Bad Intentions

  ‘Hanna wanted to give it to me personally,’ Ingerid said.

  Axel nodded. He was gripping the edge of the table. Ingerid put the book back in her bag and clicked it shut.

  ‘I will copy Jon,’ she said. ‘I’ll put it in my desk drawer. One day, when I’m feeling very brave, I’ll read it. Jon may not have wanted me to – after all, a diary is a private thing – but I might find some answers.’

  Axel finally leapt into action. You could see him preparing for an attack. He drew his chair closer, leaned forward over the table and placed a hand on her arm. It was golden against her white skin, a strong, tanned hand with clearly visible veins.

  ‘Think twice before you read it,’ he said. ‘Perhaps there were things he wanted to spare you.’

  She looked surprised. Her eyebrows shot up.

  ‘What would they be?’

  ‘Well,’ Axel hesitated. ‘Those confessions may not be intended for our eyes. For yours, I mean.’

  ‘But he’s my son,’ she said, ‘and now I’ve got nothing left. Only his thoughts in that diary and I so want them.’

  Axel tightened his grip on her arm.

  ‘But the things you write in a diary are the very things you want to keep secret,’ he said.

  Ingerid Moreno started to waver.

  ‘I know that. But Jon took his own life. He left me all alone again. Who is going to bury me now, can you tell me that? Do you know what this means? I’ll have to die among strangers. I’ll forgive Jon, but only if he had good reason.’

  ‘Well,’ Axel nodded. ‘As long as you’re not disappointed. As long as it doesn’t make matters worse.’

  Ingerid Moreno freed her arm from Axel’s grip.

  ‘Jon would never disappoint me,’ she said. ‘I’m sure of that.’

  Axel was always the driving force in our little engine, Philip Reilly mused. He was in charge of operations and maintenance. He got us out of every scrape. Whenever it started rattling in one place, he would be there in a split second and tighten a bolt.

  Whenever they needed forgiveness for some boyish prank, he would charm people into submission, men and women alike. They had been able to get away with anything. Axel Frimann had his own light, an overwhelming aura of warmth, and when he looked at people, their sense of self-worth would instantly soar. Now he had lost his usual composure. Axel was normally a man of action. He could turn every situation to his own advantage. He had no time for people who surrendered to their fate. But now it appeared that Jon’s innermost thoughts were to be found inside that diary, and he was no longer in control.

  ‘You know what this means, don’t you?’

  ‘You leave Ingerid alone,’ Reilly said.

  Axel stopped pacing. What had Ingerid said? That she would do as Jon had done and put the diary in a drawer. And then, when she summoned up the courage one day, she would read it.

  ‘There’s a desk just inside the front door,’ he said. ‘I bet the diary is in one of the drawers.’

  Reilly gave him a horrified look. The ideas taking shape in Axel’s head were more than he could tolerate.

  ‘We need that diary,’ Axel said.

  ‘And here I was thinking I was the crazy one,’ Reilly said. ‘It is completely out of the question and I sincerely hope that you understand that.’

  ‘The diary is evidence.’

  ‘That depends on what Jon wrote in it,’ Reilly said. ‘Don’t underestimate him.’

  Axel crossed to the open window. He stared out of it, both hands planted firmly on the windowsill. His muscles bulged under his shirt and Reilly was reminded of an ox in front of a closed gate.

  ‘Deep down you’re really very naive,’ he said. ‘You think we’ve got a chance to get away with it all, but we don’t. And that might be just as well. I’ve always known that this day would come. But then again, I’m not the one worrying about a top job with Repeat.’

  ‘No, you live in a hovel,’ Axel said. ‘And you’ve got a crap job.’

  ‘I like my hovel. I like moving beds around.’

  Over at the window Axel groaned loudly. His broad back was outlined by the light from outside.

  ‘Do you know what occurred to me in the church today?’ he asked. ‘Jon wouldn’t have made it anyway. Jon was constantly on edge, breathless, practically. You would have thought he had a heart defect.’

  Reilly was pondering something else.

