His profile stood out sharply against the car window. Annika swallowed and, turning her head, started to look in the opposite direction. Her cheeks were burning and there was a tingling sensation between her legs. The Karolinska Institute drifted past on the right, causing a twinge of panic: they would be home soon, he would be gone soon, she might never see him again.
‘How long have you lived in Vaxholm?’ she asked, a bit too breathlessly.
He sighed deeply, and for some reason this pleased her.
‘For ever,’ Thomas said.
Annika looked at his profile. Had a certain tenseness appeared around his mouth?
‘Sick of it?’ she asked.
Lingeringly, he looked at her.
‘Why do you ask?’
She looked straight ahead.
‘It’s not exactly Rock-and-roll City,’ she said. ‘It reminds me of where I come from, Hälleforsnäs.’
‘Doesn’t rock there much either?’
Annika took the plunge. ‘Are you married?’
‘It’s been twelve years.’
She looked at his profile again.
‘Must have robbed the cradle,’ she said.
Thomas laughed.
‘Suspicions of that kind were voiced at the time. Is this where you get off?’
Annika swallowed.
Shit.
‘Yes, this will be fine.’
He pressed down hard on the brakes, his gaze on the rear-view mirror, so Annika realized that he was watching the bus behind them. She got out of the car, took her bag and leaned back in through the door again.
‘Thanks for the ride.’
But Thomas wasn’t looking at her any more. His thoughts were elsewhere.
‘You’re welcome.’
A clicking and crackling noise was heard as the nurse wheeled the phone into Annika grandmother’s room.
‘Hello?’ Annika said.
Only static.
‘Gran?’
‘No, it’s Barbro.’
Not Mother, Barbro.
‘How’s she doing?’
‘Not too good. She’s asleep right now.’
Silence. Distance. An intense desire to bridge the gap arose.
‘I’ve been checking into nursing homes in Stockholm,’ Annika said. ‘There are several on Kungsholmen. . .’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ her mother said firmly, with a hard voice, not wanting to accept any bridges. ‘This has to be sorted out in her home district. I talked to a . . . this person today, and that’s what he said.’
New feelings flooded Annika’s system. Injustice. Irritation. Defeat.
‘Did you talk to someone at Social Services? Oh, Mother, I told you I wanted to be there for that.’
‘You spend your time in Stockholm. This needed to be taken care of right away.’
‘I’ll be there tomorrow. There’s something I have to do in the morning, then I’ll come.’
‘No, you don’t have to do that. Birgitta was here today. We can cope, you know.’
Annika squeezed her eyes shut, put her hand to her brow, and fought back the feelings of being unjustly left out. Rage muffled her voice.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
FRIDAY 2 NOVEMBER
I
n one motion, Thomas Samuelsson tore the plastic shroud off the suit, caught his finger on the sharp hook of the hanger and swore – fucking dry-cleaners! At the same time Eleonor was sighing over a pair of tights with a run in them.
‘Seventy-nine kronor down the drain,’ she said, tossing them in the waste-paper basket next to her bed.
‘Aren’t there cheaper brands?’ Thomas asked, sucking on his finger to avoid getting blood on his clothes.
‘Not with a shaping feature,’ his wife said as she broke open a new packet. ‘You do remember that Nisse and Ulrica are coming over tonight, don’t you?’
Thomas turned away and went into the bathroom to get a Band-Aid. For a few seconds he stared at his reflection in the mirror: the slicked-back hair, the shirt and tie, the cuff links. Wound a Band-Aid around his fingertip and went back into the bedroom. Eleonor was wriggling into a fresh pair of tights. They resisted being pulled up over her hips. He swallowed.
‘Do we really have to have guests tonight?’ he said. ‘I wish we could talk instead. We have a few things to sort out.’
‘Not right now, Thomas’ his wife said, pulling up the tights and forcing her stomach and her hips into their confining embrace.
He walked around the woman, embracing her from behind, cupping in each hand a breast encased in a push-up bra, and gently blew on the nape of her neck.
‘We could spend some time together,’ he murmured, ‘just the two of us. Have some wine, see a movie, talk.’
Eleonor removed herself from his grasp, then walked over to the closet to put on a white blouse and pull out a hanger with a black skirt.
