A Nearly Normal Family Page 4

  “But why such a rush to bring her in?” I asked. “If they don’t have anything else to go on?”

  “This case is a real hot potato.” Blomberg sighed. “The police want to act quickly. The fact is, the victim isn’t just anyone.”

  He turned to Ulrika and lowered his voice a notch.

  “It’s Christopher Olsen. Margaretha’s son.”

  Ulrika gasped.

  “Mar … Margaretha’s son?”

  “Who’s Margaretha?” I asked.

  Ulrika didn’t even look at me.

  “The dead man is named Christopher Olsen,” Blomberg said. “His mother is Margaretha Olsen, a professor of criminal law.”

  A professor? I shrugged.

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Margaretha is very well-known in legal circles,” Blomberg said. “Her son has also made a name for himself in a number of circles. A successful businessman, he owns real estate; he sits on lots of boards.”

  “Why would that matter?” I said, my irritation mounting.

  At the same time, I recalled my own words, that this sort of thing only happens to alcoholics and drug addicts. That had certainly been an assumption full of prejudice, but it was also based on empirical evidence and statistics. Sometimes you have to close your eyes to the exceptions to keep from going under.

  “Maybe it shouldn’t matter,” said Blomberg. Reading between the lines, it was clear that it did matter, and that he wasn’t sure there was anything wrong with that fact.

  “Margaretha Olsen’s son,” Ulrika said. “How old is … was he?”

  “Thirty-two, I think. Or thirty-three. Deadly force with a bladed weapon. The police are being very tight-lipped with the details. During the interrogation, they were mostly interested in Stella’s whereabouts yesterday evening and last night.”

  Yesterday evening and last night?

  “When was this man murdered?” Ulrika asked.

  “They’re not sure, but the witness heard arguing and shouting just after one o’clock. Were you awake when Stella got home?”

  Ulrika turned to me and I nodded.

  There I’d been, tossing and turning, unable to fall asleep. The text I’d sent, without receiving a reply. So my worry hadn’t been unfounded. I thought of how Stella had come home and clattered around in the bathroom and laundry room. What time had it been?

  “There must be someone who can give her an alibi,” I said.

  Both Ulrika and Blomberg looked at me.

  11

  Michael Blomberg offered to give us a ride home. The late-summer evening was offering up short-sleeve weather and people were strolling around the streets of Lund as if nothing had happened. Dogwalkers and party people; people on their way out or home or nowhere at all; night-shift workers and insomniacs. Everyday life wasn’t about to stop just because our lives had been knocked off balance.

  As we pulled up at our house, Blomberg wondered if there was anything else he could do. He said it would be no trouble for him to stick around for a while.

  “There’s no need,” I assured him.

  Ulrika remained standing in the driveway for a moment to talk to him as I hurried into the bathroom. My whole body felt warm and my mouth was dry as sawdust. I drank straight from the faucet and sponged my forehead with water.

  It was way past midnight when I went to the kitchen to find Ulrika sitting with her head in her hands. Despite the hour and my protests, she was soon calling around to every contact she had with the police, some journalists, and lawyers, anyone who might know something or be able to help. I sat across from her, scouring the internet for information about the incident on Pilegatan, about Christopher Olsen and his professor mother.

  Time and again I looked at the clock. The minutes were dragging by.

  Once a whole hour had passed, I could no longer sit still.

  “Why aren’t we getting any answers? How long could this take?”

  “I’ll call Michael,” Ulrika said, standing up.

  There was a creak on the stairs and I heard her closing the door to her office. I brooded, my thoughts gnawing at my brain, all the creepy-crawlies of anxiety under my skin.

  I walked aimlessly through the kitchen, out to the entryway, and back again. I was holding the phone in my hand when it rang.

  “It’s Amina.”

  She sobbed and cleared her throat.

  “Amina? Is something wrong?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I lied.”

  Just as I’d suspected. She hadn’t seen Stella on Friday after all. They had talked about hanging out, but it never happened.

  “I didn’t know what to say when you asked,” she said. “I lied, but only for Stella. I thought maybe something … I wanted to check with her first.”

  I understood. There was no reason to get upset with her. It was a white lie.

  “But there must be someone else who can give her an alibi,” Amina was desperate to add. “This is totally insane!”

  It truly was surreal. At the same time, it was becoming more and more clear that this was reality. I pictured Stella locked up in the cold, squalid cell where they put murderers and rapists.

  Ulrika came down the stairs at a jog.

  “The prosecutor has given the order to remand Stella,” she said.

  “Remand her?”

  My heart was pounding. I broke out in a sweat.

  “They’re holding her in jail.”

  “How is that possible? There’s no evidence!”

  “It may have to do with the investigation. Things the police want to check up on before she is released.”

  “Like an alibi?”

  “For one.”

  I didn’t know what we should do. My body was in an uproar. I could only manage to sit down for short periods, then I had to get up and move around. I walked through the house like a zombie, all around the house in my stocking feet.

  As the sun sent its first tentative rays across the eastern horizon, we still knew nothing. The lack of sleep had made my brain fuzzy.

