The badger, p.4
The Badger, page 4
“Time to leave now,” said Annika, walking to where they had hung their coats, without waiting for Martin. She needed to get out. The air inside the house had become as heavy as lead, the scent of earth from the basement grew stronger with every second. It felt as if she was going to suffocate.
She heard Martin hastily thanking the estate agent. Annika didn’t bother saying goodbye and stomped out of the house. She heard Martin closing the door and catching up with her.
“Annika,” he said. His voice was soft but she didn’t care. “Sorry, sweetheart, I didn’t realise it was that important to you.”
“No, all you saw was your bloody man cave,” said Annika without turning around. “That’s precisely the problem, you don’t listen to what’s important to me.”
“But I do. I really do. Sorry I’ve been so stupid about it. I just don’t understand.”
“Well, you don’t have to understand everything.”
“Right. I apologise. Okay? I promise, no more basements.” He looked at her with those big blue puppy dog eyes he had when he really was sorry. They sent the barbed wire around Annika’s heart crashing.
She took a deep breath. “Fine. No more basements. Though from now on, I want to see all properties before you book us a viewing.”
“Definitely.”
Annika turned around, looking over Martin’s shoulder at the wooden frontage behind them. From the outside it looked just like the dream she had pictured, of a warm and welcoming house with a garden to take care of. Where the children could run around and play. There were some bare apple trees in the grounds. They would be able to set up a swing from the sturdy branches. If it were earlier in the year, she would have been able to pick an apple straight from the tree and hand it to a child beaming up at her, just as her grandma had done when they used to visit her yellow summer house in the country.
Martin hadn’t been completely off the mark. If it wasn’t for the basement, it would have been exactly what she was looking for. She felt ashamed and gave Martin a little smile. She had punished him enough already. That would have to do.
“Shame about the basement anyway because the house is actually very sweet,” she said.
Martin nodded, looking down to the ground. “Yes it is, I thought you’d like it. Listen, Annika, I don’t want us to fall out. But don’t you also get the feeling there’s some stuff we’ve got to talk about?”
Annika looked at him. “Such as? We haven’t fallen out, I’m just stressed about work.”
“I get that. But we’d manage on my wages for quite some time. Until you find something else. But that’s not what I mean.”
“Well, what do you mean?”
“I mean us, Annika. About how we actually are. I know this isn’t the right time but maybe we should talk about things more than we do.”
“I don’t know what you mean. It’ll all work out. Soon we’ll have our house and our children and everything will be all right again.”
Martin looked at her for a long while. “Don’t get me wrong. I love you. But there are things that aren’t going to get sorted by us having children. It’s not like we’re not trying but what if it’s just not to be? What are we going to do then?”
Annika took a step closer to her husband and took his hand in hers. He looked at her and tried to smile.
“Come along,” she said. “Let’s not talk about it now.”
6
SUNDAY 14 NOVEMBER
Before becoming the Badger, I was mostly like everyone else. If you had met me on the street, you’d have never guessed that something was amiss, but it was. My body, just like yours, was bearing the seed of evil, waiting to take root.
Cecilia sat up in bed, pulling the covers against her chest. The bedroom was dark, but the chinks of light finding their way through the blinds attested that it was the middle of the day. She gasped for breath, filled the empty space within her with air and managed to find her bra which had landed up beneath the mattress at the foot of the bed.
The man sleeping beside her stirred. His name was Marcus. A tattoo sleeve emerged from beneath the covers and caressed the small of her back. She pulled away, stood up and put her dressing gown on. It didn’t provide much warmth, but it hid her body from the view her neighbours had into her apartment.
“I’ll make coffee,” she said, leaving the bedroom. Marcus groaned and turned over onto his back.
The kitchen was bathed in cold sunlight. The sky was clear and cloudless, an icy blue that only exists in the autumn. In the light she could see all of the imperfections of her home. The kitchen counter was covered in crumbs and dark coffee stains. The dust balls in the corners were a sign that she hadn’t cleaned up in weeks. On the sofa the blankets were still crumpled from the night before and the wine glasses hadn’t been cleared from the coffee table. Hers had lipstick stains around the rim, both had small red rubies of dried wine at the bottom.
Her face felt like a mask of solidified make-up. Her heart was pumping sluggishly. Her stomach was churning with mixed emotions as she aimed the coffee into the filter basket. She spilled some ground coffee on the counter. There was no point in wiping it up. She placed her hand on the lid of the water reservoir and closed her eyes as she switched the coffee maker on.
She just couldn’t face living the single life anymore. It felt like an endless procession of meaningless dates. Yet, she didn’t know what else to do. She had to make an effort if she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life alone. When she heard Marcus coming out of the bedroom she felt a tightening in her chest, making it harder to breathe. He had stepped into his jeans but was still shirtless. He smiled at her and ran his hand through his dishevelled black hair which was hanging across an ear. He would usually tie it up in a tight knot on the back of his head.
“Good morning, gorgeous,” he said.
“Good morning,” she said without smiling. “Listen, I’d quite like you to go home.”
