The Sandman

94

As Reidar drives, Mikael sits there in his new clothes, changing stations on the radio. Suddenly he stops. Satie’s ballet music fills the car like warm summer rain.

‘Dad, isn’t it a bit over the top to live in a manor?’ Mikael smiles.

‘Yes.’

He actually bought the run-down estate because he could no longer bear the neighbours in Tyresö.

Snow-covered fields spread out before them. They turn into the long avenue where Reidar’s three friends have lit torches all along the drive. When they stop and get out of the car, Wille Strandberg, Berzelius and David Sylwan come out onto the steps.

Berzelius takes a step forward, and for a moment it looks as though he doesn’t know whether to embrace or shake hands with the young man. Then he mumbles something and hugs Mikael hard.

Wille wipes some tears away behind his glasses.

‘You’re all grown up, Micke,’ he says. ‘I’ve—’

‘Let’s go inside,’ Reidar interrupts, coming to his son’s rescue. ‘We need to eat.’

David blushes and shrugs his shoulders apologetically:

‘We’ve organised a backwards party.’

‘What’s one of those?’ Reidar asks.

‘You start with dessert and conclude with the starter.’ Sylwan smiles, slightly embarrassed.

Mikael is first through the imposing doorway. The broad oak tiles in the hallway smell as if they’ve recently been scrubbed.

There are balloons hanging from the ceiling of the dining room, and on the table is a large cake decorated with a figure of Spiderman made out of coloured marzipan.

‘We know you’re grown up, but you used to love Spiderman, so we thought...’

‘We got it wrong,’ Wille concludes.

‘I’d love to try some,’ Mikael says kindly.

‘That’s the spirit!’ David laughs.

‘Then there’s pizza... and alphabet soup to finish up with,’ Berzelius says.

They sit down at the huge oval table.

‘I remember one time when you said you had to keep an eye on a cake in the kitchen until the guests arrived,’ Berzelius says, cutting Mikael a large slice. ‘It was completely hollow by the time we came to light the candles...’

Reidar excuses himself, gets up and leaves the table. He tries to smile at the others, but his heart is pounding with angst. He’s missing his daughter so much it hurts, enough to make him want to scream. Seeing Mikael sitting there with that childish cake. As if resurrected from the dead. He takes a few deep breaths and goes out into the hall, remembering the day he buried the children’s empty caskets next to Roseanna’s ashes. Then he went home. Invited everyone to a party, and was never properly sober again.

He stands in the hall, looking back into the dining room where Mikael is eating cake while Reidar’s friends try to make conversation and cajole him into laughing. Reidar knows he shouldn’t keep doing it, but he gets out his phone and calls Joona Linna.

‘It’s Reidar Frost,’ he says, feeling a faint pressure in his chest.

‘I heard that Mikael was discharged,’ the detective says.

‘But Felicia, I have to know... she’s, she’s so...’

‘I know, Reidar,’ Joona says gently.

‘You’re doing what you can,’ Reidar whispers, feeling that he has to sit down.

He hears the detective ask something, but he still ends the call in the middle of a sentence.