She fumbled in her handbag and took out a tissue. She tried to control herself, but the tears blurred her voice.
“Jonas has always been such a fantastic person, even when he was little. Always happy and kind. He was born with artistic talent. He drew and painted before he could talk. There was never any discussion that he would be anything but an artist. I let him keep the apartment on Fjällgatan. I bought a condo on Lidingö when he was nineteen and had started at the Art Academy. We’ve always been very close. Even after he met Chester, who became like a son to me too. We lost him last summer. And now Jonas is going to disappear too!”
Mona was sobbing uncontrollably now. Out of the corner of her eye Irene could see the waiter fluttering nervously over by the doorway. She tried to calm Mona down, and after a while she succeeded. Mona sniffled and dried away her tears. She gazed steadily at Irene and her voice was totally under control when she went on.
“They got AIDS. Who infected them or whether both of them had HIV when they met, we don’t know. It doesn’t matter. But Chester died six months ago and Jonas is dying. That’s what I want you to see. You have to meet Jonas. So that you will never suspect that he had the least thing to do with his father’s death!”
MONA INSISTED she was going to drive her Audi, but Irene was intractable. If she was going along to meet Jonas, she didn’t want to ride with a driver who risked arrest for drunk driving. Mona gave in. She knew that Irene was right. They got into the car, which smelled like it was brand new. The odometer showed thirty-two hundred kilometers.
Irene sighed blissfully. “What a wonderful car!”
Mona sounded quite pleased when she said, “I picked it up last week. I don’t allow smoking in this car! My old one was only three years old, but it stank like a tar factory. At home I only smoke out on the balcony.”
“So where are we going? Where does Jonas live, I mean?”
“At his private hospital. We like to joke about it. ‘Jonas Söder at Söder Hospital.’”
Mona fell silent and stared out at the evening darkness, which was not really dark. In a big city there is never any real darkness, just another sort of light. Artificial. It creates hard contrasts and deep, frightening shadows.
“God, how sick I am of Stockholm!” Mona said. “Why did I stay here? I long to go home to Norrland, to the soft twilight and the night. The silence.”
“Härnösand isn’t really all that rural. And it’s cold as hell in Norrland.”
“The outside temperature, yes. But not between people.”
Irene didn’t really follow the reasoning, but decided not to dwell on it. It was time she made some progress with respect to the purpose for her visit to Stockholm. Calmly she said, “Why is it so important that I meet Jonas?”
Mona took a deep breath before she answered. “You have to see how sick he is. He’s getting large doses of morphine now. You can’t tell him that Richard was murdered. I haven’t told him. He hasn’t heard any news or read a newspaper in several weeks. He’s got enough to do with dying.”
She started to sob again but then pulled herself together. “The reason it’s important for you to come tonight is that the nursing staff working the swing shift is the same one that was working last Tuesday night.” Mona had turned her head and was staring hard at Irene from the side. Slowly she said, “You have to ask them if I was there last Tuesday. Jonas has been there for almost three weeks and I’ve come every evening, right after work.”
“What time?”
“Around six. I normally stay with him until about eleven. By then he’s usually asleep.”
“And you haven’t missed a single evening or come late?”
“No.”
Mona turned her head and stared with unseeing eyes straight into the headlights of the oncoming cars. “When you’re convinced that what I’m saying is the truth, I want to ask that Jonas and I be protected from the media. We have nothing to do with Richard’s life or his death. We just want to be left in peace.”
This last sentence contained enormous resignation and sorrow. But Irene felt that there was more that needed explaining.
“Is that the only reason?”
“No. You’re not stupid. And neither are the other detectives working on the investigation. Jonas will inherit from his father. And when Jonas dies, I’ll inherit from him. That’s why it’s important that you convince yourself of our innocence. You have to ask the nursing staff. There mustn’t be any doubt. We need peace and quiet so he can die.”
“But what if there’s a will? Can Jonas really inherit then?”
“A child always has the right to his lawful share of the inheritance, which is half of the estate. And by law Jonas is counted as a stepchild. Stepchildren always have the right to demand their share of the inheritance when their parents die.”