‘We’ve planned this dinner party all week. Nisse and I are going to run through some aspects of the new project. You know we can’t discuss it at the bank.’
Thomas looked at her – how well he knew her. Of course she would object.
‘Eleonor,’ he said, ‘I’m really not in the mood for this. I’m tired and pretty fed up with things right now, and I think we need to talk.’
She continued to ignore his pleas and walked over to him without looking him in the eye.
‘Could you help me with this? Thanks.’
He took the necklace and fastened it around her neck. Then he let his hands caress her shoulders and hold on to her.
‘I’m serious,’ he said. ‘If you’re going to have another dinner for your colleagues tonight, I won’t be there. I’ll drive into Stockholm and eat out.’
Eleonor tore herself from his embrace and paced over to the closet, yanked out a pair of black pumps and stuffed them into a bag. When she looked up at Thomas her hair was mussed and her face was flushed, two red spots on her cheekbones.
‘You had better get your act together,’ she snapped. ‘Don’t you realize that you aren’t free to come and go as you please? This household consists of two people – we both have to make things work.’
‘That’s exactly my point,’ Thomas countered heatedly. ‘We’re a couple, but why do you have all the power and I have all the responsibilities?’
Eleonor put on her suit jacket and went out into the hallway.
‘That was a tremendously unfair thing to say,’ she told him tersely.
Thomas remained in the master bedroom, their bedroom, her parents’ bedroom.
Damn it all to hell.
He wasn’t going to give in this time.
‘Stop acting like you’re so fucking superior,’ he yelled, running after Eleonor, catching her by the front door and grabbing her by the arm.
‘Take your hands off me!’ she screamed, yanking her arm away. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
Thomas was breathing hard and his hair was in his eyes.
‘I want to move,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to live in this house any more.’
Eleonor looked at him, more frightened than angry.
‘You don’t know what you want,’ she said, trying to pull away.
‘Yes, I do,’ he said in an eager voice. ‘I know exactly what I want. I want us to buy an apartment in Stockholm, or a house over at Äppelviken or Stocksund. You’d like it there.’
He went up to her, hugged her, inhaling the fragrance of her perfume through her hair.
‘I want to have a new job, maybe for the county council, the Association of Local Authorities, some consultant company, or some department of state. I know you want to stay here, but I’m feeling suffocated. Eleonor, I’m dying out here . . .’
She pushed him away, hurt and close to tears.
‘You look down on me for liking it here. You think I’m not ambitious, that I’m lazy.’
With both hands Thomas raked back his hair.
‘No,’ he protested, ‘it’s the other way around, I envy you. I wish I was as centred as you, I wish I was satisfied with what we have.’
Eleanor wiped the corners of her eyes, her voice muffled.
‘You’re so ridiculously immature and spoiled that you would throw away everything we have together, everything we’ve worked for all these years.’
She turned away, heading for the door. He called after her, to her black Armani-clad back.
‘That’s not true – I don’t want to throw anything away, I want to move on. We could live in Stockholm, I could get a new job. You could commute and maybe you’d like to try a new job later on too . . .’
She pulled on her coat and he saw her hands tremble as they buttoned it up.
‘My life is here. I love this town.
You
get another job and start commuting, if what you need is a change.’
Thomas was stunned. The thought hadn’t occurred to him.
Of course he could get a new job somewhere else. He wouldn’t have to move. He could commute, maybe get a small flat in Stockholm and stay there some nights.
The door closed behind Eleanor with a well-oiled click. Loneliness enveloped Thomas like a dusty blanket, heavy and suffocating.
What the hell was he doing?
The sound pierced Annika’s consciousness. Her eyes were sleepy and gritty. She picked up the phone without lifting her head from the pillow.
‘Something terrible has happened!’ a voice cried out.
Annika sat up, her heart pounding.
‘Gran? Does this have something to do with my grandmother?’
‘It’s me – Mia, Mia Eriksson. A woman has disappeared. She said she would tell the council everything and Rebecka went berserk.’
Annika rubbed her forehead and sank back against the pillows in relief. It was all right, everything would be fine.
‘What happened?’
‘There was quite a ruckus here yesterday, so I wanted to call you and tell you about it. It’s important.’
