Håkan Nesser - The Unlucky Lottery

‘I don’t know about that,’ said Jung. ‘I think perhaps we ought to-’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Rooth. ‘We’ll be there in two flicks of a donkey’s tail.’

At first Ulrike Fremdli thought the antiquarian bookshop was closed, but then she saw Van Veeteren lying back in a wing chair in the middle of all the shelves.

‘You won’t sell much if you sit there all the time,’ she said.

Van Veeteren looked up from the little leather-bound volume he had in his hand.

‘You have to become acquainted with the stock,’ he said. ‘Nice to see you.’

‘The same to you,’ said Ulrike Fremdli with a smile. Then she became serious. Looked at him with a slightly doubtful expression, shaking her head slowly.

‘You are a remarkable fellow,’ she said. ‘I can’t get over that. Do you mean… Are you saying that your Macbeth dream came true?’

‘True and true,’ muttered Van Veeteren.

‘How is he?’

‘Better,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘I was there an hour ago. He’ll pull through, but they’ll have to remove that kidney. And he’s bound to be off work for several months – maybe that’s just what he needs. He was foolish to go in on his own like he did.’

Ulrike nodded.

‘He’s been worn out,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘At least, that’s what his wife Synn said. She was there at the hospital with the children. And Inspector Moreno as well… It was a good job we turned up when we did – he couldn’t have coped with lying there for much longer.’

‘But what about that dream?’ said Ulrike again.

Van Veeteren didn’t answer. Instead he leafed back through a few pages of the book he was reading.

‘“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,”’ he quoted. ‘ Hamlet . A lovely little edition. Printed in Oxford in 1836. Just come in.’

He held it up.

‘I thought it was Macbeth we were talking about?’ said Ulrike.

Van Veeteren stood up and replaced the volume in a bookcase with glass doors.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘There’s something about Shakespeare. I think he’s said more or less all that needs saying: he covers all the bases, you could say… He’d even have been able to make something of that Leverkuhn family, no doubt.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Listen to this. The father rapes both his daughters. One goes out of her mind, the other becomes a lesbian. The son murders his father, and stabs a police officer. The mother takes all the guilt upon herself, butchers a witness and hangs herself. Just the stuff to turn into a tragedy, don’t you think?’

Ulrike eyed him sceptically.

‘Is that what it’s all about?’ she said. ‘This case?’

‘In a nutshell,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘And you should bear in mind that until three months ago they were regarded as a perfectly normal family – until somebody happened to lift the lid on them, as it were.’

Ulrike thought that over for a while.

‘How do you put up with it?’ she said in the end.

‘I don’t put up with it,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘I work in a bookshop.’

She nodded.

‘So I’ve heard. But you put your oar in, nevertheless, don’t you?’

‘I become involved,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘There’s a difference. Anyway, it’s-’

‘It’s time for lunch,’ said Ulrike. ‘I’m free until two o’clock. Are you coming?’

‘Of course,’ said Van Veeteren, stretching his arms above his head. Adjusted his back gingerly and suddenly looked worried.

‘What’s the matter?’

Van Veeteren cleared his throat.

‘Nothing. I just can’t help wondering, that’s all.’

‘Wondering?’

‘If this really was the way the tragedy happened. If life is a novel or a play, as some people suggest, it wouldn’t be all that difficult to write another chapter, or another scene – or what do you think?’

‘I don’t know what you’re on about,’ said Ulrike Fremdli. ‘I’m hungry.’

He took hold of her hand and squeezed it slightly awkwardly.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s just that I sometimes find it a bit hard to keep my thoughts in check. Let’s go.’

Elaine Vorgus stared first at the tarot cards, and then at her lover.

‘It’s remarkable,’ she said. ‘I don’t think it’s ever happened to me before. All sixteen cards the wrong way round – no, I’ve never seen the likes of it before. I’ll have to look it up in the books.’

‘What does it mean?’ asked Ruth Leverkuhn, sipping her wine at the same time as she leaned forward over the table and stroked her girlfriend’s bare arm. ‘What does it mean when they’re back to front?’

It was not the first time they’d been sitting there like this, and even if it was Ruth’s fate lying on the table in front of them, she knew that it meant more to her girlfriend than it did to herself. Elaine responded to her caress and looked up from the cards.

‘The significance is the opposite of what the cards say,’ she said. ‘The message is reversed. Wealth means poverty, strength means weakness, love means hatred… It’s as simple as that. But all sixteen cards, that must mean something very special. As if…’

‘As if what?’ said Ruth, with loving patience.

‘As if it referred to somebody quite different from you, for instance. As if the whole of you were back to front in some way… But I’m only guessing. I’ve never come across sixteen cards the wrong way round before.’

‘Let’s write it all down and leave it until later,’ said Ruth. ‘I want to drink more wine and then make love instead.’

Elaine smiled and thought for a while. Then she raised her glass and ran her tongue over her lips a few times.

‘Your wish is my command,’ she said with a smile. ‘Where would you like to start? In the bath, perhaps? I think I’d like that. I must just make that phone call first.’

‘The bath’s a good idea,’ Ruth decided. ‘Yes, I’d like to have you with me in the bath. Write down what’s on the cards and then make that call. I’ll get in the bath first, and be waiting for you.’

Once in the bathroom she stood and contemplated her sizeable body in the mirror. Lifted up her heavy breasts and sucked at each nipple for a few seconds. Stroked herself carefully between her legs with a finger in order to get confirmation of her desire.

Then her brother cropped up in her thoughts again, and she moved her hands to more neutral regions.

Poor Mauritz, she thought. Silly bugger! She sighed and wrapped a bath towel round her. Continued thinking while she somewhat mechanically and absent-mindedly rearranged the perfume bottles on the shelf under the mirror, and selected her favourite foam bath scents.

What is the point of confessing to something you haven’t done?

The question had been buzzing around in her mind for some days now. Nagging at her, making her worry. Why couldn’t Mauritz simply have admitted to being a weakling instead? A cowardly and confused person who would never have been able to carry off anything like that? Not in any circumstances.

Twenty-eight stabs! Mauritz?

It was ridiculous. Anybody who knew anything at all about him could have explained that it was absolutely impossible.

But of course there wasn’t anybody who knew anything about him. Apart from her.

So perhaps it wasn’t all that odd after all. She had begun to understand that was the case after a few days. That he wanted to take the blame, and that people believed him. There was a sort of logic. A twisted and back-to-front logic, but it made sense even so.

But why had he gone to the trouble of buying an identical knife when they had already disposed of the real one? That was a genuine mystery. When she thought about it, she realized that this was the only thing she didn’t understand. Couldn’t make head nor tail of it. He could never have planned to use it. To stab that police officer? The fact that he actually did so could hardly be explained in any other way than his being possessed for a sudden second of an ability to act. Sudden and unexpected. Like a will o’ the wisp. Nothing else.