The Boy at the Door Read online

  Now I’m going to walk into town and put this diary into the postbox I have at the central post office, which Krysz doesn’t know about. The key I will place in the pocket of Tobias’s only jeans like I usually do, telling him to never ever give that key to anybody, unless I’m dead. Then he can give it to whoever he wants.

  23

  I remain completely still in my chair, but push the mass of paper slightly away from me to indicate that I have finished reading. Both Camilla Stensland and Inspector Ellefsen are staring at me. I look over at Johan, who is still staring at the pages of the letter and the journal, brow furrowed, hands tightly clasped, eyes red but dry now. I resist the temptation to sneak a glance at Sylling – he, too, has been given a copy of the journals. They’ve been photocopied from the originals and each page is individually stamped ‘Sandefjord Politi’.

  ‘As you can imagine, we have quite a few questions for you with regard to the information brought to us through Annika Lucasson’s own words. We’ve selected one further section we’d like you to read before we move forward. The last she’d ever write, as it turned out.’

  ‘Fine,’ I say. I wonder what prison will be like. I glance at Sylling now, and judging by the way he is pursing his lips and pressing his thumbs into his eyes, it’s pretty clear that the reappearance of Anni’s journals is a straight-up catastrophe. He turns and looks at me and I widen my eyes the way a crazy person might, to show him that I agree; I really will plead insanity. Camilla Stensland pushes the last section of Anni’s account over to me, and I stare down at the table where the mad words swim before my eyes. I won’t give her the satisfaction of meeting her eye now she’s caught me in yet more lies. Georg Sylling sighs heavily.

  ‘Look,’ says Johan, breaking the silence, making everybody turn towards him. ‘Is this really necessary? I think my wife has had enough for today, don’t you?’ He pointedly looks at Camilla Stensland. My husband is a very sensitive man, and I’m certain he perceives the negative energy this woman directs towards me.

  ‘Mr Wilborg, this is a police investigation. We have a lot of material to cover, and really need to push forward today.’

  ‘It’s fine, Johan,’ I say, trying to find a brave smile. ‘Really.’

  ‘No, it isn’t, really,’ he continues. ‘Whatever the circumstances here are, I’d quite like some kind of legal justification for forcing my wife to sit here and read through all this. Like she said herself, it could all be made up.’

  ‘Thank you for raising your concerns, Mr Wilborg,’ says Thor Ellefsen. ‘I can assure you that we are well within our rights to request a suspect to read through the first-hand account of the murder victim.’ Georg Sylling nods, raising his eyebrows in an exasperated expression.

  ‘Whether you are within your rights or not, I think this is morally wrong. Look at her! My wife is a normal person. A mother. A wife. Every single day of her life, she does good things for other people, and has, up until all this started, been a highly functioning member of society. She’s made one mistake. A single mistake. Have you never made a mistake in your life? Not one? The poor Lucasson woman can never be brought back, no matter what. What are the chances of you finding her killer? And we all know it sure wasn’t my wife. It’s time to lay this case to rest and give us a chance to recover.’

  ‘Johan,’ I begin, but Camilla Stensland interrupts me.

  ‘Mr Wilborg, you’ll appreciate that this is a murder investigation.’

  ‘Yes, I do. But what you’re playing at here is morally wrong. And I am fully entitled to say that.’ The room falls silent, and both Stensland and Ellefsen stare down at their hands for several long moments. My heart is beating fast and hard – I’ve never before been so proud of Johan in all my life. After a while, Camilla Stensland looks up at me, then points to the rest of the journal, open on the table in front of me. I drop my gaze to the densely printed sheets of paper, and as I do, a couple of fat teardrops spill from my eyes and land on Anni’s words.

  Annika L., Somewhere near Sandefjord (Kjerringvik?), October 16th

  This is a wake. I don’t know if I can do this. I can’t find the words to do this. This is a wake, the only one he’ll ever get. This is his eulogy, words to keep him in the world forever. My journal will end up somewhere, and in it, Krysz will continue to exist. That’s why I have to do this. I will find the words. I will sit here all night until I do. I am writing this by the light of a single candle at a kitchen table overflowing with newspapers, old, yellowed books, crusty plates, mugs soiled with years of bitter, black coffee, overflowing ashtrays and empty cigarette packs. Pawel says it’s some woman’s house, that she has another house in somewhere like Lanzarote, where she spends winters, so it’s okay for him to live here while she’s away, though she sure as hell doesn’t know about it. It’s very late and so cold. Writing this on the back of an old electricity bill – stacks of bills have been left on the table so I’ve got plenty of paper. Over by the terrace door is Krysz. I’ve pulled the tarpaulin back so that most of his face is showing.

