The killer's art

41

With a deep sigh Johan dropped his suitcase on the floor of his flat. Soon he would have only one address, and the idea certainly appealed to him.

Max Grenfors had rung him on Sunday afternoon, just as he and Emma had decided to order Thai food and rent a movie for the evening. Typical. For a week he’d enjoyed living with Emma and Elin, but now he’d been forced to return to Stockholm. Yet it was perfectly understandable that he’d been summoned back by head office. At the moment there was nothing more to report about the murder, and half of the Stockholm reporters were off with flu. So in the meantime, Pia would have to hold the fort on Gotland.

He started by opening the windows to air his flat. The two potted plants that he owned were drooping badly. He gave them a good watering and then went through his post. The substantial pile that he’d found in the hall consisted mostly of bills, as well as a number of advertising brochures, and a postcard showing a tropical paradise; it was from Andreas, who was on holiday in Brazil.

Johan sank on to the sofa and looked around. His ground-floor one-bedroom flat in the Sodermalm district wasn’t especially spacious or remarkable, but the location meant that it would be easy to sublet. He just had to get permission from the building owner.

He looked at his worn leather sofa, the oak coffee table that his mother had given him, and the Billy bookshelf from Ikea. He wouldn’t miss any of his furniture. On the other hand, he had to take his CD collection and player with him to Gotland. Not surprisingly, Emma’s ex-husband Olle had laid claim to the stereo after their divorce.

He went over to the kitchen and stood there a moment, leaning against the doorpost. How spartan everything looked compared to Emma’s fully furnished big house in Roma. The kitchen held nothing more than a small drop-leaf table and two chairs next to the window. He saw nothing he wanted to take with him, except possibly the sandwich-toaster, which in his bachelor existence he had used constantly. Actually, it might be a relief not to see it again. Nor did the bedroom contain much to shout about. The bed was covered with an ugly old spread, and it lacked a headboard. It dawned on him that he’d made no real effort to furnish a home for himself. He’d had this flat for over ten years and was comfortable here, but it was as if he’d been using it as some sort of way-station. Not a real home. It now seemed anonymous and inhospitable, somehow empty and lifeless. It would be great to move out.

He listened to his phone messages. His mother had called several times; she seemed to have forgotten that he was working on Gotland. Two of his three brothers had also left messages. He missed them and hoped that he’d have a chance to see them while he was back in Stockholm. Johan was the oldest and had consciously taken on the role of paterfamilias when his father died several years earlier. Luckily, his mother had now found a new love interest. She still lived in her own house, but she seemed to get on splendidly with her sweetheart, and that made Johan happy. Not just for her sake, but also for his own. She didn’t need him in the same way as she had in the past. He thought about how things would go now that he and Emma had decided to move in together and get married. Johan would be the first of his brothers to take a wife. It was a big step, a serious decision. He didn’t want to tell anyone about it. Not just yet.

A nxiety crept over him towards evening. Erik had always thought there was something unpleasant about Sunday nights. The weekend was almost over, and the working week was just around the corner, with its responsibilities, routines, commitments — and he had to be able to function. That alone could fill him with panic. He was lying on the sofa in the living room, staring at the ceiling. A whisky would deaden the feeling of emptiness, but he wasn’t going to drink today. He never did on Sundays.

Instead he got up and took out a few old photo albums from his childhood. He put on a CD of Maria Callas and began turning the pages. A picture of himself at the age of seven on the Moja boat dock. Hoisting the sail on the boat with his father, and with a friend in the dinghy. As a child he had loved the Stockholm archipelago. His family always went sailing for several weeks in the summer. They would go out to Moja, Sandhamn and Uto, attend the dances on the wharves, and eat dinner at the elegant inns. His father would come along, and that always made his mother happier and more relaxed. With her husband at her side she would forget about the irritation she felt towards Erik, although she made no attempt to hide her feelings when the two of them were at home alone and his father was off travelling. She liked to sunbathe on holiday, and her thin, taut body acquired a deep tan; she even put on a little weight. It was as if the tension in her face eased, and she became more like the cheerful girl she may once have been; the one Erik thought was still there under that stern exterior.

Erik grew up as an only child, living with his parents in a luxurious house in the fashionable suburb of Djursholm. He attended private schools and then majored in economics at Ostra Real secondary school. His future was decided in advance. He was going to follow in his father’s footsteps and go to business school, get top marks, and then start working for the family business. No other alternatives were ever discussed.

Erik managed fairly well during his school years, in spite of his cold-hearted mother and absent father. He’d always had an easy time making friends, and the socializing he did outside the house made it possible for him to survive, year after year. He longed fervently for the day when he could pack his bags and leave home.

It was when he was a teenager that the change happened. There was a new boy in class who was interested in art; he went to all the gallery openings in town, and he also painted in his spare time. He was so enthusiastic and captivating that several of his classmates joined him on the weekends when he would go to Liljevalch Art Centre and the National Museum, Waldemarsudde and small, obscure art galleries. Erik showed the most interest of any of the boys. He was particularly taken with Swedish art from the early twentieth century. It was then that he discovered ‘The Dying Dandy’ and became utterly overwhelmed by it. Back then he didn’t understand why the painting had such a strong effect on him; he just knew that it resonated with something in him that was deep and hidden and over which he had no control. He started reading everything he could find about Dardel and the paintings of the early 1900s in general. He even went so far as to begin studying art history along with his other subjects. He was planning to keep his interest secret from his parents for as long as possible.

