nor Regina.
As the day passed, his breathing grew weaker and weaker, but in the midst of all the mumbling there were other names and words Per recognized: ‘Bremer... Moleng Noar... and Markus Lukas, so ill...’
At about eight o’clock on Sunday evening, when Per had almost fallen asleep, Jerry suddenly looked at him with total clarity and whispered, ‘Pelle?’
‘I’m here,’ said Per. ‘There’s nothing to worry about, Dad.’
‘Good, Pelle... Good.’ He fell silent.
Per leaned closer. ‘Who was it?’ he asked. ‘Who was driving the car?’
‘Bremer.’
‘It can’t have been.’
But Jerry simply nodded, then closed his eyes again.
He passed away just after nine on Sunday evening, with a barely audible sigh. The wheezing Per had heard ever since he was a child stopped with a quiet exhalation, and his body gave up the struggle.
Per was sitting by the bed holding Jerry’s hand when it happened, and he remained there when the room became utterly silent.
He sat there for several minutes. He tried to think of someone who needed to know that Jerry had gone, someone he ought to call — but he couldn’t come up with a single person.
Eventually he went to look for a doctor.
45
Per got back to Casa Mörner an hour after midnight, once he had seen his father’s body transferred to a trolley and wheeled away by a porter.
The last thing one of the night nurses had done in Jerry’s room was to go over and open the window wide, the curtains fluttering as the cold night air swept in.
She turned to Per and gave him a brief, embarrassed smile. ‘I usually open the window when they’ve gone,’ she said. ‘To let the soul out.’
Per nodded. He looked over at the window and could almost see Jerry’s spirit drifting away through the night, like a shimmering silver ball outside the hospital. Would it sink down towards the ground, or float up to the stars?
He left Kalmar at half past midnight and drove slowly across the Öland bridge. As he drove north on the island he kept glancing in the rear-view mirror. A couple of times he saw headlights coming up behind him at high speed and gripped the wheel more tightly, but both cars overtook him.
Down by the quarry it was almost completely dark, with only a couple of outside lights showing over at the new houses. Per drove up to his little cottage, got out of the car and listened, but everywhere was quiet. The faint soughing of the wind, nothing else.
Then he heard the telephone ringing in the kitchen.
He began to walk slowly towards the house, and the phone continued to ring.
Markus Lukas, he thought. You’ve killed Bremer and now you’re hiding somewhere, wondering if you managed to kill my father.
He unlocked the door and followed the sound into the kitchen. He looked at the telephone for a few seconds, then picked up the receiver. ‘Hello?’
No one spoke; all he could hear was an echoing sound, and rhythmic cries in the background.
It was a recording, Per realized, and he had heard it before. On Maundy Thursday someone had rung up and played exactly the same thing in the middle of the day.
And now he recognized what he was listening to — a girl crying out. It was the soundtrack from one of Jerry’s films.
He clutched the receiver tightly. ‘Talk to me,’ he said. ‘Why are you doing this?’
There was no answer — the soundtrack continued. He listened and closed his eyes. ‘You don’t need to play that... Jerry’s gone now,’ he went on. ‘You killed him.’
He held his breath and listened for some kind of response, but all he heard was the sound of the film for a few more seconds, then a click. The call was over.
He slowly replaced the receiver and saw his own pale face reflected in the kitchen window.
What was the message he had just been given? That this Markus Lukas intended to carry on? That he wasn’t just pursuing Jerry for what he’d done, whatever that might be, but the whole Mörner family? The sins of the father passed on to the children and grandchildren...
He got up and went back out into the night. To Ernst’s old workshop.
The trolls stared at him from the shelves lining the walls as he started to carry out Ernst’s tools. Hammers, saws, chisels, sledgehammers and wooden clubs — plenty of excellent weapons. Under the light outside the cottage, Per could see that many of the tools were blunt and worn, but some were sharp. There was a big axe for chopping wood that looked lethal. He raised it with both hands.
You want revenge? You just come here then. Come here and see if I’m prepared to pay for something my father did...
He took his weapons inside, locked the door and distributed them through the different rooms. He placed the axe next to his bed. Then he turned off the light and lay in the darkness, staring up at the ceiling and thinking of Markus Lukas, the man whose face was turned away.
Eventually he fell asleep.
Four hours later the rising sun woke him. He raised his head, blinked and saw the big axe within reach on the floor. It all came flooding back.
His father had been murdered and his daughter was seriously ill.
The world was cold and empty.
He lay in bed for an hour or so but couldn’t get back to sleep, and in the end he got up and had some breakfast. He looked at the telephone, but it remained silent.
After a while he picked up the receiver and made the necessary calls following the death of a relative: to a funeral director, to Jerry’s bank, and to the priest at the church where the funeral would take place.
Then he sat and stared out of the window, waiting for something to happen. But he had to occupy himself in the meantime. He took out his questionnaires.
He couldn’t work at the moment, of course, he just didn’t have the strength — so he started making up the answers. He filled in the forms himself, one after another. At first it was a slow process, but as time went by it became surprisingly easy to conjure up people who had seen an advert for a particular soap and were considering buying it. Some of them, like ‘Peter from Karlstad’ and ‘Christina from Uppsala’, were absolutely certain they would be making a purchase. They were convinced that this soap would give their life new meaning.