Calle snorted in contempt.
‘A wife and healthy children and pots of money. And you sit here whingeing about some idiotic losers who had their heyday in secondary school. And who are no longer with us. How many successful people do you know who were actually happy at school?’
‘You’re right,’ Jorgen said. ‘You’re so right.’
‘Of course I’m right.’
‘But Ylva’s still alive?’
‘I don’t know,’ Calle said. ‘Can’t say that we’re in daily contact. Haven’t seen her since we were at school. I think she married someone from Skane, or something like that.’
‘Someone from Skane?’ Jorgen repeated.
‘There you go,’ Calle said. ‘A fate worse than death.’
Jorgen stared blankly into space.
‘Stop it,’ Calle snapped. ‘It doesn’t suit you.’
Jorgen didn’t understand.
‘What?’ he said.
‘Sitting there ruminating.’
‘I was just thinking—’
‘Well, don’t,’ Calle interrupted. ‘It won’t do you or anyone else any good.’
Jorgen waved his hand around and crossed his legs.
‘What you were saying,’ Jorgen continued, ‘about the boy who was paralysed, that it was self-inflicted …’
Calle wondered where he was going with this.
‘Maybe it was the same with the guys in the Gang of Four,’ Jorgen said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Morgan got cancer, probably due to an unhealthy lifestyle. Anders was murdered in central Stockholm, and we can only guess the reason for that. And Johan was killed in a motorbike accident in Zimbabwe, and probably wasn’t entirely sober at the time.’
Calle shook his head.
‘You don’t give up, do you?’ he said.
‘It’s strange,’ Mike said. ‘I almost think more about Dad than I do about Ylva. All the old stuff bubbling to the surface.’
He was in Gosta Lundin’s office on the fourth floor of Helsingborg hospital. Mike felt at ease in this setting and he had absolute confidence in his doctor.
‘Do you mean, what could you have done differently?’ Gosta asked him.
Mike cocked his head and pulled a face.
‘It’s not so much that, it’s the feeling.’
‘The feeling?’
‘Just after it happened, a lot of attention was focused on my mother and me. Family, friends, Dad’s funeral and all the details. Daily life was dramatic, heightened in some way. Maybe it sounds daft, but it was really exciting, a bit like the first day at school, or falling in love. Life was full of meaning, despite all the grief and helplessness. I presume that I … I don’t know, felt important or something. God, I sound awful.’
‘Not at all.’
‘Because that’s not what I mean.’
‘I understand. Carry on.’
Mike gathered his thoughts, tried to formulate what he wanted to say.
‘The other stuff came later,’ he said.
‘What other stuff ?’
‘The shame, the embarrassment, the looking away. People don’t know how to deal with grief. There are so few who actually understand what you really need.’
‘And what is that?’ Gosta queried.
‘Company,’ Mike said, and looked at him. ‘Or, at least, I think it is. Someone who asks you round for tea and is just friendly, normal, who calls and asks if you want to go to the cinema with them, who asks you to give them a hand with something. Whatever, just something to help the time go by.’
Mike smiled at his doctor.
‘After all the rituals and stuff were out of the way, when everyday life had started to catch up and people expected you to be over it all, at that time, I would have appreciated even an inappropriate joke, anything, just not distance and silence.’
Mike laughed, looked at his hands and then raised his eyes again.
‘I sound like some old talk-show presenter going on about his troubled childhood,’ he said. ‘And I assume that most people who sit in this chair do the same. You must think that we’re a sorry bunch of moaning muppets.’
Gosta shook his head. He leaned forward and folded his hands on the desk.
‘Your father,’ he said in a friendly voice. ‘Are you afraid that … well, that it’s hereditary, shall we say? His depression, I mean.’
Mike shook his head and leaned back.
‘Mum thinks it was the alcohol that killed Dad. It was a vicious circle. In the end she didn’t know whether he was drinking because he was depressed or whether he was depressed because he was drinking. I’m pretty careful with alcohol, take after my mother in that regard. And as long as I’ve got Sanna, I would never even contemplate anything like that, never. Even though I must say I can understand Dad in a way, now. I mean, the pain was deep and the future was bleak. I understand why people commit suicide, I just don’t want it to be those who are close to me.’
‘What do you think happened to Ylva? Do you think she committed suicide?’
‘No.’
‘What do you think happened?’
‘I think …’
He turned his face and looked at the wall.
‘I think she was murdered. Possibly by accident. It might have been a sex game with the wrong person, a sexual assault, I don’t know.’
‘So you don’t think she’s alive?’
‘No, I don’t,’ he said, after a while.
‘You don’t have any hopes left?’
Mike shook his head.
‘I’d lose my mind then,’ he said.
‘Both the scenarios you mentioned involve sex,’ Gosta pointed out.
‘We’ve talked about that,’ Mike said, curtly.
‘Was she excessively flirtatious?’
‘Yes.’
Mike had to strain himself to control his voice.
‘And do you think that led her into the arms of the wrong person?’
‘I have no idea any more. Ylva has gone, and she’s never coming back. I actually don’t want to think too much about what might have happened.’
‘I’m sorry, I apologise,’ Gosta said.
Mike pulled himself together and calmed down.
‘Have you ever lost anyone close to you?’ he asked, eventually, and locked eyes with the doctor.
‘I had a daughter,’ Gosta told him.
Mike’s face shifted from angry to apologetic in a split second. Gosta held his gaze.
‘It was twenty years ago. She was sixteen.’
‘Cancer?’
Gosta didn’t say anything for a long time.
