The badger, p.22
The Badger, page 22
He really wanted to give her some sort of slap on the wrist for being so condescending before, when he was speaking to Annika. But that had to wait. She was going to pay for her betrayal, sooner or later. He finally caught sight of her in the throng. She was standing a little too close to Tobias Rönn, the palm of her hand gently resting in the middle of his chest. Her eyes were sparkling as she was whispering in his ear.
He clenched his fist, feeling the plastic cup burst with a snap. Lukewarm wine splashed across the back of his hand.
“Oops! What’s happened here?” said Stina, laughing loudly. “Did you get any on you, shall I get a napkin or anything?”
Jan looked at his hand. Red wine was running between his fingers and across the base of his thumb, like thin trickles of blood.
55
FRIDAY 8 JUNE
You can’t be sure that I really do burrow my way in beneath the basement floor. How would I do that?
Cecilia was sitting on a stool at a high table looking out across Kungsportsavenyen from the roof terrace of the Hotel Opalen. The boulevard looked different from above. The treetops were round balls of greenery. The dirty roofs on the tram had faded grey over time and the people on the street were reminiscent of dolls. Green and red rooftops of sheet metal or concrete pantiles extended around her as far as the eye could see.
She dragged her finger along the cold glass of beer in front of her, checking out the other guests meeting for drinks after work. So far there weren’t that many, it was too early in the evening. It didn’t matter. She had just arrived there herself. She was bound to get the opportunity to talk to somebody, sooner or later.
She sipped her beer. It was bitter but refreshing. She smiled to herself. She was there to celebrate. The first day of the holidays was always the best. With everything ahead of her, it felt as if she was invincible. Her telephone buzzed in her handbag. She bent down and took it out. It was Jonas. She considered letting it ring, she was off work after all. But she couldn’t. Being responsible for the investigation, it was expected of her to respond if anything cropped up.
“Hello?” she said, aware of how official she sounded.
“Hello, you tourist,” said Jonas. “Having a good time?”
She looked out across the Avenue again. The evening sun was shining into the skylights and she had to squint. She decided to pick out a new pair of sunglasses tomorrow. It would be worth it. “Absolutely. You should get yourself over here, it’s a lovely evening.”
“Thanks, but I’d probably think Jessica wants me at home. Though I thought you might want the result of Jesper Olsson’s swab test.”
Cecilia sat up a little straighter. Her heart was beating faster. “Go on.”
“It was as expected. Jesper Olsson isn’t our unidentified man. We can eliminate him again.”
She felt deflated. Jonas was right. It wasn’t a surprise. Even so, she had been hoping for some progress. The Gods knew she had deserved some.
“That’s a shame,” she said, for want of anything better.
“It is, but at the same time he wasn’t exactly our top candidate.”
Cecilia shook her head. “No, you’re right about that.”
She nervously drummed her fingers on the table, hesitated and thought about the cup she had taken, the one Bengt Johansson had drunk from. She had stuck it in an evidence bag and placed it in her desk drawer without letting on.
“Jonas,” she said so he wouldn’t end the call.
“Yes?” he said.
She said nothing and buttoned her lip. Lerjedal’s investigation was still underway. She wanted to ask Jonas to send the cup to NFC. At the same time, she didn’t want to tell him how she got hold of it. That wouldn’t have ended very well.
She sighed. “No, it wasn’t anything. Just a fleeting thought.”
“Okay,” said Jonas. “Then let the holidays begin, wouldn’t you say?”
56
TUESDAY 13 SEPTEMBER
When I’m talking to you through my writing, do you feel chosen or threatened?
Doctor Lena Amarant was wrong. Annika hadn’t got better. On the contrary, the sinkhole inside her was growing and, as the days went by, she became more and more passive and depressed. Her sick leave was extended and her diagnosis was changed to chronic fatigue syndrome as the summer flashed before her eyes.
Annika had no perception of time any more. From outside the window she heard the sound of life, but she wasn’t a part of it. It crowded in on her, demanded her attention, with no respect for her not being able to handle it. Chirping birds, cawing magpies. Low flying propeller aircraft. A barking dog. Passing cars. The neighbour cutting his grass with his noisy lawn mower.
“It works anyway, so why change it?” he had said to Martin over the hedge. “Those robotic ones only get stolen.”
The inside of the house was stuffy. A wilted bouquet from Eklund Press was standing in a vase of cloudy water in the window. The card was full of signatures with the words Get Well Soon in cursive print above a cartoon teddy bear with a bandage on his head. By now she was lying on the sofa with a blanket across her legs, despite the heat. Images of an American talk show were flickering on the television. The kind which involves the audience with surprises under their seats. Famous guests, smiling. Everything is simple, if you believe in the American dream. Annika didn’t. Right now, she didn’t believe in anything.
The blinds were pulled down in an attempt to shut life out. She was sleeping even worse than before the miscarriage and crying a lot, waking only to move to the sofa and spend the rest of the day there. Martin had been working late all summer, coming home in the evenings with ready meals. What little she did eat was salty. She was losing far too much weight.
