‘Linus,’ she said, ‘what you’ve just told me is terrible. It must have been horrific. I really think you should tell another adult, because it’s not good for you to go around with this sort of secret.’
He pulled away from her hand, backing up against the wall.
‘You promised!’ he said. ‘You said I was anonymous.’
Annika raised her hands helplessly. ‘Hey,’ she said,
‘I’m not going to say anything. I’m just worried about you. This is one of the worst things I’ve ever heard.’
She let her hands fall and stood up.
‘It’s really important that the police hear what you saw, but you know that. You’re a smart boy. Benny’s death was no accident, and you’re the only one who saw it happen. Do you think the murderer should get away with it?’
The boy was staring stubbornly at his lap again. A thought suddenly occurred to Annika.
‘Did you . . . ? You recognized the man in the car, didn’t you?’
The boy hesitated, twisting his fingers. ‘Maybe,’ he said quietly, then suddenly looked at her and said: ‘What time is it?’
‘Five to six,’ Annika said.
‘Shit,’ he said, leaping up.
‘What is it?’ Annika said as he flew past her and into the kitchen. ‘Do you mean that you might have recognized—’
‘It’s my turn to cook and I haven’t even started.’
Then he appeared in the doorway again.
‘Mum’ll be here any minute,’ he said anxiously. ‘You’ve got to go. Now!’
She pulled on her jacket, took a step towards him.
‘Think about what I said,’ she said, trying to smile.
Feeling utterly helpless, she left the boy alone.
Thomas could feel himself getting more and more irritated as he tried one code after another on the door of the nursery. The same thing had happened only yesterday, leaving him standing there like an idiot, unable to get in.
‘Do you know the code?’ he asked his son.
The boy shook his head. ‘Mum always does the code.’
A moment later the door was unlocked from inside. A woman in her forties with two snotty toddlers stepped onto the pavement. He muttered his thanks, held the door open for Kalle and went into the hall.
‘It was fun going to nursery,’ the boy said.
Thomas nodded absent-mindedly, gathering his thoughts. Every time he walked into the nursery he felt like an alien, his wax jacket and briefcase and tie seemed somehow to clash with the sensible shoes and cosy sweaters of the staff. Among the tiny boots and miniature furniture he was a clumsy giant, sweaty and out of place. But most of all it was communication that shut him out; he had never managed to have the same sort of relationship the staff had with his children. He couldn’t handle sitting and talking about the same drawing for ten minutes, the wire in his
veins started tugging and itching after just a few seconds . . . yes, that’s lovely, Ellen, is it a cat? After that he was on to his next thought, the next action.
She was doing some cutting-out when he arrived, and enthusiastically showed him the fish and plants she had made for her little sea.
‘Shall I help you with your overall?’ he offered.
She looked at him in surprise.
‘I can do that on my own,’ she said, putting away the scissors and paper and going off to the cloakroom, a stern little figure with narrow legs and swinging arms.
They took the bus from Fleminggatan, but before they had even got on Thomas realized it was a mistake.
‘I want to start playing hockey,’ Kalle said, as Thomas tried to stop a pensioner with a walking frame from running over Ellen. The mere thought of driving his son through the centre of the city several times a week made him shudder.
‘Don’t you think that might be a bit too soon?’ he said, hoping to put him off.
‘William’s started going to Djurgården. They said he was almost too old.’
Good grief
, Thomas thought.
‘Right, Ellen,’ he said, ‘up on the seat with you. We’re almost there.’
‘I’m swelting,’ the little girl said.
‘It’s sweating,’ the boy said disdainfully. ‘You’re so stupid.’
‘Now, now,’ Thomas said.
The half kilometre to their home on Hantverkargatan took fifteen minutes. Kalle fell over twice when the driver braked sharply to get over the congested junctions on Scheelegatan.
As the sweat ran down his back and the air grew thicker with carbon monoxide and coughed-up virus
particles, Thomas swore that from now on he would ignore party politics and only vote for the party that promised a solution to the traffic in Stockholm.
‘Is Mummy home?’ his daughter asked once they’d finally got to the second floor of number 32.
