Page 44 of The Living and the Dead

“When I was at Madeleine’s. Or I suppose I saw you see us. But I want to make sure you know we were just having coffee.”

“And that was all I saw,” Gerd said, flashing an innocent smile and throwing up her hands.

“Do you know each other well? You and Madeleine?” Siri asked.

The question seemed to come as a surprise.

“I guess we used to, back in school and so forth. We were good friends back then.” He looked at Gerd. “As you know.”

Gerd nodded. “But were youjustfriends?”

Gerd asked the question as though it weren’t dangerous at all. Sten took a sip of coffee, set his mug down, and leaned back. The chair creaked alarmingly.

“I suppose I wondered if it could have turned into something more. But it never did. Madeleine met Göran, and I met Linda. I liked Göran. A lot. He was a good guy. It was a hell of a sad day when he died a few years back. By that point, Linda and I had gone our separate ways, and when Madeleine’s grief started to pass, I started courting her a little bit, again. Or whatever the word is. Nothing major, of course.”

“What did you do, for instance?” Siri asked.

“Nothing out of the ordinary. Gave her a ride to Oskarström, helped in the vegetable garden, had a cup of coffee in her kitchen afterwards, like today, or a beer or two. No one else knows, not Killian and definitely not Linda. They would be hurt. If something had happened between us, I would have told them, obviously, but since it didn’t, I didn’t tell anyone. Madeleine didn’t either.”

Sten turned to Gerd again. “You know how it was when Göran died, how Madeleine and Felicia had to move. Right?”

“Yes,” Gerd said. “But it would probably be a good idea for you to tell us anyway, if only to catch Siri up.”

“They couldn’t afford to stay in their house without him, the bills were too much. They actually didn’t have anywhere to go until Karl-Henrik, as they say, reached out a helping hand. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

He scoffed.

“They moved into that old house on the other side of the field. Karl-Henrik’s grandparents used to live there, before they ended up in the nursing home, so it had been empty for years. And sure enough, they had an affair there after that, Karl-Henrik and Madeleine. Madeleine, as gullible as she is, I’m sure she was still wracked with grief over Göran and probably wasn’t thinking clearly, but still—she believed Karl-Henrik was going to leave Lillemor for her. That’s when it all started, when he let them move into that house. In fact, for all I know, it might still be going on.”

Sten let out a mirthless laugh, but it was cut off when he got some cookie down the wrong pipe.

“You’re laughing,” said Siri. “May I ask why?”

“Well, because it’s all so absurd. To think that Karl-Henrik would get a divorce. It’s only in the city that men get divorced for their mistresses. Out here, you get divorced so you don’t kill each other. I mean,” he added, “Linda and I had some great years together too. It was only towards the end that everything fell apart.”

“What about you?” Siri asked.

“Hmm?”

“When you heard about Karl-Henrik and Madeleine, what was that like for you?”

“It just was. Nothing I could do about it.”

“But would you have wanted to do something, if you could?”

“Like what? I tried to talk to Madeleine. He’s no good for her, I’ve always felt that way, and anyone can see it. And,” he went on, “she’sactually not so good for him either. Madeleine seems to arouse something inside him, the way women sometimes do to men.” He paused. “What?”

“It just seemed like there was more you wanted to say,” Siri said gently.

He squirmed in his seat. Considered another cookie, but decided againstit.

“I mean, I don’t know. But…well, like I said, I don’t know if their affair is over, and maybe they aren’t really sure either; do you always know something like that? Sometimes you think something is over, and then you meet and it flares right up again.”

He spoke as if this had recently happened to him.

“But,” he went on, “whatever’s between them, it’s changed now.”

“How so?”