The Cruel Stars of the Night

Forty

“Now you die,” echoed in Ann Lindell’s head. The words resounded again and again as she slowly floated up to the surface of consciousness. It was a long return, edged with a searing pain and confused words that circled like black birds above her head.

She took stock of the situation, how she had plunged down the stairs and landed among bottles and boxes. She had registered glass shattering against the floor and how everything at that point went dark.

Blood was trickling down one cheek. The birds shrieked. Her right shoulder was throbbing. “Now you die.” She stretched out the uninjured arm and fumbled for the flashlight. The concrete floor was littered with slivers of glass. She cut herself and cried out.

The basement was dark. It smelled stale, raw, and moldy. There are probably a lot of vermin in this place, she thought groggily, and imagined long-legged spiders crawling over her body, and she dragged herself into a half-sitting position.

I’m not dead, she thought and the image of Erik appeared in her mind.

My phone, she thought, but she realized it was still pocketed in the jacket she had left behind in the kitchen. The first shock and surprise transformed into anger that she could have acted so clumsily. To be so damn right and act so damn wrong. But also because she had been pushed. The cowardly attack from behind, coated in small talk and that giggle just before the push, made her attempt to stand. She had to steady herself against the wall so as not to fall over.

“Pitch black,” she muttered and felt her way along the floor with her foot in order to locate the flashlight.

The chance that it was still working was slim but it was her only source of light.

Thank goodness she had never been afraid of the dark, not even as a child. She remembered that time out in Gräsö Island when she had woken up in the middle of the night and not been able to fall back asleep. Edvard sleeping by her side. She decided to walk down to the sea. It was fall. It had been raining during the day, and there had been blustery winds but when she came outside the stars were out and the temperature had sunk.

That time she had thought her future was on the line. Would she be able to live with Edvard? Would she move out to Gräsö Island? The questions had woken her up. She walked to the sea. She knew the path well. The darkness was like a wall. The smell from the bay swept in with the northeasterly wind. Everything was quiet. Even the white birds were resting.

Her thoughts made her lose her way. She kept on going, unaware of her direction, preoccupied with her life-changing decisions, took a left instead of a right, became lost, and ended up farther and farther from the sea. Suddenly she came out next to an old hay loft. She didn’t recognize her surroundings, she was shivering and felt more alone than ever. Lost, abandoned, even by herself, unable to think a single clear thought.

She wandered around in the November dark for several hours before she at last saw something she recognized. The road to Victor’s house.

If she had imagined it was a matter of life and death that time, then Lindell was painfully aware that here, in Laura Hindersten’s dark basement, there was a true threat to her life. It was suddenly clear to her that Laura had murdered the three men. Even if Lindell had only been able to confirm the link between the Hindersten family and Blomgren, there was a connection also to the other two, she was convinced of that.

If you have killed three times, a fourth is no great matter. Would she be the one? Would Laura return?

Lindell groped her way around. Her foot struck the flashlight. She bent down and picked it up, pulled the mechanism back and forth but it remained dark. The glass had been smashed. She shook it, and suddenly it started to shine. Only faintly, but enough light so she could orient herself.

She inspected the cardboard boxes and realized that they had saved her life. The door opening to her left led in toward what she believed to be a boiler room. The beam of light traveled over an old boiler. In one corner there was a bathtub. Wooden boxes with old junk were piled up along one wall.

She trained the light in the other direction. There was a narrow corridor that apparently ran the whole length of the house. There was an old rag-rug on the floor. It looked completely out of place. There were small nooks on either side. Lindell decided to search the entire basement and started with the boiler room.

It took her a quarter of an hour to go through everything. It was completely windowless. The most exciting thing about it was probably the wine cellar that took up an entire room in the part that Lindell figured out faced the garden. There were hundreds of dusty bottles that were clearly arranged according to vineyards. From what she could see all the wine was produced in Italy.

The light from the flashlight was growing weaker. She turned it off and ended up standing at the foot of the stairs. The ache in her shoulder had modulated into a smarting pain that made itself known whenever she moved carelessly. She had tested the strength of her arm but found that it was essentially useless. She could barely hold the flashlight with her right hand.

She turned it on again and directed the beam upward. She crept silently up the stairs, avoiding the third step from the top, and pushed down the door handle. The door was locked. She had not found any tools or objects that she could use to force the door.

The door and frame looked solid but the lock was not particularly complicated. With the right tools she could easily have picked it. But she had nothing. And her right arm ruled out more forceful methods.

She pressed her ear to the door but a deathly silenced reigned in the house. Had Laura left? Lindell started to sweat. There was still blood trickling down her forehead. Strangely enough she felt hungry. Good god how she longed for a cup of coffee and a pastry from the Savoy cafe. She sat down on the top step and tried to clear her mind, but all she could think about was that she had to find a way out. There was only one possibility and that was through the door. There must be something in the basement that could be used to pick the lock. A wire hanger, a bit of steel wire or… maybe an axe. The door was reinforced with steel but maybe-despite her handicap-she could break down the frame and part of the wall?