‘She’s in Norrland,’ Kalle said. ‘She said so yesterday.’
‘Is Mummy home?’ she asked again in the same hopeful tone, this time turning to Thomas.
He saw her eyes, so completely trusting, the chubby little cheeks, the rucksack. For a moment the world spun: what have we done? What sort of responsibility is this? How on earth are we going to manage? How are the kids going to survive in this bloody world?
He swallowed hard, leaned over the child, sweeping off her damp woolly hat.
‘No, darling; Mummy’s working. She’ll be home tomorrow. Here, hold your hat while I unlock the door.’
‘What are we having for tea?’ his son asked.
‘Baked meatballs with garlic and veg.’
‘Mmm,’ Ellen said.
‘Yummy,’ said Kalle.
The air in the flat was stale and slightly pungent. The streetlights below threw quivering blue shadows over the ceiling mouldings.
‘Can you get the lights, Kalle?’
The children started to take off their outdoor clothes as he went into the kitchen and turned on the lamps and the oven. Annika had prepared frozen meals in plastic tubs so they could heat them in the microwave, but he preferred to do it the old-fashioned way.
‘Can we play on the computer, Daddy?’
‘If you can sort it out yourselves.’
‘Hooray!’ Kalle said, running off into the library.
He settled down with the various sections of the
morning paper he hadn’t had time to read earlier; new terrorist attack in the Middle East, stock market falls, profit warning in the pharmaceutical industry. Suddenly he noticed that the unpleasant smell was much stronger now.
He put the paper down, got up and looked around the kitchen. When he opened the cupboard under the sink the smell practically floored him.
Fish scraps.
He instantly remembered that Annika had reminded him to put the rubbish out before she left yesterday morning. He was bent double, ready to throw up, when his mobile rang out in the hallway. He quickly shut the cupboard door, pushing it hard to make sure, then went to take the call.
It was a colleague of his from the Association of Local Authorities.
‘I’ve got the brochures from the printers,’ Sophia Grenborg said. ‘I know you’ve gone home, but I’m guessing you want to see them straight away.’
It was like champagne corks going off in his brain.
‘God, thanks so much for calling,’ Thomas said. ‘I’d love to see them. Can you courier a few home to me, Hantverkargatan?’
He went back to the kitchen and opened the window to air the room and get rid of the smell of fish.
‘Aha,’ Sophia said distractedly, as though she was writing something down. ‘On Kungsholmen, isn’t it?’
He told her the door-code so the courier could get in.
‘They just rang from the department,’ she went on, ‘Cramne’s wondering if we can bring forward the evening meeting and do it tomorrow instead.’
Thomas stopped, looking down into the back yard. He’d miss his tennis.
‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘My wife’s away, back tomorrow afternoon. Next Monday would be much better.’
‘He was pretty insistent that Monday didn’t work for him,’ Sophia said. ‘Do you want us to go ahead without you?’
The thought of being left out made him speechless at first, then offended.
‘No,’ he said quickly, ‘no, that’s all right. Annika should be back soon after five, so seven o’clock will be fine . . .’
‘Okay, I’ll pass that on. See you tomorrow evening . . .’
He sat down, still clutching the mobile, the humming sound of the ventilator in the back yard filtering gently through the gap in the window.
The department, again. This new project was a real stroke of luck. After the investigation into the question of regional representation, which had been a huge success, he had pretty much been able to take his pick among the new jobs at the Association. It had been Annika who had suggested he look into threats to politicians. There had been other, more prestigious areas that he could have taken over, but she had seen the bigger picture.
‘You want to move on,’ she had said in her usual unsentimental way. ‘Why piss about with some pretentious project at the Association if you’ve got a chance to make a load of good contacts in the wider world?’
So he had opted for social openness and access to politicians, and the threat inherent in this.
There was a cold draught around his feet. He got up and closed the window.
The reason behind the project was a survey that had shown one in four local authority heads and one in five committee chairs had suffered either violence or the threat of violence in the course of their political
activity. The threats were mostly made by individuals, but threats from racist or xenophobic groups were also relatively common. The results of the survey led to the formation of a high-powered group to investigate threats and violence aimed at politicians.
