The Darkest Room

Tilda sat down on the bed. It creaked slightly, but it was soft.

The house was still completely silent around her.

She leaned back, was received by the pile of cushions, and relaxed, her gaze fixed on the ceiling. If she let her thoughts run free, the white surface could become like a movie screen, showing pictures from her memory.

Tilda could see Martin on the ceiling, the way he had looked when he had slept beside her in bed for the last time. It had been in her old apartment in Vaxjo almost a month ago, and she hoped he would come over to visit her soon.

Nothing is as warm and cozy as a child’s bedroom.

She breathed out slowly and closed her eyes.

***

If you don’t come to me, then I’ll have to come to you…

Tilda sat up with a start, in the middle of a breath, with no idea where she was. But her father was with her, she could hear his voice.

She opened her eyes.

No, her father was dead, his car had gone off the road eleven years ago.

Tilda blinked, looked around, and realized she had been asleep.

She smelled the aroma of newly polished wood and saw a freshly painted ceiling above her, and realized that she was lying on a little bed in the manor house at Eel Point. And straight after that an unpleasant memory of running water flashed into her mind-the water pouring from the clothes on the body down by the shore.

She had fallen asleep in a child’s bedroom.

Tilda blinked away the sleep, glanced quickly at the clock and saw that it was ten past eleven. She had slept for over two hours and dreamed strange dreams about her father. He had been there with her, in the child’s bedroom.

She heard something and raised her head.

The house was no longer completely silent. She heard faint noises that rose and fell, as if someone-or more than one person-was talking.

It was the sound of low voices.

It sounded like muted mumbling. A group of people talking, quietly and intensely, somewhere outside the house.

Tilda got up silently from the bed, with the feeling that she was eavesdropping.

She held her breath so that she could hear better, and took a couple of silent steps toward the door, out of the bedroom, and listened again.

Perhaps it was just the wind between the buildings?

She went out onto the veranda again-and just when she

thought she could distinguish the voices clearly through the glass, they suddenly fell silent.

Everything was dark and still between the large buildings of the manor.

The next moment a bright light swept through the rooms-the headlights of a car.

She heard the faint sound of an engine approaching and realized that Joakim Westin had arrived back at Eel Point.

Tilda took a final glance back into the house to make sure everything looked as it should. She thought about the sounds she had heard and had a vague feeling of having done something forbidden-despite the fact that waiting for the owner inside the warm house had seemed like the obvious thing to do. Then she pulled on her boots and went out into the darkness again.

As she stepped outside, the car with its trailer was just swinging around to stop in the turning area.

The driver switched off the engine and got out. Joakim Westin. A tall, slim man aged about thirty-five, dressed in jeans and a winter jacket. Tilda could barely make out his face in the darkness, but she thought he was looking at her with a grim expression. His movements as he left the car were rapid and tense.

He closed the car door and came over to her.

“Hi,” he said. He nodded, but without extending his hand.

“Hi.” She nodded too. “Tilda Davidsson, local police… We spoke earlier.”

She wished she had been wearing her police uniform, not civilian clothes. It would have felt more appropriate on this dark night.

“Is there only you here?” said Westin.

“Yes. My colleagues have left,” said Tilda. “And the ambulance.”

There was silence. Westin just stood there, somehow indecisive, and she couldn’t think of a single decent question to ask.

“Livia,” said Westin eventually, gazing up at the lit windows of the house. “Is she… is she not here?”

“She’s being taken care of,” said Tilda. “They’ve taken her to Kalmar.”

“What happened?” asked Westin, looking at her. “Where did it happen?”

“By the shore… next to the lighthouses.”

“Did she go out to the lighthouses?”

“No, or rather… we don’t know yet.”

Westin’s eyes were flicking between Tilda and the house.

“And Katrine and Gabriel? Are they still at the neighbors’?”

Tilda nodded. “They’ve fallen asleep, I rang and checked a while ago.”

“Is that the place over there?” said Westin, looking toward the lights in the southwest. “The farm?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going over there.”

“I can drive you,” said Tilda. “We can-”

“No thank you. I need to walk.”

He walked past her, clambered over a stone wall, and strode off into the darkness.

The bereaved should never be left alone, Tilda had learned during her training, and she quickly set off after him. It was hardly appropriate to try to lighten the situation with questions about his journey from Stockholm or other small talk, so she just walked in silence across the field toward the lights in the distance.

They should have brought a flashlight or lantern; it was pitch black out here. But Westin seemed able to find his way.

Tilda thought he had forgotten she was behind him, but suddenly he turned his head and said quietly, “Careful… there’s barbed wire here.”

He led them around the fence and closer to the road. Tilda could hear the faint rushing of the sea to the east. It sounded almost like whispering, and it made her remember the sounds back at the house. The quiet voices through the walls.

“Does anyone else live in the manor house?” she asked.

“No,” said Westin tersely.

He didn’t ask what she meant, and Tilda didn’t say any more.

After a few hundred yards they came up onto a gravel track that led them straight to the farm. They walked past some kind of silo and a row of parked tractors. Tilda could smell manure, and she heard the sound of faint lowing from a dark barn on the other side of the farmyard.

They arrived at the Carlsson family house. A black cat walked down the steps and slunk off around the corner, and Westin asked quietly, “Who found her… was it Katrine?”

“No,” said Tilda. “I think it was one of the staff from the preschool.”

Joakim Westin turned his head and gave her a long look, as if he didn’t understand what she was talking about.

Tilda realized later that she should have stopped on the steps and talked more to him then. Instead she took two more steps up to the door and tapped gently on one of the panes of glass.

After a minute or so a blonde woman dressed in a skirt and sweater came and opened the door. It was Maria Carlsson.