Black Lies, Red Blood

Fourteen

“Why did you lie?”

Andreas Davidsson had not once looked Ann Lindell in the eyes, but instead continued stubbornly staring down between his feet. Sometimes he made a movement with one foot; Lindell did not see it, but heard the scraping sound of the sole against the pavestones.

They were sitting, like before, on the terrace. Lindell invited his mother to sit with them, but Andreas refused. Then he would not say a word, he explained. His mother did not put up a fight, on the contrary she sneaked off immediately. Did she have any idea that she too would be questioned? Lindell suspected more and more that she suffered from some defect, which made her incapable of fully understanding the consequences of their family lie.

Lindell had explained to both of them that she would tape the conversation. Andreas was over the age of fifteen and therefore liable for a criminal offense.

“I don’t know,” he forced out.

“If you can speak louder, that would be nice,” said Lindell, moving the tape recorder a little closer to the boy. “Okay, this is how it looks: Klara Lovisa disappeared on her sixteenth birthday. You and your mother have maintained the whole time that on that Saturday you were in Gävle visiting your grandmother. Your grandmother supported that version. Until yesterday, when I visited her. Then she was clearly having a pretty good day. You know she’s often confused, that’s not news to anyone in your family, is it?”

“Naw.”

“She was angry at you, do you know that? Because you didn’t come that Saturday. It was not only Klara Lovisa’s birthday, but also your grandfather’s. She was angry because you stayed home.”

“She’s so screwy,” said Andreas.

“Yes, sometimes she’s a little confused, we know that, but the problem for you is that your aunt, who I didn’t even know about until yesterday, confirmed your grandmother’s latest version, the true version. She was also there at the cemetery and at dinner. She is definitely not confused. I talked with her too. She remembers the dinner very well and that your grandmother quarreled with your mother because you weren’t there. You were still in Uppsala, weren’t you?”

He did not answer.

“Can you stop scraping your feet and answer the question instead!”

He shook his head.

“What does that headshaking mean?”

“I was at home.”

“Good, now we don’t have to argue about that,” said Lindell. “It’s nice when you say what really happened.”

The next question was a given, but she chose to wait in silence. After a while, no more than half a minute, Andreas looked at her for the first time, a momentary glance. Lindell nodded and tried to look encouraging.

“What did you do on Saturday the twenty-eighth of April?”

“I was at home, like I said.”

“The whole day?”

“Yes.”

“A Saturday? It was a beautiful spring day. You didn’t go outside even once?”

“No.”

“Did you have any visitors?”

“No.”

“Did anyone call?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Were you waiting for someone to call?”

The answer was delayed, and came in the form of another shake of the head.

“Perhaps you thought that Klara Lovisa would be in touch?”

“Lay off! Haven’t you understood that it was over?”

“It was her birthday.”

“I know that!”

“Did you send an SMS to wish her happy birthday, perhaps?”

Suddenly Lindell felt sorry for the boy. He was suffering all the torments of hell before her eyes. She understood now why he stayed at home. He had been waiting for a response from her. He must have sent her a text message, maybe said something about wanting to see her.

“You didn’t go to her house, did you?”

“No.”

“When did you find out that she had disappeared, did you see it in the newspaper?”

“I knew it before. Klovisa’s mom called here.”

“On Saturday evening?”

“Yes, she wondered if I’d seen her.”

“And then your mom decided that you should lie, that you had been in Gävle?”

“We didn’t know anything.”

“So the lie came about when you read in the paper that she had disappeared,” Lindell observed. “But you had no reason to pretend. You were home the whole day and had no contact with her, so why this song and dance?”

“I don’t know.”

“You did have contact with her, didn’t you? Think now, before you tell another lie. They often crack. I know that, I’m a police officer, I’ve questioned hundreds like you. The truth almost always creeps out.”

“I texted her,” he said at last.

“When was that?”

Andreas pulled out his cell phone. Lindell understood that he had saved his message and she felt a stab in her heart.

“Nine twenty-two,” he said.

“What did you write?”

“‘Happy sixteenth birthday. Can we meet?’” he read from the display.

“You got no answer.”

“No.”

She could imagine his anguish, first before he sent it, then afterward, while he waited for a possible reply from Klara Lovisa.

They sat in silence. Lindell peeked at her watch. In an hour she should pick up Erik, who was at a birthday party on Botvidsgatan. A playmate at preschool was turning seven.

She guessed that the boy spoke the truth where the SMS was concerned, and sensed that he had not seen her that Saturday. In April they had already asked all the neighbors around the Davidsson house if they might have seen Klara Lovisa, but no one had seen or heard anything.

“Where you did usually meet?”

“Here or at her house,” said Andreas.

“But when you wanted to be by yourselves?”

“By the crematorium, behind there kind of. There’s a place where they pile up old gravestones, so they can use them again. Recycling, kind of.”

Lindell could not keep from smiling at his word choice, but it didn’t seem to be the most romantic place for a date. At that moment she remembered that the first time she saw an erect penis was at a cemetery in Ödeshög.

“May I borrow your cell phone?”

“Why? That’s what it says.”

“I just want to check,” said Lindell, reaching out her hand.

After a slight hesitation he handed over the phone. She read the message. He had left out an “XOX” at the end. She went back a step and checked incoming texts. If he had gotten a reply from her, she guessed he would have saved that too. But there was no SMS from Klara Lovisa.

She handed back the phone.

“Thanks,” she said. “It’s good that this came out, isn’t it?”

He nodded.

“Will I be punished?” he asked.

“No,” said Lindell, and turned off the recorder.

The one who should be punished is his mother, she thought.

Andreas sat with the phone in his hand. Wonder how many times he’s read his message, wondered Lindell, more gloomy than content at having cracked his alibi.

“One thing, and now the tape recorder is no longer running,” she emphasized. “When I asked you whether you had slept with each other, you said that Klara Lovisa wanted to wait. Wait until when?”

“Until she turned sixteen,” said Andreas.

Back in the car she wondered about the significance of Andreas’s final statement. Certainly he had hoped that he would be the first. An SMS could create contact, that was his obvious thought.

Lindell did not believe that Andreas had any part in her disappearance, but obviously that could not be ruled out. She looked at her watch again. Erik would not like her arriving late, and she saw that she still had time to take a look at the area around the crematorium and cemetery.

She headed in that direction, and when an elderly woman came walking along Berthågavägen she braked to ask about the place where the church stored old gravestones. The woman looked perplexed at first, and then nodded encouragingly, as if she thought Lindell was going to choose a gravestone, and pointed out the way.

Lindell got out of the car. The woman’s face made her think about her parents, that one day, perhaps in the not too distant future, she would have to choose a stone.

The area was an open yard where stones in all forms were laid out like on parade. She read some of the stones. Some of the inscriptions were almost worn away by the teeth of time.

She strolled around, turning in behind a wooden fence and surveying the ground. Weeds were growing luxuriantly between piles of gravel and chunks of concrete. Had Klara Lovisa and Andreas, despite everything, seen each other here on her birthday? Perhaps Klara Lovisa was happy that he remembered her birthday, even if she rejected his overture to resume the relationship. Could Klara Lovisa be buried here?

Andreas seemed to be a careful guy, but Lindell knew the problems that raging hormones in combination with disappointment could create.

She left the place with a sense of oppression, as if she had trespassed. The same feeling as when you are witness to a stranger’s sorrow.

She understood that it was this place, so lacking in finesse, that she would associate with Klara Lovisa. This would be her resting place, until they found her.