  Came here yesterday night. After Pawel took Krysz away in the car and I’d left the kid at Fatma’s, I went back to the house and packed the rest of the stuff, but throwing most of it away in the bins down the road at Co-op Extra. I usually never go into the shops near the house, but I went into Rema then, in the middle of the day, and bought a cucumber and some cookies, as though I’d eat them, as though I hadn’t just watched Krysz die. The girl behind the counter didn’t meet my eyes, but I felt her staring at me when I was picking the coins out of my purse. On the back of my hand is a large cigarette burn; black, bloody and ugly, a last souvenir from Krysz, and that was probably what she was gawping at. Or maybe it was my bloated, twisted face – I couldn’t seem to find a remotely normal expression even when I was consciously making an effort to.

  Late in the evening, Pawel picked me up, and drove me here. I don’t know where exactly this house is, but we drove for a while in the direction of Larvik on the 303. We passed a sign for Kjerringvik. Where is he? I asked after a while, avoiding Pawel’s blunt, pockmarked face, looking instead at the trees by the roadside, imagining a freshly dug grave among them. Where the fuck do you think? he asked, sucking hard on the soggy end of a roll-up. He’s in the goddamned boot, Anni. What did you think I was going to do? Wave my magic wand to get rid of a fucking corpse? I couldn’t stop the tears that began to flow, and I didn’t try to. Pawel didn’t say anything else, but I could feel his eyes on me occasionally. Just behind where I was sitting, Krysz lay, dead. I thought Pawel had taken him out. I twisted my nose stud around and around to stop myself from howling.

  When Pawel finally stopped the car, neither of us immediately got out. I could see a building in front of us, but it was so dark I couldn’t tell how big it was, or which color. Look, he said, finally, I have a plan. Inside the house, it was very cold, and Pawel said we couldn’t turn on the heating because then the owner would receive bills and realize someone was in her house. We couldn’t use the wood-burning stove either, because someone might see smoke curling from the chimney, even though it was the middle of the night and we were miles away from anywhere. I went into a bedroom and took a purple fleece jacket, some woolly socks and a ski jacket from the top of a closet, and that is what I’m still wearing now.

  We ate some rice crackers with raspberry jam, and the cookies I’d bought at Co-op. Pawel said he will help me for fifty thousand kroner. He will get rid of the body, then we will go to Poland on the ferry. It’s easy to hide in Poland. I told him that I don’t have fifty thousand kroner, all I have is just under two thousand kroner left over from the last time Cecilia paid us, almost a month ago. Pawel burst out laughing, a mocking bark, like a wolf’s, then he slammed his fist very very hard down on the table, sending several loose sheets of paper sliding to the ground. Are you fucking stupid or something? You will go to the Wilborg woman and get the money from her, tell her whatever the fuck you have to. Say we’ll hand the kid over to the police, or that we’
ll kill him, whatever it takes!

  I was going to go to bed. Tiredness had seeped into every hollow in my body, filling me like lead. Or maybe that was grief. I stared into the candle’s flame, focusing on blocking out Pawel’s voice as he rambled on about what a fucking mess I’d landed him in. Then Pawel brought out the crack pipe. I’ve not done much for almost a year now, with the occasional exception of coke when we’ve had money, but when he held the pipe out to me I took it. I don’t know why, I didn’t want to, really. Once, Ellen said to me that people always want to live, no matter what, that survival is programmed into our DNA, but that can’t have been quite true because what about all the people who kill themselves? It might have been true for me, though; because even when things were awful, and they have been mostly awful, I’ve still always wanted more time. But last night when I took the pipe from Pawel and pulled the sour, dense smoke deep into my lungs, it occurred to me that it doesn’t particularly matter whether a part of me still wants to live – it just feels like one way or another I’ll be dead soon anyway. So I might as well smoke crack and whatever else Pawel can get me.

