by Jens Lapidus
Jossan might have noticed that Emelie asked the bartender for the “same again” when they ordered for a second time—though just by looking at her drink, you couldn’t tell that it was nonalcoholic. Maybe she should just talk to Josephine, tell her everything. Katja’s murder, the attack on Mats, the network, and, above all, the child growing in her belly. Who the father was. Or maybe she should see a psychologist, because she was going to need to release the pressure sometime soon—she could feel it. There was only one problem: she didn’t know how to talk. It had never been her thing—while all of her girlfriends wanted nothing more than to talk things over, to psychologize, play hobby therapist with one another, Emelie usually chose different topics. It wasn’t that she didn’t reflect on herself, it was just that she could never find the right words.
Or maybe she should drop it all. Drop the murder. Drop the fact that at least ten men had abused Katja and others without ever being arrested or brought to justice. Drop any possible leads from Mats Emanuelsson. Everything would go back to normal. No concerns. No anxiety. No fear.
Jossan elbowed her. “Listen, Emelie, I just want you to know that whatever it is that’s bothering you, I’m here. If you want to talk about it.”
Emelie slowly swirled her straw in her drink. Josephine was her best friend.
“Oh, look,” her friend suddenly said, in a completely different tone. She pointed toward the entrance. “Your old bosses.”
Emelie turned around. Magnus Hassel and a couple of other partners from Leijon had just stepped inside. She turned her face to the wall and hoped they wouldn’t see her.
“They’re going into the restaurant,” said Jossan.
“Good, I really don’t have the energy to talk to them.”
Josephine went off to the restroom.
* * *
—
A few days earlier, Oliver had called the office and asked to speak to Emelie. When she phoned him back, he had begged her to meet him again. She eventually agreed, initially because she thought she wanted to stop his nagging—but in truth, it was mostly because she was curious. She wanted to know more about Katja and Adam. In line with Swedish regulations, he was still being held in custody—there was no upper limit to how long someone could be denied their freedom before trial.
“Nice to have you visiting us,” Anneli had joked when she went into the office. She had nodded in the direction of the visitor’s chairs. “There’s someone waiting for you.” Oliver was more than an hour and a half early. Emelie had been planning to go through some mail before he arrived, but she realized she may as well speak to him right away; she wouldn’t be able to relax with him waiting outside. She had gone over to him and held out a hand. “Hi, Oliver, welcome.”
He got up. Avoided looking her in the eye. Avoided shaking her hand.
They went into her room. Oliver seemed slimmer than when they had last met, maybe that was why he didn’t shake her hand—he simply didn’t have the muscles, the strength. “Dad’s lawyer is no good,” he said.
Emelie had tried to catch his eye. “In what sense?”
“I’m never allowed to talk to Dad. I’ve called the police and the prison a thousand times, but they just say I have to take it up with his lawyer. But the lawyer doesn’t care about me.”
“I understand,” Emelie had said. She recognized that tactic, even if she did feel sorry for Adam’s son. Family members and relatives often thought that the lawyer was their representative, too—something that could lead to even the best of lawyers being overwhelmed by calls.
“I’m sorry,” she had said. “But it’s not my place to get involved. Your dad will have to bring it up with his lawyer himself. She isn’t your lawyer. And Adam isn’t my client. I think you understand.”
“Please, there must be something you can do?”
“Have you spoken to your father at all?”
“Once, a few weeks ago. There was a guard listening in on our conversation.”
Emelie hadn’t been able to hold back her curiosity. “What did he say?”
For the first time, Oliver had looked up. “He wants to get out.”
She turned away. She couldn’t ask any more questions like this to a thirteen-year-old boy; it was unethical. They had spoken for a few more minutes, Emelie still trying to convince Oliver that she was the wrong person to talk to. Eventually, she had said: “Okay, I can help you write a letter to your dad’s lawyer. That’s all.”
They had jotted down a few lines on her computer. She printed out the letter and he signed it. “But I can’t send it in one of my firm’s envelopes,” Emelie said. “You’ll have to post it yourself.”
Oliver’s hand had been shaking as he took the letter from her.
* * *
—
Why wasn’t Josephine coming back? Emelie feared the worst—that she had taken a detour through the restaurant to speak to her bosses. Then she saw something even more challenging: Magnus Hassel was coming toward her. She really didn’t have the energy to talk to him right now, particularly not without Josephine. She turned away again, praying he would pass her by, but five seconds later she felt a hand on her back.
Magnus was wearing a coat that was buttoned up to his chin and he was carrying a leather briefcase. “Nice to bump into you,” he said, sounding genuinely happy. “Are you here on your own?”
Somehow, it felt like he was standing too close. “No,” she said. “I’m here with Josephine.”
Magnus was standing unnaturally still, the way only drunk people do when they’re trying to look sober. “You’re brave, you know that, don’t you?”
Emelie wondered what he meant. Did he know something about the shooting in Oslo? Or did he mean something else? That she was digging around, doing research, trying to work out what had happened to Katja—was he aware of that? Or did he mean that she was sitting here, drinking, even though she was pregnant—could he know about that?