Annika felt irritation building up in her head.
‘How does this concern me?’
‘The woman said she knew you, that you had recommended Paradise. Her name is Aida Begovic, she comes from Bijelina in Bosnia.’
Annika shut her eyes, a wave of heat flooding her face.
This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening.
‘What’s happened to Aida?’ she managed to say, her face flushed and throbbing.
‘She said she would tell the council where she lived that the set-up was a fraud, and then Rebecka shouted that she had better watch her step, because Rebecka knew who was after her. That was last night and now Aida’s gone!’
Mia began to cry. Annika shook her head in an attempt to think straight.
‘Hang on,’ she said. ‘Take it easy. Maybe it’s not that bad. Aida might just be out shopping or something like that.’
‘You don’t know Rebecka,’ Mia Eriksson said breathlessly. ‘She told me something, in confidence. That she’ll kill whoever betrays her.’
Annika felt a chill sweep over her.
‘No,’ she said, ‘that’s all talk. Rebecka is full of shit, but she’s not a killer. Don’t get paranoid.’
‘She’s got a gun,’ Mia said. ‘I’ve seen it. A handgun.’
Rage took hold of Annika, forcing her to sit up in bed again.
‘Don’t you realize that she’s only trying to scare you? She wants to make sure that no one will tell anyone about her scam.’
Mia Eriksson wasn’t at all convinced.
‘We’re leaving – today. I’m not going to set foot in this place again.’
‘Where will you be going?’
The woman on the other end of the line hesitated.
‘Away from here. We’ve found a cottage way out in the woods.’
Annika understood: last night she had read through Mia Eriksson’s files and she knew why they never let anyone know their whereabouts.
They were silent for a while, each at their own end of the line.
‘I’ll continue to dig for dirt on Paradise,’ Annika promised.
‘Don’t trust Rebecka,’ Mia countered.
Annika sighed.
‘Good luck.’
‘Write only what you can corroborate,’ Mai Eriksson said.
Silence crept up on Annika after she had hung up the phone, the curtains swayed, the shadows danced. Paradise wouldn’t release its hold on her.
The mail, pushed through the slot in her front door, landed on the floor with a thud. Gratefully she got out of bed, brought the letters back with her and opened them when she reached the lavatory downstairs. A gas bill. An advertisement for a book club. An invitation to a junior high school reunion.
‘I’d rather die,’ Annika murmured to herself and stuffed everything but the bill into the bin for sanitary napkins.
She had to go to the office.
Eva-Britt Qvist was at her desk, sorting piles of papers.
‘Did that list turn up?’
The secretary looked up at Annika.
‘Those sources of yours don’t seem to be all that reliable,’ she said.
Annika stifled a tart retort and smiled instead.
‘Could you possibly put it in my in-box if it does turn up?’
Without waiting for a reply, she turned away.
Sit on your fucking fax machine, you broody old hen.
She logged on to PubReg.
‘You do know that there’s a charge for every item you look up, don’t you?’ Eva-Britt Qvist called out from her desk.
Annika got up and went over to the secretary’s desk, put her hands on the stack of papers there and leaned closer to the woman.
‘Do you think that I’m here just to spite you?’ she asked. ‘Or could it be that I’m simply trying to do my job, just like you?’
Eva-Britt leaned back, not quite following her and blinking indignantly.
‘I’m responsible for the PubReg, I was just reminding you.’
‘You aren’t accountable for the budget, are you? That’s Sjölander’s job.’
Two red spots began to burn on the woman’s plump cheeks.
‘I’m pretty busy,’ she said. ‘I have some calls to make.’
Annika returned to the computer, clenching her hands tight to make them stop shaking. Why did she always have to have the last word? Why couldn’t she be more easygoing?
She sat down, her back to the secretary, picked up her notes and squeezed her eyes shut in order to concentrate. Where should she start?
She entered the command F8, tried Rebecka’s name again and got back ‘Protected identity’.
A deep sigh. Why did she even bother?
She decided to switch to F2 and use the personal ID number she had. She entered Rebecka’s digits and the machine whirred and processed.
The message was the same: ‘Protected identity’.
She moved on to F7, historical data, and entered the ID number again. Whir, process: Nordin, Ingrid Agneta.