by C S Duffy
‘Would you like a coffee?’
I nodded and she went behind the bar to fire up the gleaming coffee machine. ‘I am so happy you got in touch. I can’t believe you worked at almost every club in London that I loved, I am so jealous. My friends and I would save up for the cheapest flight over as often as we could. We wouldn’t even get a hotel because we would just dance all night then sit in a café in Soho drinking coffee until we had to go to the airport. It was wonderful, except when the hangover began on the coach about halfway to Luton. Then I would want to die.’
‘Everyone feels that ways about coaches to Luton, even when stone cold sober,’ I smiled as she handed me a coffee.
‘So what sort of thing were you thinking about doing here? I don’t exactly have a job to offer you, but perhaps we could put something together. Do you have an idea?’
In my email to her that morning, I’d hinted vaguely about wanting to start a London-style club night — whatever that meant — in Stockholm. I stalled for time by taking a sip of my coffee, then distracted her with some chat about DJs and promoters I was sure she would have heard of. She turned out to be promisingly amenable to gossip.
We exchanged stories of bar staff overcharging drunk customers then pocketing the difference, DJs who charge a fortune then rock up and play a playlist off their phone, and celebrities who demand an extra VIP area inside the VIP area, in case anyone less famous than them tries to talk to them. Linda told me about the extremely famous Swedish actor who was so jet lagged when he showed up at her club that he fell asleep on a sofa next to the dance floor, dead to the world, spread eagled, snoring and drooling in front of a hundred fascinated people. She’d had to spend the whole night running around confiscating people’s phones so that pictures weren’t leaked.
‘I was just reading something about a Stockholm DJ this week,’ I said finally, when I’d finished telling her about the famously happily married DJ who used to demand groupies blew him under the decks while he was playing. ‘She drowned or something, I think. Sounded awful. You didn’t know her, did you?’
‘Sanna,’ Linda said, with a sad smile that actually reached her eyes. ‘Yes, she was a very good friend. I don’t know if you knew, but she was missing for many months,. We didn’t really hold out any hope of her being okay any more, but it was still a shock.’
‘Such a tragedy,’ I murmured. ‘I’ve never thought of kayaking as an extreme sport, but I suppose you never know the minute.’
‘It was not an accident,’ said Linda, her voice hard suddenly.
‘Oh shit, I’m sorry — I thought I read —’
‘No, I’m sorry. It’s not your fault he got away with it.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Her boyfriend killed her. Staged it to look like an accident. He did it well enough that there is no evidence for the police to charge him with, but that does not make him innocent.’
‘How could you be sure, then?’ I made a production out of finishing my coffee, praying she couldn’t hear my heart thudding in my chest.
‘He drugged her. Gave her some type of sedative that made her pass out and fall into the water. He was a nurse. He had access to those sorts of drugs, would know exactly how to use them.’
‘That’s hardly proof he —’
‘I never met the guy, but I have friends who knew them together and he was a fucking weirdo. Jealous, insecure. She was way out of his league and he knew it. She had met someone new, and was going to dump him that weekend. She told me the Friday night before she left. He must have snapped, made sure she could never leave him.’
‘You can’t possibly —’
‘He might have got away with it for now, but they will get him sooner or later. Or,’ she shrugged, her eyes cold and hard, ‘he will do it again.’
Ten minutes later, I didn’t realise how badly my hands were shaking until I fumbled for my purse on the bus and dropped it twice. The driver was glaring daggers at me by the time I finally managed to tap my Travelcard on the machine, and he pulled out so fast I nearly went flying.
Obviously, Linda Andersson had no idea what she was talking about. The bus swung around Kungsträdgården and the sparkling waters of Stockholm’s harbour came in to view. She said herself she hadn’t even met Johan. She didn’t know him from Adam, and whoever else claimed they ‘knew them together’ were clearly talking out of their arse. Johan was a lot of things — grumpy and uncommunicative sprang to mind — but insecure and jealous?
No.
Capable of murdering a woman rather than have her chuck him after a summer fling? Absolutely not.
