Page 45 of The Living and the Dead

“Well, he violates her. Sometimes.”

Violates.The word fell from his lips, sharp and hot like a poker.

Maybe it had been about love, once. Who could say, really, what love looked like? But it wasn’t the same anymore. As far as he could tell, Sten said, Karl-Henrik came to Madeleine to take something from her. Always late at night, when Felicia wasn’t home, after Lillemor and the kids were in bed and the lights were out in the big house. That’s when he came.

“Apparently, Lillemor can’t anymore. She’s getting past her prime. But that’s no excuse for what he does. Or did. He’s taking advantage of his power over them.”

Siri got up and went to the next room, where she picked up a printout of the police report from last autumn. She placed it in front of Sten.

“What is this all about?”

Sten read it in silence.

“Ah. Right.” He looked up. “Well. It was all of this. I had just found out about it. We had a go at each other that night, I confronted him and told him to lay off.” Sten suddenly looked uncertain. “But I don’t want to take it any further, or anything.”

“We understand,” Gerd said. “But we might talk to other people about it, and that might mean we have to bring up this incident.”

“Do whatever you damn well please,” he said. “Just solve this.”

“Do you think,” Siri said, “that Karl-Henrik really did lay off? I mean, after this?” She nodded at the report. “Has he left Madeleine alone since?”

Sten blinked.

“I doubt it,” he said, and stood up to leave.

33

Evil bastards. They were out to get him, he could feelit.

Karl-Henrik Söderström stepped back from the window and stared at the scrawny Chinese cop’s uniform-clad back until she was gone.

The day before Christmas Eve.

It was the day before Christmas Eve, and she had the nerve to come to his house and ring the doorbell Mikael helped him install less than a year ago. It took them all day to mount it correctly, get it to ring the way it was supposed to. That was one of Karl-Henrik’s favorite things, just working on a project with his older son. Mikael was good with electronics. He understood how things worked.

And then she shows up, that cop, and presses her bony thumb right to that button. Who did she think she was? He couldn’t believeit.

This washishome,hecontrolled its sounds and signals. Now his and Mikael’s doorbell rang in the front hall every day as people stopped by with flowers, questions, offers:

We just wanted…

How are you holdingup?

Is there anything we can do? We’ll be home all through Christmas, just come on over if…

If what? If he happened to suddenly get over his son’s death?

My son’s death. He had no problem thinking those words, or even saying them out loud.

He looked around for his coffee cup. Only one last mouthful left. He went down to the basement, found the bottle, and poured a refill, then headed back upstairs.

The house was quiet. The patrol car that had been parked outside was gone. He saw tracks in the snow, from vehicles and animals.Work,he thought,try to get some work done, even though there’s no point anymore, except to pass the time. All this time, what was he supposed to do with it? Maybe he should be like his wife and just sit up there on the sofa, listening as it passed in the loud tick-tock of the wall clock.

Once, when Mikael was little, he’d said it sounded like that clock was counting down to something.

“It’s counting down to your tenth birthday,” Karl-Henrik had said. “When you turn double digits. That’s a big day, when you get to add another number to your age. It won’t happen again until you turn a hundred and can add a third.”

The boy’s eyes opened wide. A hundred. Did people get that old?