“What do you mean?” she asked.
Magnus placed an arm around her shoulder. “I mean that you’re brave, leaving us to do your own thing. Not many would take that leap.”
Emelie breathed out. “But I didn’t exactly choose to leave. You and Anders fired me, as you might remember.”
“That wasn’t quite what happened, Emelie. But it’s all history now. I like you, always have.” He squeezed her shoulder.
Emelie didn’t want to hear any more.
“Can I buy you a drink?” he asked.
Emelie really didn’t want to hear any more. She glanced over toward the restaurant and the restrooms, urging Josephine to reappear and save her.
“What about a martini?” Magnus insisted.
Emelie felt like a marble sculpture as she sat there. She couldn’t say a word.
“Come on,” said Magnus.
Emelie swirled the ice in her otherwise empty glass.
“Or maybe you want to follow me somewhere else?”
She glanced toward the exit and the restrooms.
“Jesus, why’re you so tense?”
She should get up and leave, but it was like the hand on her shoulder weighed ten tons.
“Leave her be.”
Emelie turned around. It was Anders Henriksson.
“She doesn’t need to be dealing with clingy old men like you,” Anders said, trying to make it sound like a joke. “What a state you’re in.”
Magnus was swaying almost imperceptibly. He seemed to be holding his bag tight. Emelie seized the opportunity. “Good night, then,” she said, nodding first to Anders and then to Magnus. She walked toward the curtain-covered exit. She would have to explain to Jossan tomorrow.
In the light of the bar, she could make out the shapes of Magnus and Anders. Anders in a loose suit. Magnus in his coat, clutching his briefcase.
She pushed the curtain to one side
. Her head was spinning.
Coat and briefcase. Magnus had brought his briefcase over to her.
Just like that, something clicked in Emelie’s mind. A thought had appeared, and she was going to have to look into it. Katja’s killer—the answer might be much simpler than they thought. Much more difficult, too.
32
Roksana had been in Tehran for four days now, but it felt more like four months. She had never experienced anything like it. It wasn’t that Etty, Val, and Leila weren’t treating her like a member of the family, because they really were. Etty had even insisted that she go over to her grandmother’s place, in the building next door, at least twice a day, and complained that she was using the wrong air-conditioning setting as though Roksana were her own daughter. Nor was it that Velenjak wasn’t an insanely nice area, full of huge parks, handsome houses, and relatively relaxed girls with chic, pushed-back shawls and pants as tight as workout leggings. It was something else—a sense of belonging, of having a base, of living an uncomplicated life with people who accepted her as she was—who didn’t demand top grades or prestigious jobs or yell for ketamine the whole time. But within that feeling, there was also a hint of something else. Imagine if this was how life could have been—imagine if Mom and Dad had never had to run, never had to emigrate?
Still, Roksana had a job to do here: something she had to get done. Nothing lasted forever. She would be going back to Stockholm soon.
Val and his friend Jahan drove her around town. Along the wide highways, past the huge Khomeini Mausoleum and the grand mosques, through the melting pot of Tehran’s lower districts, by the small children selling chewing gum and flowers, and alongside the crazy murals—there was one in particular that caught Roksana’s eye: the Statue of Liberty depicted as a naked skeleton. Everything going on in the United States right now was crazy—but the strange portrait still gave her the creeps.
The air became cleaner as they rose toward Tehran’s more northerly parts—“the good neighborhoods,” as her father had described them, where the lush trees stooped over the streets, leaning in like they consciously wanted to provide shade for the yellow taxis, the Porsches, and the death-defying Vespa drivers.
On her first day, Dad’s cousins and Roksana’s second cousins had come to visit. The next day, her father’s aunt had come over. They all wanted to know when Mom, Dad, and Caspar would be coming to Iran. They ate chunks of watermelon and enjoyed a long dinner around the dark dining table in the middle of the house. Her aunt Etty had talked about working in Paris in her youth—“at night, I took the Champs-Elysées by storm”—and laughed so loudly that there had to be a risk of the neighbors calling the morality police, thinking she was drunk. “Yes, you have to promise us, Roksana, take us out in Stockholm one night when we come to visit. Your father says you party even more than Val.”
The houses were large, surrounded by walls and gates, but they had pools out back. In certain areas, the buildings rose up into the air, practically skyscrapers reaching the mountaintops—the view down must be astounding. There were cranes everywhere. Val smiled: “That’s how we make our money. The prices have tripled in just seven years. Lots of places in town have grown by seventy, eighty percent; they’re taking shape now, taking character, like a child growing up.”
Roksana knew the background. Val and Leila’s father, Omid, had previously worked for the town planning office, but had started to buy up land through his former colleagues during the nineties. The money, however, came from her aunt’s side of the family. Omid had died two years ago, but Etty continued to look after the property empire he had built up. Roksana couldn’t quite work out exactly what Val and Leila did.
“I help Mom,” Val claimed, but Roksana hadn’t seen him do anything but eat, play his electric guitar, cruise aimlessly in his absurdly large Range Rover, and sleep half the day away while she had been there. And ride—that was what Val loved doing most. Horse riding up in the mountains. It was the reason Roksana had come, after all—she had spotted his riding helmet and an idea had taken hold.
