Authors: Hakan Ostlundh
If someone had told him fifteen years ago that he would be living on Fårö he probably would have laughed a lot louder and more crudely. But deep down he would have been afraid. Was that why he had moved there? To overcome the fear?
The last stretch up the hill and he was there; soon he was backing in alongside Malin’s black Honda. He took the camera bags from the backseat before he locked the car. The rest of the equipment could wait until tomorrow.
He pushed open the gate with his back, squeezed through with the heavy bags, and continued down the slope. Only as he approached the house through the gray-blue twilight did it strike him that not a single light was on.
He quickened his pace. The grass rustled faintly against his shoes and the shoulder bag chafed against his hip. He stopped at the steps and put down the other bag while he searched for his keys. It was completely silent around him. No wind in the treetops, no restless sea whispering at a distance, no birds, not even the sound of a tractor.
He took out the jingling key ring and put it in the lock, only to discover that the door was unlocked. He opened the door with the keys still in the lock and took a step in. A heavy, strange odor struck him. He could not place it. It was not perfume, not an unpleasant cooking smell, not cleanser.
He fumbled for the light switch behind the jackets on the hooks to the left. The ceiling light dispelled the dark and at the same moment the sight threw itself on him like an aggressive animal.
There was blood everywhere. It was as if someone had painted it over his eyeballs. Drawn a brush with blood over his face. It forced its way into his nose, into his mouth. The odor, the taste. Everything was red. He even heard blood.
On legs that did not feel like they belonged to him Henrik staggered up to Malin and fell down on his knees beside her, uncertain whether it was deliberate or because his legs gave way.
He did not know what to do. His hands were shaking above the bloody head, next to the face he did not recognize. She was not moving. The body that was wearing Malin’s clothes was lying completely still, spilled out across the floor. He forced his hand down to her neck, tried to feel for the pulse. How did you do that? Cardiopulmonary resuscitation. What were you supposed to do? Didn’t he know that? He turned his head to the right. Axel. In the kitchen. On the floor in front of the stove. His head was so different. Pressed in, splintery, bloody.
The paralysis spread from his legs up through his body. Nausea grew from his belly out into his chest and it became hard to breathe. He crept slowly toward Axel while at the same time he tried to get his cell phone out of his pocket. He fell down on his side, hurt his elbow. He did everything backward. Crawled ahead. The blood. It was weighing him down. Smelled like iron and animal. Axel. His little, little head. He had to help him. Rescue him. He had to wake that absent gaze to life.
His thumb glided across the glass surface of the cell phone, smeared it. His hand was red with blood. From where? It was everywhere. Trembling he managed to enter the three digits.
“They’re dead,” was the first thing he said when he got a response. “Or, I don’t know … There’s blood everywhere. Someone has—”
The man on the other end wanted a name and address.
“It’s my wife and son,” he heard himself say, and was surprised that he could even talk.
The blood was smeared between his fingers.
The voice was nagging about an address. What was it? The number on the mailbox that he always turned at. He said his own name and Kalbjerga and Fårö. Wasn’t that enough? Yes, that was enough. But the voice wanted to know more. What had happened? How many were injured, and in what way? Who were they?
“But you have to send an ambulance … an ambulance helicopter. They’re dying…”
He stammered out the words between tears and irregular breathing.
“Try to take it easy,” said the voice. “I’ve already sent the alarm, but the more I know, the better we can help you.”
“Okay, okay,” he whispered against the glass surface sticky with blood, and tried to breathe more calmly.
“If we start with who this concerns,” said the voice.
“It’s my wife, Malin Andersson, and my son, Axel.”
He was forced to break off and breathe panting a while, as if the short sentence had been a hundred-yard dash.
“You have to hurry,” he whimpered. “There must be a helicopter?”
“How old is the boy?” said the voice.
“Five.”
“And how is he injured?”
“I don’t know … His head. He’s … been struck on the head … it…”
“And your wife? How is she injured?”
“Same thing, her head…”
“Okay, you’ll get help as soon as possible, but it will take a while, so it’s important that you do what you can to help them. Can you see whether they’re breathing?”
