‘I think you’d better explain from the beginning,’ said Barbarotti.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Rickard Berglund. ‘I’m getting ahead of myself.’

  ‘We’ve got all the time in the world,’ said Barbarotti, checking that the tape was turning in his recorder.

  Rickard Berglund collected his thoughts for a moment and seemed to be looking for the right way in. ‘There was something demonic about him,’ he said finally, leaning back in his seat. ‘Yes, that’s how I would put it. Demonic.’

  ‘Who?’ said Barbarotti.

  ‘Germund Grooth,’ said Berglund. ‘It’s Germund Grooth who is the crux of all this, but maybe I don’t need to inform you of that.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ said Barbarotti. ‘Please inform me.’

  ‘Of course. Sorry.’ Berglund coughed a couple of times into his closed fist and launched in. ‘I never understood him and I really have been trying to, these past few years, more recently. I know Ekelöf writes in his poem that what is bedrock for you is also bedrock for other people, but that really didn’t apply where Grooth was concerned. He is – was – an alien being, to put it simply.’

  He sighed and lapsed into silence again. Barbarotti waited.

  ‘Christ, it’s awful being old and knowing your life has been totally screwed up,’ observed Berglund, and now there was a touch of anger in his voice. It was also, Barbarotti couldn’t help noticing, the first expletive he had allowed to pass his lips.

  ‘You go on building and building,’ he continued, ‘bringing your damn twigs to life’s nest, year in and year out, and you think you’re learning something along the way . . . You think the balance is busy establishing itself. You so much want to imagine that, at least. Don’t you?’

  ‘We like to think the journey is taking us forward,’ said Barbarotti.

  ‘Quite right. Only in my case, it wasn’t. I deserted my calling as a preacher of the Word, I didn’t have any children and, throughout our entire marriage, my wife loved another man. One wonders what the point was, really.’

  ‘She loved Germund Grooth?’

  ‘Germund Grooth,’ answered Berglund, running his hand over his mouth and chin. ‘They had an affair that lasted twenty-five years. More than twenty-five. From the very day . . .’

  His voice broke. He shook his head and took a deep, unsteady breath. Barbarotti wondered momentarily if he was about to witness a breakdown, but that didn’t seem to be the case. Berglund needed frequent pauses before he moved on to what lay ahead, but he held it together.

  ‘From the very day we moved in together . . . Imagine the melodrama. Germund was helping us shift the furniture and they had sex when I was called away for a couple of hours. I went to visit a friend who’d had an accident . . . he’d been admitted to the Akademiska hospital in Uppsala. While she was being unfaithful to me in our first home. October 1971.’

  He checked himself, looked at his hands and let his shoulders droop.

  ‘It went on way into the 1990s. Until she got cancer the first time, I think. Yes, that’s right. She was . . . obsessed with him. She didn’t want him, but she could never say no, he was . . . it’s a strong word, but I think he was evil. Demonic, as I said. I’ve tried to understand him, his motivation and everything, but I just can’t. I mean, he had other women as well, the entire time.’

  ‘How did you know that?’ asked Barbarotti, suppressing an impulse to touch the man opposite him. Where do impulses like that come from? he thought. He realized, too, that there must have been ten years between Anna Berglund and Marianne, and it was an insight that seemed about to open a route to wholly undesirable regions – demonic? – but Berglund’s continuing narrative dispelled his private mist of misgivings.

  ‘She told me,’ Berglund was explaining. ‘When the cancer came back, she told me everything. She wanted to kill herself as well, but I managed to stop her. She was grateful for that; she didn’t see Grooth again after the millennium, not even once. These last years have been devoted to atonement. The remarkable thing is . . .’

  ‘Yes?’ said Barbarotti. ‘The remarkable thing is . . .?’

  Berglund gave a short, doubtful-sounding laugh. ‘The remarkable thing is,’ he said, ‘that she came to hate him . . . Or maybe it isn’t remarkable at all. The pendulum swung to the other extreme, you might say. Sometimes I found myself all but defending him. Reminding her that it takes two, but she found it hard to see that. He was the drug and she was the victim – that was how she used to describe it. But however you look at it, Germund Grooth destroyed our lives; of course he’s my scapegoat, but for Anna he was even more so. Is it possible for any of this to make sense to an outsider?’

