Almost two years ago, in the autumn of 2004, Maud Pettersson rang and asked if I could keep any eye on their house while she and her husband were in the Canaries. Water the plants, feed the cat. I was a bit surprised because we hadn’t really had any kind of close contact, but I saw no reason to say no. Their house is only three hundred metres from ours, just on the edge of the area where all the summer cottages are located. Playa de Nåten, as we like to call it.
I suppose it was partly because Emil had started nursery two months earlier, at the same time as Johanna started Year 3. Lasse was still working for the prison and probation service in Norrtälje, and the house was empty during the day. I could usually get my work done in two or three hours. I’m a crossword compiler. Hemmets Journal, Allers and Kamratposten.
I can work much more quickly since Göran, one of Lasse’s friends, wrote a program enabling me to do the whole thing on the computer. If I really made an effort I could probably come up with something along the lines of the Sunday crossword in Dagens Nyheter. But that would take longer, and the weekly magazines neither demand nor want that kind of thing. I’m paid twelve hundred kronor for a crossword that takes about five hours to compile. I work three hours a day and earn marginally less than Lasse, who works seven.
Not a bad life. Quite the reverse. Almost perfect, in fact. By about twelve o’clock I’ve finished work. Happy if I’ve managed to make everything work with words that are in the Swedish Academy’s dictionary, less happy if I’ve had to resort to ‘Björn Larsson’ to fit in with BL. My employers don’t seem to mind; it’s rare that I get any kind of response.
So from twelve o’clock the day is my own until half past three, when Johanna and Emil come home. I usually start by praying to God for a while. It goes in cycles; sometimes it’s every day, sometimes I might miss a whole week. Then I have a guilty conscience.
I pray on the kitchen floor, kneeling on a cushion. I pray for the usual thing: the ability to feel love. Or perhaps that isn’t the usual thing? Nowadays I know there’s something wrong with me. Perhaps there was something wrong with my prayers too.
Anyway. Maud’s house.
She and her husband set off for the Canaries in the morning, and in the afternoon I went over to feed the cat.
The key was where she said it would be. There was a cat flap and the cat was out, its food untouched. I put some fresh water in its bowl. When I straightened up after putting the bowl down, I felt dizzy and had to sit on a kitchen chair. I sat there for a while looking around their kitchen. Then I stood up.
There was nothing special in the top drawer. Cutlery. The other drawers also contained various kitchen utensils. Except the bottom one. In there I found a number of bundles of sheets made of a material that most closely resembled papier-mâché, except that it was stiff, shiny. I held a sheet up to the light and saw a spider’s web pattern of fibres.
I couldn’t for the life of me work out what it was or what it might be used for. Perhaps I wouldn’t have reacted if there had been just one sheet—something for baking a particular kind of biscuit?—but there were bundles. There must have been a hundred sheets made of this unfamiliar material.
As I crouched there by the drawer I heard a sound, and felt a little shock that ran all the way up from the base of my spine. But it was only the cat. It came in through the cat flap and stood there looking at me. I suppose it was wondering who I was, what I was doing there. Stupidly, I blushed.
I left the kitchen and investigated the utility room. There were eight pairs of Bestpoint men’s underpants, the kind you get at the Flygfyren shopping centre. No other brands. Lasse has lots of different brands of underpants, but this man had found the one he liked and he was sticking to it. I don’t remember his name. I want to say Guran, but that’s not a name, is it?
During the rest of the week I examined every single corner of the house. I went through the bills they’d paid. Found a whole lot of payments to something called Royal Court. Several thousand kronor over the years. I’ve looked on the internet, but I can’t find a company with that name; all I get are links to royal families in various countries.
I found a gold ring underneath a bundle of cables behind the TV. I couldn’t leave it out on the table, so I tucked it under the rug where there was more chance of them finding it. They must have been surprised even so. It’s the sort of thing you tell your friends: ‘Just imagine…the ring had been missing for four years, then one day I was just going to shake out the rugs…’
They had an impressive collection of razors in the bathroom. Five different kinds, if I remember rightly.