  ‘What do you think it looks like inside his coffin?’ he asked.

  ‘What are you on about now?’

  ‘It hit the ground. Jon must have skidded forwards. Perhaps he’s squashed up in a corner.’

  ‘There’s no room for movement inside a coffin,’ Axel said. ‘They’re made to measure. And even if he did bump his head against a corner, there’s no one to see it anyway.’

  Reilly did not reply. But the thought that Jon was not lying as he should haunted him for a long time.

  CHAPTER 11

  The remains of the summer’s floral splendour glowed against the red walls of Mrs Moreno’s house. Above the doorbell was a porcelain sign in the shape of a salmon. INGERID AND JON LIVE HERE. Sejer and Skarre waited. It took some time before Ingerid opened the door and when she finally emerged, she did not speak a word. She disappeared inside.

  ‘How are you?’ Sejer asked.

  She collapsed into an armchair, picked up a cushion and held it in front of her like a shield.

  ‘How am I? I’ve lost Jon, and I’ve lost the rest of my life.’

  Sejer protested. ‘Don’t think about the rest of your life,’ he said. ‘No one can look ahead when they’re down.’ He placed his hand on her arm.

  ‘Jon kept a diary,’ she said. ‘Hanna Wigert brought it to the funeral yesterday. She found it in his room, in a drawer. It’s on my bedside table.’ Abruptly she got up from the armchair and went to her bedroom to fetch it.

  Sejer touched the cover. The red fabric was coarse and quite plain.

  ‘May I read it, please?’ he asked.

  ‘What good would that do?’

  ‘We need it.’

  She looked baffled.

  ‘We’ll talk more about it later,’ he said. ‘But first tell us about the funeral, please. Did you give Jon a lovely service?’

  She pondered this for a while.

  ‘I met Molly,’ she said. ‘She and Jon were very good friends. She brought along a terrier which caused something of a commotion. Have you heard about it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sejer said. ‘We’ve heard. How do you feel about what happened?’

  ‘I thought it might be a sign. That all of us who knew Jon, we couldn’t manage to hold on to him while he was alive. He got ill and he slipped through our fingers. And we didn’t manage to keep hold of him in death either. We lost him to the earth, plain and simple. It says something about us.’

  ‘What does it say?’ Sejer asked.

  ‘That we’re all to blame.’

  She fell silent. She waited for Sejer to move the conversation forward.

  ‘When Jon was growing up, were you ever worried about him?’ Sejer asked.

  She smiled bleakly.

  ‘Of course I was. He was my child. Is there anything we do but worry about them? There’s so much they have to cope with,’ she said. ‘They have to find a space for themselves among their siblings, and in the classroom, and they have to survive in the playground. They have to find a peer group to belong to and a couple of close friends. They need an education and a job, and they need girlfriends. And children. Do you have children?’ she asked.

  ‘I have a daughter and a grandchild. They have managed all the things you mention. But I’ve never taken it for granted.’

  He looked at her gravely.

  ‘Ingerid. You need to listen to me. There is something I have to tell you and it’s very confusing.’

  She did not reply, but the cushion was now back in her lap.

  ‘There are some details about Jon’s death which we find unusual. We can’t pinpoint anyth
ing in particular, yet we suspect that this case might be different, or that there’s more to it than we first thought.’

  ‘I don’t follow,’ she said.

  ‘There are a few things about Jon’s suicide which we don’t understand.’

  She let go of the cushion.

  ‘What are you talking about? A few things? Are you saying someone else was involved? But there was no one up there, only Axel and Reilly. And they’re his friends,’ she said. ‘They were very close. Are you out of your mind?’

  Sejer placed his hand on the red diary.

  ‘How much have you read?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ she replied. ‘Not a single line.’

