Stone Coffin Part 1

Stone Coffin.

Kjell Eriksson.

Prologue.

The lizards darted in and out of the wall, lightning-quick. They were celebrating the sun, which would be rising out of the sea in half an hour. A morning ritual.

The stone wall could easily have been in Ireland. The stone was different, but the style of it was the same. Stone on stone, haphazard at first glance, and yet so beautifully functional. The wall rose to a height of one and a half meters, encircled the garden, and along one edge of the property, linked to the wall of a building.

The gray expanse of the fiber cement roofing tiles was framed by dark vegetation. A couple of palm trees, a citrus tree, and a couple of midsized trees he did not recognize. He had collected a few of their brown seedpods, shaken them, listened, and fished out a couple of dark seeds. They looked poisonous. They lay in his palm darkly gleaming, almost metallic, like mystical messengers, and for a moment he had the impulse to toss them down his throat.

Poisonous? No matter. They were beautiful and he would save them to plant later.

The rain began suddenly. The drops gathered in the undulations of the corrugated roofing tiles. They gleamed as they left the roof and fell toward the ground. They glimmered just as they were about to drop. He had the notion that they were a melody played out on a keyboard. A dance across the keys. Soundless music. He-tone deaf-was blinded by the beauty of their fine music.

Pull yourself together, he thought, and in that moment the rain stopped.

The sea washed in over the beach. Yesterday evening he had tried to figure out the pattern of the unceasing movement of the waves. Was there a pattern? Seven small waves and one large? At some point everything grew very still, a resounding silence, as if the sea were holding its breath. Two, three seconds, nothing more.

A flowering creeper resembling a morning glory encircled his feet. He sifted sand through his fingers and looked out over the water. A container ship was huffing in the distance. He made plans but was too tired to be rational and too disoriented in that scene to find any peace in it. Exposed, he thought, I am exposed on this beach, and it is here that I must make up my mind.

But instead of making any decisions, he went to the little bodega that also doubled as a bar. A shack made out of wood and sheet metal, resting up against a tree and with a view of the road. Ramn, "The Baker," held out his hand across the packets of chewing gum stacked on the counter.

A white-haired man, his face deeply lined, was watching him intently. There was a woman sitting across from him. She wore a tight-fitting green dress.

He ordered a beer, sat down at the other table, nodded at the old man, and lifted the cold beer bottle to his lips. If I could only stay like this, he thought, here at this table. The water came from the mountains and the salt from the ocean.

"Good," he said, and he knew that he was going to get drunk. As long as he kept drinking, the Baker would keep his establishment open.

He signaled the Baker that he should serve beer to the old man and the woman.

We are the new conquistadors, he thought, and sighed.

"Problems?"

Sven-Erik Cederen nodded and raised his bottle. He had been to this country five, six times, but he had never been here alone before. Each visit had shifted his parameters. The first couple of times he had sought out the usual tourist places, drunk rum, and watched the women, but without taking any initiative. Now he went to the Baker, mostly sat quietly at his table, and drank Presidente.

"How long are you staying?" the Baker asked.

The couple at the next table turned around and looked at him inquiringly, as if his answer was of the greatest import.

"One more week."

The old man raised his bottle.

"I will buy some land. Just outside Gaspar Hernndez."

"That's a village of idiots," the old one said.

"What does your country look like?" the woman asked.

He started to give the usual response-the cold, the snow, the ice on the lakes, the forests-but then he stopped. He wanted to express something more.

"We live..." he started tentatively, "we live a fairly good life."

He began to talk about his daughter. He started on another beer. The Baker opened a bottle of rum and poured him a gla.s.s. He rested his arms on the counter. Sven-Erik looked at him and they smiled at each other.

"Do you miss her?"

"Of course."

"There is something else that you miss more," the Baker said.

"One always misses one's homeland," the old one said.

The Swede shook his head.

"You miss a woman."

"Perhaps."

What had he done? Could it be fixed? No. He could only patch it up. He was the sinner who had repented too late. For almost forty years he had marched to the beat. Now he was falling out of line. He was scared. If only he could sit in this shack, drink beer, and talk with the people who came by. The Baker and his shop would give him absolution.

He was afraid, but not for himself. Lies! Of course he was afraid of the sentence. He escaped to a bodega full of beer, Pringles, and chewing gum.

