The Cruel Stars of the Night - Kjell Eriksson [61]
He had an impulse to throw his car keys down the drain as well, leave the car, and simply walk, go as far away as possible. He turned his head and looked back at the house he had left. He could only see parts of the roof. Not so much as the light from the windows penetrated the bushes and trees.
But the neighbor’s house was lit up. Small lamps, placed in two orderly rows from the street up toward the entrance, spread a dim light over the garden. Stig saw the shadow of a person flicker by in one of the windows. It was the odious professor that Laura had talked about. Stig had an idea of who he was. He thought they had bumped into each other once during a lunch at the Gillet.
Without a doubt the neighbor had noted the presence of the car in the street and perhaps even recognized him. It was not possible to be anonymous. To be a Rotary member and keep a mistress in Kåbo was a losing proposition.
He couldn’t possibly return to Jessica in this condition. There would be trouble, he knew that, and not just that. He would in all likelihood be thrown out for good. It was Jessica’s house, paid for by her former company, perhaps even by Torbjörnsson junior himself. Rumors had circulated but Stig had never paid any attention to them, nor asked Jessica how she could afford a house in Sunnersta, but more than once he had been made to feel that he lived there on her charity. He had offered to pay for half of the house, had even been to the bank and arranged the loan, but Jessica had curtly turned down his offer.
She wasn’t one to let something slide. He would have to pack his things and leave. Stig Franklin shivered and sat down in the car.
The clothes that were soaked through reminded him of a canoe trip in Ströms Vattudal many years ago, when he had flipped the canoe and been convinced he was going to drown. That time he had managed to crawl up on a stony beach but his provisions and canoe were lost. Shaking with cold he heard the wind pick up and how the waves rose up out of the black water. He had the feeling that they were disappointed, furious that he had escaped them.
An old man, who lived very close to the shore, came walking along and led Stig to his cottage. They shared a bottle of grayish liquor in front of the fire and the old man entertained Stig with fantastic stories about log-driving, death by drowning, and the devilishness of the sea.
The man’s love-hate relationship to the water seemed grounded in an ancient conviction that man lived off water but also under its curse.
“It is the same thing with fire,” the old man went on to philosophize and spit into the fire. “It warms us, but devours us also. Like love.”
Stig put his key in the ignition and at that moment Laura Hinder-sten’s car rolled out onto the street. He saw it vanish around the corner before he realized completely that it was her. He backed up a few meters and saw that her car was no longer parked in the driveway.
Where was she going? She hadn’t said anything about going anywhere. Stig followed her and saw her rear lights turn the corner at Artillerigatan. At Dag Hammarskjöld’s Way she turned right. Stig got a red light and was forced to stop but now he had an idea of where she was headed.
He checked the traffic in the intersection. Everything was calm, there was only one car in sight and it was driving down the hill to the hospital. Stig drove on red and took up the chase.
Stig watched Laura park about twenty meters from his home, a “funkis” house at the end of a cul-de-sac. He braked and drove down the street very slowly He was at a loss. Should he drive up, park the car, and go in, pretending he hadn’t seen her car? The risk was great that she would make her presence known, perhaps call out to him, want