  When I did go to bed, hours later, high as hell and still crying at the thought of Krysz out there, in the boot, Pawel followed, and without a word placed me on the bed, face down. It was too cold to take any more than the absolutely necessary items of clothing off, so he just pulled my jeans down to my knees, and his own, too. On the wall hung an old-fashioned cuckoo clock, and I kept my eyes on this, trying to block out Pawel’s cold, fleshy hands gripping my hips. I half expected the clock to suddenly spring open, revealing little wooden figures and playing merry music. It still worked, because I watched several long minutes tick by. He was rough and took a long while, probably because of the crack and all the beers, and he put it into both places, which made it much worse. I couldn’t stop myself from crying out in pain after a very long time when he still hadn’t stopped. You like that, don’t you, you whore? Pawel said, bending forward, grunting into my ear.

  When I woke this morning, Pawel was standing over the bed. Make contact with the Wilborg woman, he said. I’m going to Oslo, and I won’t be back until tomorrow. I nodded, swallowing hard. Bile rose from my stomach at the thought of last night. I need you to bring Krysz inside, I said. No, said Pawel. Yes, I answered. We stared at each other for a long time, but I did not flinch, and finally he walked downstairs and I heard the door slam shut behind him. I watched Pawel cross the little courtyard to where Krysz’s Skoda stood, dripping with the overnight heavy rain. He opened the boot and stood staring into it for several long moments, then he turned and saw me at the window and threw his hands up in exaggerated exasperation. I ran downstairs and outside, and by the time I reached them, Pawel had managed to haul Krysz, still covered in the tarpaulin, onto the gravel. His eyes were narrow and cold, and he motioned for me to pick up the feet end.

  Krysz was so heavy I doubt Pawel would have been able to carry him alone. We half carried, half dragged him over to the house, then up the wooden stairs on the outside that led to a large terrace which wrapped around the entire first floor of the house. It was bigger than it seemed from the inside, painted a light gray, with white shuttered windows – it reminded me of one of those American beach houses you see in the movies, but in a run-down kind of way. From the terrace I turned back towards the car and tried to make out anything at all that could tell me where this house is, but there wasn’t anything. Besides the red car, everything was gray; the bare, somber trees that surrounded the house on all sides, the sky, the silvery stretch between the trees to the left, which looked like a lake or perhaps even the sea.

  Pawel dragged Krysz through the terrace door into the living room, then turned to me. Now what are you going to do with him, you sick bitch? He spat at the floor, in between my feet and the head-end of the tarpaulin, then walked back outside to the bitterly cold, gray morning. A moment later I heard the car start. I don’t know why he went to Oslo, nor that he’ll actually come back. But I expect he’ll want the fifty thousand.

  Tomorrow we are going to get rid of Krysz’s body, and Pawel has said I’ll have to help him. I don’t know that I can do it. But he’s here, now. In the house, with me. I’ve never been to a wake before, so I don’t know exactly what it is I should do, but I think it must have something to do with sending him off in a respectful and loving way. After Pawel left, I walked into the forest in front of the house, towards the water until I reached it and it was a lake indeed. A thin sheath of ice covered it, so fragile a thrown pebble would have cracked it. I stood awhile, looking at the black water beneath. I found some small pinecones and some smooth, light gray stones. The kinds of things Tobias would have brought home with him. I walked slowly back towards the gray house, my old running shoes squelching loudly in mud covered in ice crystals. I stopped a few times and just let the tears fall from my eyes. How do I grieve someone who hurt me so deeply and so constantly? How?

