He stood on deck during the short trip back to the marina.
He continued to think in his car on the way into the city.
Mystery. There’s a mystery. Something happened once that led to what’s happening now. There are no coincidences. There’s a reason Axel Osvald was found where he was found. Or for why he died. Someone or something led him to his death. I don’t think it was a higher power. Or was it? Some sort of higher power?
They were eating dinner. Halders had made farina at the request of first Magda and then Hannes.
“I’ve never eaten farina,” said Aneta.
Everything on her plate was white: the farina, the milk, the sugar. The plate was white. If she hadn’t heard Magda’s request she might have suspected Fredrik of yet another kind of joke.
“Sure you have!” said Magda.
“No, it’s true.”
“You just did! I saw you take a spoonful!”
“Well, now I have. But I never had before.”
“What kind of porridge did you eat at home when you were little?” asked Magda. Her big brother looked embarrassed. That’s none of your business, he seemed to be thinking. He’s becoming more and more like Fredrik, thought Aneta. Big gestures, a look that doesn’t let you go. But he’s more calm. Let it stay that way. He doesn’t say more than he needs to. He keeps to himself in his room. He thinks about his mom. Fredrik is worried about him.
“Oatmeal,” said Aneta.
“Millet pudding,” said Halders.
“What’s that?” asked Magda.
“A kind of grain that’s common in Africa,” said Aneta. “It’s actually a grass.”
“But you haven’t been to Africa, have you?” asked Magda.
“Stop it, Magda,” said Halders.
“I’ve been there,” said Aneta, “but I was born here, as you know.”
“Did you have millet pudding?” asked Halders.
“My mom hated millet,” said Aneta.
Halders scooped more of the white goo onto her plate.
“That’s actually the reason my mom and dad left Africa,” said Aneta.
“Really?” asked Hannes.
“No,” answered Aneta, smiling at the boy. “I was just kidding.”
“Why did they move, then?” asked Magda.
“They would probably have ended up in prison otherwise.”
“Why?” asked Magda. “Did they do something wrong?”
“No.”
Halders got out the teakettle again. They were sitting in the living room, which looked different since Halders had moved in after the death of his ex-wife. Not a huge transformation, but different.
The children were playing Pass the Pig in Hannes’s room. They could hear the howls when one of them got a double razorback.
“So you got to talk about Burkina Faso’s difficult past,” said Halders.
“Is that a problem for you?”
“Quite the opposite.”
The Everly Brothers were crying themselves out of the record player, track by track. Crying in the rain. It started over, feelings betrayed on repeat. Bye bye love, bye bye happiness, hello loneliness, I think I’m gonna cry.
“That song is the same age as I am,” said Halders. “Nineteen fifty-seven.”
“Good lyrics,” said Aneta.
“Yes, aren’t they?”
“A bit final, maybe.”
“Mmhmm.”
“It’s almost worse than Roy Orbison,” said Aneta, “in terms of how depressed they are.”
“Roy Orbison isn’t depressed,” said Halders.
“Then we have different views on the concept of being depressed,” said Aneta. “Or is it called distressed?”
Halders didn’t answer; he drank his tea. He listened again. All I have to do is dream.
“If you want to, you can read anything at all into song lyrics,” he said.
“In the case of these guys, there aren’t really all that many alternatives,” said Aneta. “It’s about love that has disappeared, right?”
“So sad to watch good love go bad,” said Halders.
“Yeah… about like that.”
“It’s one of the Everlys’ best songs,” said Halders.
“There you go. Then it’s a good example.”
She drove home late. Fredrik had asked her to stay but she wanted to wake up in her own home. It was like that sometimes.
Fredrik had been disappointed, really disappointed. He hadn’t wanted to show it, but she could tell. He hadn’t been able to go out and cry in the rain, because it wasn’t raining.
“It’s Hannes,” he’d said. “Fuck knows what’s going to happen.”
But of course it wasn’t just Hannes, or Magda, or just Fredrik. It was what everyone knew, that nothing would ever be the same again. No mom, no grandma later on, when they were adults themselves and had families. Only Grandpa Fredrik. Maybe. It would never be as it had been, but it could be better than now. It could be as good as it could get.
Fredrik hadn’t said anything, nothing really dead serious like that. But they both knew. She needed to think. It was as though she never had time to think about it, or could think about it. There was time to think of everything but that.
I have to think.
Of going with Fredrik to his beloved Ouagadougou. Only that. Good God. A week in Burkina Faso and we’ll see how tough you are, Detective Inspector Halders.
She laughed out loud there in the car, quickly and impulsively.
She drove off of Allen and onto Sprangkullsgatan. People were taking shelter from the rain outside the Capitol Theater after the last show. It was no later than that. Everyone was blue in the face, blackish blue from neon and night. Like a gang of black people from Ouagadougou, on their way out of the movie theater, one of many. At least we have that. What am I thinking? “We.”
She parked on Sveagaten.
Do I miss it? Is that what’s starting to happen? Will I eventually be drawn back to the Africa I was never born in? My Africa. Because it always has to be that way? My rhythm is there.
When she unlocked the front door facing the street, she saw something behind her that shouldn’t be there.
She turned around quickly and a car flashed its lights and took off to the north with a roaring start. She didn’t have time to see the license number, and it wasn’t a model she recognized.
She saw a figure disappear quickly to the south, a man or a woman. A hasty departure. Bye bye love.
But she wasn’t smiling when she closed the door behind her.
29
Winter called in from the car. Mollerstrom put him through to Ringmar, who was working on a homicide in Karra. Open and shut. All that loathsome, never-ending paperwork for an event that took no time at all, but no secrets, no mystery. A drunk who beat another drunk to death because of some reason the killer had