“Sounds like you’ve read up on the subject.”
“Of course. I looked it up right away in
Everyday Jurisprudence
when I read in the papers that Richard was dead. This was bound to come up eventually, but I repressed it. Neither Jonas nor I need his money. In the eyes of the police, though, we must be suspects. I realized this when the papers started talking about murder. But we want nothing to do with his money. He has never shared in our lives, or we in his. Except for the generous support payments. He bought his way out. And for our part that was certainly the best thing that could have happened. We had no financial worries while I finished my studies. Or later, when Jonas was growing up. The salaries of social workers have never been huge, but thanks to Richard’s support my school loans were modest. I paid them off long ago. And I got out of living with Richard. That was my best revenge against Sylvia. And I didn’t have to lift a finger.”
She gave a curt, joyless laugh. “I had no reason to kill Richard. Besides Jonas, he’s the only man I ever loved, but he has been dead to me for thirty years. And I intend to donate Jonas’s inheritance from Richard to Noah’s Ark, the AIDS support organization.”
For the rest of the way they sat in silence, each absorbed in her own thoughts.
ON THE way up in the elevator, Mona told Irene that Jonas was in a special ward for AIDS patients. There were eight beds. Jonas’s condition had declined so drastically that he now had a private room. Unsentimentally she said, “We had decided that he would be allowed to die at home on Fjällgatan. But it didn’t work. Sometimes he’s completely incontinent and can’t hold his urine or excrement. We couldn’t handle things at home. Both of us were thankful that he was allowed to come here. We thought that he’d only have to come in for a few days to be rehydrated a little. But he can no longer keep food or fluids down. He has to be on an IV all the time. That’s not something I can take care of. Thank the good Lord that the national health-care system is still functioning!”
They went in through the glass doors to the ward. As they approached the door marked STAFF, Mona slowed, smiled wanly, and whispered, “He’s in the first room on the left, just past the staff room.”
Mona quickened her step and opened a door a few meters down the hall.
Irene could hear hard-rock music streaming out the door. She recognized the sound; the glam-rock band Kiss, playing “Heaven on Fire.” She entered the staff room and found two nurses, dressed in blue scrubs. One of them was young and blond. When he stood up Irene saw that he was close to two meters tall. His female colleague was middle aged and plump. She said in a friendly voice, “Hello. Are you looking for someone?”
“Well, yes. I’m a friend of Mona Söder. We’re visiting Jonas. Mona hasn’t arrived yet, has she? Isn’t she always here in the evenings?”
Good grief! Why was she lying? But she knew she wanted to help exclude Mona from the von Knecht case.
The nurse nodded and smiled. “Every evening. Why do you ask?”
Irene managed an apologetic and helpless smile. “I tried to call her Tuesday evening. Here. But no one answered Jonas’s phone. I got the direct number from Mona. So that’s why I thought maybe she wasn’t here last Tuesday?. . .”
“Oh yes, she was here. We were working Tuesday night. Maybe she pulled out the jack if Jonas was sleeping.”
“Yes, maybe that’s what happened. I just wanted to mention that Jonas’s phone might not be working right . . . But I suppose it’s fine. Sorry to disturb you.”
With an apologetic smile Irene backed out into the corridor. The nurses gave her a friendly nod, turned back to each other, and continued their interrupted conversation.
It was as easy as that. She was without doubt a natural-born liar. Once you start down that path, you might as well keep following it. She quickly slunk out through the glass doors and went over to a pay phone she had seen near the elevator. She fed in some coins and took out the crumpled note with the number of Swedish Data. Maybe there wouldn’t be anyone at the switchboard on a Friday evening just before six o’clock?
“Swedish Data, good afternoon.”
Irene sighed with relief before she spoke.
“Good evening, I’m looking for Personnel Director Mona Söder.”
“She’s gone for the day.”
“Will she be in on Monday?”
“Just a moment . . . No, she has three weeks’ vacation.”
“Oh, that’s too bad! I was looking for her on Tuesday, but didn’t get hold of her. Was she off that day too?”