  ‘Perhaps that’s not the important thing,’ said Barbarotti. ‘I mean, reason and emotion don’t always get on with each other. What was it that happened at Gåsaklinten in 1975 then?’

  Rickard Berglund frowned for a moment, still apparently pondering the comment about reason and emotion. Then he drank some coffee and straightened his back.

  ‘My wife pushed Maria off the cliff,’ he said.

  Barbarotti let this sink in for a few moments. He checked the tape recorder was still running.

  ‘Why?’ he asked.

  ‘Because she knew Germund would always put Maria before her,’ said Berglund. ‘Maria and Germund, it was almost as if they were of the same blood. That much had been made clear at the vicarage the evening before; he said it straight out to Anna, and that was when she made her mind up. She murdered Maria so she could have Germund, it was as simple as that.’

  ‘Simple?’

  ‘Yes. Things can be analysed this way and that, of course, but I don’t think it makes a scrap of difference. It was precisely as simple as that.’

  ‘I see,’ said Barbarotti. ‘And nobody suspected anything?’

  ‘Nobody suspected a single thing,’ asserted Berglund. ‘Especially not Germund. Until a fortnight ago he still thought Maria slipped over the edge of Gåsaklinten on that outing. He thought it was a fatal accident. But Anna miscalculated. It didn’t turn out the way she expected. Germund didn’t want her, even though Maria was gone. Not properly, only as an illicit bit on the side for another twenty years. And she made do with that . . . She was obsessed, there’s no other word for it.’

  ‘And when,’ asked Barbarotti, ‘did you find this out?’

  ‘Five years ago,’ said Berglund. ‘Five and a half, to be exact. When she got really ill. I hung up my cassock for good a couple of months later; the two are connected, but I can’t cope with going into the exact details right now. It proved impossible for me to go on – you’ll have to make do with that as an explanation. Do you understand what I mean when I say my life’s screwed up?’

  ‘I think so,’ said Barbarotti. ‘But just for the sake of clarity, I want you to tell me about Germund Grooth’s death as well.’

  ‘Gladly,’ said Berglund, and Barbarotti could hear that he genuinely meant it. It would give him a bitter sort of satisfaction to describe how his wife’s lover had ended his days.

  And who could really begrudge him that? thought Barbarotti, pushing away the picture of Marianne and Germund Grooth that was trying to resurface in his mind. He stamped it down into oblivion before it had a chance to come into focus.

  ‘You could say she drove me to it,’ said Rickard Berglund. ‘But that isn’t really true.’

  Barbarotti nodded.

  ‘If she hadn’t forced it to that point, I would have done it of my own volition. I certainly hope so. At any rate, she didn’t want to die herself until she knew I’d got rid of him. Punished him, and that was all that kept her alive these last few weeks. Are you following?’

  ‘I’m following,’ said Barbarotti. ‘And I’m not an idiot.’

  ‘Good,’ said Berglund. ‘I’ve noticed that you’re not an idiot. So, we devised the plan together, and we had such a feeling of togetherness while we were doing it. She was weak and in pain, but what we were doing had to . . . well, in a way it had to compensate for the entire failure of our marriage, of our lives. And I followed the plan. I got in the car and drove down to Lund in the middle of the night. I rang him from a mobile – a pay-as-you-go, like a proper criminal. It was early in the morning and I was standing outside his block of flats. I asked if I could come up; he was surprised, of course, but I said Anna was dying and it was important. He asked me to wait a couple of minutes, then he let me in, and naturally I could . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  Rickard Berglund stood up. He went over to the bookshelves and pulled out a drawer. He took out various papers and files, standing with his back to Barbarotti, and when he turned round he had a heavy revolver in his hands. He held it between his two cupped hands as if it was something delicate and precious – the image of a communion chalice flashed into Barbarotti’s mind – and carried it almost ceremoniously back to his armchair. He sat down and laid the gun in his lap. As far as Barbarotti could see, it was a Berenger – or possibly a Spanish Baluga. Resting on Berglund’s knees, it looked as out of place as a Bible in an aquarium.

