Open Grave: A Mystery (14 page)

These days Bertram von Ohler was his only client and he would visit the house four or five times a year. There were always some papers that had to be arranged. Agnes suspected it was the will that was up for discussion again. Now and then it would be adjusted, some detail added or removed. During the day the professor had been rooting in the “archive,” as he called the old safe. Agnes knew, the only one besides the professor himself, where the key to the safe was stored: in an old tin can in the cellar.

She had to retrieve it, he usually did not dare make his way down the steps himself. The talk about her being able to rest awhile after lunch had evidently been immediately forgotten. He filled the afternoon with constant new instructions and orders and now she felt very tired. As always when she was forced to walk a lot the pains in her left hip also increased. She limped, which even the dim-sighted Forslund observed.

“What’s the matter? Is he after you?” he said with a grin.

“Go right in,” said Agnes, holding open the door.

The attorney turned into the library.

“Thanks, Agnes,” said the professor. “We’ll have a bite to eat in an hour. Or maybe half an hour,” he corrected himself after taking a look at Forslund.

*   *   *

Was she herself in the
will? She thought so. The professor had mentioned something several years ago. But since then it had been rewritten several times. Forslund would no doubt gladly remove her as a beneficiary. He had previously shown a certain interest in her, hinted that there were many rooms in the house where she could have a private legal consultation. During a certain stage of intoxication he always tried to grope her and when that didn’t work he would change to verbal indecencies. She had always refused him, sometimes brusquely. But that was many years ago now. They had both withered a bit.

It struck her, while she made the final preparations before dinner, how little she cared about her assets. The professor changed his will every so often, while she herself barely knew what she had in the bank. She had talked about retiring but had not reflected on the financial side of it all.

She had always lived and eaten for free at Ohler’s, her expenses were limited to clothes and little things. She also regularly sent a sum to Lutheran World Relief.

Did she have enough money to pay rent somewhere else? She didn’t know. And what did an apartment cost? It had not felt necessary to investigate, the cottage on Gr
ä
s
ö
had always been there as an alternative. But would Greta accept her moving in? And would she herself want to come back?

The odor of herring in mustard sauce always made her a little nauseated, yet she made a point of making it herself. Say what you will about Forslund, but herring he understood. Pickled herring with onions, regular pickled herring, the classic
glasm
ä
starsill
, however long the parade was he could never get enough. He also praised her preserves at great length, so if it was for the herring alone they would make an excellent couple, she thought and smiled.

In the morning she had put a bottle of aquavit in the fridge. Now she put it in the freezer along with the schnapps glasses, so that they would be properly frosted. She set a hand towel over the pan of potatoes, arranged the plates with cucumbers and capers and supervised the sweet-pickled herring filet which in a creamy egg mixture was getting the right color in the oven.

Forslund always wanted to eat in the kitchen, it’s suitable for herring, as he put it, and the professor accommodated him this time too. They arrived just as she was taking the filet out of the oven.

“Magnificent!” exclaimed Forslund, “Agnes is a jewel.”

The sight of all the good things on the table, complemented by a couple bottles of Hof cold from the refrigerator, and the encounter with the smells in the kitchen made him mildly exhilarated.

The professor lingered by the door and observed her with a peculiar expression, as if he could not immediately recall who the woman in the kitchen was. Agnes registered his curious appearance out of the corner of her eye while she poured the first aquavit. The professor was too shaky nowadays. The attorney would take care of the refills himself.

“I’ll be in the TV room, if you need anything,” she said.

“Agnes should actually be here to celebrate,” Forslund exclaimed. “That would probably—”

“Thanks!” the professor interrupted him, who seemed released from his blockage. “As usual it looks very appetizing. Thank you, Agnes.”

“But I don’t think anyone ever died from one glass of aquavit,” Forslund continued, spearing a pickle with his fork.

“Agnes doesn’t touch alcohol,” said the professor, stepping aside so she could leave the kitchen.

She sank down on the couch and turned on the TV. She had her own TV in the little drawing room one flight up, and would have preferred to withdraw there, but it was understood that she should stay in the vicinity to be able to respond quickly.

The news had just started and it was a minor shock when the first thing she saw was a picture of the professor, a photograph that must have been twenty-five years old. At first she refused to really take in the picture, as if it did not depict the real Bertram von Ohler.

The news anchor began by saying something about the “massive criticism” that had struck the Academy of Sciences for its choice of prize winner. Agnes lowered the sound on the TV.

Then a journalist appeared standing in a large hall, in the background rows of chairs and a podium could be seen. The reporter squinted with one eye, and that distracted her for a moment, but his voice was sharp and clear as he accounted for the atmosphere among a group of scientists who were gathered for some meeting in Germany. He talked extremely quickly and so did the person he was interviewing,
HORST BUBB
read the text that appeared on screen, but Agnes understood well enough that Bertram von Ohler was taking a real beating.

At the end of the feature the news anchor said that the Academy of Sciences declined to comment on the criticism.

Then was a report from the United States on the crisis in the car industry.

Agnes remained sitting awhile without taking in anything of what was said, before she got up and went over to the liquor cabinet, took out a bottle and poured a centimeter of liqueur in a crystal glass that she had polished that morning.

Just as she brought the glass to her mouth and sensed the almost corrosive odor of alcohol rise up in her nose the phone rang.

She set down the glass. The portable phone was on the table and she answered after the second ring.

“Professor Ohler,” said a voice more as a statement than a question.

“He’s occupied at the moment,” Agnes replied, “I’ll have to ask you to call back tomorrow.”

“My name is Liselott Karnehagen and I am calling from
Aftonbladet.
”

Agnes remained silent.

“There is no possibility—” Agnes persevered.

“We would really like a comment.”

“From me?”

