‘Alexandra left here in the middle of spring semester 1977. She was registered at the boarding school in the spring of 1978, and that was also when Karl-Erik began his job here in Goteborg. My question is therefore, where were you during that year?’
A furrow had formed between Henrik’s eyebrows, and he shifted his gaze back and forth between Birgit and Karl-Erik. Both were avoiding his eyes. Karl-Erik felt a grinding pain spreading outward from his heart area and slowly increasing in strength.
‘I don’t understand what you’re getting at with all these questions. What does it matter whether we moved in ’77 or ’78? Our daughter is dead and you come here asking us questions as if we’re the guilty ones. There must have been some mistake somewhere. Someone wrote it down wrong in some register, that’s what it must be. We moved here in the spring of ’77 and that’s when Alexandra began school in Switzerland.’
Patrik gave Birgit an apologetic look as she got more and more upset. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Carlgren, to be causing you any discomfort. I know you’re going through a difficult time, but I have to ask these questions. And my information is correct. The two of you didn’t move here until spring 1978, and for the whole year before that there is nothing to prove that you were even in Sweden. So I have to ask once again: where were you during the year between spring of ’77 and spring of ’78?’
With desperation in her eyes Birgit turned to Karl-Erik for help, but he knew that he could no longer give her the kind of help she wanted. In the long run, he believed that he was doing this for the good of the family; he also knew that, in the short run, it might crush her. But he had no choice. He gave his wife a sad look and then cleared his throat.
‘We were in Switzerland. Alex, my wife and I.’
‘Hush, Karl-Erik, don’t say any more!’
He ignored her. ‘We were in Switzerland because our ten-year-old daughter was pregnant.’
He wasn’t surprised to see Patrik drop his pen in his consternation over what he’d just said. Whatever the police officer had reckoned on, or suspected, it was something else entirely to hear it said out loud. How could anyone have imagined something so awful?
‘My daughter was exploited-raped. She was only a child.’
He felt his voice break and pressed his fist hard against his lips to try to collect himself. After a while he was able to go on. Birgit refused even to look at him, but now there was no turning back.
‘We could tell that something was wrong, but we didn’t know what it was. She had always seemed happy, secure. Sometime in the beginning of the eighth grade she began to change. She turned quiet and uncommunicative. None of her friends came over anymore, and she could be away for hours at a time. We didn’t know where she was. We didn’t take it that seriously, thinking it was only a phase she was going through. A preliminary stage to her teenage years maybe, I don’t know.’
He had to clear his throat again. The pain in his chest was increasing. ‘It wasn’t until she was in her fourth month that we discovered she was pregnant. We should have seen the signs earlier, but who could believe…We couldn’t even imagine…’
‘Karl-Erik, please.’ Birgit’s face was like a grey mask. Henrik looked numb, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing, which he probably couldn’t. Even to his own ears Karl-Erik could hear how incredible it sounded when he spoke the words aloud. For twenty-five years the words had been gnawing at his guts. Out of consideration for Birgit he had stifled his need to speak out, but now the words came pouring forth and he couldn’t stop them.
‘We couldn’t consider an abortion. Not under those conditions. Nor did we give Alex any opportunity to make a choice, even if she could have done so. We never asked her how she felt or what she wanted to do. Instead, we hushed it all up. We took her out of school, went abroad and stayed there until she gave birth to the child. No one could know anything about it. Because what would people say?’
He could hear for himself how bitter that last sentence sounded. Nothing had been more important than that. It had taken precedence over their own daughter’s happiness and well-being. He couldn’t even place the entire blame on Birgit for making that choice. She had never been the one who was most concerned about outward appearances. After years of self-examination, he had been forced to admit to himself that he let her have her way based on his own wish to retain an unblemished appearance. He could feel sour stomach acid creeping up his throat. He swallowed hard and went on.
‘After Alex had the baby, we registered her at the boarding school, returned to Goteborg and got on with our lives.’
Every word was dripping with bitterness and self-contempt. Birgit’s eyes were filled with fury, perhaps hatred as well. She stared at him intensely as if to use sheer will-power to make him stop. But he knew that the process had begun the same moment that Alex was found dead in the bathtub. He knew that the police would root around, turn over every stone and drag out into the sunlight everything that crawled. It was better that they tell the truth in their own words. Or in his words, as it turned out. Perhaps he should have done it earlier, but he had needed the time to muster the courage. Patrik Hedstrom’s telephone call was the last push he needed.
Karl-Erik knew that he had left out a good deal, but a weariness had settled over him like a blanket, and he let Patrik take up the thread and ask the questions that would fill in the gaps. He leaned back in the armchair and gripped the armrests hard.
Henrik was the first to speak. His voice was noticeably shaky. ‘Why didn’t you tell anyone? Why didn’t Alex say anything? I knew that she was hiding something from me, but not this.’
Karl-Erik threw out his hands in a resigned gesture. There was nothing he could say to Alex’s husband.
Patrik had fought hard to retain his professionalism, but it was obvious that he was shaken. He picked up the pen he had dropped on the floor and tried to focus on the notebook in front of him.
‘Who was it that attacked Alex? Was it someone at the school?’
Karl-Erik only nodded.
‘Was it…’ Patrik hesitated. ‘Was it Nils Lorentz?’
‘Who’s Nils Lorentz?’ asked Henrik.
Birgit answered him, with steel in her voice. ‘He was a substitute teacher at the school. He’s the son of Nelly Lorentz.’
‘But where is he now? He must have gone to prison for what he did to Alex, didn’t he?’ Henrik looked like he was wrestling hard to understand what Karl-Erik had said.
‘He disappeared twenty-five years ago,’ Patrik explained. ‘No one has seen him since then. But what I also want to know is why no police report was ever filed. I’ve searched through our archives, and there’s never been any complaint to the police against him.’
Karl-Erik closed his eyes. Patrik wasn’t asking the question as an accusation, but that was how it felt. Each word felt like needles piercing his skin, reminding him of the terrible mistake they had made twenty-five years ago.
‘We never lodged a complaint. When we understood that Alex was pregnant and she told us what happened, I stormed up to Nelly’s house and told her what her son had done. I had every intention of reporting him to the police, and I told Nelly as much, but-’
‘But Nelly came and talked with me and suggested that we could solve it without getting the police involved,’ said Birgit as she sat on the sofa, her back straight as a poker. ‘She said that there was no reason to humiliate Alex any further by having all of Fjallbacka whispering about what had happened. We could only agree, and we decided that it would be to her benefit if we could handle the matter within the family. Nelly promised that she would take care of Nils in a suitable manner.’
‘Nelly also arranged a very well-paid job for me here in Goteborg,’ said Karl-Erik. ‘I assume that we were no better than most people, dazzled by the promise of gold.’ Karl-Erik was being brutally honest about himself. The time for denials was past.
‘That had nothing to do with it. How can you say that, Karl-Erik? We were only thinking of what was best for Alex. What good would it have done her if everyone had known? We gave her a chance to move on with her life.’
‘No, Birgit, we gave ourselves a chance to move on with
They gazed at each other across the coffee table, and Karl-Erik knew that some things could never be repaired. She would never understand.
‘And the baby? What happened to the baby? Was it given up for adoption?’ asked Patrik.