  ‘Are you scared?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  Memories from her own past surfaced and disturbed her. The summer she had travelled around Europe with a friend. One day they had found a wallet in a toilet. It had contained a thick bundle of notes, which after a brief discussion they chose to keep and later spent in an expensive restaurant. She remembered when she had had an abortion at nineteen. She was not even sure who the father was. Twice during her marriage to Tony Moreno she had been unfaithful. Both episodes had occurred when she had been travelling alone and she was drunk. When she recalled these incidents she felt woozy, and it struck her that she had not felt any remorse. Merely faint irritation, a slight jolt to the system. She had never, ever confided in anyone, simply stored it somewhere and later dismissed it as insignificant. But she remembered it now. She looked at the red diary. Did she have any sort of right to read Jon’s confessions? She opened it up at the first page and read a few lines. Then she put it away, quickly, as though she had burned herself.

  ‘I’ll read it,’ she said, ‘and I’ll let you know.’

  CHAPTER 12

  Molly Gram crossed the lawn in front of the hospital.

  She walked diagonally towards the path, glancing briskly both to the left and right as she always did. Molly was seventeen years old, but her childish face, high forehead, slender body and the way she moved made her seem younger. She did not want to come across as womanly. She did not play on that side of herself because she had had her fingers burned. Instead she had assumed the role of small, grumpy girl. She took in everything as she walked. A limping man to her right, a couple strolling arm in arm across the car park. She assessed them as she moved. As far as she could see, there were no enemies around. Every time she left the ward she exposed herself to the outside world and its inhabitants, to the light and the wind. Something might come from above or something might attack her from the side. She felt safe only inside her room. Under her duvet. In the dark. With Melis.

  She was outside now. She had finally reached the path. This was where she used to walk with Jon Moreno. Now the dog was her only companion. From time to time it would jump up and snap at her green skirt and she would tell it off in an affectionate voice. Little rascal, she said. Good doggy. She felt that Jon was somehow still with her, that his frail figure was at her side as usual, and she carried on an internal conversation with him.

  Hi Jon, let’s go for a walk. The weather is very nice. I like this time of year when it starts to get dark earlier. I couldn’t find anyone who wanted to come for a walk with me. The others are so boring; they just hang out in the smoking room and can’t be bothered to do anything. And they take no notice of what’s going on outside. They don’t know that monks are being killed in Burma and stuff like that.

  Her inner voice grew quiet as if she lacked the strength to keep Jon alive. Her eyes soon began to dart around again, and she increased her speed. Melis had to run to keep up with her.

  You and I would have been friends for life, she thought, I’m sure of that. But we didn’t get enough time. Jon, I need you to listen to me now because there’s something I have to tell you, something I’ve never told anyone. I want to kill myself too. But I’m afraid. I’m not that scared of dying, but I’m scared that I might change my mind. What if, say, I jump off a bridge and regret it and panic as I fall. Then I’ll die with a terrible scream. I don’t want to die screaming, it would be so embarrassing. People might think I’m some huge seagull as I flap past them, can you imagine that? And once I have made my decision, then I don’t want to whine and moan about it, but to leave life behind with dignity. Or what if I take an overdose? And I have second thoughts and can’t manage to make myself vomit. Imagine me kneeling in front of the toilet bowl, retching, how humiliating would that be? I can’t see a future, only a road that is getting narrower and disappears round a bend and then into darkness, and I’m walking down that road alone. Damn you, Jon!

  She sobbed as she walked on. She was quite deep into the forest now. Melis zigzagged; one moment he would appear on her right side, then ahead of her and then somewhat behind. A light breeze caused Molly’s hair to flutter, and the leaves either side of the path rustled as if the forest were an animal stirring. Then she heard a different noise, the sound of a twig snapping. It can’t be Melis, she thought, he’s too light. She stopped abruptly and glanced over her shoulder. Was anyone there? What did they want? Melis, too, had stopped. His small ears had detected a sound. She increased her speed again. She was quite far from the hospital now. No one would hear her if she screamed. Were those footsteps? A muted shuffle and some dry cracks. Was it one of the men from the secure unit, she wondered, one of the lunatics? The patients in the secure unit had their own outside space, but sometimes they escaped. Molly could taste blood in her mouth. She turned around a second time, but there was nothing to see. Perhaps it was just a cat prowling through the scrub, nothing to get wound up about. Other people were out walking too; she did not own the forest or the path. Now calm down, Molly, she told herself.