OK. I think you get it. I was being nosey. It gave me great satisfaction while I was doing it. When I got home I didn’t feel quite so good. I promised myself I wouldn’t do it again. On the first day I also promised God that I wouldn’t do it again. Then I did it anyway, and stopped making promises. I also stopped praying that week.
It might sound as if this is something I’ve always done, and to a certain extent I suppose it is. I take the opportunity to read people’s letters and diaries on the sly, check what’s in their bathroom cabinets.
It’s bad. I know it’s bad. It involves breaking a spoken or unspoken trust. It’s a violation. I know. I curse myself for doing it. I’ve asked God for help, but he doesn’t help me. Perhaps I’m not really interested in people’s secrets. Perhaps it’s the actual violation I’m after. That’s probably worse.
After that week it was a couple of months before anything happened on that front. Johanna was bullied by some older girls at school, and I prayed to God that it would stop. It stopped.
Perhaps I would have started on—what shall I call it?—phase two earlier if Lasse hadn’t been working nights for a couple of months. That meant he was at home during the day, and could keep an eye on me.
It’s only in the light of what happened later that such terminology is justified: ‘keep an eye on me’. Things were good between us, me and Lasse. You couldn’t wish for a better husband. He’s sensitive, fun, and insists that we share the housework equally. I probably do slightly more anyway, because I have more time. But in principle. He’s not good looking, not at all. But then neither am I, as I’ve been told.
I could have been happy with Lasse during those months. Sometimes we’d make love during the day. I closed my eyes. He has a pot belly and a lot of hair on his body, particularly around his navel. I closed my eyes and thought of the summer cottages. All those lives just waiting to be discovered, within walking distance.
It’s difficult to describe how I felt during that week in Maud’s house as I opened cupboards and drawers. It gave me peace while it was going on, perhaps the peace that comes with the awareness of absolute power. Of course I enjoyed giving my imagination free rein (Royal Court, what could that be? That wax paper, what was it used for?), but I won’t pretend. I think it’s about power.
The problem with the summer cottages was that I didn’t have keys. The first time I headed over there with trembling knees, I had no clear idea of what I was going to do. Perhaps that would have been the end of it, if I hadn’t immediately found the key to the first cottage I visited. In the guttering.
It was only five houses later that I found another key. I broke into the intervening four. If a spatula in the lock doesn’t work, you can usually manage to undo one of the windows from the outside.
The summer cottages were less rewarding than Maud’s house. Apart from the occasions when I found photographs, I didn’t know what the people looked like, and had no faces to which I could attach whatever I found. Besides which, you don’t leave as many clues in a summer cottage. It’s cleaned from top to bottom every year, and many personal items are removed.
But you don’t need much to spin a tale, if you have the gift. I find an ugly souvenir from Corsica, a Bible with various passages underlined and a high-visibility jacket from the national organisation responsible for road maintenance. The picture is clear in my mind.
It happened in Januar
y, after the Christmas break. By that time I had been inside perhaps twenty-five houses. If anyone caught me, I would say that the owners had called me and asked me to turn off the water so that the pipes wouldn’t freeze. If the owners caught me it would have been slightly more difficult. But it never happened.
Christmas wasn’t all that enjoyable. I’d become dependent on my breaking and entering, and the children’s Christmas holidays meant I couldn’t get away. Oh, it was a lovely Christmas in every way, but I just wasn’t really there, I think. Lasse asked me one day, ‘Veronica, what is it you’re thinking about all the time?’
‘Nothing in particular.’
‘It’s as if you’re not here.’
I don’t know. Perhaps looking at all these unfamiliar objects had alienated me from my own life. I looked at my own things, my own loved ones in the same way: a puzzle to be solved, a reality to bring together. Thought about how I would analyse the objects we would leave behind.
