Free Hour of the Wolf by Håkan Nesser Page A

sitting in the murky kitchen, waiting for him with her hands wrapped round a cup of tea. He could sense an aura of reproachful worry and sympathy, but it affected him no more than a wrong number or a formal condolence.
    I hope she can cope, he thought. I hope I don’t drag her down with me.
    ‘You’re wet,’ she said. ‘Did you go far?’
    He shrugged and sat down opposite her.
    ‘I walked out towards Löhr and back,’ he said. ‘It’s not raining all that hard.’
    ‘I fell asleep,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’
    ‘I needed to get out.’
    She nodded. Half a minute passed: then she stretched her hands out over the table. Left them lying half-open a few centimetres in front of him, and after a while he took hold of them. Wrapped his own hands round them and squeezed them tentatively. He realized that she was waiting for something. That he needed to say something.
    ‘There was an old couple when I was a little boy,’ he began. ‘They were called Bloeme.’
    She nodded vaguely and looked enquiringly at him. He contemplated her face for a while before continuing.
    ‘Maybe they weren’t that old in fact, but they gave the impression of being the oldest people in the whole world. They lived in the same block as we did, just a few houses away from ours, and they hardly ever went out. You only ever saw them very occasionally on a Sunday afternoon . . . And when they appeared all games and all signs of life in the street came to a standstill. They always walked arm in arm on the shady side of the street, the husband always wore a hat, and there was an aura of deep sorrow around them. A cloud. My mother told me their story – I was no more than seven or eight, I should think. The Bloemes used to have two daughters, two pretty young daughters who travelled to Paris together one summer. They were both murdered under a bridge, and ever since, their parents stopped associating with other people. The girls came back home, each of them in a French coffin. Anyway, that was the story . . . We children always regarded them with the greatest possible deference. A hell of a lot of respect, in fact.’
    He fell silent and let go of Ulrike’s hands.
    ‘Children shouldn’t die before their parents.’
    She nodded.
    ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’
    ‘Yes please. If you add a drop or two of rum.’
    She stood up. Went over to the work surface and switched on the electric kettle. Searched round among the bottles in the cupboard. Van Veeteren remained seated at the table. Clasped his hands and rested his chin on his knuckles. Closed his eyes and once again felt his eyes throbbing in their sockets. A burning sensation inside them and up into his temples.
    ‘I’ve experienced it before.’
    Ulrike turned to look at him.
    ‘No, I don’t mean at work. It’s just that I’ve imagined Erich’s death many times . . . That it would be me who had to bury him instead of vice versa. Not lately, but a few years back. Eight or ten years ago. Imagined it pretty tangibly . . . The father burying his son – I don’t know, perhaps it’s something all parents do.’
    She put two steaming hot cups down on the table, and sat down opposite him again.
    ‘I didn’t,’ she said. ‘Not in detail like that, at least. Why did you torture yourself with that sort of thing? There must have been reasons.’
    Van Veeteren nodded, and took a cautious sip of the strong, sweet tea.
    ‘Oh yes.’ He hesitated a moment. ‘Yes, there were reasons all right. One at least . . . When Erich was eighteen he tried to commit suicide. Swallowed enough tablets to have accounted for five or six fully grown people. A girlfriend found him and rushed him to hospital. But for her he would have died. That’s over ten years ago now. I dreamt about it every single night for quite a while. Not just that vacant, desperate, guilt-laden expression on his face as he lay in bed at Gemejnte . . . I dreamt that he had succeeded in taking his own life, that I was putting