He kept on talking about his country. What do I choose to tell? What do I know about Sweden? Should I talk about life in Uppsala-Nas, the Edenhof golf course, about my colleagues, lectures at the business a.s.sociation, the tiled bathrooms, and the dock that I spent a hundred thousand kronor to renovate?

He glanced at the woman as he talked. She was between twenty and thirty. Her arm rested close to his. Maybe he could. The wad of bills in his pocket. The c.o.c.k that swelled in his pants.

He took a sip of his beer. The Baker looked at him and nodded.

One.

"Come up here on the road! You're getting your shoes dirty!"

The girl tore off a last flower and held the clover flowers up to her mother.

"Four leaves means good luck," the girl said.

"We'll put those on the grave."

The woman arranged the flowers, peeling away a withered leaf.

"Nana liked clover," she said thoughtfully, looking off at the church and then at the child by her side. One day, she thought, you got only one day together on this earth.

Six years and one day ago, Emily was born, and the very next day her grandmother died. Every anniversary of her death they walked to the church and laid flowers on her grave. They also sat on the low stone wall for a while. The woman would drink coffee and her daughter some juice.

The walk took them half an hour. They could have taken the car but preferred to walk. The slow trip to the church enabled reflection. She had loved her mother above all else. It was as if Emily had filled in for her Nana. As one love slipped away, another arrived.

She and her newborn had been transported in the Akademiska hospital to the unit where her mother lay in a state between consciousness and sleep.

The little girl had been lifted into her arms. At first it looked as if she thought yet another burden was being added to her already ravaged body.

The woman guessed that the baby's scent brought her mother to life, because her nostrils widened suddenly. The gaunt, needle-riddled hand patted the tiny bundle in her lap and she opened her morphine-obscured eyes.

"I want to run the last bit," the girl said, interrupting her mother's thoughts.

"No, we'll stay together," she said, and right before she died, she realized that she might have saved her daughter's life if she had let her go.

The car struck them both with full force. The child was thrown some ten meters and died almost instantly. The mother was thrown forward and the front left wheel of the car ran over her body. She lived long enough to grasp what had happened, that she might have been able to save her daughter. She also had time to note that the car swerved and slid as it accelerated and disappeared in the direction of the church.

"Why are you killing us?" she whispered.

Two.

Ann Lindell was savoring her colleague's good mood. Sammy Nilsson had read the horoscope of the day with a serious face, but when he arrived at the final line, "... and why not give in to love's invitation that comes your way today?" he burst into laughter.

"Love's invitation," Lindell said. "That's something."

"Maybe Ottosson will offer you a cup of coffee," Sammy said. "I think he's working on you."

Ottosson was the unit commander for Violent Crimes. He had called a meeting for nine-thirty, and both Lindell and Sammy thought he would likely announce a reorganization of the unit.

Everything seemed to be undergoing reorganization. The community policing initiative that had been introduced with great fanfare lay shot and gasping. It was going to give up the ghost at any moment. There was talk that the community policing in Gottsunda and other far-flung areas would be relocated to the Fyrislund industrial area. "Community" was likely to gain a new definition if Commissioner Lindberg got his wish.

"How are you doing? I hear rumors that you're seeing someone."

Lindell looked up abruptly. Sammy thought she seemed almost frightened.

"Seeing someone? No way."

"Didn't you hook up with some guy?"

"I went out and partied with the girls."

"I heard something else."

Lindell smiled. "Don't believe everything you hear. It was just one time."

"And one time doesn't count?"

Lindell just smiled in reply.

Ola Haver walked up to them. Lindell saw in his face that something had happened, but he sat down at the table before he started to talk.

"We have a hit-and-run," he said. "Two dead."

"Where?" Sammy asked.

"Uppsala-Nas."

"Any witnesses?" Lindell asked.

Haver shook his head.

"Someone who drove past the scene called it in. One of the dead is a child. A little girl."

Haver was white as a sheet.

"s.h.i.t," Sammy said.

"Maybe six years old."

Lindell checked the time: nine-twelve.

"I'll call Ottosson," she said and got up.

Love's invitation, Lindell thought as she jumped into Sammy's car. Hardly. These were the kinds of invitations that came their way.

She glanced over at Sammy as he turned onto Salagatan. He swore quietly about the traffic, drove up Sankt Olofsgatan, and stared furiously at the driver who came from the right and forced him to stop.

Haver was in the backseat talking on his phone and Lindell heard that he was getting information directly from the patrol unit on the scene.