The talk show had stopped for a commercial break. Not knowing why, she sat up and looked at the drawn blinds. She felt a desperate need to do something. She couldn’t say what, or why, just that she would start panicking if she were to lie there motionless any longer. She stood up and blinked while she waited for her giddiness to pass, then she went to the window and peered between the slats. When her eyes got used to the light, she saw that the grass was partially covered in the first of the leaves which had dropped from the trees. They were glowing yellow like suns against the green. The grass, for its part, was tall and matted. The garden needed work. The little Martin did do to keep nature in check hadn’t made much difference.
The handle on the veranda door jammed, squeaking as she opened it. The sun was warm on her face and a light breeze through her cotton pyjamas refreshed her. She took a step onto the grass in her bare feet. Blades of grass tickled between her toes and wet earth cooled the balls of her feet. The moisture from the sole of her foot shot through her entire body like a thunderbolt. It rose up along her spine like a rush of euphoria, buzzed about her head and vanished out through the hairs on the back of her head. Annika couldn’t explain it, but she wanted more. It was like a physical hunger which had to be fed. She dragged her feet a few steps further out onto the lawn. She felt a tingle, but it didn’t produce the same euphoria as her first contact with the earth had done. She looked around to see if she was being observed. There was nobody there. She was alone.
Her eyes landed on the garden border nearest the wall of the house. Along the edge, flowering perennials were growing into an unfathomable jumble that nobody had bothered tending for several years. Not since Jan Apelgren disappeared, Annika thought. She knelt down by the leaves, which were now withered, and placed her hands on the ground. On the surface the soil was dry and grey. The sun had warmed it up making the heat spread through her palms. She sniffed and stood up, went to fetch the key to the garden shed and rooted among the tools inside.
She cast her eyes over bow rakes and lawn rakes until she found a trowel. A sharp wedge of metal with a dirty plastic handle. She grabbed it and returned to the border.
“Just what am I doing?” she said out loud. Then she pushed the trowel sharply into the ground. There was a scrape as it bumped against a stone below the surface. The noise made her shrink back, dropping the tool as if it had burnt her. She looked around again for signs that someone might have seen her after all. Once she was sure no one was around, she grabbed the trowel again. She prised, hacked away and twisted, until she laboured out a hollow some ten centimetres deep, among torn off roots and the edge of a bulb that had flowered.
Now she couldn’t hold off any longer. She shoved her hands down into the cool topsoil, feeling the euphoria rising through her again. Her head was spinning and she was forced to shut her eyes tightly to steady her balance. Wet earth cooled her fingers as she sunk them further down, slowly and painstakingly, making fists in the ground and pulling her hands back out into the air again.
She studied the pattern the earth created in her palms and smiled. It was beautiful, like a natural canvas. She felt the tears coming to her eyes again. She didn’t try to stop them, but let them flow as she dug some more. She scratched and clawed until she was able to tear the flower bulb out of the ground, threw it over her shoulder and continued digging until her nail broke on a jagged stone. She jerked her hands back, purely as a reflex action. The shock came before the pain did, her euphoria vanishing at once. Reality was seeping back into her instead. Her knees and the joints of her fingers were aching. The fresh earth smelt rich and metallic. She had exposed dirty concrete along the exterior of the house.
Her middle finger was throbbing where her nail had split almost a third of the way down its length. A light drop of blood emerged, like a ruby in the dirt. She held it with her other hand, thinking that she had to wash her hands so she wouldn’t get an infection. When did she have her last tetanus jab?
Then she saw something that made her forget the pain. There was a light mark on the exterior of the house which disappeared downwards at an angle. Annika took the trowel in her uninjured hand and dug along the mark in order get a better look. It was going in parallel with other marks a little further down. Annika stopped digging and dropped her small trowel. It did look as if someone had scraped something against the wall, didn’t it?
She bounced to her feet. Her heart was pounding in her chest. There could only be one thing leaving signs like these on the exterior. The Scraper, the creature who had whispered to her in the basement when she was young. The creature who would drag its claws against the wall outside, in the earth around the house, at night.
It wasn’t her imagination. She had heard it, that night they lost their child. What else could it be? It was there. She could feel spiteful eyes on the back of her head, observing her from the neighbour’s black windows.
Her breathing was jerky. “Where are you?” she whispered. Her eyes were jumping back and forth across the grass. She imagined a figure breaking up through the earth to take her. There was a whoosh on the street. Annika jumped out of her skin. Her heart was running riot.
A car drove by. Annika held her hands against her brow, struggling to calm her breathing.
“Just a car,” she said to herself. “You’re fine. You’re not going mad.” She laughed. “You’re talking to yourself, Annika. But it’s okay. Just relax.”
Sniffling, she wiped her tears with her hands. Tiny bits of earth got under her eyelids, but she wasn’t concerned about that. She breathed out. The veranda door was still slightly open, just as she had left it. She slid inside, without touching the door so she wouldn’t dirty the handle, and washed her hands in the kitchen. The smell of soap filled her nostrils and black streaks of soil ran down the plughole.
