‘What do you mean? I’m an excellent driver!’ said Patrik, offended, glancing at Martin for support.
‘Right,’ Martin jeered. Then he turned to look at Paula. ‘I put him forward for that programme,
Paula laughed and Patrik snorted to show he was insulted. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, considering all the time that you and I have spent driving around together – have I ever crashed or had any sort of accident? No, I’ve an unblemished driving record, so what you’re saying is pure slander.’ He snorted again as he glared at Martin, which almost caused him to rear-end the Saab in front of them, and he had to brake hard.
‘I rest my case,’ said Martin, holding up his hands as Paula doubled over with laughter.
Patrik sulked the rest of the way back to the station. But at least he obeyed the speed limit.
Kjell was still riled after the encounter with his father. Frans had always had that effect on him. No, actually that wasn’t true. Not always. When he was a boy, disappointment had been the predominant feeling. Disappointment mixed with love, which over the years had been transformed into a solid core of hatred and anger. He realized that he’d allowed these feelings to guide all the choices he’d made, and in that sense he’d practically let his father steer his life. But he was utterly powerless to do anything about it. Just as he’d been powerless to resist when his mother had dragged him along on her innumerable trips to see Frans in prison. The cold, grey visitors’ room, completely impersonal, soulless. His father’s awkward attempts to talk to him, pretending that he was actually part of his life and not just a stranger observing it from a distance. From behind bars.
It had been years since his father had served his last prison sentence, but that didn’t mean he was a reformed character. He’d simply grown smarter. He’d chosen a different path. And as a consequence, Kjell had chosen the exact opposite. He’d written about the anti-foreigner organizations with a vehemence and passion that had won him a name and reputation that extended far beyond the readership of the
He parked in front of his ex-wife’s house. This time he hadn’t bothered to phone ahead. Sometimes she contrived to leave before he arrived, but this time he’d made sure that she was at home. He’d been sitting in his car a short distance away, waiting to catch sight of her. After an hour she’d driven up to the house and parked in front. It looked as though she’d been shopping, because she took a couple of supermarket bags out of the car. Kjell waited until she was inside and then drove the last hundred metres up to the house. He got out and knocked. Carina’s shoulders visibly slumped when she saw who was standing on the doorstep.
‘So it’s you, is it? What do you want?’ she asked.
Why did she always have to look so… crushed? Still. After ten years. His sense of guilt only exacerbated his irritation. Why couldn’t she understand the seriousness of the situation? Realize that it was time for them to take a tough approach?
‘We need to talk. About Per.’ He pushed past her and began taking off his shoes and hanging up his jacket. For a moment Carina looked as if she might object, but then she shrugged and went into the kitchen. She stood with her back leaned against the counter and her arms folded across her chest, as if preparing for a fight.
‘What is it now?’ She shook her head so the dark strands of her fringe fell into her eyes and she had to push them aside. He’d seen that same gesture so many times. It was one of the things he’d loved about her when they first met, before the daily grind and sorrow had taken their toll, before their love had faded and made him choose a different path. He still didn’t know whether he’d made the right choice or not.
Kjell pulled out one of the kitchen chairs and sat down. ‘We have to do something. This isn’t something that’s going resolve itself. Once a kid gets in with that type of crowd…’
Carina interrupted him by raising her hand. ‘When did I say that it will resolve itself? I just have a different opinion as to what should be done. Sending Per away is not the solution. You should be able to see that too.’
‘What you don’t realize is that he needs to get away from this environment!’ He angrily ran his hand through his hair.
‘And I take it that by “this environment” you mean your father.’ Carina’s voice was dripping with contempt. ‘I think you should see about solving your own problems with your father before you get Per involved.’
‘What problems?’ Kjell was aware of his voice rising, so he forced himself to take several deep breaths to calm down. ‘First of all, it’s not just my father that I’m talking about when I say that Per needs to get away from here. Don’t you think I can see what’s going on? Don’t you think I know that you’ve got bottles hidden away in every cupboard and drawer?’ He motioned towards the kitchen cabinets. Carina was about to protest, but he held up his hand to stop her. ‘And there’s nothing to be resolved between me and Frans,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘As far as I’m concerned, I’d prefer not to have anything to do with the man, and I have no intention whatsoever of allowing him to have any influence over Per. But since we can’t keep watch over the boy every minute of the day, and you don’t seem particularly interested in dealing with him, I can’t see any other solution but to send him away. We need to find a boarding school where the staff know how to handle this sort of situation.’
‘And just how do you think that’s going to be arranged?’ Carina snapped. ‘They don’t just send teenagers off to those sorts of schools for no reason. They have to have done something first -’
‘Breaking and entering,’ Kjell cut her off. ‘He was caught breaking into somebody’s house.’
‘What are you talking about? He’s never -’
‘In early June. The homeowner caught him red-handed and phoned me. I went over and collected Per. He got in through a basement window and was in the middle of gathering things in the house when he got caught. The owner threatened to ring the police if he didn’t cough up his parents’ phone number. And so Per gave him my number – not yours.’ He couldn’t resist feeling smug when he saw how upset and disappointed Carina looked.
‘He gave him your number? But why?’
Kjell shrugged. ‘Who knows? I guess a father is always a father.’
‘Whose house did he break into?’ Carina still seemed to be having a hard time accepting the fact that Per had asked the man to call Kjell.
He hesitated for a couple of seconds before replying. Then he said, ‘That old man they found dead in Fjallbacka last week. Erik Frankel. It was his house.’
‘But why?’ She shook her head.
‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you! Erik Frankel was an expert on the Second World War. He had tons of stuff from that period, and Per probably wanted to impress his friends by showing them some genuine Nazi memorabilia.’
‘Do the police know about this?’
‘Not yet,’ he said coldly. ‘It just depends on whether -’
‘Would you do that to your own son? Report him for breaking and entering?’ whispered Carina, horrified.
Kjell felt a hard knot in his stomach. He pictured her as she’d looked the first time they met. At a party at the journalism school. She’d come with a friend who was studying there, but the girl had gone off with some guy right after they arrived, so Carina had ended up sitting on a sofa feeling lonely and neglected. He’d fallen in love with her the moment he saw her. She had on a yellow dress with a yellow ribbon in her hair, which was just as dark as it was now but without the strands of grey that were becoming visible. There was something about her that had made him want to take care of her, protect her, love her. He thought about their wedding. The dress that would nowadays be regarded as a relic from the eighties, with its voluminous skirt and puffed sleeves. He, at any rate, had thought she was a vision in that dress. And then another image surfaced in his mind: Carina exhausted, without make-up, wearing an ugly hospital gown and holding their son in her arms. When she had looked up at him and smiled, he’d felt as if he could slay dragons or fight off an entire army for his wife and son.
As they stood in the little kitchen, two combatants facing each other down, each caught a fleeting glimpse of the way they had once been, the times they had laughed together, made love to each other. Back in the days before their love turned into something fragile and brittle. Making him vulnerable. The knot in his stomach hardened even more.
Kjell pushed away these thoughts. ‘If I have to, I’ll see to it that the police are given this information,’ he said.
