The Drowned Boy by Karin Fossum Read Free Book Online Page B

funeral?”
    “He was our child,” Nicolai burst out. His voice was breaking up.
    “I’m sorry,” Zita said hastily. “I was only trying to help. I just thought we should make some decisions. And I thought that you might need someone to do that for you, as you have more than enough to deal with. How did the police treat you? Were they understanding? Did they treat you with respect?”
    “They poked around and asked lots of questions about all sorts of things,” Carmen said. “And Nicolai and I were kept in separate rooms, which I thought was horrible.”
    “But that’s just procedure,” Zita reassured her. “Rules that they have to follow in the event of sudden death and accidents. To find out exactly what happened.”
    “But we’d explained to them,” Carmen said sulkily. “In detail. And still they said that we might have to go in again. To answer more questions after the autopsy. But they won’t find anything. He was fit and healthy. He had that ear infection once but got over it quick enough. I told them that Tommy was healthy.”
    They sat in silence while eating Elsa’s food. Nicolai was hungry, but he let it gnaw at him and only took a couple of mouthfuls. Afterward Zita went out into the yard and wandered around aimlessly, not knowing what to do. If there was anything, anything at all that could soothe the pain, he thought. Again and again he berated himself for not having built a fence.
    Nicolai wanted them to leave, because he wanted to be alone. He wanted to grieve without onlookers. He left the house again around midnight and went back down to the pond. He sat at the end of the jetty and wept. He could barely resist the lure of the black water.

9
    ELEVENTH OF AUGUST . Morning.
    “I dreamed about death,” she wailed. “He was right here in the room, and he was falling to pieces. All stained and rotten and messy, with long yellow nails. I’ve never seen anything so hideous in my life. He sat on the rug beside the bed all night, breathing. It was disgusting. I thought I could still smell him when I woke up—a kind of sweet, rotten smell. And something’s bitten me on the thigh. Look, it’s all red and starting to swell up.”
    “A wasp,” Nicolai said, exhausted. “There’s some lidocaine cream in the bathroom drawer. It should help a little.”
    “Haven’t you slept?”
    “No.”
    “Have you been drinking whiskey?”
    “Yes.”
    “More than one?”
    “Yes, and don’t worry. I can do what I like with my life. If I want to go to hell, I’ll go to hell.”
    Carmen stood there for a while, thinking she desperately wanted to say the right thing. She wanted to be good and to save him. Because that was what the situation called for. She had to put out the fire that was burning all around her. She saw the empty glass on the table and started to fret. To think that he was sitting here drinking on his own so early in the morning.
    “It won’t get any better if you’re tired and hungry,” she said. “It won’t get any better if you’re drunk. We don’t need to numb ourselves; we have to get through this. And there are things we need to organize. The funeral and lots of other things. Listen to me, I’m trying to help!”
    He didn’t answer. Just sat there and played with the fringe on the blanket. His eyes were swollen from crying and his hair was a mess. She stood looking at him, not knowing what to say. So she said nothing, went into the kitchen, and put on the kettle. She had a life to live, after all. She needed air in her lungs, blood in her arms and legs. Things had to keep working. He called to her from the living room.
    “Why do you think they want to examine the house?”
    She went back out and fell into a chair. She licked her finger and brushed it over the bite, because she thought that spit might soothe it. That was right, wasn’t it?
    “Don’t think about it anymore,” she said in a comforting voice. “It’s bad enough as it is, and you’re only making it