‘Mum?’ a boy’s voice called out.
‘Coming!’
Per looked at her and tried to come up with one last question. ‘How do you feel about it now?’
‘It’s OK,’ said Ulrica, getting up to rinse her coffee cup. She looked at him. ‘What’s done is done … If you do stupid things when you’re young, you regret it, and if you don’t do anything stupid, you still regret it, sooner or later. Don’t you agree?’
But he didn’t say anything.
As he drove away from the farm, he thought about Ulrica Ternman, then about Regina. What was he doing? He wanted to save girls who sometimes didn’t want to be saved. He wanted to save them from his father.
Just before he reached the motorway, he pulled into a car park and rang Directory Enquiries. He found two people called Tobias Jesslin. One lived in Mora, the other in Karlskrona.
Karlskrona was closer to Kalmar, so he tried that number first. After three rings a girl’s voice chirruped: ‘Hello, this is Emilie!’
Per was taken aback, but asked for Tobias anyway.
‘Daddy’s not here,’ said the girl. ‘Do you want to talk to Mummy?’
Per hesitated. ‘OK.’
There was a rattling sound, then a stressed female voice came on the line. ‘Hello, this is Katarina.’
‘Hi, my name’s Per Morner … I was hoping to speak to Tobias.’
‘He’s at work.’
‘Where does he work?’
‘Honolulu.’
‘Sorry?’
‘The Honolulu restaurant. Who are you?’
‘I’m … I’m just an old friend. We haven’t been in touch for a long time. This is the Tobias who used to live in Malmo, isn’t it?’
The woman didn’t say anything for a few seconds.
‘Yes, he did live in Malmo.’
‘Good,’ said Per, ‘I’ve probably got the right person then. When will he be home?’
‘He finishes at eleven … but you could ring him at the Honolulu.’
‘Or I could go there … what’s the address?’
He made a note of it and rang off.
Then he thought it over. It was almost seven o’clock now, and it would probably take him about an hour to drive down to Karlskrona.
He made a decision, and got in the car. He would go and see Tobias Jesslin, who once upon a time had been called Markus Lukas.
55
Vendela spent the whole of Tuesday working on the new garden. Before lunch she planted ivy, box and a long row of elder saplings which would provide good foliage and shade when they had grown, and in the afternoon she hauled bags of compost and small limestone blocks and created three little flowerbeds. She could see in her mind’s eye the rows of green leaves emerging in May, the stems growing strong in June, the big petals turning towards the sun.
The telephone in the house rang a few times, but she didn’t answer. At about seven she went in and ran herself a hot bubble bath, ate a couple of pieces of crispbread for dinner, and stared out of the window. Over towards the little cottage to the north.
She didn’t want to go for a run on the alvar this evening. She thought about going to see old Gerlof, but didn’t want to disturb him. What she really wanted was to go over to Per Morner and spend the rest of the evening sitting chatting to him, but his car wasn’t there. So she sat there in her big empty house, waiting for her husband and her dog to come back.
They didn’t come. At ten o’clock she went to bed.
Through the fog of sleep Vendela could hear a throbbing noise coming closer, then she was woken by the sound of someone unlocking the front door. She opened her eyes and saw from the clock by her bedside that it was quarter to eleven.
The light went on in the hallway and a strip of light fell across her bed.
‘Hello?’ called a man’s voice.
It was Max.
‘Hello …’ she replied quietly, running a hand over her forehead.
‘Hi darling!’
Max came into the bedroom, still wearing his padded jacket.
Vendela raised her head and looked around the floor. ‘Where’s Aloysius?’
‘Here,’ said Max, throwing something on the bed. ‘It’s done now.’
Vendela looked at him in confusion. ‘What’s done?’
Then she looked down at the bed and saw something small and narrow lying beside her, something strangely familiar. She reached out and picked it up.
It was a strip of leather. A dog collar.
She recognized the faint smell of Aloysius. It was his collar.
Max was still standing by the bed. ‘I thought you might want that. As a memento.’
‘Max, what have you done?’
He sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘I’ll tell you about it, if you want to know. It was very peaceful and I was holding him all the time … The vets know exactly what to do.’
Vendela just stared at him, but he carried on. ‘First of all they gave him a tranquillizer, just like the ones you take sometimes. Then they injected an overdose of anaesthetic into his front leg, and by that time—’
Vendela sat up. ‘I don’t want to hear it!’
She threw the covers aside and leapt out of bed, pushing past Max. She ran into the hallway, pulled on her coat and boots and hurtled out of the door. When she landed on the path the gravel flew up around her feet.
Away, she had to get away.
Suddenly the Audi was there in front of her and she fumbled with the door. It wasn’t locked.
She got in the car and leaned her head against the hardness of the wheel.
Then came the tears. Tears for Aloysius.
Ten years. She and Max had bought him when he was just a young dog, the autumn they got married. When they walked into the kennels to look for a dog he had wagged his tail and come running up to them, as if he had chosen them instead of vice versa, and he had been with Vendela every single day since then.
A shadow appeared next to the car.
‘Vendela?’ It was Max, tapping on the window. ‘Come inside, then we can talk.’
‘
She flung open the door and clenched her fists, forcing Max to take a step backwards. Then she took the torch out of the glove compartment and got out of the car. ‘Don’t touch me!’ she screamed.
He took two more steps backwards and she walked past him, heading for the gravel track.
‘Where are you going, Vendela?’
She didn’t answer – she just wanted to get away from her husband as quickly as possible, heading out into the cold and the darkness.
56
A bitterly cold wind was blowing in off the Baltic as Per got out of his car in front of the Honolulu restaurant.
