Mari Jungstedt - Dark Angel

Knutas cautiously opened the stall door and stepped inside. He gasped when he looked at the man’s face.

It wasn’t Andreas.

JOHAN HAD NO idea how much time had passed when the door finally opened. He saw a man wearing a white coat and glasses, his expression sombre. Johan’s vision blurred, as if he were looking through a fog. As he watched the doctor coming down the long corridor towards them, all sorts of memories flashed through his mind. Fragments of his life with Emma.

Her hand frantically clutching his when she gave birth to Elin; her smile when she said ‘I do’ in the church; her fevered expression when they made love. A minor quarrel at the breakfast table a few days ago; Emma wearing a white bathrobe with a towel wrapped around her head after taking a shower and then making coffee in the kitchen.

The doctor had reached them now. He stood very close. Johan didn’t dare look up.

‘It’s over now. The worst of it, anyway. She’s out of danger, and she’s going to be fine. The baby too.’

‘The baby?’ whispered Johan.

KNUTAS STOOD MOTIONLESS, trying to gather his thoughts. He recognized Mats from the photographs. Now here he lay, looking up at the ceiling, his eyes unseeing, his body limp. But he was breathing.

‘Mats, my name is Anders Knutas and I’m a police officer. You’re under arrest for the murder of Viktor Algård and Veronika Hammar. Do you hear what I’m saying?’

He crouched down and shook Mats by the shoulder. No reaction. The man seemed almost catatonic.

The next moment two people appeared in the doorway, carrying torches. They stopped abruptly, surprised to see the police officers. Knutas looked in confusion from one person to the other. He couldn’t make sense of what he saw: There stood the sheep farmer Andreas Hammar and the TV camerawoman Pia Lilja, hand in hand. To make matters worse, Jacobsson had fallen to the ground and was staring glassy-eyed into space. As if she were the victim of a blackout.

Then the man on the floor suddenly turned his head to look at Knutas. His expression displayed such pain that Knutas almost shrank back. Slowly Mats lifted one arm, holding something in his hand. For a fraction of a second a danger warning flashed through Knutas’s brain. Was it a weapon? The next second he was relieved to see that it was a mobile phone. Mats’s voice shook as he whispered his question: ‘Is this true?’

Puzzled, Knutas tried to make out the words on the tiny, illuminated display. The message was brief but devastating.

‘Simon is dead. Call me. Mikaela’.

KNUTAS WAS STANDING next to the window in his office, looking out at the car park, which was wet with rain. He filled his pipe as he thought about the dramatic events of the past few days.

From the very beginning this particular case had affected him more strongly than others. Maybe because it had made him think about his own role as a parent. Just before the murders occurred, Alexander Almlöv had been assaulted at the Solo Club. His own son Nils had witnessed the vicious attack but hadn’t dared tell his father, the police officer.

Over the past weeks Knutas had spent almost as much time wrestling with that issue as he had trying to discover the identity of the killer.

The fate of Mats Andersson was a tragic one, from start to finish. He had hoped to save his newfound and beloved brother from succumbing to despair by killing their mother. But before that happened, Simon had taken his own life. Knutas could understand how shocked Mats must have been to receive word of his brother’s death. Everything he had done was in vain. The plan he had spent months putting together was to no avail.

Mats had ended up recounting the whole story about his desperate attempt to free his younger brother from their mother. Ultimately it seemed to him that there was only one option. He had to kill Veronika – destroy her before she destroyed the family that he had found at last. Simon, in turn, had tried all his life to save her, to make her happy and content with her life. But that had proved to be an impossible task. Both Mats and Simon had seen themselves as angels sent to the rescue. And it had all ended in disaster.

Nobody can save anybody else, thought Knutas bitterly. Everyone has to save his own life.

It was strange that things had gone so well for Veronika Hammar’s children, in spite of the difficult circumstances they had endured while growing up with their excessively demanding mother. At least Andreas and Mikaela had succeeded in creating a satisfactory life for themselves, and they seemed reasonably happy.

They also had shown an ability to love. Was that something they’d learned from somebody else, or was it an innate part of being human?

His thoughts were interrupted by Jacobsson knocking on the door.

‘Come in.’

She sat down on his visitors’ sofa. Knutas sensed that she had something important to say, so he sat down across from her.

‘How are you doing?’

‘Fine, thanks.’

She smiled. Her dark eyes had regained their familiar alert expression. He was happy to see it.

‘I’ve decided to try to find my daughter. Lydia.’

Knutas didn’t reply. Instead, he got up and went over to sit next to her, giving her a hug. She relaxed into his arms, not moving as he stroked her hair.

He had been pondering what to do about everything that Karin had told him in Stockholm. He had agonized over the decision he needed to make. He had no idea what to do, and there was no one he could consult.

Karin had deliberately allowed a double murderer to escape. Maybe she was unbalanced. Maybe he would come to regret the decision he was about to make.

Yet, at that moment, he knew that he could never tell anyone her secret.

Never.

THE LIGHT IN the flat is a heavy grey, just like in the city far below. Slussen’s never-ending circle with its constant stream of cars. They stubbornly continue to come from every direction, like arteries to a pumping heart. Then they disperse into the stinking body that is Stockholm.

It’s time. I feel closer to myself than I ever have before. In the past I always lived through other people and for other people, wanting to please them. Trying to live up to something. And I always failed.

I’ve merely been playing a role from the very beginning.

I feel immensely tired. I no longer need to keep going. Or keep fighting. Or suffering. Soon it will be over. I gaze out at the city. I’m a stranger in the midst of everything going on around me. I no longer want any part of it.

I had a dream that I was allowed to live my own life, just like everyone else. Work, travel, live. Give and receive love. Spend time with people, accumulate experiences, build relationships and mature. I imagined a future with a family, security and love.

That’s no longer a possibility. It’s not meant to be. I had a son, whom I love. I hope that he will experience all those things. That he will take charge of his own life.

My time on this earth is over. Sun, wind, snow, rain – never again will I witness the changes in weather. Or hear the howling of the storm over the sea. Or see the dawn.

Soon there will be nothing but night.

I’m looking forward to the embrace of darkness. I imagine death as sinking into the enveloping comfort of a woman’s arms. Maybe it’s true that we return to where we started. Inside our mother’s body, inside her womb, inside the soft, rocking, silent darkness, unaware of what is to come.

Maybe that’s what happens.

I pick up the photograph of Katrina and Daniel and kiss it tenderly. I will hold these two, whom I love, in my hand when I die.

Then I won’t be alone.

This story is entirely fictional. Any similarities between the characters in the novel and actual individuals are coincidental. Occasionally I have taken artistic liberties to change things for the benefit of the book. This includes Swedish TV’s coverage of Gotland, which in the book has been moved to Stockholm. I have the utmost respect for SVT’s regional news programme Östnytt , which covers Gotland with a permanent team stationed in Visby.