  Back at the house I pulled more of the tarpaulin back, but there was something very frightening about how Krysz didn’t yield at all, even when I pulled quite hard on the tarpaulin. I don’t know what I’d expected, nor why I’d insisted on Pawel bringing him inside. I just knew that I had to do something. I placed the pinecones in a circle around his head and placed a coin over each of his eyes. I lit a couple of tea lights I found in a kitchen drawer and placed them into wine glasses because I couldn’t find any holders. They looked kind of beautiful and I placed one on either side of Krysz’s head. I placed one little stone in his pocket, one in my own, and the remaining few around him, like the pinecones. Then I just sat there for hours. I talked to him, I touched his face, I recited the only prayer I remembered from school, though I didn’t know all the words. It was almost completely dark by three o’clock, and it was then, in the violet, hazy light that it really hit me; I will live the rest of my life, however long it may turn out, without Krysz. I felt so intensely furious with Tobias for doing what he did, that I imagined snapping his thin neck with my bare hands or smashing a rock in his head, just like he did to Krysz. But then, I thought about the man my heart had chosen, and I felt briefly relieved he was gone, and then, ashamed at my own relief. God damn you, I whispered. I began praying again, but this time, it wasn’t a vaguely remembered prayer from childhood, it was as though words appeared from inside my very core, intended for God himself.

  This was somebody’s baby, I whispered into the cool, quiet air. He was somebody’s daddy, and now they are together. He was somebody who never found peace, and that is what I wish for him, now. Please, please, please give him peace.

  Throughout the evening, I sat by him, smoking crack, crying, cutting myself with a little penknife and letting the blood drip onto Krysz’s navy shirt. At one point I was so angry with Krysz for everything – for leaving me, for hitting me, for being dead, for having been alive at all, that I ran the knife down the side of his face, leaving a dry pink line like a scar. I screamed loudly and pummeled his still chest with my fists. A couple of times, I felt the phone vibrate in my back pocket but I didn’t even glance at it, I was so high and so consumed by giving Krysz his wake. And now it is the early early morning and I’ve been here all night and only now is the high wearing off, leaving behind this dreadful, cold nothingness.

  This is his eulogy, these words are everything that will be left of him, and perhaps of me, too. It is my greatest wish that Ellen one day will read the letter I wrote her and my diaries and forgive me. Maybe she can sit on that same bench at the cemetery in Eckfors where she once sat with me when she took me to see my mother’s grave, and maybe by then I’ll be buried next to her, and maybe Ellen would find that to be quite comforting.

  Back to now, and to Krysz. He’s here tonight. Here with me. And tonight is all we’ve got.

  24

  I wish they pretended it wasn’t Christmas instead of pretending like we are going to have a nice family Christmas. Hamed looks confused and says merci every time someone hands him a cookie. Yesterday he wa
lked around and switched off all the fairy lights and said, S’il vous plaît, non. Sigrid looks like she wants to stab someone, and because she might actually do that, there aren’t any knives in any of the drawers. The bunnies are hiding and the chickens are gross. The ‘family members’ are talking constantly about the big meal we will have tomorrow, but secretly I bet they are angry about having to sit here on Christmas Eve with the orphans instead of with their actual families. They’re not going to cook, though, because I have seen the cardboard boxes of ready-made Christmas dinners in the fridge. I’m not dumb just because I’m short. I said that to Hannah, one of the nicer ‘family members’, but then she made me sit and draw and the man with glasses whose name I can’t pronounce sat and watched and brought my drawing with him when he left. I drew a bird with a smiling face and a big smiling sun to confuse him.

  Today is the twenty-third of December and two thousand and seventeen years ago, Jesus Christ was about to be born. That’s cool. I know that we are celebrating Christmas because he was born and because he brought so much light and love to the world – that’s what Moffa always said. He also said that even if you have nothing else, you’ll always have Jesus if you believe in him. Karl-Henrik didn’t come today because it’s Saturday, but it wouldn’t have been a school day anyway. There isn’t anything to do here. I’ve been on my iPad since I woke up, and here, nobody says, Tobias, that’s enough screen time. Why don’t you go outside to play? like the mother in the house always said.

  If Moffa hadn’t died and I was still at the farm with him and Baby, I’d play in the snow today. Maybe Moffa would have made me hot chocolate with tiny marshmallows, and maybe we would have walked around the lake together in the afternoon, me on the wooden skis that were Moffa’s when he was a kid. If I’d been allowed to stay with the family, I don’t know what Christmas would have been like. I think there would be many presents because they’re rich. The mother and the father would have wine, and the girls and I would draw or watch YouTube videos. If I’d still been with Anni, I guess we would have been in the house at Østerøysvingen 8. It would be very cold without any heating and it would be just Anni and me, but I’d get some chocolates and she might let me play Candy Crush on her phone. Someone is knocking on my door.