“And who are you? Some kind of secretary, or what?”

“No, really now!”

“Professor von Ohler seems to be a fraud—”

“That may be,” said Agnes calmly, “but right now he’s eating herring.”

“Herring?”

“As I said, call back tomorrow,” said Agnes, and ended the call by simply setting the phone down on the table.

It rang immediately again. Agnes quickly went out in the hall and pulled out the phone jack. She realized they had a rough time ahead of them.

By way of the connecting corridor that ran through half of the house she went up to the kitchen door. Forslund was doing all the talking but Agnes could not make out what he was saying. She considered knocking and asking whether everything was satisfactory but put that out of her head when she remembered the poured liqueur, went back to the TV room, and sank down on the couch.

She did not like that prize. Why should they start poking at the professor and bringing him to life? He was an old man and he’d had so much in his day that he didn’t need anymore. She had read about the prize sum in the newspaper, inconceivable millions. That was probably why the lawyer had been summoned. Once again her own situation came to her. The professor had completely rejected her talk about retirement and she understood that very well. She was needed.

Fifty-five years, she thought, leaned her head back, and fell asleep at once with the glass in her hand.

Fourteen

If he let go of
the tabletop he would fall. He ought to open his eyes, that would alleviate it, but it was as if such a simple thing, raising two eyelids, was associated with a kind of uncertainty, perhaps fear. There was a pressure over his body, his legs felt like poles, his head was heavy as lead, and fear was coiling like snakes around his body.

I’ll have to stand here until the end of time, he thought. Once he had seen a petrified human. The man’s joints were stiff, the face immobile as a wooden mask, and the body cold and shiny like the belly of an oribi, the fish that played in the river below his house every spring. The man’s wife said that at night he talked in words that no one understood. A strange language had crept into him and that was what frightened the villagers most. She left the village shortly after and went to live with one of her brothers. She did not want to be infected, and that was an argument that most understood and accepted. The man died after a few months. Later he became a story that made its way through the valley, in which his nighttime talk took on a different meaning, that it was God who was speaking through him. His wife was depicted as an evil woman who had abandoned her husband in a difficult time.

So fall or become petrified? That was his choice. He chose to fall. He let go and collapsed like a high-rise that had been primed with dynamite and then exploded.

A wave of relief washed away the fear. His one shoulder took a blow when it hit the floor but it did not hurt especially. Maybe the pain would come later. But the fear was gone, that was the main thing.

He dragged himself up onto all fours. He was thoroughly intoxicated, as drunk as he had been in decades. Yet his thoughts came to him as clear as crystal. He thought about how the associate professor had scolded him, and what shame he felt. He had abused the hospitality by trying to make himself important. A dreadful failure.

He tipped over and remained sitting on the floor with his legs stretched out in front of him.
All in all, I’m a failed character,
he thought, and at the same moment he became angry at himself for his self-pity.

He tried to think about the planting he had to complete. A few white azaleas were not to be found so late in the season, so instead he would have to be content with the rhododendron, three Cunningham’s White, which he got for half price. But it was a vain attempt. The thoughts of Ohler constantly returned.

He wanted to throw one more stone, and another. His joking mention of a catapult was not just loose talk. He wanted to besiege the big house, drive the professor out into the light, exposed, ridiculed.

“Get up!”

The words were intended to be forceful but were heard mostly as an exhausted sigh, and he sneered.

He had seen the professor on the TV news and that had triggered the reaction to mix a toddy, something he seldom did. Unaccustomed as he was, a few glasses of the rum he had bought during his most recent visit in Germany had been enough to get him thoroughly intoxicated.

I’ll kill the bastard,
was his last thought before he tipped over and remained lying there.

Fifteen

“Death threats?”
Ottosson exclaimed. “That’s
going a bit far.”

“That’s how he understands it all,” said Allan Fredriksson, scratching the back of his head for the third time.

“Do you have lice?” asked Sammy Nilsson.

Ann Lindell grinned and scratched herself in a motion that was supposed to resemble a monkey. This happened behind Fredriksson’s back but he whirled around, as if he sensed that some mischief was going on.

“Nice, very entertaining,” he said sarcastically.

Lindell gave him a nudge in the side.

“Okay,” she said, “a skull in the mailbox.”

“Plus a stone thrown the other day,” said Fredriksson, waving a piece of paper. “And then quite a few articles in the newspaper. Today the Uppsala paper had something and evidently
Aktuellt
ran a feature yesterday.”

“But death threats?” said Ottosson again.

It was noticeable that he wanted to set the whole thing aside, send the case right back to the uniformed police.

“Wohlin is very definite,” Fredriksson continued. “This is still a Nobel Prize winner, an aristocratic professor we’re dealing with.”

Agne Wohlin had the title of superintendent and was a new star at the Uppsala Police Department. No one liked him, as you instinctively disliked newcomers, superintendents, and people from Dalsland. This last item Sammy Nilsson had added, no one really understood why. He had never spoken badly about Dalslanders before. There were no doubt few at Homicide who knew anyone from Dalsland, or could even point out the province on a map.

“This is a case for the uniformed police,” said Sammy. “They can post a couple of bluecoats there, then it will be calm.”

“Wohlin wants us to investigate the threat pattern.”

“Something for SePo,” Sammy attempted.

“
Us
,” Fredriksson repeated.

Not me,
thought Lindell, but that was exactly what Ottosson decided.

“Ann, you can handle the poor folks in K
å
bo, drive out there and talk with the old man.”

“But don’t go down in the cellar,” said Fredriksson.

A number of years earlier Ann Lindell had investigated a series of murders in the countryside outside Uppsala and then had reason to visit a villa in K
å
bo, a visit that almost cost her her life. Since then she had not set foot in the area.

“I suppose it’s the same block?”