I Can See in the Dark

Chapter 18

18 July.

I got up and went to work, quite determined to boast about Sister Anna’s cake. I enjoyed imagining the cake as a declaration of love, even though I knew it was nothing of the kind. I do possess some self-awareness, but a lovely daydream is not to be shunned. It was a grey day with threatening clouds, and I wished that rain would come and wash away all traces of the night’s misdeeds, that luck would be on my side, and why shouldn’t it be? Arnfinn, I hoped, would be able to rest there in perpetuity, on the edge of the forest. And become a part of the great cycle of life, without anyone knowing. Just as Anna’s brother lay at rest on the bottom of Lake Mester, undisturbed by the living. As if nature can’t deal with things herself, without any help from us; she devours us and converts us, other living organisms feed on us, it’s really a lovely thought. But when I bumped into Anna in the corridor, I could see straight away that there was something on her mind. That there was something she was puzzling over. That’s the strange thing about a person’s eyes, how much they can express, the coloured iris against the white background, and the black pupil pulsating. The delicate lines in the corner of the eye. A set of highly tuned messages that can broadcast displeasure, scepticism or joy in a fraction of a second.

I latch on to such things instantly.

And Anna had a message. So I avoided her for as long as possible, I kept away from the ward office and paced the corridors instead. Then she suddenly emerged from Barbro’s room. I stepped aside to let her pass, but she stopped, stretched out a hand and plucked at my coat.

‘Your father’s dead,’ she said.

I drew a deep breath and let it out again.

‘What are you talking about?’ I asked. ‘Why are you bringing that up?’

‘He’s dead,’ she repeated. ‘You sat there in the ward office and told everyone about it, that he died of a massive thrombosis when you were fourteen. So how could he have been lying on your sofa groaning?’

My mind worked like lightning. Had I really told them that, about my father dying? I couldn’t remember. But she was right, of course, we did talk about that sort of thing, and everyone knew that my parents were dead. I gave her my widest smile and patted her gently on the arm.

‘Oh, that!’ I said, with a glint in my eye. ‘Of course he’s dead. He died years ago. It was only a little white lie, one has to tell them sometimes.’

‘Well?’ she said. ‘And so?’

‘An old friend paid me a visit yesterday, and, regrettably, we had a slight altercation. So I bashed him on the head with a hammer. It was probably him you heard. He was stretched out on the floor wailing like a baby.’

Anna shook her head in despair.

‘I’ll never understand you,’ she said. ‘No one on the ward will ever understand you.’

She started to walk away then changed her mind and gave me a penetrating look.

‘But what happened to your acquaintance? After you bashed him on the head?’

‘Oh, he went and died,’ I said. ‘And now he’s buried behind the house. I had quite a busy night of it, I can tell you. I was digging for hours, I was totally knackered.’

Another sigh of resignation. Then she strode off down the corridor, and I could see that she’d brushed it all aside, all the nonsense that had spouted from my mouth. Because other things had entered her thoughts. She had her brother to think about, they still hadn’t found him. And there were plenty of patients on our ward. Several were close to death.

I went to the park near Lake Mester after my shift.

I sat there looking at Arnfinn’s bench, and melancholy thoughts began to assail my mind, about how he was gone forever, and nobody knew it. The murder was with me every moment. It was in my head and in my heart, and in the hand that had raised the hammer, and welling up was the realisation that I really had done it, not merely dreamt it.

Because he’d driven me to breaking point.

The park was quiet except for a few hopping sparrows. Perhaps they found the odd crumb, at any rate they searched energetically, and watching them soothed me. Ebba didn’t come, nor did Lill Anita and Miranda. Maybe the large black man had found work at last. Wouldn’t that be something, I thought, if someone had finally discovered that mound of muscle. I sat on the bench and brooded on the murder. I felt deeply irritated that Arnfinn had been such a fool. He’d finally found a source, a wellspring of vodka, and in an instant he’d thrown it all away. Drops began to fall from the sky. Lightly at first, then heavily, until it was a constant, calming swish. I looked on it as a portent, that nature was on my side, because now the little barrow of earth at the back of the house would settle and blend with the landscape. And Arnfinn would, quite literally, become part of nature. I sat out in the rain for a good while. I sat and mulled over this new twist to my life, and marvelled at it all, at the way his deceit could push me over the edge like that. It had happened so quickly, I hadn’t had time to think. At last, I was soaked to the skin; the July rain was mild, so it wasn’t that I was cold, but I just couldn’t relax. Every now and again my crime would surface in all its horror and make my ears burn.