  At last Blomberg called. I stood across from Ulrika in the kitchen and held my breath.

  Her answers were brief and mumbling. She stood there with the phone pressed to her ear even after the call had ended.

  “What did he say?” I asked.

  Ulrika was looking at me and yet her gaze was elsewhere.

  “We have to leave the house.”

  Her voice was thin as a spider’s silk, about to break.

  “What? What’s going on?”

  “The police are on their way. They’re going to search the house.”

  My thoughts went immediately to the stained blouse. It couldn’t be blood, surely? Of course there would be a sensible explanation. It must be as Blomberg had said, rash decisions and misunderstandings.

  Stella could never … or could she?

  I stole into the laundry room and lifted the pile of clothes I’d shoved the top under. My hands stiffened.

  It was gone.

  “What are you doing?” Ulrika said from the kitchen. “We have to get going.”

  I desperately dug through the other piles of clothing but didn’t find a thing. The clotheslines were empty. The top was gone.

  “Come on!” Ulrika called.

  12

  The future was always bright, but in a glistening, almost blinding way, like the winter sun through billowing mist. There was no worry, even if our paths weren’t yet laid out before us. I recall tiny Stella, with baby teeth and pigtails.

  And then I recall a very uncomfortable parent-teacher conference at preschool when Stella was five.

  The teacher, whose name was Ingrid, first reported on all the activities, crafts, and educational games they had done during the autumn and winter. Then she took a deep breath, paged through her papers at random, and seemed unsure of where to focus her gaze.

  “A few parents and children have approached us with concerns,” she said without looking at us. “At tim
es Stella can be quite dominant and she gets … angry. If things don’t go her way.”

  This sounded familiar, of course, although I suppose we had been hoping it wasn’t as obvious at preschool as it was at home. I immediately felt both embarrassed and defensive when I learned that other parents had aired opinions about my daughter.

  “I’m sure it isn’t that bad? She’s only five.”

  Ingrid nodded.

  “A few parents have brought it up with the school director,” she said. “It’s important for Stella to receive help for this, both at school and at home.”

  “What? Who are those parents?” Ulrika said.

  “Could you give us an example?” I asked. “What is it that Stella does wrong?”

  Ingrid paged through her documents.

  “Well, in role-playing games, when the children play pretend, Stella very much wants to control the others.”

  Ulrika shrugged.

  “Isn’t it sometimes good that someone takes on the role of leader?”

  “We know Stella can sometimes seem domineering,” I said. “The question is how much we should try to stifle it. As Ulrika said, leadership qualities can be a very good thing—that she’s direct, a driving force.”

  Ingrid scratched intensely at her right eyebrow.

  “Last week, Stella said she was like God. The other children had to obey her, because she was like God and God is in charge of everything.”

  I felt Ulrika’s eyes boring into me from the side. Stella had spent quite a bit of time at church with me; she had shown interest in my work and was already asking existential questions, but I would never dream of providing her with neatly packaged solutions or clear-cut answers. Furthermore, I would never touch upon God’s omnipotence even in my daughter’s absence.

  “We’ll talk to Stella,” I said curtly.

  In the car on the way home, Ulrika pointedly turned off the radio, one finger poking at the panel on the dashboard.

  “It’s crazy, the opinions people have about other people’s children.”

  “It’s nothing to worry about,” I said, turning the music back on. “She’s only five.”

  I had no idea how quickly time would pass.

  13

  On Sunday afternoon I was sitting in a spartan interrogation room at the police station, waiting to be questioned. I was given strong coffee in a mug; the minutes passed slowly, painfully, and my skin felt itchy.

  The chief inspector finally arrived; her name was Agnes Thelin and she was wearing a conciliatory expression. She claimed that she knew exactly how I must be feeling. She had two sons around Stella’s age.

  “I know you’re feeling scared and sad.”

  “Those aren’t words I would use.”

  Above all, I was angry. It might sound strange, at least in retrospect, but I was probably in the midst of the “shock” stage. I’d put fear and sorrow on hold and was focusing on my survival, on my family’s survival. I would get us out of this.

  “What is it you’re looking for?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean how you’re searching our house. All the police who are going through our belongings this very minute.”

  Chief Inspector Thelin nodded.

  “We’re looking for forensic evidence, which can be lots of different things. It’s possible that we’ll find something that’s to Stella’s advantage, something that corroborates her story. Or we might find nothing at all. We’re trying to figure out what happened.”

  “Stella has nothing to do with this,” I said.

  Agnes Thelin nodded.

  “We’ll take it one step at a time. Can you start by telling us what you did last Friday?”

  “I was at church almost all day.”

  “At church?”

  She made it sound like the last place on earth she would visit.

  “I’m a pastor,” I explained.

  Agnes Thelin gaped at me for a moment, then came to her senses and busied herself with paging through her documents.

  “So you were … working?”

  “I had a funeral that afternoon.”

  “A funeral, okay.” She scribbled a note. “What time did you return home?”