Henrik’s voice broke in a gurgling fit of crying when he tried to answer. How did it look if someone was breathing?
“Henrik,” said the voice on the other end.
He was startled by his name. Did not remember that he had said what his name was.
“Henrik, are you there?”
“Yes,” he said hoarsely.
“I’m going to transfer you to a nurse now. She will help you and give you instructions. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes,” he said. “I understand.”
But he did not understand. His eyes ran restlessly between Malin and Axel. He had to save them. He had to save them now.
Ellen, why wasn’t Ellen there? Why hadn’t Malin locked the door?
“Ellen,” he screamed.
No one answered.
“Ellen!”
Göran’s name glowed from the display on Fredrik’s cell phone. It was 8:11
P.M.
The time of the call already gave away that the matter was serious. His tone of voice said the rest.
“Things seem to have gone badly up on Fårö.”
“In Kalbjerga?” said Fredrik, although he knew the answer.
“Yes. Malin Andersson and one of the children are severely injured. Maybe dead. Two persons are missing.”
“Henrik Kjellander and the other child?”
“No, he was the one who found them. The daughter is missing. And Malin’s sister.”
There was silence for a moment. The words that were hanging in the air but not expressed were just as obvious as if they were physically hanging there. At least for Fredrik.
They should have seen this. If they had done a better job perhaps they could have prevented …
“Call me when you leave Visby so that we can coordinate the ferry,” said Göran.
The call was interrupted.
There had been something heavy in Göran’s voice. He was usually dry and efficient in these kinds of situations, but this time something else came through.
Fredrik closed his eyes for the image of Malin and little Axel that appeared in his mind. It disappeared, only to be replaced by the family portrait with the eyes poked out. It was as if an old-fashioned slide projector had started up there.
He went into the living room and told Ninni that he had to go.
“Something seems to have happened with the family up on Fårö,” he said vaguely.
“The ones with the daughter who disappeared from school?”
“Yes.”
“Oh dear,” was all she said, looking at him.
He was glad that no one was suggesting that an unexpected call out late in the evening would be too much for him. Neither Göran nor Ninni.
“Be careful,” she said.
He put on his shoes and jacket and hurried out to the car. As he rolled out of the yard he peeked up toward Simon’s room where the lamp was on over the desk. He pictured him, alone in front of the computer. Then he thought about Joakim far away in Stockholm. What was he doing right now? Was he at home with his girlfriend? Was he out in the city or sitting on the subway? Fredrik had no idea.
Then he pushed all thoughts about his own family aside, closed them in behind a watertight bulkhead, and tried to prepare himself for what was waiting. Severely injured. Maybe dead.
Henrik did as the nurse instructed and as he vaguely remembered from some lifesaving course long ago. The little chest heaved carefully every time he blew. He did not dare put too much force into it. Then Malin. Breath after breath.
“Ellen!”
He screamed himself hoarse between exhalations.
And then, like a miracle, voices outside. Steps.
“Ellen!”
“Daddy,” was heard from far away.
Ellen. She was alive.
“Henrik, it’s okay. We’re out here.”
Maria this time. Henrik flew up from the floor and hurried out the door, which he left open behind him. They were only a few steps from the stairs.
“Wait! Wait out here!” he roared uncontrollably, even though it had just gone through his head that he should be calm and collected, not frighten them.
Maria and Ellen stopped abruptly, stood with bathrobes flapping and stared at him.
“There’s, there’s,” he stammered, not knowing how he should explain.
For a moment he thought about saying something in English, but the next moment the idea seemed completely bizarre.
Maria’s eyes were wide open. Terror and doubt reshaped her pale face to one he had never seen before.
Henrik looked firmly at her.
“Stay here with Ellen.”
He was actually able to make his voice more or less normal.
“You have to stay out here.”