  ‘Put that away,’ said Barbarotti.

  Berglund shook his head.

  ‘I can’t continue this conversation at gunpoint.’

  ‘I’m not sure you have any choice,’ said Berglund.

  Gunnar Barbarotti thought about it for about five seconds. Then he nodded. He felt oddly grateful he wasn’t armed himself. It would have altered the situation if he had had access to his police weapon. It would have forced him to act, in one way or the other. He didn’t want to act, only to listen.

  ‘I could have killed him straight away, of course,’ said Berglund, continuing where he had left off. ‘With this. But that wasn’t the plan.’

  Barbarotti folded his hands.

  ‘And what was the plan, exactly?’

  ‘But you already know that,’ said Berglund. ‘Get him back there and unite him with Maria. Close the circle. Anna was fond of saying that in those last days. ‘We must close the circle, Rickard,’ she would tell me. ‘Trap the evil inside.’

  He fell silent and ran his fingertips thoughtfully over the revolver.

  ‘Go on,’ said Barbarotti. ‘I must say I’m a little surprised by that . . . object.’

  ‘Me, too,’ admitted Berglund. ‘Vicars and firearms don’t really go together, do they? Not even ex-vicars. I came across it a couple of years ago. I’m not sure why I appropriated it; it was just a strange impulse, and now I’ve put it to good use . . .’

  ‘Came across it?’

  ‘An estate inventory,’ said Berglund. ‘I was going through the estate of a deceased person; that’s been my area of work at the funeral directors’ these past few years, and I saw this in a box down in a basement storage area. Ammunition and everything, and I simply popped it into my briefcase; I didn’t say anything to Linderholm, who was upstairs going through the actual flat . . . When I say I’ve put it to good use, I don’t mean I’ve fired it, of course.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Barbarotti.

  Berglund cleared his throat and prepared to continue his story. ‘I had it in my coat pocket when Germund opened the door that morning, but he came with me voluntarily, as it happened. I got the impression he suspected what was coming, but perhaps it was my imagination. I asked him to drive the car and we didn’t exchange many words. I told him Anna wanted to see him before she died, and that was enough. He could have made a big song and dance and objected that he didn’t see why, but he refrained from that. He just shrugged his shoulders and came with me. He got into the driving seat and started the car. I climbed into the back, telling him I had to take a nap and it would be more comfortable there. He didn’t want to talk; I recognized the old Germund from years before as we sped north on the E6. Quiet and self-sufficient, in a way. Defensive. He only asked once how she was, and I said she was in a bad way, and it could only be a question of days. We were just twenty kilometres or so from Kymlinge when I pulled this out.’

  He nodded at the revolver and pulled up the corners of his mouth in a fleeting, crooked smile. ‘He saw it in the rear-view mirror and all he did was give a little shake of his head. I don’t know if he was even surprised. I told him to drive to Gåsaklinten and he nodded, said he couldn’t remember the way. I gave him directions, and we got there and parked in the same place as thirty-five years ago. We got out of the car, first me and then him; I kept the gun trained on him and walked three metres behind him and, well, within fifteen or twenty minutes we were there. We were standing up there on the rock and had reached the end of the road. “What happened?” he asked. “Perhaps you could tell me how Maria died, before you kill me?” I asked him if Anna had never mentioned it during any of their assignations through the years . . . I knew she hadn’t, of course, and he shook his head. So I told him. Told him Anna had killed her.

  Rickard Berglund paused and raised the revolver. He looked at it as if hoping to extract some kind of answer from it. Then he stuck out his lower lip and nodded to himself.

  ‘And?’ said Barbarotti.

  Berglund gave a shrug. ‘Hmm, how can I put it? I got the impression he had known about it, somehow, but perhaps I was just imagining that. I thought he blanched and . . . well, all the air went out of him and he kind of subsided. But all at once, with us finally up there and everything so close to consummation, it didn’t seem important. It was as if all the world’s emptiness and desolation were suckering onto me, taking me in their grip. Life and death were nothing more than two husks in eternity. It felt as if God had turned his back on us, which I hadn’t expected Him to. I asked Germund if he would jump of his own accord or would prefer me to shoot him. Do you know what he did?’