He sat down heavily on his chair, thought about picking up the paper again but decided against it.
The project had no great status within the Association, and several eyebrows had been raised when he’d chosen that one. The task of the group was to promote an open and democratic society and to come up with suggestions for how elected representatives should behave in threatening situations. Amongst other things, they were supposed to develop a training course, and hold regional conferences in association with the Office for Integration and the Committee for Living History.
He and Sophia from the Federation of County Councils were the convenors, and even though the project had only been running for a couple of months he knew he had made the right choice. The support they had received from the Justice Ministry so far had been fantastic. His dream of getting a government job before he was forty no longer seemed impossible.
Suddenly his mobile started to vibrate in his hand again. He answered before it had time to ring.
‘You ought to be here,’ Annika said. ‘I’m driving past the West Checkpoint of the steelworks in Svartöstaden outside Luleå, and it’s so beautiful. I’m opening the window now, can you hear the noise?’
Thomas leaned back and closed his eyes, hearing nothing but the noise of a bad line established by a Swedish-American capitalist.
‘The steelworks?’ he said. ‘I thought you were going to the airbase?’
‘Yep, I’ve been there, but I met a young lad who—’
‘But you’ll make it okay?’
‘Make what?’
He had no answer. In the gap between them he really could hear the noise in the background, some sort of low rumbling. He felt the distance between them like a dead weight.
‘I miss you,’ he said quietly.
‘What did you say?’ she yelled above the noise.
He took a quick, silent breath.
‘How are you, Annika?’ he asked.
‘Really good,’ she replied, too quickly and too firmly. ‘Have you eaten?’
‘It’s in the oven.’
‘Why don’t you do it in the microwave? I put them—’
‘I know,’ he interrupted. ‘Can I call you later? I’m in the middle of things here right now . . .’
Then he was sitting there again holding his mobile, feeling an irrational anxiety that threatened to turn into anger.
He didn’t like Annika going away, it was as simple as that. She didn’t deal with it well. But when he raised the subject with her she became cold and dismissive. He wanted her here beside him so he could make sure everything was all right, that she was safe and happy.
After that terrible Christmas, once the worst of the attention had died down, everything had seemed pretty good. Annika had been quiet and pale, but okay. She’d spent a lot of time playing with the children, singing and dancing with them, cutting and gluing. She’d spent a lot of time on the new residents’ association, and on a small extension to the kitchen that they could have done now that they’d bought the freehold on the flat. The thought of the bargain they had got, buying the flat for less than half the market price, made her childishly excited, but
then she had always been broke. He had tried to regard the purchase more soberly, aware that money came and went. Annika never let him forget that he’d lost his last savings on shares.
He glanced at the oven, wondering if the food was hot yet, but made no move to take it out.
When Annika started work again she seemed to slip out of reach more and more, becoming distant, unknown. She would stop in the middle of a conversation, her mouth open, eyes staring in horror. If he asked what was wrong she would look at him like she’d never seen him before. It gave him goosebumps.
‘Daddy, I can’t get the computer to work.’
‘Try turning it off and on again, then I’ll come and look.’
Suddenly he felt quite powerless. He glanced one last time at the paper, realizing that another day of journalistic effort was about to go straight in the recycling. With limbs heavy as lead he lay the table, threw the children’s dirty overalls in the washing machine, made a salad and showed Kalle how to restart the computer.
Just as they were sitting down to eat, the courier arrived with the brochures they were going to discuss and evaluate the following evening.
While the children chattered and made a mess he read through the advice on how threatened politicians should behave. All the way through, and then once more.
Then he thought about Sophia.
Annika switched off the car engine outside the darkened door of the
Norrland News
. The yellow streetlamps threw an oblique light on the dashboard.
The time she had spent at home had given Thomas space which he had soon made his own. In three months he had got used to total service from her, with the children as accessories; his evenings free for tennis and work meetings, weekends for hunting and hockey trips. Since she had started work again, she was still doing most of the work at home. He criticized her for working, under the pretext that she needed to rest.