She got up, walked down the steps, and realized how close to death she had come. Then she searched the basement a second time. Time was running out. Soon the flashlight would go out for good.

The bins in the boiler room mostly contained old smelly men’s clothes. Black beetles scurried around. Lindell tossed the clothes back and looked through the next bin, that seemed more promising. Here there were cables and cords, coupling boxes, and what looked like an old fuse box. She tried the strength of an old copper wire but it was too bendable to work well as a passkey.

While she searched, ever more desperately, she started to notice a pungent odor. She sniffed the pile of clothes. It smelled, but it was not the source of the odor, which was sharper, somewhat bittersweet. Deep down she knew what kind of smell it was. She didn’t want to know, but the police in her took over. It felt like a game from childhood, “hide the key” it was called, and it was one of the few games where the whole family participated. Her father had taken a childish delight in hiding things that his wife and Ann had to try to find. Sometimes it was fun, but often too hard. Her father triumphed, gave them hints, and spurred them on to continue searching.

She finally determined that the smell was coming from a recessed area next to the boiler. It had a surface area of a couple of square meters. Big pieces of wood were piled into a high pile. Lindell started to pull the wood away, at first carefully with the thought that she didn’t want to make any noise, then more violently. She threw the pieces of wood down behind her. The stench increased with every layer she uncovered.

Suddenly she reached black plastic. From what she could tell it was a garbage bag. The beam of light was growing weaker. A rat scrambled past and made her jump back. It wriggled in amongst the wood. She heard a rustling in there. If there was one rat there were usually more. She shivered. The flashlight went out but she managed to shake some life back into it.

On her guard against new surprises she stretched out, picked off more blocks of wood, and uncovered a larger area. Small pieces of plastic were gnawed through. She stretched out her left hand with trepidation. She felt the contours of a human body under the bag. It was a human hand. A human claw.

A new rat appeared. It was significantly larger and bolder than the first and it studied the intruder with sharp eyes. The tail was at least ten centimeters long and the fur was flecked with black. Lindell stared bewitched at the animal and slowly got to her feet.

What she had smelled was a corpse. She had sensed what she was going to find but the shock and the feeling of revulsion, above all when she thought about the rats’ activities, made her stare mutely at the woodpile and the black wrapping.

Her own situation-alone in a basement with a rotting, rat-gnawed corpse, with a crazy mass-murderer one floor up and the awareness of Laura Hindersten’s crimes and the fact that she was probably planning more murders-blocked her brain for a few moments. Laura’s ice cold words “Now you die” returned. Lindell heard them repeated and she turned around as if Laura was standing behind her.

She backed out of the wood storage area and went as far away from the corpse as possible. She walked into the wine cellar, turned off the flashlight, and sank down on the floor with her back to the wall. For a moment she was tempted to take out one of the bottles and have a drink, but reconsidered.

A thought came to her: if I make it out of here alive I’m going to confiscate all the wine in this house. She started fantasizing about a wine tasting evening with Charles, Görel, and her husband.

What time is it? she thought suddenly. Erik needs to be picked up from day care. It must be four, maybe five. She let out a sob. He was going to wonder where she was. The staff would be angry, then worried.

Did anyone actually know she was going to look up Laura? She had made the unforgivable mistake of not telling anyone she was coming here. This was her punishment for her lack of judgment, for not trusting her colleagues and keeping them in the dark regarding the photograph of Alice Hindersten.

She pulled herself up to her feet again and stood indecisive in the dark. Her right arm was dangling by her side. She didn’t want to think it was broken, perhaps it had only been pulled out of joint. She had heard a story about someone whose shoulder was constantly popping out of its socket and who had learned to pop it back in again, but she realized this was not the right situation for medical experiments. She had to be grateful she was still alive.

Driven by her will to get out of the basement she walked up the stairs again. It wasn’t so much the darkness that was frightening, nor the presence of the rats and a stinking corpse, but the feeling of imprisonment that made her increasingly panic-stricken. The darkness she could bear, the rats she could fight off, and she would get used to the smell of the corpse, but the captivity was intolerable.

She banged on the door.

“Laura! Let me out!” she screamed, astonished at how terrified and desperate she sounded. “I know it must have made you angry when I talked about your mother but I’m just curious. That’s all. We can talk about something else. Laura!”

She leaned against the door, breathed deeply, and tried to discern any sounds from the other side of the door.

“Laura! Listen to me!”

Not a sound. Not a sign that Laura had heard her. Lindell sank down on the uppermost step. She could hear the rats rustling in the woodpile. It appeared they had become more active since she had interrupted their macabre feast on Ulrik Hindersten’s remains. She assumed it was he who was packed in plastic.

What kind of a person can kill her own father and then set out on a murder spree? Or was it the case that Ulrik was the serial killer and that he, after committing the three murders had in turn been murdered by his daughter? Or by a third person?

Ulrik Hindersten had been reported missing at the end of September and judging by the stench the body had been there since that time.