Marcus paused dead in his tracks. “Excuse me?”
“You heard.”
He brought his hand back down and looked around, even more bleary-eyed now. “I don’t understand. Yesterday…”
“Yesterday everything was different.” Cecilia sighed and tilted her head. “I can’t do this anymore today. I’m sorry, but it’s not happening.”
“Why not? I mean, we’ve been going out for over a month now.”
“I know. But it wouldn’t be fair on you to carry on. I’m no good for you, or for anyone. I’ll only let you down in the end.”
Marcus shook his head. Disappointment, perhaps loss, glistened in his eyes. “I don’t know what to say. I thought we had something.”
“But we don’t, okay. So it’s best we don’t see each other anymore.” Cecilia felt a lump in her throat and fought back her tears. She knew it had been a mistake to keep seeing one another beyond those wonderful first few times. She used to feel a shiver of delight when he touched her, looked into her eyes. But as soon as she came back down to earth again, she was reminded of how it would always end. How she would let him down. Better not to let it go that far. They had spent their last night together now, time to wrap it up before it became more than just another passing relationship.
Marcus closed his eyes, squeezing the bridge of his nose with his fingers. Cecilia saw his athletic body twitching a little. He quickly inhaled through his nose. “Where’s my T-shirt?” he said and went back to the bedroom. As he came out again he was fully dressed.
“Shit, Cecilia,” he said, shaking his head. “It could have been so good.”
Cecilia folded her arms across her chest to hide how tense her body was.
“You’re so bloody pretty,” said Marcus, caressing her cheek. His hand was warm and rough from work. “Why are you doing this to yourself?”
She moved his hand away and looked into his eyes. “I’m only doing what’s best for both of us.”
“Okay, if that’s what you believe,” said Marcus. He wiped a tear with the back of his hand and went out into the hall. Cecilia heard him putting his jacket and shoes on. Then he left.
Cecilia collapsed onto a kitchen chair. She could hear her own breathing moving in and out of her body. Every now and then the coffee maker gurgled. Otherwise all was quiet. The emotions inside her were buzzing about like angry bees. Self-loathing. The feeling of having done the right thing, the fear of having made a terrible mistake. The resignation of being alone once again. And at the same time the familiarity of being alone once again. It gave her heart some comfort.
She had been here before so many times. It hurt but it was better than the alternative, being compelled to wound even later on, when the person she was seeing began entertaining hopes of a life together with Cecilia Wreede.
She poured a mug of coffee and collected her mobile phone from the bedside table. Her dressing gown had opened slightly but it was pleasantly refreshing. She still felt stale after sweating during the night. The tension of the situation had made it sticky under her arms. She stood at the window, looking out across the courtyard while the coffee mug warmed her hands.
Love had swept her off her feet once in her life. She had been in love with someone so much that her body physically hurt. All the same, she had let him down and moved away. She had barely known why. Not at the time. By now she knew that was what she was like. No use in stringing herself along with any other excuse.
Not this time, but maybe next?
The more she knew it was pointless, the less she was inclined to stop trying. She took another gulp, opened Tinder and started sweeping right on new profiles.
7
MONDAY 15 NOVEMBER
I was born in a small town. I’m not going to reveal which one, but it was a leafy idyll where everyone knew everyone else.
The basement staircase from the viewing had awoken memories that Annika thought were buried long ago. Now they came floating up to the surface like the bubbles in a glass of soda water, keeping her awake all night long. At around five o’clock she gave up and made her way to work instead.
The wind was whistling in fierce gusts, whipping up large raindrops against the tram window and slamming them against the glass. The clanking of the tram was drowning out the audio book in her earphones. Annika moved one seat in from the window of her carriage, worried that the glass would crack in the wind. At this time of day, the carriage was barely half-full. The other passengers on the blue seats were hunched over their phones, staring at them to keep awake. Annika was listening to, but not hearing, the hypnotic voice reading to her, until the tram juddered to a halt at Järntorget and it was time to step off.
Her red coat was pressing against her body in the gale. Not even the windproof fabric was keeping the cold out. She defied the feeling of looming danger, practically jogging from the tram stop, past the Dragon and along to the main entrance. On this particular day she was grateful that the lock was still broken so she could escape the storm quicker. Annika caught her breath on the staircase and was just about to walk up when she saw a muddy footprint on the bottom step. It wasn’t the only one. More clumps of earth were going up the stairs, some trodden in by heavy-duty footwear as if excavation work was taking place within the building.
She tapped 112 on her mobile, gearing up to make the call in case any uninvited guest was still on the stairway. Her eyes were flicking between the bits of soil and the next landing as she crept up the stairs. But nobody was there. The footprints came to an end on the same storey as the publishing house had its office. Something had been left on the floor, right at the company’s door, surrounded by lumps of wet soil. A crumpled heap of dirty papers weighed down by a rough stone. Dirty fingers had begrimed the edges.