Definitely not.
The day after we met, I was already basically head over heels in love with him, but I was trying to do the cool girl thing, so at some point in the afternoon I left him dozing in the beach hut and wandered back out to the third day of the Full Moon Party. I ran into some people I knew from the hostel I’d been staying at the week before, one thing led to another, and the next thing I knew, was not in a state to operate heavy machinery. After a while I lost track of my friends, and was dancing by myself at the edge of the crowd when I heard an Australian guy slur, ‘Meredith?’
Which I ignored, on account of not being Meredith.
‘So this is where you escaped to.’
The voice was suddenly a lot closer. Squinting in the darkness, I could just make out a tallish guy wearing not much other than one of those luminous necklaces, thick dirty blond hair in dreds. He was staring at me, wobbling a bit — he definitely shouldn’t be operating heavy machinery either — and he appeared to be pissed off with me. It’s hardly unheard of for someone I don’t know to be pissed off with me, so I asked him what the problem was.
He appeared to be under the impression that my name was Meredith, that I was from California, and that he had bought me four drinks that evening which he appeared to believe that entitled him to my company. For some reason, I chose to deal with this by putting on a mad Valley Girl accent in an attempt to prove I was not, in fact, remotely American. This succeeded in both confusing him and irritating him further. He got shirty and I lost patience, pointing out that four drinks entitled him to precisely nothing, regardless of whether or not I was Meredith. Which, also, I still wasn’t.
He started to shout and at one point grabbed my arm and tried to yank me closer, then Johan flew out of the darkness and let’s just say told the Aussie to leave me alone, on no uncertain terms. This was met with much the reaction you would expect, and the two of them ended up knocking over a little stall selling energising juices like the pair of brawling idiots they were. I helped the Thai sisters who ran the stall to clean up, and bought all the juices Johan and the other halfwit had spilled. By the time I was finished, the Aussie guy’s mates had dragged him off and Johan was sitting on the sand looking sheepish.
As well he should.
So, I’ve seen him be a hot headed fuckwit on more than one occasion. There was no denying the guy had a temper, and a moronic one at that. I’ve never said he was perfect, but the guy Linda described — that just wasn’t Johan.
Probably someone spotted him and Sanna having a drunken argument once upon a time, or maybe Sanna had a bit of a moan about him being a pain in the arse and they’d got the wrong end of the stick. One whisper turned into another, and suddenly it was established fact Johan was a nasty piece of work. I’ve seen it happen so many times. Hell, I’ve probably contributed to it my fair share of times.
None of it meant anything. None of them knew Johan like I did.
The bus swung around Slussen and started to climb the hill towards Johan’s flat. As Stockholm’s harbour came into view, bathed in the dusky pink of sunset, a thought struck me and suddenly my breath caught in my throat.
What if it wasn’t idle gossip that took a dangerous turn when Sanna drowned? What if it suited someone very well for people to believe that Sanna’s boyfriend was jealous and prone to violence?
Who was Sanna was about to dump Johan for?
/> Gustav Lindström and all his pecs popped into my mind.
For fuck’s sake, Sanna.
18
The smell hit me as I was kicking off my shoes. Brick Lane. Spices. Don’t ask me to be more specific than that, my idea of cooking is grating cheese over baked beans, but whatever it was, it was heavenly.
Johan was in the kitchen, wearing an actual apron over his jeans and baby blue T shirt. He was leaning over a huge, steaming pot on the stove, frowning as he measured out a precise teaspoon of a fiery red spice.
‘You said you missed curry,’ he said as I came up behind him and slipped my arms around his waist. I leaned my head between his shoulder blades, felt the muscles of his back ripple beneath my cheek as he stirred the burbling mixture. He put the lid on the pot then turned around in my arms and kissed the top of my head. We stood there a moment, just hugging, and I felt relief flood through me. This was my Johan.