But it wasn’t just his interest in art that complicated his life during those years. He began feeling himself drawn more and more to his own gender; he was totally uninterested in women. Whenever his friends talked about girls and sex, he would laugh along with them and contribute some tall tales about his own advanced sexual experiences. In reality, Erik was furtively looking at men. On the bus, on the street, and in the showers at the gym. It was the male body, not the female, that interested him. Since he was painfully aware of his parents’ old-fashioned and narrow-minded view of homosexuality, he did everything he could to suppress his attraction to men. But then one day he had his feelings confirmed.

His family was supposed to spend a weekend on Gotska Sandon, staying overnight in a cabin. On the ferry ride over, they met a pleasant family from Goteborg whose son was the same age as Erik. Late that night, while the adults were still up drinking wine, the two youths left the party and set off for a walk along the sandy beaches that surrounded the small island. It was just before Midsummer, and the night was bright and warm. They lay down next to each other on a sand dune and gazed up at the sky while they talked. Erik liked Joel, as the boy was called, and they had a lot in common. They soon began confiding in each other, and Erik told his new friend about his problems at home. Joel was kind and understanding, and all of a sudden they were lying in each other’s arms. Erik would never forget that night. They exchanged addresses and phone numbers, but they never contacted each other again.

Erik had gone back to his life in Stockholm truly shaken by his first homosexual experience. He was so terrified by his feelings that at university he began going out with a girl who had been giving him long looks during classes.

Her name was Lydia. They soon became a couple and in due course got married. At first their marriage was relatively happy, and they had three children in quick succession. Erik’s excessive drinking had begun much earlier, but it escalated with each year that passed.

His parents found nothing unusual about the fact that he was so self-absorbed, and they gave Erik and Lydia money so that they could live comfortably in a large, fancy flat in the Ostermalm district. Lydia was from a middle-class family in Leksand. She trained to be an art restorer and eventually found a job at the National Museum.

Erik got into the habit of not coming home until two in the morning, still under the influence of alcohol and drugs. One Saturday, Lydia decided that she’d finally had enough. She took the children and went to stay with her parents-in-law.

Erik’s parents were furious, of course, and they threatened to stop sending the money that they usually provided each month. Lydia wanted a divorce, and naturally his parents took her side. It was Erik who had behaved badly and broken his promises.

Erik didn’t care what his mother thought or felt; she had destroyed any love he might have felt for her when he was young through years of psychological tyranny and indifference. He thought about all the times when she had insulted and criticized him in front of teachers, neighbours, relatives and friends. He felt absolutely nothing for her, and was convinced that the feeling was mutual. If there was any emotion left to speak of, it might almost be described as deep contempt.

But he still had warm feelings for his father. Mr Mattson had never been actually unkind to Erik, yet he had always meekly submitted to his wife’s wishes, in spite of the fact that he was so successful in the business world. She was the one who ruled the roost for all those years, and he had seldom questioned her authority, letting her do as she liked. It was the best thing for domestic harmony, as Erik’s father would say with a good-natured smile before he fled the scene and left on yet another business trip.

Erik saw his parents only once after his divorce, when Emelie turned five. Sitting at the table to celebrate his daughter’s birthday, Erik saw the pain and disappointment in his father’s eyes, and that upset him. A feeling of sorrow and deceit hovered over the party, despite all the balloons, day-care friends, gifts and plates of cake. Erik had been forced to go out on the balcony to get some air.

Even though Lydia felt deeply disappointed in Erik after the divorce, she still understood him better than anyone else ever had. He had told her about his miserable childhood, about the complicated relationship he had with his mother, and how he’d become aware of his homosexuality. Lydia accepted him as he was, and after all the agitation connected with the divorce had faded, they were able to remain friends. He thought that Lydia realized he’d tried to do the best he could. They decided that the children should live with her, since they were still so young, but they would stay with their father every other weekend.

This arrangement worked well for six months. Erik did his job in an exemplary fashion and remained sober on the days when he had the children. His parents continued to deposit a sizeable sum into his bank account every month, although his mother made it clear that the money was for her grandchildren and not for him.

Then one Saturday after Erik had picked up the children from Lydia’s house, an old boyfriend of his turned up and stayed for dinner. After the children went to bed, the former lover started getting friendly, and they had sex. Then they began drinking some of the excellent whisky that he’d brought along. And, as usual, once Erik started he couldn’t stop.

The next day he woke up on the living-room sofa around noon when the doorbell wouldn’t stop ringing. It was Lydia. She came storming into the flat and found the three children sitting in the bedroom in front of the TV, munching on crisps, cake and raw spaghetti.

They were all supposed to have gone to Skansen amusement park that Sunday. That was the last weekend that Erik was allowed to have the children to stay with him, and his parents stopped the monthly payments.

He hadn’t seen his parents since.

By chance he once caught sight of his mother in the hat section of the NK department store. For a long time he stood behind a pillar and watched her laugh as she tried on hats along with a woman friend of hers. He couldn’t understand how this person he was looking at could be his mother. That she could have carried him inside her body, given birth to him, and nursed him when he was a baby. It was incomprehensible. Just as difficult to understand was the fact that she had once chosen to have children at all.