He turned abruptly and rushed back in with a strange happiness rushing through his body. Ellen. She was alive and uninjured. A quick glance as he passed the hall mirror. He was covered with blood. His hands, shirt front, face. His mouth was smeared with dark red, sticky blood. He felt Maria’s eyes behind him, as if they could go right through the wall. She must think he’s gone crazy, that he killed them, or that he himself was injured. He didn’t care which. It didn’t matter. The only thing that was important was that she did not come in with Ellen, that he made sure Ellen avoided seeing this.
He sank down on his knees next to Axel. Must continue. Leaned over and pinched his nose. The cell phone he had set down on the floor buzzed. He could make out the voice’s whispering from the speaker, but not what it said. He could not take it now. Not yet. First he had to blow.
He had been alone with them so long, alone in the house with the blood and the bodies, alone with the nurse’s voice. He had listened to the voice, blown air into Axel’s lungs and pressed with his hands on the little chest. The voice had been his rescue, the voice would guide him while he woke them to life again.
Alone in the dark he had struggled against death, soiled with blood, sometimes a break to scream for Ellen. For every endless minute that passed a distant reasonableness had pressed an ever colder hand around his heart. Said that it was too late.
He heard the sound of a car outside. It stopped abruptly. A door opened and closed again. It was silent for a moment, then a strange voice. He heard the words “nurse” and “rescue service.” That she was from Skär. He had not struggled in vain. Now came the rescue. Now the one who would put everything right had come.
Everything would work out.
Fredrik was standing with a few of his closest associates outside the wide-open front door to the house in Kalbjerga. The hall was bathed in light. The whole house was lit up and some twenty people were either in or outside the building.
The middle-aged woman in red-yellow reflector jacket with the word
DOCTOR
in capital letters on the back got up from her kneeling position by the side of the blood-covered little boy. She had thick, platinum blond hair cut short and was not much more than five foot four inches tall. She looked around among the tall policemen who, with the exception of the technician, were waiting in the doorway. She seemed uncertain who she should turn to.
“Yes?” said Göran Eide to help put her on the right track.
“There’s nothing to do,” she said. “They’ve been dead for several hours.”
She looked tired, her forehead full of worried wrinkles.
“Can you say how many?”
“Well,” said the doctor, turning quickly toward the dead again. “That’s not really my department,” she continued after thinking a moment, “but three or four hours, at a rough estimate.”
She stroked her forehead with her jacket sleeve.
“And the cause of death?” asked Göran.
The doctor blinked as if she thought the question was superfluous, but quickly realized the technical side of the matter.
“There are head injuries, of course,” she said. “But it will take an autopsy to determine whether the immediate cause of death is due to loss of blood or that the brain damage caused vital bodily functions to stop.”
Fredrik turned quickly and stared out into the darkness; he felt an unpleasant stabbing sensation in his legs. It was not the blood-spattered walls, the two dead bodies or their crushed heads that upset him. It was the doctor’s words that surprisingly took him out to Östergarnsholme.
He fell along the cliff, or more correctly stated, he saw himself fall. He tumbled along and remained lying on the shore while the waves broke only a few feet away. Splashed foam over him and the dead man under him. He saw something he had never seen before. A fantasy obviously. He had been unconscious, of course. There was nothing to remember.
Fredrik took a few deep breaths and heard the doctor continue behind his back.
“They have been struck repeatedly with a hard, heavy weapon. What kind of weapon she can probably say better than me.”
Fredrik assumed it was Eva the doctor was referring to with the last comment.
“The woman has fractures on her arms and hands,” the doctor continued.
“Defensive injuries.” He heard Eva Karlén’s voice.
He turned in toward the hall again and stuck his head in between Gustav and Göran.
“Yes,” said the doctor. “I guess there’s not much more I can do here.”
She was part of the helicopter team. They had arrived at the same time as Fredrik and Gustav and the other colleagues from investigation and landed right across the road down by the mailboxes. Since the duty officer had taken the alarm at two minutes past eight ferry traffic had been closed for everything except the emergency response traffic. The first ferry had shipped over an ambulance and two patrol cars. The ambulance personnel, just like the nurse from Skär that the emergency response service had sent in advance, realized that they had arrived too late. They decided not to move the bodies.