His T shirt was soft and smelled clean and fresh, of washing powder scented with a summer’s day. He wrapped one arm around my waist, holding me close, and his other hand toyed with my hair, winding a tendril round and round his finger in the way he knew sent shivers down my spine. I rubbed his back and his every muscle felt so achingly familiar it brought a lump to my throat.
‘How was your day?’ he asked into my hair, and I flinched, guilt unfurling in my stomach. I pulled away and got wine glasses down from the shelf, poured the red that was sitting on the counter behind him. ‘Do you think you got the job?’
Right. Yes. I’d told him I had an interview.
‘Hard to tell,’ I said with what I hoped looked like a hopeful smile as I handed him his wine glass. ‘Fingers crossed.’
‘I was surprised anyone was interviewing in summer,’ he said. I looked up sharply, but there was no suspicion in his eyes. ‘Most offices are now almost closed until summer.’
‘Yeah, they — they mentioned that. It’s something to do with it being freelance, it’s a bit more irregular,’ I muttered, as though this made a blind bit of sense.
‘Well, do not worry if it is not right for you,’ he said. ‘There is no hurry.’
‘My savings aren’t going to last forever. There’s the small matter of earning money to pay for shit.’
‘I pay for this apartment whether you are here or not. You don’t even eat much,’ he grinned.
That wasn’t strictly true. It was just that, left to my own devices, I could quite cheerfully exist on cereal and the odd takeaway, whereas Johan was a stickler for cooking and eating actual meals like some kind of grown up.
‘I’m going to pay my way, Johan,’ I said firmly, ‘I’ve always paid my way.’
‘Of course.’ He leaned over to plant a soft kiss on my lips which I didn’t deserve. ‘I am only saying you don’t need to rush it. Wait for the right job. It is better I pay for the apartment for two or three months more and you find work that makes you happy.’ He shrugged. ‘If that’s what you want. It’s up to you.’
‘Well, we’ll see,’ I said, an uncomfortable feeling prickling over me, because here I was arguing with him and I hadn’t applied for a single job yet.
‘It’s not as though you have just been sitting around relaxing,’ he added, turning around to stir the pot again. I hopped up to sit on the kitchen counter next to the stove, watched him frowning in concentration as he tasted the mixture then rummaged amongst his spice jars for the one he wanted. ‘Mia told me you went to the memorial.’
Mia. Shit. I’d meant to ask her not to say anything to Johan, and I’d clean forgotten.
‘Johan —’ I began, with zero idea of what to say next.
‘It means to much, that you are trying to help me. I thought —’ his voice wavered a tiny bit then, and he stared into the curry, as though stirring took an inordinate amount of focus. ‘I have been waiting for you to say that you were leaving. Going back to London. I would understand. I would not blame you.’
‘Bugger right off.’
He looked up with a surprised grin. ‘What?’
‘Get lost, if you think you’re getting rid of me that easily. Especially not now you’ve told me it’s a cushty gig as a lady of leisure.’
He chuckled and I leaned over and kissed his shoulder.
‘But really, I don’t know if even ‘thank you’ is enough to say —’
‘Tell you what, you can thank me with a gorgeous curry any time you like.’
He smiled, but I could see in his eyes there was something more, and my stomach twisted with anticipation. Had he found out I’d spoken to Linda, too? Did he know what that shower of Östermalm arseholes were saying about him?
‘I am going to get therapy,’ he said, levelling off a teaspoon of what looked like hot chocolate powder. ‘I have known for many years that I need to, but I — I think I hoped maybe I would mellow in my old age.’ He gave a slightly bitter smile. ‘I have not.’
‘Because of the T-bana fight?’
He nodded, frowned at the curry.
‘I think that would be a really good idea,’ I said softly, reaching over to stroke his cheek with my thumb. He turned and kissed the palm of my hand. ‘And if you want to — I mean, you don’t have to, but if you want to talk to me too, I’m here.’
He nodded, stirred the curry some more.