The rats may not have found the body immediately but Lindell knew that once they had gotten a taste of the professor it wouldn’t take long until only the bones were left. Was it Laura’s intention that the rats should take care of the work of destroying the body?

During this time Laura had burned the entire contents of a household and had perhaps murdered three people. Now it was her turn. Would even she be left to rot and eaten by rats?

She banged on the door. It was still completely quiet inside the house. Lindell walked down the stairs. Had she missed anything? She was struck by the thought that perhaps there might have been a boarded-up window somewhere.

She groped her way along the corridor when the door was suddenly opened and light fell on the boxes that had braced her fall.

“You didn’t die,” she heard Laura say.

Lindell stood absolutely still and didn’t answer. She looked around for a weapon in the faint light, something to strike with. She wouldn’t hesitate for a second to use violence if only she could come closer to Laura.

“Don’t think I’m coming down,” Laura said. “I just wanted to tell you I’m leaving now to go see my man.”

Lindell walked out and placed herself at the foot of the stairs. Laura was standing in the doorway, lit from behind so that the light formed a halo around her dark hair. Lindell couldn’t help noticing how beautiful she was.

“You have to stay here, as a punishment. I wanted to confuse you, but I did not want you to come poking around here. That bitch who took my report at the police station treated me like dog shit. Do you understand? She sat there behind her desk and-”

“Are you talking about Åsa Lantz-Andersson?” Lindell said, breaking into her rapidly flowing speech.

“Is that her name? She’s such a nothing.”

Laura started to laugh.

“Why did you kill your father?”

“Oh, you found him, did you? I didn’t kill him. I strangled him.”

Her voice echoed in the basement.

“Did he abuse you?”

“You’ve already asked me that.”

“If that is the case then the repercussions will be much less severe. I’m sure you know that. Don’t make it worse now. You will not be able to get off entirely but someday will be able to live your life as you please.”

Lindell heard how hollow her words sounded but it was the only thing she could think of to get Laura thinking in a different direction.

“You must think I’m stupid.”

Lindell shook her head.

“On the contrary,” she said. “I think you’re a smart woman.”

Laura snorted.

“Tell me about your mother. Even if you don’t think so maybe I’ll understand. We are both single women. I have been thinking about you so much.”

The silence made Lindell sweat. This was the moment of judgment. Either Laura would slam the door shut or she would start to talk. She kept her hand on the door handle. Lindell thought the strip of light on the basement floor grew thinner.

“Laura,” she said and tried to keep her voice steady, “where does your rage come from?”

“I’ve grown up with the black death,” she said and Lindell didn’t know what she was talking about but hoped she would keep talking.

“Petrus Blomgren killed my mother, you know?”

“Indirectly, you mean?”

“He broke into her life. A farmer who thought he was some kind of Casanova. Do you realize how much pain he caused? He inserted a wedge in our lives, lured her away to Mallorca of all places, and then dumped her. He deserved to die, it’s that simple.”

“Jan-Elis Andersson, did he also deserve to die?”

“Did you find the chess piece?”

“We did,” Lindell said and felt as if the air in the basement was running out. “Why a chess piece?”

“My father and I used to play chess in the cottage. That was when he taught me everything I know about chess.”

“Which cottage?”

Laura told her about the only happy summer with Ulrik, when he was like a real father, and how Jan-Elis Andersson turned them out and put an end to the idyll.

“Why did you have to move?”

Ann was trying to keep Laura talking.

“He said he had to prepare the house for a relative but I know why he threw us out. He tried to feel me up. The second time I said I would tell Ulrik. That scared the old bastard.”

“But why the chess piece?”

“When I was throwing out Ulrik’s old things I found the chessboard and the box, and then when I drove out to Alsike I took a pawn with me. Like a reminder. A detail that was important to me. Did it confuse you?”

“Yes. We only found it today.”

“How careless you are.”

Lindell was prepared to agree. She thought of the photo at Blomgren’s house. If Fredriksson had found it the first time they would perhaps have had a chance of stopping the murders of Andersson and Palmblad.

“So there was no larger scheme involving chess?” she asked.

“Why would there be?”

Lindell couldn’t help feeling a certain measure of satisfaction. The chess theory had been plucked out of thin air. The threat against Queen Silvia was nonexistent.

“One of my colleagues had an idea,” Lindell said.

Could she make it up the steps before Laura had time to close and lock the door?

“So Laura,” she said and climbed a step at the same time, “why Palmblad?”

“Oh yes, ‘The Horse.’ Not that he looks like a horse anymore. It’s strange what the years can do. I hardly recognized him, but he recognized me.”

“Why was he an enemy?”

Lindell took another step.

“There are eleven steps left. You’ll never make it,” Laura said. Lindell saw that she was smiling.

“You can think about it down there. You have plenty of time. Have a little wine. Acquaint yourself with Ulrik. He’s better dead.” “There are rats down here.”

“That’s good company for Ulrik. He loved to kill mice.” Laura pushed the door shut and turned the lock.