Johan Theorin - The Darkest Room

“Ethel had gone down to the walkway by the shore,” said Joakim. “She had sat down by a boathouse and pushed the needle in, then she had tumbled into the freezing water. And that was the end of her.”

“Weren’t you home that night?” asked Gerlof.

“I came home later…Livia and I were at a children’s party.”

“That was probably a good thing. For her sake.”

“Yes. And for a while we hoped that everything would settle

down,” said Joakim. “But I kept on waking up at night thinking that I could hear Ethel yelling out in the street. And Katrine just lost all her joy in life…We’d finished renovating the Apple House by that time and it was lovely, but she just couldn’t relax there. So last winter we started talking about moving out to the country, moving south, maybe finding a place here on Öland. And in the end that’s what we did.”

He fell silent and looked at his watch. Twenty past four. It felt as if he had talked more during this last hour than during the whole of the fall.

“I have to go and pick up my children,” he said.

“Did anyone ask how all this made you feel?” said Gerlof.

“Me?” said Joakim, getting up. “I felt terrific, of course.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“No. But we’ve never talked about how we feel in my family. And we never really talked about Ethel’s problems, either.” He looked at Gerlof. “You just don’t tell people that your sister is a junkie. Katrine was the first… you could say I dragged her into all this.”

Gerlof sat there in silence, apparently lost in thought.

“What did Ethel want?” he said. “Why did she keep on coming to your house? Was it just to get the money for drugs?”

Joakim pulled on his jacket without answering.

“Not just that,” he said eventually. “She wanted her daughter back as well.”

“Her daughter?”

Joakim hesitated. This was also difficult to talk about, but in the end he came out with it:

“There was no father… he died of an overdose. Katrine and I were Livia’s godparents, and social services awarded her care to us four years ago. We adopted her last year… Livia is ours now.”

“But she’s Ethel’s child?” said Gerlof.

“No. Not any longer.”

Tilda had put in a report on the black van to headquarters in Borgholm, describing it as an “interesting” vehicle worth looking out for. But Öland was a big place and the number of police officers out patrolling the roads was small.

And Gerlof’s talk of a murderer with a boat hook at Eel Point? She hadn’t put in a report on that particular theory. Without any proof that there had in fact been a boat out by the point, it was impossible to instigate a murder investigation-it would take more than a few holes in a top.

“I’ve returned the clothes to Joakim Westin,” said Gerlof the next time he called her.

“Did you tell him about your murder theory?” said Tilda.

“No… it wasn’t the right time. He’s still out of balance; he would probably believe that an apparition had dragged his wife down into the water.”

“An apparition?”

“Westin’s sister… she was a drug addict.”

Gerlof told her the story of Joakim’s sister, Ethel, her heroin addiction and her habit of disturbing the peace.

“So that’s why the family moved from Stockholm,” said Tilda when he finished. “A death drove them away.”

“That was one reason. But Öland might just have tempted them as well.”

Tilda thought about how tired and worn Joakim Westin had looked when they went to see him, and said, “I think he could do with talking to a psychologist. Or maybe a priest.”

“So I’m not up to the job of father confessor?” said Gerlof.

Almost every evening when Tilda passed a mailbox on her way home from work, she was on the point of taking out the letter to Martin’s wife and dropping it in the box, and yet it was still in her purse. It was as if she were carrying an ax around-the letter gave her power over a person she didn’t know.

Of course, she had power over Martin too. He had continued to call her from time to time, trying to make small talk. Tilda didn’t know what she would say if he asked if he could come and see her again.

Over two weeks had passed without a single reported break-in in northern Öland. But one morning the telephone rang in the police station. The call came from Stenvik on the west coast of the island; the man on the other end of the line spoke quietly, with a strong local dialect, and said that his name was John Hagman. She recognized the name-Hagman was one of Gerlof’s friends.

“I hear you’re looking for people who’ve been breaking into houses,” he said.

“We are,” said Tilda. “I was intending to call you…”

“Yes, Gerlof told me.”

“Have you seen anyone breaking in?”

“No.”

Hagman didn’t say any more. Tilda waited, then asked, “Have you perhaps seen any trace of someone breaking in?”

“Yes. They’ve been here in the village.”

“Recently?”

“I don’t know… sometime in the fall. They appear to have been in several houses.”

“I’ll come down and take a look,” said Tilda. “How will I find you in the village?”

“I’m the only one here right now.”

Tilda got out of the police car on a gravel track in the middle of a row of closed-up summer cottages, a hundred yards or so above the sound. She looked around in the cold wind, and thought about her family. They came from Stenvik; they had somehow managed to survive in this stony landscape.

A short, elderly man in dark blue dungarees and a brown cap came over to the car.

“Hagman,” he said. He nodded briefly and pointed to a dark brown one-story house with wide windows. “There,” he said. “I noticed it had blown open. Same thing next door.”

One of the windows at the back of the house was ajar. When Tilda went closer, she could see that the frame was split and broken open near the catch.

There were no footprints on the veranda below the window. Tilda went over and pulled it wide open. The room inside was a mess, with clothes and tools just thrown on the stone floor.

“Have you got a key to this house, John?”

“No.”

“In that case I’ll climb in.”

Tilda grabbed hold of both sides of the frame with her gloved hands and hauled herself into the darkness inside.

She jumped down onto the floor of a small storeroom

and flicked a switch, but no light came on. The power was turned off.

The traces left by the thieves were clearly visible, however-all the storage boxes had been pulled out and emptied onto the floor. And when she moved through into the main room, she saw fragments of broken glass, just as in the vicarage at Hagelby.

Tilda went over for a closer look. Small pieces of wood lay among the glass, and it was a while before she realized it was a ship in a bottle that had been smashed on the floor.

A few minutes later she heaved herself back out through the window. Hagman was still standing on the grass.

“They’ve been in there,” she said, “and they’ve made a real mess… smashed things.”

She held out a clear plastic bag and showed him the bits of wood she had collected-the remains of the model ship.

“Is it one of Gerlof’s?”

Hagman looked sadly at the bits and nodded. “Gerlof has a cottage here in the village… he’s sold ships in bottles and model boats to plenty of the summer visitors.”

Tilda pushed the bag into her jacket pocket. “And you haven’t heard or seen anything at night from these cottages?”

Hagman shook his head.

“No unusual traffic in the area?”