  Calm down, for God’s sake!

  But she could not calm down. And then she spotted a man some distance away. He stood motionless on the path. There was something familiar about him, and she searched her memory frantically.

  Axel Frimann raised his hand and waved.

  ‘Well, who would have thought it?’ he said. ‘It’s Molly and Melis.’

  He bowed solemnly. Molly could not work out what he was doing here, on her path. At her hospital. He took a few steps towards her. Molly stood very still as she watched him come closer.

  ‘I didn’t mean to frighten you,’ he said, ‘but I suddenly got it into my head to try this walk. You gave me the idea.’

  Axel Frimann expected people to take the bait immediately, that they would be dangling from the hook on his first throw. But not Molly. Her kohl-rimmed eyes narrowed with scepticism.

  ‘What did you make of the funeral?’ Axel asked.

  What does he mean? Molly wondered. Jon’s funeral was terrible. She had never attended a sadder funeral in her entire life.

  ‘I mean, the ceremony,’ Axel said. ‘The vicar’s eulogy. It was lovely, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It was very ordinary,’ Molly said.

  ‘You think so?’

  Axel fell silent. The sullen girl baffled him. He did not get the reaction he usually got when speaking to girls.

  ‘You need to train that dog of yours,’ he said. ‘People are still talking about it, Jon hitting the ground.’

  Molly shrugged. ‘You should have kept steady,’ she snapped.

  ‘That mutt sank its teeth into Reilly’s calf,’ he said.

  Molly looked down at her mutt.

  ‘West Highland terrier,’ she said. ‘Eight kilos.’

  Axel tried a different tack, a more friendly approach.

  ‘It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? That he killed himself, I mean.’ Molly remembered Jon’s voice. It always contained despair, suppressed tears.

  ‘He was troubled by so many things,’ she said.

  Axel Frimann was on his guard now. ‘That’s what I’ve been thinking,’ he said. ‘That something must have happened, something he couldn’t cope with. But I never found out what it was. He wouldn’t even confide in his best friends. It’s actually very hurtf
ul to be kept at a distance. Did he confide in you?

  Molly stared down at her feet in the pink trainers. ‘We spoke about most things,’ she said.

  Axel offered her his arm. ‘Will you walk with me?’ he asked.

  Molly started walking in the opposite direction, back to the hospital. She walked quickly now. ‘No, not at all.’

  ‘Don’t be so ill-tempered,’ he said. ‘There’s no need. I was only asking.’

  Molly strode on. Axel sauntered after her. Melis growled from the depths of his throat.

  ‘Has Hanna Wigert been asking you a lot of questions?’ Axel wanted to know. He was walking effortlessly beside her now.

  Molly continued to walk as quickly as she could.

  ‘About Jon, I mean,’ Axel continued. ‘If you have information which might explain his suicide.’

  She stopped and gave him an irritated look. ‘He was having a hard time. It’s that simple. Jesus Christ, stop prying!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Axel said. ‘I don’t mean to interrogate you, but Jon was my best friend. It’s a huge loss.’

  ‘I’m quite insightful,’ Molly said. ‘All you’ve lost is control.’

  That night she climbed into bed with Melis.

  The darkness crept out from the corners and she felt the warmth from the panting dog. She was thinking of the things Jon had told her. I’ve got such a guilty conscience, he had said, I’ve made some big mistakes. I’ve discovered something terrible about myself. I’m a coward. This is what he used to say. But everybody makes mistakes and only a few of us are truly courageous, Molly thought, Jon must be thinking of something quite specific. She was startled when the door opened. A beam of light fell across the floor and she saw Ruth, the night nurse. Melis raised his head to suss out the intruder. Ruth entered and looked down at Molly in the bed. Molly had removed the black make-up and without it she was another person, a pale and blurry child against the white bed linen. Ruth perched on the edge of the bed and Molly clasped her arm with both hands.

  ‘You’re so good to touch,’ she said. ‘You’re like warm dough.’