Bad Blood

31

Gunnar Nyberg came out of “Supreme Central Command” steaming with rage-he didn’t know how he was supposed to get rid of it. Three times a filicidal murderer had inflicted bodily injury on him. Now here was another father who had murdered his son. Lasse Lundberg was now in the cell from which Jennings had escaped. Nyberg went down there. His first impulse was to let Benny’s dad have everything he had failed to give Lamar’s. He shook off the guards’ protests and entered the corridor with the cells. He arrived at Lundberg’s and peered in through the small window. Lasse Lundberg was hunched over with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands, shaking uncontrollably. Nyberg watched him for a moment, then did an about-face, reminded of a certain other father’s sins.

He set out for Östhammar, two hours north of Stockholm, in his Renault. He had a lot of time to think as he drove, but his thoughts were wrapped in the after-effects of a double concussion. This case was supposed to have been calm and easy as he awaited retirement. No personal engagement, no risk taking, no excessive overtime. Cutting back, some time for peaceful vegetating. And what the hell had happened instead?

The road he took, Norrtäljevägen, was flooded. The roadbed seemed more liquid than solid. Even when he was driving uphill, he met masses of water; driving downhill, he sloshed through water. It felt ridiculous.

He passed Norrtälje. He passed the exit for Hallstavik and Grisslehamn, and then he was in Östhammar, a small, peaceful, depopulated village. The Stockholmers who vacationed there were back in the city now, so Östhammar was once again identifiable as the little farming village it was.

With the help of the extremely detailed police map, he drove far out into the countryside. The rain fell incessantly. The roads were nearly impassable-his tires dug into the mud. At one point the Renault’s left rear wheel got stuck in a veritable crater. He got out, enraged, and lifted up the fucking car.

Sometime later the farm appeared over the crown of a hill. Small as the incline was, it seemed hard to conquer. He stepped on the gas and pushed ahead. He barely made it but finally turned the car onto the grounds.

Next to the barn he saw a tractor-its enormous back tire was half sunk in the mud. A large man with a gold-and-green cap, muddy overalls, and green size-eighteen boots was crouching next to it. His back was to Nyberg, who stepped out of the car and trudged over to him in the pelting rain. The man pounded the tractor with his large fist, whereupon it sank further into the mud. Fuming, the man yelled, “Fucking tractor!”

And then he lifted the tractor out of the mud.

At that moment, Gunnar Nyberg realized he was in the right place. He took a few steps closer.

The large farmer heard him sloshing and turned to see a gigantic mummy approaching him through the deluge. The sight would have terrified anyone. But not this farmer. He stepped toward the apparition.

Soon Nyberg could discern his face. He was about twenty-five. And he looked just like he himself had, at that age. This man wasn’t Mr. Sweden-he was a hick. But he appeared to feel much better than Mr. Sweden had.

The man stopped a few yards from Gunnar. Was it himself or his father that Tommy Nyberg recognized? “Dad?” he thundered.

Gunnar Nyberg felt a warm wave stream through him.

Tommy Nyberg stepped up to him and scrutinized him. Then he took off his work gloves and extended his hand. “Holy shit! Dad! And you’re still a cop?”

Nyberg adjusted his nose cone with his healthy left hand, then extended it and managed a rather awkward handshake. He was incapable of speech.

“What are you doing here? Come on in, dammit! It’s a little wet.”

They plodded over the waterlogged ground, past the tractor, past the barn, and past a tire swing in a water-filled hollow in the yard; it was floating with its chain hanging slack.

“Oh yes,” said Tommy. “You’ll get to meet him soon.”

They reached the run-down house. It was neither big nor impressive. Boards stuck out in some places, the result of makeshift repairs; the old red paint was flaking. Here and there patches of mold spotted the surface. Patina, thought Gunnar Nyberg; the house fit him perfectly.

They stepped up onto the porch. The stairs creaked alarmingly, first under Tommy, then under Gunnar. They went in, straight into the dining room. A small, thin, blond woman in her early twenties was seated at the large table, feeding a fat, blond baby in a high chair.

She tossed an unruly lock of hair over her head and stared at the giant duo in surprise. The boy started bawling at the sight of his seriously bandaged grandfather.

“Tina and Benny,” Tommy Nyberg said as he pulled off his size eighteens. “This is my dad. He popped up out of the storm.”

“His name is Benny?” said Gunnar Nyberg from the entryway.

“He’s Gunnar?” Tina said uncertainly. “Your real dad?”

“I suppose you could call him that,” Tommy rumbled, and gave Benny an audible kiss so that he stopped crying, and then he sat at the table with a crash. “After all,” he added with a broad smile.

“Come in,” said Tina, rising to her feet. “Don’t just stand there!”

Gunnar Nyberg took off his shoes and took a seat at a respectable distance from the child. He felt ill at ease.

“Hi.” Tina extended a hand across the table.

Nyberg greeted her awkwardly. “Hi,” he said softly.

They were quiet for a moment. The silence ought to have been uncomfortable, but it wasn’t. The three of them looked at Gunnar, curiously, not hatefully.

“This is your grandfather,” Tommy finally said to one-year-old Benny, who looked as though this information would bring on another attack of crying. But a scoop of porridge from his mother distracted him.

“Well then,” said Tommy, “where have you been keeping yourself?”

“I didn’t know you lived here,” Nyberg whispered. “It’s been so long since we’ve seen each other.”

“Oh well, you’re here now, anyway. Would you like some coffee?”

Nyberg nodded and watched his son disappear into the kitchen.

“He’s been talking about contacting you ever since we moved here,” said Tina, sticking a spoon of porridge into Benny’s mouth.

“Has he said anything else?”

She inspected him, as if searching for a motive. “Just that the family moved to the west coast early on, and that you had promised not to contact them. But I don’t know why.”

Gunnar Nyberg knit his eyebrows. For the first time he felt distinct pain in his nose and hand. It radiated up through him, in one fell swoop. Like a vague recollection of Wayne Jennings’s nerve pinching. Or rather, as though a long-acting anesthetic had worn off.

“Because I was an extraordinarily bad father,” he said.

She nodded and regarded him curiously. “Is it true that you were Mr. Sweden?”

He laughed, long and noisily, and his voice seemed to return after an eternity in exile. “It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? I’d have been happy to have done without that, believe me.”

He looked at Benny’s stout little body. The child snatched the spoon from Tina’s hand and threw it at him. Gunnar caught it in midair. Porridge spattered on his clothes. He let it be.

“Do you want to hold him?” asked Tina.

She lifted his grandchild over to him. The boy was heavy, compact. He’d probably become a strapping fellow.

Bad blood always comes back around.

That wasn’t true. It was possible to break the cycle.

It wasn’t even true that what goes around comes around.

There was such a thing as forgiveness. He understood that now.

Tommy reappeared from the kitchen brandishing the coffeepot. Suddenly, at the threshold, he stopped and took off his wet farmer cap.

“Hey, Dad, what the hell?” he said. “Are you crying?”