Read Online The Cruel Stars of the Night by Kjell Eriksson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Kjell Eriksson
Tags: Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective, Detective and Mystery Stories, Mystery Fiction, Women Detectives, Police Procedural, Missing Persons, Women detectives - Sweden
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very thoughtful. Her father never hurried her.
Sometimes moths came in, fluttering around the lamp. Then her father would interrupt himself, go to some lengths to capture the visitor, and gently carry it out into the dark. She liked him a lot for the trouble he took to save the small creatures.
She would always remember his bent figure in the doorway, the pitch-black darkness outside and the lamp that generously cast its beam of light into the yard. She thought there was a limited supply of light, that the chessboard would get darker when the door was opened and the dark outside stole some of their light.
The contract on the cottage was not renewed. The owner, whom they rented from, said he was going to renovate it for a relative. Laura recalled how her father burned all the sheets and furniture in the yard the last evening. For a few moments she thought he was going to burn down the whole cottage.
Laura had looked around. It was still burning. Some of the joy and excitement of the summer holiday in the cottage had evaporated but it was with great sorrow that she took her final look at the red house, the outhouse and the woodshed, in the door of which she had carved her very own sonnet in Italian.
When Laura reached the roundabout in Nåntuna she became unsure. Should she turn around and go south as she had planned or turn around and drive home? The incident at the Flottsund Bridge had thrown her off kilter.
She knew the police must have been called in and that they were looking for her. She had no idea if there had been other cars or pedestrians at the bridge. Perhaps someone had made a note of her license plate number? She tried to think back through the events and did not think she had seen any witnesses.
She became convinced her father would have been proud of her. She fought back, didn’t let anyone steamroller her, and she meted out a punishment at once. That the punishment was not in proportion to the crime would almost certainly not have troubled her father. He wanted so to strike back, but the powerlessness that increased with the years had reduced his desire for revenge to a displeased querulousness. He said on many occasions that he wanted to bomb the whole miserable lot.
His language could get very vulgar. He could talk of “the saggy boob conspiracy” when two women in his department had made a written complaint about his teaching to the chair.
“They’re about as exciting as hollowed-out old trees whose caterpillars and beetles in their interior is their only life. One should plant a bomb under their fat arses.”
But it was only words, at first some counter missives with rancorous attacks that inflamed the situation, later on harangues of invectives and insults.
She turned in toward Bergsbrunna after a sudden inspiration that there might be a patrol car by Lilla Ultuna, keeping lookout for a woman driver in a red car. Now she instead curved around past the Denmark’s Church and came out onto Almunge Road. From there she found her way back in toward the city and its center.
The other drivers signaled to her, gestured and made angry and frustrated faces. She crept through the western parts of Uppsala. This was her city. The other side of the river barely existed in Laura’s consciousness. She had an impulse to go there. It was only a couple of kilometers away. Maybe that would lead to something else, something better? But she dismissed the thought.
Her father had spoken of the “pölsa,” or scrapple, city, which was how he referred to the eastern part. Laura had never eaten pölsa but had seen the brown meat-and-grain dish in the school cafeteria and so she imagined that people on the eastern side of the river slurped this unattractive mush while they followed some soap opera on TV.
“I’m burned out,” she said suddenly out loud to herself at a stoplight by Norby Road.
They talked about that at work, how everyone walked around burned out. For her part she had felt burned out most of
Sometimes moths came in, fluttering around the lamp. Then her father would interrupt himself, go to some lengths to capture the visitor, and gently carry it out into the dark. She liked him a lot for the trouble he took to save the small creatures.
She would always remember his bent figure in the doorway, the pitch-black darkness outside and the lamp that generously cast its beam of light into the yard. She thought there was a limited supply of light, that the chessboard would get darker when the door was opened and the dark outside stole some of their light.
The contract on the cottage was not renewed. The owner, whom they rented from, said he was going to renovate it for a relative. Laura recalled how her father burned all the sheets and furniture in the yard the last evening. For a few moments she thought he was going to burn down the whole cottage.
Laura had looked around. It was still burning. Some of the joy and excitement of the summer holiday in the cottage had evaporated but it was with great sorrow that she took her final look at the red house, the outhouse and the woodshed, in the door of which she had carved her very own sonnet in Italian.
When Laura reached the roundabout in Nåntuna she became unsure. Should she turn around and go south as she had planned or turn around and drive home? The incident at the Flottsund Bridge had thrown her off kilter.
She knew the police must have been called in and that they were looking for her. She had no idea if there had been other cars or pedestrians at the bridge. Perhaps someone had made a note of her license plate number? She tried to think back through the events and did not think she had seen any witnesses.
She became convinced her father would have been proud of her. She fought back, didn’t let anyone steamroller her, and she meted out a punishment at once. That the punishment was not in proportion to the crime would almost certainly not have troubled her father. He wanted so to strike back, but the powerlessness that increased with the years had reduced his desire for revenge to a displeased querulousness. He said on many occasions that he wanted to bomb the whole miserable lot.
His language could get very vulgar. He could talk of “the saggy boob conspiracy” when two women in his department had made a written complaint about his teaching to the chair.
“They’re about as exciting as hollowed-out old trees whose caterpillars and beetles in their interior is their only life. One should plant a bomb under their fat arses.”
But it was only words, at first some counter missives with rancorous attacks that inflamed the situation, later on harangues of invectives and insults.
She turned in toward Bergsbrunna after a sudden inspiration that there might be a patrol car by Lilla Ultuna, keeping lookout for a woman driver in a red car. Now she instead curved around past the Denmark’s Church and came out onto Almunge Road. From there she found her way back in toward the city and its center.
The other drivers signaled to her, gestured and made angry and frustrated faces. She crept through the western parts of Uppsala. This was her city. The other side of the river barely existed in Laura’s consciousness. She had an impulse to go there. It was only a couple of kilometers away. Maybe that would lead to something else, something better? But she dismissed the thought.
Her father had spoken of the “pölsa,” or scrapple, city, which was how he referred to the eastern part. Laura had never eaten pölsa but had seen the brown meat-and-grain dish in the school cafeteria and so she imagined that people on the eastern side of the river slurped this unattractive mush while they followed some soap opera on TV.
“I’m burned out,” she said suddenly out loud to herself at a stoplight by Norby Road.
They talked about that at work, how everyone walked around burned out. For her part she had felt burned out most of
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