‘It is not a very interesting story,’ he said finally. ‘Quite cliché. My father liked to shout with his fists when he was drunk.’ Johan shrugged, but there was a tension I could see in his jaw that tore at my heart. ‘It would get bad, my mother would throw him out, then he would come back and it would be okay until the next time. He didn’t hit us, usually. He would smash up furniture, would be brought home by police after bar fights.’ Johan gave a bitter smile. ‘Does that sound familiar?’
I didn’t know what to say, so I just took his hand, held it tight.
‘What happened to him?’ I asked softly.
‘He was hit by a car in the freeway that runs through a tunnel under the island. A hit and run. How he got down there, who knows, there’s no pedestrian access. He had lost his wallet so he sat in the morgue for three days until my mother reported him missing. I was seven.’
‘Oh Johan.’ I put my arms around him, feeling helpless. He hugged me back, but he didn’t quite melt into me, the tension in his spine holding him back. It crossed my mind that it must be lonely being such a big guy. I loved it when we snuggled on the couch and I sat between his legs, wrapped in his arms, completely encapsulated by him. It didn’t seem fair I couldn’t do the same to him.
‘It is fine,’ he said finally, pulling back. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘It is life. I just hoped I would not turn out to be so much his son.’
‘You’re not, though,’ I said firmly. ‘For one thing, you’re not nearly as bad, and more importantly, you’re getting help. That makes all the difference. That makes you brave, and brilliant, and — I’m really proud of you.’
‘I think the curry is ready.’
‘Then I am proud of you and also hungry.’
He laughed and I carried our wine to the little table in the living room while he dished up.
After we’d eaten the truly spectacular meal and I’d moaned and groaned and held my stomach in ecstasy, going way over the top to make him laugh, we sat at the table for a while. My feet were in his lap and he was rubbing them absentmindedly as I poured the last of the red into our glasses. The candles on the table were the only light in the room, and it was almost dark outside. The candlelight flickered over Johan’s face as he smiled over at me.
He looked so warm and kind and Johan that a part of me wanted to take a picture, march right over to that shitty club and shove it in Linda Andersson’s face then punch her lights out.
Not that I had the first clue of how a person punches someone’s lights out, I didn’t even have siblings to practice on. The only person I’d ever tried to whack was a guy who felt me up on Trafalgar Square at midnight on New Year’s Eve once upon a time. I’d w
hirled around and swung for him, but had only succeeded in sort of thumping his shoulder and as he was wearing a thick puffa jacket I’d might as well have punched a pillow. It was frankly embarrassing for both of us, though I felt a bit better after I’d emptied a bottle of Smirnoff Ice on his head.
Maybe I should empty a bottle of Smirnoff Ice on Linda Andersson’s head.
‘I love you,’ Johan said, and little fireworks of joy exploded deep inside me. I shifted my foot, and grinned as I heard his breath catch in his throat. I started to massage with my toes. He ran his hand lightly up my other calf, stroking that little sensitive spot behind my knee and I gasped, started to move my toes faster. He muttered something breathlessly in Swedish and I grinned, because I always loved the moment all his English flew out of his head.
I slipped off my seat and straddled him, replacing my toes with my hips as he gripped my arse. I kissed him deeply, felt his fingers fumble under my shirt and run lightly over my tummy as my tongue found his. He slid the fabric of my bra aside with his thumb and I moaned.
And then there was a bang at the door.
‘Ignore it,’ I whispered, slipping my hand between us to undo his jeans.
The banging continued, loud, urgent.
‘Fuu-uck,’ he muttered. His English was back.
I sighed in frustration and got up, smoothing my skirt and straightening my bra as Johan answered the door.
It was Liv. She tossed the briefest smile in my direction as she unleashed a flow of rapid Swedish at Johan, and I mentally added ‘sense of timing’ to the list of things I didn’t like about her. Johan led her over to the sofa with an apologetic look at me, as I cleared the table with a couple more bangs and crashes than were strictly necessary.
19
‘Oh my god I would have strangled her with my bare hands,’ Maddie laughed the next day as I wound up my tirade on Liv’s general awfulness with the finale of her interruption the night before.
‘She’s lucky I didn’t.’