  ‘No,’ said Barbarotti.

  A shudder ran through Berglund. ‘He . . . he looked straight at me and there was nothing to read in his eyes. No fear. No regret. No distress. Not a damn thing. It was only for a couple of seconds, then he turned round, stood right on the edge for a moment and then took a step forward. Straight out into the void, and all I heard was a faint, dull thud when he hit the ground. I felt something give way inside me and I thought I was going to throw up, but I pulled myself together somehow. I went back to the car and drove straight to the hospital. Anna was asleep and I had to wait an hour for her to wake up, and then I told her. That’s . . . well, that’s all there is to tell.’

  ‘All there is to tell?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Barbarotti reflected and looked out of the window. It had started to rain and a tree branch was scraping against the window. The wind seemed to be coming in squally gusts. He shifted his gaze to the tape recorder, where the tape was still turning. Where Rickard Berglund’s woeful testimony was secured and documented for as long as anyone wanted it. It felt utterly irrelevant.

  ‘You didn’t push him?’ he still had to ask.

  Berglund shook his head. Barbarotti indicated the tape recorder.

  ‘No,’ said Berglund. ‘I didn’t push him.’

  ‘Did you threaten him with the pistol?’

  ‘No. I didn’t need to.’

  ‘And if he hadn’t jumped of his own volition, what would you have done?’

  Berglund hesitated, for a heartbeat at most. ‘I would have shot him. I preferred not having to, of course, but let there be no misunderstanding about this. I accept full responsibility for Germund Grooth’s death. It’s the most moral act of my entire life, so don’t try to take it away from me. Do you understand?’

  ‘I understand,’ said Barbarotti. ‘It’s just that with a view to the impending . . .’

  ‘There is no impending,’ said Rickard Berglund. ‘One more thing before we’re done. We never had any children, Anna and I.’

  ‘I know,’ said Barbarotti. ‘Would you like—’

  ‘She had an abortion,’ Berglund interrupted. ‘In the spring of 1975. The same year, you see, but I didn’t know about it until thirty years later. After that abortion, she never got pregnant again.’

  He stopped talking and looked at Barbarotti across the table. His eyes wouldn’t settle and one leg had started to shake. I have no control over this, thought Barbarotti. And neither has he.

  ‘You mean . . .’ he said. ‘You mean it was his baby, Germund Grooth’s, and he didn’t want—’

  He broke off. Berglund had raised his gun, with just one hand this time; it suddenly looked entirely natural and Barbarotti noticed a note had started ringing in his head.

  ‘Just the opposite,’ said Rickard Berglund with immense weariness in his voice. ‘It was my baby, and that was why she didn’t want it. It’s Tuesday today.’

  In one unexpectedly swift movement he put the muzzle of the revolver in his right ear and pressed the trigger.

  72

  The sky was an impenetrable greyish white. A cold wind from the north-west was sweeping in over the open, ploughed fields, and the low stone wall running round Rödåkra churchyard afforded scant protection. Barbarotti was freezing cold and he felt relieved that Marianne had decided not to come. There was no reason for her to stand in a windy churchyard to accompany a former vicar to his last resting place.

  No reason at all. It was enough for him and Backman to be there. A few others, too, of course: the current vicar and Linderholm; two elderly women who had worked with Berglund in the parish office for over twenty years; and a stooped little old man of sixty or so. Barbarotti had no idea who he was. He had shaken hands in the church, but Barbarotti hadn’t caught his quietly mumbled name.

  The ceremony was mercifully brief. The vicar, who was called Silvergren and had a limp, declared that the two people who had lived their lives together were now reunited. Death proved powerless to divide them for more than a few weeks. The rest had already been said in the church. Forever and ever, amen.

  That was basically it. Barbarotti knew that the vicar knew that Rickard Berglund had shot himself in the head, and an apostate priest who had committed suicide was of course not worthy of many words. Perhaps the cathedral chapter had issued instructions to keep it short.