She had wondered how she should explain the details to him, but Val had sounded positive over Skype.
* * *
—
That evening, they were going to a party at Jahan’s. There was no telling what the guy’s crib usually looked like, because the apartment had been transformed for the party—a remake deluxe. He had hung huge drapes that created the feeling of rooms within rooms. In one area, there was an illuminated bar; in another, a DJ booth. Stroboscopes, disco balls, and spotlights hung from the ceiling. Roksana couldn’t see a single woman wearing a head scarf, and she even saw two guys who were topless—they had more tattoos on their chests than Billie and Z had combined. A few girls and guys were running around in swimwear, spraying water pistols at the warm guests. In the bar room, there was a thick rug and a circle of people passing a bong between themselves. Shahs of Sunset was playing on a laptop. Behind a curtain, a girl in a tiny shirt was making out with a guy with a mustache.
The bartender poured mojitos, but Roksana didn’t see him adding any alcohol. When she raised the glass to her lips, however, she could barely manage a sip—the cocktail was so strong. Val laughed. “They premixed everything, no bottles of booze visible.”
* * *
—
An hour and a half later, Roksana sat down on the huge rug. Her clothes were soaked. This party: she was trying and failing to work out how she would describe it to Z when she got home. All she knew was that she was filled with an energy she had never felt before, either with or without the Special K in her body. She didn’t recognize a single tune from the dance floor, hadn’t drunk more than two cocktails, hadn’t seen either Val or Leila in a while—but it didn’t matter. The night felt like it was practically tailor-made for her.
“How’s it going?”
Roksana turned around. It was Val. He sat down beside her, holding a modest shisha pipe in one hand.
“Great party,” Roksana said.
Val fiddled with the water pipe. “Yeah, it’s good. Jahan made an effort for once.”
Roksana smiled. Val took a long drag on the pipe. She could smell it now: sweet, floral, but also something else. “Are you smoking weed?”
“Yeah, what else?”
Music was spilling out of the room with the dance floor.
“I don’t know, I was just thinking that if the police came…”
“They won’t, not to a private party like this. And if they do, we’ll end up in a cell for a day or two, it’s happened to plenty of people before. You won’t miss your flight, don’t worry.”
Val passed the pipe to a guy sitting next to him. “People are under a lot of pressure here, so you’ve got to find a way to emigrate, even if it’s only spiritually.”
Emigrate, Roksana thought—she wondered whether Val also wanted to leave.
* * *
—
Two days later, she and Val were sitting beneath a pergola at the ranch. It was the hottest day since she had arrived. Everything had to go without a hitch now—this was what she had come for. Val had guaranteed that the amounts were large here, that there were several kilos in the cool room.
A guy with a mustache and a hat kept glancing over at them at regular intervals. “He’ll be here soon,” he said. “Busy day.”
Val hadn’t asked what Roksana wanted the medication for, but he had set up the meeting. They were waiting for one of Tehran’s premiere horse breeders, a man who also happened to be Aunt Etty’s former neighbor’s brother’s best friend. Mr. Isaawi.
The brick stable building was low, and Roksana could see magnificent horses being led in and out of it. Their hooves kicked up dust. There were openings in the wall in a few places, and she could see horses peering out of them, taking in the view.
“I rent a space here, along with over four hundred others,” Val explained. “Th
ose of us who are better off love riding, and that means you need your own animal.”
A bright white horse peered out of the opening closest to them. It turned its head and stared at her. It was beautiful, strong. She thought about her grandmother.
Roksana had visited her that morning. Whenever she had been over to her grandmother’s house before, her grandmother had either been in bed or sitting in front of the TV. The carer was usually cleaning or cooking, not that Roksana understood why she bothered with that kind of thing all the time; whenever Roksana had seen her grandmother at the dining table, she had never eaten more than a few bites, and her house was hardly dirty. But the carer hadn’t been there that morning, and her grandmother had been sitting on a bench in the garden behind the house. She was elegantly dressed, her blouse embroidered with gold and the moccasins on her feet featuring an emblem that looked like it belonged to some royal house.
“Roksana joonam,” she had said, sounding exactly like Dad. She patted the bench beside her. “Sit down.”
Roksana had done as she was told. “How are you today, Grandmother?”
“I am as I deserve to be. Too old, but I still like living. I understand you will be going back to Sweden soon?”
“Yes, the day after tomorrow.”
Whenever Etty had forced her to go over there before, her grandmother had barely said a word, just taken Roksana’s hand and squeezed it. But she had been different today. She talked about when she, Grandfather, Etty, and Dad had moved into the house forty years earlier. “Your father wasn’t like Val. He was always studying.” Then she had pointed to the flower bed and the purple flowers closest to them. “Look at those. I planted those over twenty-five years ago, and they still come every year. Do you know what they are?”
“Crocuses?”
Her grandmother had laughed. “Yes, but what type of crocus?”
“Crocus crocus?”