Happier thoughts crept into her mind. Dinner on Saturday at Patrik’s place had far exceeded her expectations. For Erica he had always seemed like a nice but slightly annoying younger brother, even though they were the same age. She had still expected Patrik to be the same irritating boy. Instead she had found a mature, warm and humorous man. He didn’t look half bad, she had to admit. She wondered how soon she could decently ask him over to dinner – just returning the invitation, that is.
The last hill up to the Sälvik campground looked deceptively level; it was a long, slow incline. She was panting heavily when she turned off to the right and went up the last small slope to the house. When she reached the top she stopped short. A big Mercedes was parked in front of the house, and she knew exactly who the registered owner was. She’d thought that the day’s activity couldn’t be any more trying than it already was. She was wrong.
‘Hello, Erica.’ Lucas was leaning against the front door with his arms crossed.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Is that any way to welcome your brother-in-law?’ His Swedish had an accent but was grammatically perfect.
Lucas mockingly spread out his arms as if to give her a hug. Erica ignored the gesture. She could see that that was precisely what he’d expected. She’d never made the mistake of underestimating Lucas. That’s why she always observed a great deal of caution when she was in his presence. She wanted more than anything to walk right up to him and slap his grinning face, but she knew that could start something that she might regret.
‘Answer my question. What are you doing here?’
‘If I’m not mistaken … hmmm … let’s see, exactly one quarter of all this is mine.’
He gestured towards the house, but he might as well have been pointing at the whole world, his self-assurance was so vast.
‘Half is mine and half is Anna’s. You have nothing to do with this house.’
‘You may not be very well versed in the community property code, seeing as you haven’t succeeded in finding anyone stupid enough to get hitched with you, I mean. But according to that law, a married couple shares everything equally. Even ownership in a house by the sea.’
Erica was well aware that this was the case. For a brief moment she cursed her parents who had not been far-sighted enough to guarantee that the house was solely owned by their daughters. They had known what sort of man Lucas was, but they probably hadn’t reckoned that they had so little time left. No one likes to be reminded of his own mortality, and like so many other people they had postponed that sort of decision.
She chose not to take the bait and object to his pejorative comment about her marital status. She would rather be an old maid for the rest of her life than make the mistake of marrying someone like Lucas.
He went on, ‘I wanted to be here when the estate agent arrived. It never hurts to check up on one’s net worth. We want everything to go smoothly, now don’t we?’
He smiled that infernal smile of his again. Erica unlocked the front door and pushed past him. The agent was late, but she hoped he would show up soon. She didn’t like the prospect of being alone with Lucas.
He entered the house after her. She hung up her jacket and began pottering about the kitchen. The only way she could handle him was to ignore him. She heard him walking about the house, inspecting it. It couldn’t be more than the third or fourth time he’d been inside. The beauty of simplicity was not something that Lucas appreciated, nor had he ever shown the slightest interest in visiting Anna’s family. Their father couldn’t stand his son-in-law, and the feeling was mutual. When Anna and the children came to visit, they came alone.
She didn’t like the way Lucas was walking around touching things in the house – the way he was touching the furniture and the decorative objects. Erica had to repress a desire to walk behind him with a dust-rag and wipe off everything he had touched. With relief she saw a grey-haired man in a big Volvo turn into the driveway. She hurried to open the door for him. Then she went into her office and closed the door. She didn’t want to watch him go round looking at her childhood home and assessing its weight in gold. Or price per square metre.
The computer was already on. The file was open, waiting for her to get back to work. She had been up early for a change and had got a lot done. She had written four pages that morning for her draft of the book about Alex, and now she went back and read through them. She still had a number of problems with the form of the book. At first, when she’d thought that Alex’s death was suicide, she’d considered writing a book to answer the question ‘why?’ It would have been more of a biography. Now the material was increasingly taking on the form of a crime novel, a genre to which she’d never felt particularly attracted. It was people – their relationships and psychological motivations – that she was interested in; she thought that was something most crime novels had to give up in favour of bloody murders and cold shivers running down the spine. She hated all the clichés they used; she wanted to write about something that was genuine. Something that attempted to describe why someone could commit the worst of all sins – to take the life of another human being. So far she had written down everything in chronological order, reproducing word-for-word what was said to her, and mixing in her own observations and conclusions. She would have to pare down that material. Tighten it up to get as close to the truth as possible. How Alex’s nearest and dearest might react was not something she had wanted to consider yet.
She regretted not telling Patrik everything about her visit to the house where Alex had died. She should have told him about the mysterious visitor and about the painting she found hidden in the wardrobe. And about the feeling she had that something was missing, something that had been in the room when she first went inside. She couldn’t stand to ring him now and admit that there was more to tell. But if the right occasion presented itself, she would tell him the rest, she promised herself that.
She could hear Lucas and the estate agent walking around in the house. He must have thought she was behaving quite strangely, barely saying hello and then rushing off and locking herself in her office. The agent wasn’t to blame for the situation in which she found herself, so she decided to grit her teeth and display some of the good manners she had been taught.
When she came into the living room, Lucas was in the midst of describing in effusive terms the magnificent light let in by the big mullioned windows. Strange, Erica didn’t know that creatures that crept out from under a rock would appreciate sunlight. She had a vision of Lucas as a big, shiny beetle; she just wished she could have eradicated him from her life with a simple stamp of her boot-heel.
‘Please excuse my rudeness just now. I had some urgent business to tend to.’
Erica smiled broadly and held out her hand to the agent, who introduced himself as Kjell Ekh. He assured her that he was in no way offended. Selling houses was a very emotional affair. If she only knew what stories he could tell … Erica smiled wider and even permitted herself a sly little flutter of her lashes. Lucas looked at her suspiciously. She ignored him.
‘Well, don’t let me interrupt. How far did you get?’
‘Your brother-in-law was just showing me your lovely living room. It’s very tasteful, I must say. Quite beautiful with the light coming in through the windows.’
‘Yes, it is lovely, isn’t it. Too bad about the draught.’
‘The draught?’
‘Yes, unfortunately the windows are not properly sealed, so when the least wind blows you have to make sure you’re wearing your warmest woollen socks. But it’s nothing that replacing all the windows couldn’t fix.’
Lucas glared at her furiously, but Erica pretended not to notice. Instead she took Kjell by the arm; if he’d been a dog he would have been eagerly wagging his tail by this point.
‘You’ve seen the upstairs, I take it, so perhaps we should continue down to the cellar. And don’t worry about the mouldy smell. As long as you’re