The Strangler's Honeymoon by Håkan Nesser Read Free Book Online Page B

now eleven days since he had slunk out of her bedroom.
    Then she said yes.
    Provided it didn’t take too long, she added. She had quite a few things to see to.
    Benjamin accepted this, and five minutes later she was sitting in the passenger seat of his car. He was wearing the same shirt as he’d had on that first evening on the sofa, she noted.

6
    ‘I’ve been a bit busy,’ he said. ‘That’s why you haven’t heard from me. Please forgive me.’
    She wondered how many times he had apologized or begged for forgiveness during the short time she had known him. It somehow seemed to be his built-in opening line every time he met anybody: apologize, draw a line under everything that had happened and start afresh. Raring to go and without prejudice.
    But perhaps it wasn’t such a good strategy in the long run.
    ‘Me too,’ she said. ‘School is causing a lot of problems. I’m going to change, I think.’
    ‘Change what?’
    ‘Schools.’
    ‘I see.’
    He didn’t sound especially interested. Perhaps he had a voice that always gave him away. She had been so taken by it to start with, but perhaps that had been mainly because that was what he wanted her to feel. Maybe he used his voice as a sort of tool.
    He stroked her arm gently with the back of his hand before starting the car. She tried to assess her reaction to that gesture – to determine what she really felt about it – but she couldn’t. It was too superficial and insignificant.
    ‘Where would you like to go?’
    She shrugged. Pointed out that he was the one who wanted to talk, not she. As far as she was concerned, it didn’t matter where they did it.
    ‘Have you eaten?’
    She admitted that she had only had an omelette and a sandwich, as her mother was ill.
    ‘Ill?’ he said as he drove off in the direction of Zwille. ‘She hasn’t said anything about that to me.’
    ‘It started today. When did you last speak to her?’
    ‘Yesterday. We spoke on the phone yesterday.’
    ‘But you haven’t actually met her for quite a while?’
    ‘Not for a week. I’ve been a bit busy, as I said.’
    There was only a slight hint of irritation in his voice, but she noticed it. A vague reminder that . . . well, what? she wondered. That not just one person was to blame if two people were not in touch with each other? Not even when one was thirty-nine and the other sixteen.
    ‘But you have time to meet me?’
    He turned onto the Fourth of September Bridge, turned his head and looked at her for so long that she was about to tell him to keep his eyes on the road instead. Then he cleared his throat, wound down the side window and lit a cigarette. She had never seen him smoking before, and had never noticed that he smelled or tasted of tobacco.
    ‘Do you smoke?’
    He laughed.
    ‘I’ve given it up. Although I buy the odd packet now and again when work gets a bit too stressful. Would you like one?’
    He held out the packet. She shook her head.
    ‘The important thing is that I’m in control of it. I can stop whenever I want.’
    ‘Do it then,’ she said. ‘Stop now, smoke inside a car makes me feel sick.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, throwing the cigarette out of the window. ‘I didn’t know that. Are you angry with me?’
    ‘Why do you ask that?’
    ‘Because I think you sound negative. Quite clearly annoyed. Can I invite you to dinner even so?’
    She thought it was odd that he wanted to invite her to dinner if he thought she sounded negative and annoyed, and didn’t know what to say. She suddenly began to think she was being nasty to him: if she didn’t want to talk to him at all, she could have said so on the telephone instead. Declined to join him in the car, that would have been more honest. What she had done in fact was a half measure, as her mother usually called it. A typical, rotten half measure.
    And in any case, surely he hadn’t done anything to deserve being treated in this childish way? Six of one and half a dozen of the other,