It was a relief when normal everyday life returned. On the first day I was alone in the house I neglected my work so that I could go out straight away. I chose a house that looked as if it had been lived in over Christmas, because the paths had been cleared. However, there was a thin covering of snow, so the residents must have gone home.
It was one of the better cottages. The owner had knocked the old house down and built a new one, fairly recently. Picture windows looking out over the garden, and a patio door that was quite easy to force. I moved quickly through the living room, since the large windows meant I could be seen from the road. I just had time to notice that everything in the house looked expensive. Huge sofa, coffee table with interiors magazines aesthetically arranged.
I went into the kitchen. Tiled floor, presumably with under-floor heating. Central island. Drinks shelf with every imaginable kind of liqueur, Cognac, whisky and so on. I sat down and poured myself a small whisky, then rinsed and dried the glass before putting it away.
The house was a mystery. Everything looked as if it came straight from the pages of Homes and Gardens. Without doubt they had employed an interior designer, and there was nothing personal. Steel utensils hung on hooks above the fan-forced oven with its ceramic hob, and every single thing was in the right place. Even the black granite saltcellar lying on its side looked as though it had been placed like that in order to achieve a certain effect.
I started to get excited as I sat there at the kitchen table. Finally, a decent nut to crack. The life these people lived was so markedly different from mine that I would have to carry out detailed research to build up a picture.
I decided to start with the bedroom. The bedside table is revealing. That’s where you find the last things a person puts down before they go to sleep, and the first things they need when they wake up. Along with the bathroom cabinet, it’s number one.
However, the bedroom door was locked.
Of all the houses I had gone through, this was the first time I had come across a locked door inside the house. That was the first clue: they locked their bedroom door when they went away. But why?
Of course this made me even more determined to get into the room. By this time my hands were frozen. It was colder inside the house than outside, and my breath formed clouds of vapour. I fumbled with my provisional lock-picking equipment, and bizarrely, couldn’t get it open. It should have been a piece of cake. An internal door!
However. The solution was simple. As in many houses, all the doors had been put in at the same time, and I found a key in the kitchen door that fitted the bedroom. I unlocked it.
The only thing I saw was the outline of a double bed and a bundled up duvet. The blinds were drawn and the room lay in darkness. I risked switching on the light.
It wasn’t a duvet lying on the bed. It was a man.
I jerked back and almost stumbled in the doorway, but grabbed hold of the frame and regained my balance. I realised at once that the man was dead. His body was chalk white, naked, completely motionless. His penis hung limply between his legs and something red was sticking up out of his chest.
My immediate impulse was to run away. But I stayed where I was. I’m quite a sensible person, in spite of everything. I realised I couldn’t call the police. At least not until I found a phone box and could make an anonymous call. The closest was in Norrtälje.
I approached the bed cautiously. Stopped. I was in the process of destroying evidence that the forensic technicians might be able to find. And what about me? Were my fingerprints on the glass I’d used, for example, or on the door handle?
Strange how death alters the way we look at things. The body on the bed was worthless, and yet it defined the room around it; the entire house. This was a house that contained death. I crept closer, alert to any possible movement. But the man didn’t move. His eyes were closed, his eyelids had a bluish tinge. One arm dangled over the side of the bed, the other was by his side.
I reached out with one index finger and poked his big toe. It had virtually no elasticity. It was as if the body was deep frozen. I could now see that the object sticking out of his chest, directly over the heart, was the handle of a clasp knife. The word Equinox was written on the handle. Equinox is the time of year when day and night are of equal length. I like the word, but have never had the opportunity to use it. Q and X.
I stood there motionless with my arms by my sides, as if standing to attention before the dead man, and tried to work out what was wrong. Something was wrong, something didn’t fit. The red, soft rectangle sticking up from the chest was beautiful in some way. An anatomical arrow pointing at the heart, into the heart. It was a beautiful corpse. No blood.
