Helene Tursten - Detective Inspector Huss

“Oh, that’s too bad! I was looking for her on Tuesday, but didn’t get hold of her. Was she off that day too?”

“Off? No, you must be mistaken. She was here all day on Tuesday. She hasn’t had any time off all week. May I tell her who is calling?”

“Birgitta Andersson. I’ll call her again in three weeks. It’s not urgent. Have a nice weekend!”

SHE OPENED the door to Jonas’s room. The volume of the music had been turned down. She recognized this artist and song too: Freddie Mercury, “Mr. Bad Guy.” Impulsively she said to Jonas, “This isn’t really one of his best songs. Or albums either, for that matter.”

He seemed not to hear, but after a moment he opened his eyelids a bit. “No, this album was never a big hit,” he replied weakly. He coughed violently, and his whole torso shook.

Irene had steeled herself for the sight of Jonas. She was afraid she would see a trembling skeleton, stinking of his own excrement, bald, and covered with pustules and sores. But he was a handsome man. Thin, but indisputably like the pictures she had seen of Richard von Knecht as a young man. His dark blond hair was cropped short. He had opened his eyes now, and she could see that they were a bright, intense blue, despite the spiderweb of morphine overlaying his consciousness. He fixed his gaze on her and the smile he gave her was amazingly alert.

“You must be Irene. Mamma told me about you.”

A mild coughing fit interrupted him again. Irene took care to raise an inquisitive eyebrow at Mona. She shook her head. So she hadn’t told him that Irene was a cop. What had she said? Mona picked up on her query and said in a natural tone of voice, “Yes, it was a good thing you came to work at Swedish Data. I wound up with both a skilled colleague and a good friend.”

Another born liar, apparently. Wanting to signal reassurance, Irene replied, “I’m sorry to be late. But I checked with the staff. Evidently there was nothing wrong with the phone on Tuesday when I tried to call you here. You must have pulled out the jack while Jonas was asleep.”

Mona looked extremely relieved. But her voice betrayed nothing when she answered, “Yes, I must have.”

“It didn’t matter anyway. We took care of things and found a temp.”

Irene turned to Jonas as she spoke but he didn’t seem in the least interested. He was looking up at the IV. The yellow fluid in the little bottle was almost gone. The big bag hanging next to it was filled with a clear liquid. There was a lot of text printed on it. Apparently it contained a great number of important and useful components. With a deft hand Mona turned off the drip from the little bottle by pulling out the red plastic wheel in the drip regulator. The tubes went down to a drip tap that was fastened by adhesive tape to Jonas’s collarbone. Irene shuddered when she realized that the catheter went directly through the skin on his neck. The insertion point was covered with a thick compress.

Jonas looked at her again and asked, “Do you like Freddie Mercury?”

“Not so much as a solo artist. He was best when he was with Queen.”

Jonas nodded. He gave Irene a mocking look. “We have a lot in common, Freddie and I. We’re gay. On our death certificates posterity will be able to read the cause of our death. AIDS. And that we died too young.”

He was seized by a powerful fit of coughing. When he again tried to fix his gaze on her, Irene saw that his eyes were glazing over. He had probably just received a dose of morphine, which was beginning to take effect. He breathed with difficulty and tried to speak carefully to avoid coughing.

“Mamma, help me with the oxygen,” he managed to say.

The oxygen hose was hanging over the bedpost. Mona slipped it expertly and carefully over his head. It looked like a transparent halter. Mona placed a cannula with two tips under his nostrils. Without hesitation she turned on the regulator on the wall. The oxygen meter on the wall came to life as a faint rushing sound came from the hose.

Then Irene noticed the painting. Two big yellow butterflies with black markings on their wings hovered over a vast landscape, a shimmering stream in the valley and blue-tinged mountains in the distance. In the foreground there were beautiful meadow blossoms. The blue of the forget-me-nots was dominant, but there were also splashes of white and pink flowers that she recognized but couldn’t name. They came so close to the observer that it felt as if she were lying on her stomach among the meadow flowers and peeking over the edge down into the long valley, up toward the two gaudy butterflies. The sky was not blue, but a silvery white circle above the mountains dispersed a strong light that became a warm pink at the outer edges. It was not the sun and not the moon. It was the Light.

“What do you see?”

Jonas’s question made her jump.

“The painting. . it’s wonderful!”

She smiled at Jonas and her gaze was pulled down into his. Down there she saw the contrasting picture. Darkness, despair, dread, and loneliness. But also a great calm. The knowledge that everything is one. If he hadn’t possessed the contrasting image, he never would have been able to depict the Light.

“It’s me and Chester. The swallowtail butterflies. I painted it the week after he died. I finished it in twenty-four hours, but then I collapsed. It was blood poisoning,” he said in a clear voice. He looked at her with eyes wide open. All haziness seemed to have vanished.

“The top butterfly is Chester. He’s already in the tunnel of light. On the beach by the river of Life lies his congealed blood.”

Only then did Irene notice that the beach had a pale pinkish brown tone. Closest to the waterline there was a sharper bloodred line. In the left corner the bloodred color was repeated until the flowers took over.

“In the left corner you see my blood. It’s running out. Running out … of the picture.” He coughed and breathed more heavily.

“The butterfly flying below is me. I’m still tied to the earth, which is symbolized by the flowers. But I’m on my way. Upward.”

He was silent for a long time. Irene was fascinated by the painting. It was big, surely two square meters. Despite the fact that the interpretation he had given her should have made her sad, the picture prompted no feelings of sorrow whatsoever. On the contrary, she felt a joy of life and a sense of optimism flowing toward her.

“You have to understand, Irene, that I look forward to dying. Not because I want an end to my suffering, because I don’t have much pain anymore. But I have no dignity left. I shit myself and have to use a catheter and diaper. I can’t even jerk off. I feel anxious when I have shortness of breath and because I can’t walk anymore. But I don’t want to end it. Life is a gift. All the way to whatever you are given.”

It was much too long a speech. The coughing fit that followed seemed as if it would never end. The shaking of his emaciated body made Irene felt powerless. Mona put her arm around his shoulders to support him. She spoke softly and soothingly, as all mothers do when they comfort a sick child. Although this child was a grown man. Who was dying.

Jonas nodded off for a while. Mona and Irene looked at the other painting that was in the room. It hung on the wall facing Jonas’s bed so that he could easily see it. It was a portrait of a dark-skinned man. In the background was a saxophone, music scores, and notes. There was a gold sheen over the entire picture, from the saxophone to a faint misty gold over the man’s mouth and eyes. Irene turned to Mona and asked, “Who is the man in the picture?”

“Chester. Chester Johnson, jazz musician. He became my son-in-law in April. They were married at home, because Chester was too sick to go to the city hall. Jonas was going through a slightly better period just then. But since Chester passed away he just hasn’t wanted to go on. Except when he painted the butterflies.”