  “Around six, I should think.”

  I told her that I had showered and prepared a pork casserole, then ate it with Ulrika. After the meal we played a game of Trivial Pursuit on the sofa and then went to bed. Stella worked until quarter past seven and had been planning to meet a friend in town afterwards.

  Agnes Thelin asked if I’d been in contact with Stella that evening and I told her that I had sent a text, but I didn’t remember what she responded, or even whether she responded at all.

  “Is it typical for Stella not to answer texts?”

  I shrugged. “You have teenagers.”

  “But we’re talking about Stella right now.”

  I explained that it wasn’t unusual at all. She often answered sooner or later, but later was common. Sometimes much later. Nor was it unusual for the response, when it arrived, to consist solely of a smiley face or a thumbs-up.

  “Who was the friend?”

  I had to swallow.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Who was the friend Stella was planning to meet? The one she was going out with?”

  I stared down at the table.

  “Stella had told my wife she was going to meet up with her friend Amina. But we’ve asked Amina, and they didn’t see each other on Friday.”

  “Why do you think Stella was lying?”

  Her choice of words was infuriating.

  “She wasn’t lying. Amina told us they had been planning to meet up, but plans changed.”

  “What do you think she did instead?”

  I didn’t answer. Why would I speculate? Surely my thoughts didn’t mean much.

  “Do you know what she did instead?” Agnes Thelin asked.

  That was a more reasonable question.

  “No.”

  Agnes Thelin flipped through her papers again in silence. It probably only took a few seconds, really, but it was enough for the silence to seem meaningful, somehow.

  “What kind of phone does Stella have?” the chief inspector asked.

  I explained it was an iPhone, but that I always get the models mixed up. It was white, in any case, I could tell her that much.

  “Does she have more than one of them?” Agnes Thelin asked.

  “More than one? No.”

  Obviously the police would find her phone in our house, and take it into evidence. For a moment I wondered if I should mention to Thelin that Stella had forgotten her phone at home, but I decided not to. It sounded strange for an eighteen-year-old to forget her phone. As if it meant something was wrong.

  “Do you know if Stella has access to pepper spray?”

  “Pepper spray? The kind the police use?”

  “Exactly. Does Stella have a spray bottle like that?”

  “Of course not. Is that even legal?”

  I felt nauseated.

  “What time was it when you went to bed on Friday?” Agnes Thelin asked.

  “Eleven, maybe a little after.”

  “Did you fall asleep right away?”

  “No, I couldn’t sleep.”

  “So you lay awake for a long time?”

  I drew a breath. My mind was whirling. Fuzzy images of Stella as a little girl, a proud teenager, a grown woman. My little girl. Our family: Ulrika, Stella, and me. The photograph on the windowsill.

  “I lay awake, waiting for Stella. I suppose it doesn’t matter how old your child gets, you never stop worrying about them.”

  Agnes Thelin nodded. I think she understood.

  What happened next is hard to explain.

  I hadn’t planned it. I had come to the interrogation with every intention of sharing what I knew. Not once had I considered deviating in the least from the truth.

  “So you were awake when Stella came home?”

  Agnes The
lin’s eyes were large and inviting.

  “Mmhmm.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Yes,” I said, my tone sharper. “I was awake when Stella came home.”

  “Do you have an idea of what time that was?”

  “I know exactly what time it was.”

  What is a lie? Just as there are different sorts of truths, there must be different sorts of lies. White lies, for example—I’ve never shied away from those. Better a kind lie than a hurtful truth, I’ve always thought.

  But of course, this was different.

  “It was eleven forty-five when Stella came home.”

  Chief Inspector Thelin stared at me and the Eighth Commandment twisted in my gut like a snake. The Bible says that he who tells a lie must perish. But at the same time: my God is just and forgiving.

  “How do you know that?” asked Agnes Thelin. “So precisely, I mean.”

  “I looked at the clock.”

  “What clock?”

  “On my phone.”

  There’s a verse in the Gospels that says a house divided cannot stand. I realized I had forgotten about my family. Neglected it. Taken it for granted. I hadn’t been the father and spouse I should have been.

  I still knew nothing about what had happened when that man lost his life on the playground on Pilegatan, but I knew one thing with full certainty: my daughter is no murderer.

  “And you’re sure that it was Stella coming home?” Agnes Thelin asked.

  “Of course I am.”

  “I mean, you couldn’t have been hearing something else?”

  I smiled with certainty. Inside, I was going to pieces.

  “I’m sure. I talked to her.”

  “You talked to her?” Agnes Thelin exclaimed. “What did she say? Did anything stand out?”

  “Not at all. We mostly just said good night.”

  Agnes Thelin refused to take her eyes from me.

  The snake twisted in my belly once again. An overwhelming sense that this wasn’t really me, it was someone else saying all these things in the stuffy interrogation room.

  In his first letter to Timothy, Paul writes that someone who doesn’t take care of his own family has abandoned his faith in Jesus. I hadn’t taken care of my family well enough. This was a chance to correct my mistakes.