She scrubbed and rubbed until her skin was sore and felt rough. She felt a sting as the skin on the knuckle on her left index finger split and red blood ran into the hot water. Then she turned the tap off and stopped. Her blood tasted sweet and metallic as she sucked at the wound.
You’re fine, she thought. It’s just your imagination playing a trick on you. The earth she had smeared on her forehead was itching as it dried. A sour scent was finding its way out from under her arms. The time on the oven clock was after five.
She didn’t want to look like this when Martin came home. She needed a shower and a change of clothes. She left the kitchen but only made it to the hall. There she stopped as if she had walked into an invisible wall. Straight ahead was the bedroom and the door to the bathroom. But on the right, between her and the bathroom, were the stairs downstairs, gaping wide open like a sinkhole. Annika propped herself up with her hand as her dizziness was threatening to floor her. The stairs led to the entertainment room, but at the same time, they also led to the basement.
It was an irrational fear. She knew it wasn’t the same basement she was locked in as a young girl. With the picture windows in the entertainment room which bathed the room in sunlight, it didn’t even come close to that. But behind the entertainment room, in the utility room and the basement storeroom, the dreaded darkness was lurking. Annika shook her head to shake those ideas out of her mind. Her legs were trembling, but she managed to force herself past the stairs and into the bathroom.
Safely inside, she collapsed on the floor, in tears once more.
57
TUESDAY 13 SEPTEMBER
Because I know you hear them too, even if you don’t want to admit it. And wasn’t that a scraping sound you heard in the basement just a moment ago?
Just under an hour later, she had wiped the entire event out of her head. Her common sense had triumphed yet again. She was feeling ridiculously elated, like the rush felt after surviving a scary ride at Liseberg amusement park.
In the warmth of the cooking, the kitchen smelt of the curry which was bubbling along with coconut cream and vegetables on the stove. The speaker in the window was playing pop music and the extractor hood was whooshing. Everything was all right again. Annika was frying chicken pieces in oil, singing along to the music. She took a sip from a glass of red wine and sampled the sauce with a wooden spoon. She added the chicken to the sauce.
She took the saucepan off the stove and set the table for her and Martin, she had timed the food so she would be able to surprise him when he came home. She was satisfied with her culinary skills and shut her eyes to the other stuff that had occurred during the day. Annika sat down on the sofa with her wine and texted Martin that dinner was ready. She ended her message with a kissing face emoji blowing a heart.
The wine was full-bodied and tasty. It warmed her empty stomach. She switched between different programmes on television without actually watching them. Martin hadn’t got back to her. By the time she had had enough of waiting, the curry was barely lukewarm. She heated it up in the microwave and started to eat. The sounds from the television in the living room were like a procession of meaningless words keeping her company. Once she had finished and was about to leave the table, there was a rattle in the door. Martin arrived home and hung up his jacket.
“You’re late,” she said. Her disappointment was clear in her voice.
“I’m sorry,” said Martin. He went into the kitchen and piled the food onto his plate. “This looks delicious. Any wine?”
“On the counter.”
He sat down opposite her and started to eat. Annika’s teeth were slowly grinding against each another, cracking inside her skull. She tried to look into his eyes, but he continuously found something else to look at. As if she wasn’t there.
“Our data migration refused to play ball this evening,” he said, shovelling his food down. “The others are still there, trying to salvage whatever they can.”
“But you came home.”
“Yes. Just couldn’t face staying on. They’ll be fine without me for a bit, but I’m going to have to carry on remotely after dinner. Sorry for not texting you back. I got it just as everyone was most frantic.”
“You could’ve replied later.”
“Yes, I could. I forgot.”
Annika took a deep breath. She thought about what the doctor had told her about his grieving process and decided to give him space. It was tough enough for him as it was, with all of the problems he was having at work. He didn’t need any more at home. She smiled and had a little more wine. Yet she couldn’t shake off the feeling that there was something he wasn’t telling her. She drank a little more and decided it was the wine allowing her imagination to run away with her. Like that afternoon.
Except she hadn’t been drinking then, of course.
They didn’t say anything else to each other that evening. Martin went down to his desk in the entertainment room. The sound of clicking on his keyboard found its way up the stairs into the bedroom. Annika fell asleep to the sound.
58
MONDAY 10 OCTOBER
I wear knives that I’ve fixed to my gloves. I whet them on the exposed concrete of your house. Is that what you’re hearing?
Blue light from Cecilia Wreede’s television was seeping through the darkness of her living room. Her mobile lit up, competing with the television for her attention as she lay on her side on the sofa, trying not to fall asleep. It was a message from Martin Granlund on Messenger. She raised her eyebrows. She had forgotten she had him on Facebook.
Hi. It’s been a while. Sorry if this isn’t quite the best time, but I’ve been thinking a lot about you since you were here in the summer. I’d like to talk to you, if you’re happy to that is.
Cecilia sat up. The message stayed on her device as she moved her eyes to the television set. The sound was turned off but commercials filled the screen. A car was racing across a sun-drenched landscape, disappearing over a bridge.