That was it. Exactly. The knife was sticking straight into the heart, but no blood had run down the chest. I checked the sheet at the side. Just as if it had been a fairy tale, there was one drop of blood, just one. It was impossible to understand how that could have happened. Someone must have wiped him clean after…after it had happened.
The man was about my own age. Around thirty-five. He looked like one of those handsome guys at high school who kind of lived in a different world. If you ever danced with them, their eyes were always somewhere else.
His hair was very soft, as if it were freshly washed.
I didn’t know how long he had been dead, but the cold had preserved the body intact. I thought about Snow White. The knife was the red apple. The only thing missing was a glass coffin. I laughed out loud. So I must be the handsome prince, in my dark grey padded jacket.
I pulled on my gloves and opened the drawer in the bedside table. It was empty. I opened the wardrobe. Empty except for a couple of blankets.
Where are his clothes?
The alarm clock next to the bed had stopped at twenty past eleven. I pulled a chair up to the bed, sat down and let my gaze wander over the body.
I have to say it again: he was almost perfect. Muscular, but not over the top. A body moving in H2O, seven letters: swimmer. His jaw-line was well defined, casting a black shadow over his throat in the electric light. His lips could have convinced me that he was alive. Pale and bloodless, yes, but not sunken; they were full, pouting as if he were waiting for the kiss of life. His brow was high and smooth and his blond, medium-length hair was swept back. He was very handsome.
The only thing that spoiled the impression was the hair on his chest. Blond, almost white hair curling down towards his abdomen. Not too much, but enough to be disturbing. And then there was the penis. The idea was new to me, I’ve never seen a dead body before, but is there anything more pathetic than a dead man’s penis? So utterly, so mercilessly…unnecessary.
I took one of the blankets out of the wardrobe and spread it over his lower abdomen. I suppose I really should have covered his face as well—something to do with respect.
But I didn’t feel any respect. No. Now the initial shock had subsided I felt only…excitement.
‘Hi there, you,’ I said.
He didn’t reply. I would have liked to know his name, so tha
t I could use it. For the time being I decided to call him You. I wasn’t scared at all. Perhaps it was the absence of blood, the undisturbed condition of the body that made the whole thing unreal.
I sat with him for a good while. When I left, after checking that there was no one in sight on the road, I left the patio door on the latch.
By the mailboxes I counted back and forth between the houses I knew, and worked out that the man’s mailbox was number 354. There was a name too. Svensson. I found it so comical that the man was called Svensson that I started to laugh. I had imagined something along the lines of, oh, I don’t know, Delafour, Sander, anything at all, but not Svensson.
Of course there was nothing to indicate that the man on the bed was the owner of the house. I had never seen him before. As I walked home I tried out the name: ‘Svensson…Svensson.’
Oh well. It wasn’t too bad after all. Could be anybody.
I remember those days, those first days. Wonderful days. Blissful expectation running through my body, like honey. Lasse noticed the change in me, he said it was as if there was light all around me. Or as if the darkness had ebbed away—same thing, really. I played with the children, I cooked delicious meals. In the evenings, while we were watching TV, I curled up in Lasse’s arms. I loved him because he was simple and imperfect, dirty like me. Another person.
And I was longing to be somewhere else. All the time.
I was afraid of two things: that the people who owned the house would come back, and that the weather would get warmer, begin the thaw.
However, my reasoning was this: either the man on the bed is the person who owns the house, or the people who own the house have something to do with his death. Neither of these alternatives would lead to the man being moved. I know, I know, it wasn’t exactly watertight, but that’s the way I reasoned in order to calm myself down.
With regard to my other fear, there was nothing to worry about. The weather forecast promised that the cold spell would continue.
So I curled up in Lasse’s arms and smiled at the weatherman as he pointed to his minus signs and his snow flurries. Everything was as it should be.