‘Probably sleeping it off,’ said Per, slouching into the kitchen. ‘She started drinking as soon as we got home yesterday and was still at it last night when I went to bed. But I haven’t heard anything from her in a while.’

‘I’ll just go in and say hello. In the meantime make us some coffee,’ said Frans.

‘But I don’t know how to make…’ Per began in a whiny tone of voice.

‘Then it’s time you learned,’ snapped Frans, heading for Carina’s bedroom.

‘Carina,’ he said loudly as he went into her room. The only sound was a loud snoring. She lay halfway off the bed, one arm touching the floor. The room smelled of stale booze and vomit.

Taking a deep breath, Frans went over to her. He placed his hand on her shoulder and shook her.

‘Carina, time to get up.’ No reaction. He glanced around. The door to the bathroom opened right off her bedroom. He went in and turned on the taps to run her a bath. As the water poured into the tub, he began undressing her, unable to hide his disgust. It didn’t take long, since she was wearing only her bra and underwear. He wrapped her in a blanket, carried her to the bathroom, and without further ado put her in the tub.

‘Jesus Christ!’ snorted his former daughter-in-law in a daze. ‘What are you doing here?’

Frans didn’t reply. Instead, he went over to her wardrobe, opened the door, and selected some clean clothes for her. He set them on the toilet next to the tub.

‘Per is making coffee. Dry yourself off, get dressed, and come out to the kitchen.’

For a moment it looked like she might refuse. Then she nodded submissively.

‘So, have you figured out the art of using the coffeemaker?’ he asked Per, who was sitting at the kitchen table examining his cuticles.

‘It’s probably going to taste like shit,’ Per grumbled. ‘But at least I tried.’

Frans studied the pitch-black liquid that had started trickling into the glass pot. ‘It looks plenty strong, at least.’

For a long time, he and his grandson sat at the table across from each other, not speaking. It was such a strange feeling to see his own history in somebody else. He could glimpse traces of his own father in the boy. Traces of the father that he still regretted not killing. Maybe everything would have been different if he’d done that. Summoned up all the rage boiling inside of him and directed it at the one person who truly deserved it. Instead, his anger had seeped out in a totally different direction, without any purpose. And it was still there. He knew that. He just didn’t let it run riot as he had when he was younger. Now he was in control of his fury, and not the other way around. That was what he had to make his grandson understand. There was nothing wrong with his anger, but he needed to make sure that he was the one who decided when to let it loose. Anger was an arrow to be released in a controlled manner, not an axe to be swung wildly. Frans had tried that method and as a result he’d spent much of his life in prison, and his only son couldn’t bear to be in the same room with him. He had no one else. The men in the organization were not his friends. He’d never made the mistake of assuming that they were, or tried to make them friends. They were all too consumed with their own rage to establish that sort of a relationship with each other. They shared a goal. That was all.

He looked at Per and saw his father. But he also saw himself. And Kjell. He’d done his best to get to know his son during the brief family visits to the prison and those short periods when he was actually at home. But it was an endeavour doomed to failure. If he was honest with himself, Frans didn’t even know whether he really loved his son. Maybe he had once. Maybe his heart had once leapt when Rakel brought along their son to see him in prison. But he no longer remembered.

The strange thing was that as he sat there at the kitchen table with his grandson, the only love he could ever recall feeling was for Elsy. A love that was sixty years old, but it was still etched in his memory. Elsy and his grandson. They were the only people he’d ever felt any affection for. They had managed to elicit some sort of emotion from him. But it was dead now. His father had killed everything else. Frans hadn’t thought about it in a long time. About his father. Or all the rest. But recent events had made the past come alive for him. And now it was time to think about it again.

‘Kjell will be furious if he finds out that you came here.’ Carina stood in the doorway. She swayed a bit, but she was clean and dressed. Her hair was dripping wet, and she’d draped a towel over her shoulders so her shirt wouldn’t get wet.

‘I don’t care what Kjell thinks,’ said Frans drily. He got up to pour some coffee for Carina and himself.

‘This doesn’t look drinkable,’ she said as she sat down and stared at her cup, filled to the brim with the pitch-black brew.

‘Drink it,’ said Frans, opening cupboards and drawers.

‘What are you looking for?’ asked Carina, taking a sip and making a face. ‘Leave my cupboards alone!’

Frans didn’t reply as he pulled out one bottle after another and methodically poured the contents down the sink.

‘You have no right to interfere!’ she shouted at him. Per got up to leave.

‘Sit down,’ said Frans, pointing at his grandson. ‘We’re going to get to the bottom of this.’

Per obeyed at once, sinking back on to his chair.

An hour later, after all the booze had been dumped out, only the truth was left.

Kjell stared at his computer screen. Feelings of guilt had been gnawing at him ever since the police had come to see him yesterday. He knew he should go and see Per and Carina, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. He had no idea where to start. What scared him was the realization that he was starting to give up. He could fight external enemies. He could direct all his energy to combatting the power-mongers and neo-Nazis and wage battles with windmills, no matter how big they were. But when it came to his former family, when it came to Per and Carina, it was as if he had no strength left. It had been sapped by a guilty conscience.

He looked at the photo of Beata and the kids. Of course he loved Magda and Loke, and he wouldn’t want to live without them. But at the same time, it had all happened so fast, gone so wrong. He’d landed in a situation that had swept him away, and sometimes he still wondered if it had caused more harm than good. Maybe it was just the timing that had been unfortunate. Maybe he’d been going through some sort of midlife crisis, and Beata came along at just the wrong moment. At first he couldn’t believe it: an attractive young girl like her, interested in someone like him. But it had turned out to be true. And he hadn’t been able to resist sleeping with her, touching her firm, naked body, seeing the admiration in those eyes. It was nothing short of intoxicating. He couldn’t think clearly, couldn’t take a step back and make any sort of rational decision. Ironically enough, he’d just begun to show the first signs of coming to his senses when he’d lost all control of the situation. He had started to tire of the fact that she never offered any counter-arguments in their discussions, that she knew nothing about moon landings or the revolt in Hungary. He was even growing tired of the feeling of her smooth skin under his fingers.

He could still remember the moment when everything fell apart. It seemed like only yesterday, that she’d looked at him with those big blue eyes and told him that he was going to be a father, that now he would finally have to tell Carina, as he’d long promised to do.

It was at that moment he realized what a mistake he’d made. For a second he considered getting up and leaving her there in the café, going home to lie down on the sofa next to Carina to watch the news on TV while five-year-old Per slept soundly in his bed. But his male instinct told him that there was no going back. There were mistresses who wouldn’t dream of telling the wife, and there were mistresses who would delight in revealing every last detail of the affair. He had no doubt which category Beata fell into. She wouldn’t care who or what she crushed if he dared to crush her first. She would stomp on his life, destroy his very existence without looking back. And he would be left behind with the pieces.