Annika looked around to assure herself that she was alone, then squatted down, peering at the cover page. Her heart did a somersault. She lost her balance and landed gracelessly on her backside. In the middle of the page were the words I AM THE BADGER in capital letters, typed on an old-fashioned manual typewriter. However, it wasn’t the title but rather the name of the author which sent her head reeling.
Jan Apelgren.
The same man who had written the Turwall series. The same man who had disappeared without a trace six years ago.
Annika gathered up the papers from the stone floor and unlocked the door. The manuscript was crawling with soil as she carried it to her office. She placed the heap on her desk, refusing to take her eyes of it as she hung up her things. Her heart was pounding. In the course of a just few minutes she had swung from the suspicion that someone was pulling her leg, to the uneasy feeling that this might just be the real deal. She had no other option. If Jan Apelgren really had left the manuscript there, then she had to read it. She sat down slowly, brushed the wet wisps of auburn hair from her fringe behind her ears to see better and put the cover page to one side. She took a deep breath and began to read.
Once she had started, she couldn’t stop. The writing was almost hypnotic. Those very first words were drawing, almost compelling her into the story. Her concerns were quickly replaced by euphoria. She shuddered with delight and caught herself looking uneasily over her shoulder during the most exciting parts. The book was devouring her as much as she was devouring it. She greedily consumed every single word. It was full of well-crafted scenes, vivid characters and a grisly amount of blood. What she was reading was scary, self-revealing and gruesome. Nasty enough to satiate the public’s literary thirst for blood, but without crossing the line. In any case, the writing was creeping under her skin.
What she was reading was made up of the same thing as her memories were. Those very memories which forced her out of the show home the day before. It was as if the person behind the words had known about her private terror. The scenes in the basement spaces in particular made her blood run cold. It was too intimate. Too scary. All the same, she was compelled to carry on. The manuscript was like a drug for her soul as a publisher. She raced through the pages while the darkness outside was replaced by a grey dawn.
By the time she had finished the book, several hours had gone by without her noticing. She had missed the crisis meeting, but she couldn’t care less. She had to catch her breath, and stood at the window. The rain was pouring down across the car park outside and long streaks were running along the exterior of the window pane. People were struggling with their umbrellas in the gale. She wondered how many of them, this past month alone, had bought or listened to a crime novel dealing with brutal murders.
I am the Badger was a type of fictitious biography, written as if the Badger was telling their own story. A tale of blood and madness. At the same time, it was a page-turner where a copper with a messy life was trying against all odds to solve the case of the Badger. Annika didn’t know what she was supposed to make of it. Thoughts and emotions were soaring up and down her body. Was the manuscript too heinous? No, most of the thrillers she had read in recent years, including those in their manuscript piles, were far more gruesome. But anyway. Everyone knew who the Badger was. It was like a modern urban legend, only it was for real.
Every year, in the early hours of the sixth of November, he – or she – took a victim in mysterious circumstances from a detached house in Gothenburg. The police were cagey, only saying what they had to, which only fuelled wilder speculation online. Relatives had posted blog entries and pictures of the crime scenes appeared on Instagram, allegedly from the police’s secret files. No one knew what was genuine or what was an elaborate hoax, but all versions bore the same fundamental details. It was alleged that the Badger burrowed into their victims’ houses from below, through the basement floor. The victim was hauled underground through the same tunnel the murderer had emerged from. This had been going on for five years.
No one knew any more than that. Some speculated that the Badger wasn’t even human. That they were some sort of monster living in the earth, like other urban legends that appeared online. This was the thread the book had picked up on and twisted further. Annika’s stomach was in knots. The story was far too close to the events which had led her to steer clear of basements. It was making her think twice. Was releasing a book like this to the world worth the risk? However, the manuscript was quite simply too good to ignore. It made the Turwall series appear amateurish. As much as the manuscript made her uncomfortable, she realised it might be good enough to save the company. She couldn’t pretend it didn’t exist. It wasn’t her decision to make alone. She had an obligation to include the others.
Her legs trembled as she walked into Tobias’s room. He looked up from his screen with an expression of irritation. Annika got a glimpse of his desktop wallpaper from behind the windows of his different programs. Two smiling toddlers in orange life jackets. It had been taken on Tobias’s sailing boat during the summer. Each time she thought of the picture, she felt the longing for her own children from the bottom of her heart. She was grateful she was spared seeing the full picture today.
“Why weren’t you in the meeting?” he said.
“You like horror, right?” said Annika.
“Yes, if it’s well written.” Tobias cast a glance at his screen as an email notification pinged. “And if it can be marketed as suspense fiction instead. How come?”
Annika put the dirty manuscript on the keyboard in front of Tobias. It was still shedding tiny grains of dry soil, like coarse, black sand.
“Read this.”
“What the hell is all this?” Tobias lifted the papers as if he were afraid of being infected. “Jan Apelgren?”
Annika shrugged. “I don’t know any more than you.”
“I’m calling in the crisis team for an extra meeting,” said Tobias. “Make copies for the others, but not a word about this to anyone until we know what we’re dealing with.”