“Off? No, you must be mistaken. She was here all day on Tuesday. She hasn’t had any time off all week. May I tell her who is calling?”
“Birgitta Andersson. I’ll call her again in three weeks. It’s not urgent. Have a nice weekend!”
SHE OPENED the door to Jonas’s room. The volume of the music had been turned down. She recognized this artist and song too: Freddie Mercury, “Mr. Bad Guy.” Impulsively she said to Jonas, “This isn’t really one of his best songs. Or albums either, for that matter.”
He seemed not to hear, but after a moment he opened his eyelids a bit. “No, this album was never a big hit,” he replied weakly. He coughed violently, and his whole torso shook.
Irene had steeled herself for the sight of Jonas. She was afraid she would see a trembling skeleton, stinking of his own excrement, bald, and covered with pustules and sores. But he was a handsome man. Thin, but indisputably like the pictures she had seen of Richard von Knecht as a young man. His dark blond hair was cropped short. He had opened his eyes now, and she could see that they were a bright, intense blue, despite the spiderweb of morphine overlaying his consciousness. He fixed his gaze on her and the smile he gave her was amazingly alert.
“You must be Irene. Mamma told me about you.”
A mild coughing fit interrupted him again. Irene took care to raise an inquisitive eyebrow at Mona. She shook her head. So she hadn’t told him that Irene was a cop. What had she said? Mona picked up on her query and said in a natural tone of voice, “Yes, it was a good thing you came to work at Swedish Data. I wound up with both a skilled colleague and a good friend.”
Another born liar, apparently. Wanting to signal reassurance, Irene replied, “I’m sorry to be late. But I checked with the staff. Evidently there was nothing wrong with the phone on Tuesday when I tried to call you here. You must have pulled out the jack while Jonas was asleep.”
Mona looked extremely relieved. But her voice betrayed nothing when she answered, “Yes, I must have.”
“It didn’t matter anyway. We took care of things and found a temp.”
Irene turned to Jonas as she spoke but he didn’t seem in the least interested. He was looking up at the IV. The yellow fluid in the little bottle was almost gone. The big bag hanging next to it was filled with a clear liquid. There was a lot of text printed on it. Apparently it contained a great number of important and useful components. With a deft hand Mona turned off the drip from the little bottle by pulling out the red plastic wheel in the drip regulator. The tubes went down to a drip tap that was fastened by adhesive tape to Jonas’s collarbone. Irene shuddered when she realized that the catheter went directly through the skin on his neck. The insertion point was covered with a thick compress.
Jonas looked at her again and asked, “Do you like Freddie Mercury?”
“Not so much as a solo artist. He was best when he was with Queen.”
Jonas nodded. He gave Irene a mocking look. “We have a lot in common, Freddie and I. We’re gay. On our death certificates posterity will be able to read the cause of our death. AIDS. And that we died too young.”
He was seized by a powerful fit of coughing. When he again tried to fix his gaze on her, Irene saw that his eyes were glazing over. He had probably just received a dose of morphine, which was beginning to take effect. He breathed with difficulty and tried to speak carefully to avoid coughing.
“Mamma, help me with the oxygen,” he managed to say.
The oxygen hose was hanging over the bedpost. Mona slipped it expertly and carefully over his head. It looked like a transparent halter. Mona placed a cannula with two tips under his nostrils. Without hesitation she turned on the regulator on the wall. The oxygen meter on the wall came to life as a faint rushing sound came from the hose.
Then Irene noticed the painting. Two big yellow butterflies with black markings on their wings hovered over a vast landscape, a shimmering stream in the valley and blue-tinged mountains in the distance. In the foreground there were beautiful meadow blossoms. The blue of the forget-me-nots was dominant, but there were also splashes of white and pink flowers that she recognized but couldn’t name. They came so close to the observer that it felt as if she were lying on her stomach among the meadow flowers and peeking over the edge down into the long valley, up toward the two gaudy butterflies. The sky was not blue, but a silvery white circle above the mountains dispersed a strong light that became a warm pink at the outer edges. It was not the sun and not the moon. It was the Light.
“What do you see?”