Lifetime

by Liza Marklund

  Maybe this is the way to live, close to nature.

  But she knew she’d get cabin-fever within a week.

  ‘Mum, I caught him!’

  Kalle had managed to get his arm round the neck of Berit’s good-natured old Labrador. They were rolling around on the grass together, and Annika could see that her boy’s new clothes were going to have permanent grass-stains. ‘Don’t be too rough!’ she called. ‘And the dog’s a she!’

  Berit was coming towards her, a mug in one hand and Annika’s mobile in the other. ‘Did you sleep well?’

  Annika tried to smile. ‘Sort of. Funny dreams.’

  Berit sat down on the steps. ‘About the fire?’

  ‘About …’ Annika stopped herself. She hadn’t told Berit that Thomas had been unfaithful. She had been tormented by macabre nightmares about Sophia Grenborg for months now; afterwards she woke up breathless and in a cold sweat.

  ‘There’s something wrong with Thord’s old charger,’ Berit said, ‘so I’m not sure how full the battery is.’ She put the phone down on the porch.

  Annika sat next to her and looked out over the meadow. ‘You’ve got a lovely place here,’ she said.

  Berit screwed up her eyes against the reflection of the sun on the lake. ‘This was the last chance for me and Thord,’ she said. ‘We grabbed it, and it worked out.’

  Annika followed her gaze towards the water. ‘How so?’

  Berit glanced at Annika with a little smile. ‘I had an affair,’ she said, and Annika gasped.

  Berit? An affair?

  ‘I got very fond of another man,’ Berit went on, ‘but of course it was just an illusion. I fell in love with love itself. It was a great feeling – that sparkle again, being head over heels …’ She laughed, slightly embarrassed. ‘Of course it didn’t last. When I saw him in the cold light of day, he was just another bloke. There was no reason to throw away everything I had with Thord just for a bit of decent sex.’

  Annika was staring down into her mug, unable to think of anything to say.

  Berit? An affair? Decent sex? But she was fifty-two years old!

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Berit said, ‘and I can assure you of one thing: it felt exactly the same as it did when I was eighteen. In some ways I’m glad it happened, but I’ll never do it again.’

  Without being conscious of what she was doing, Annika put the mug down, wrapped her arms round her friend’s neck and started to cry. She wept silently, Berit holding her, for several minutes. ‘He’s got someone else,’ she whispered, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. ‘I keep dreaming of killing her. He left me for her, and then the house burned down.’

  Berit sighed and stroked her back. ‘And you still haven’t spoken to him?’

  Annika shook her head and dried her cheeks on the sleeve of her cardigan.

  ‘You have to get through this,’ Berit said. ‘There’s no way round it.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘There’s a phone in the office. The children can stay here if you need to go out for a while.’

  Berit stood up, brushed the dirt from her behind and headed for the house again, mug in hand. Annika watched her go, trying to see her with different eyes, a man’s eyes. She was fairly tall and thin, with broad shoulders and cropped hair. She was wearing a loose top that swung out at her hips. She didn’t dress like that for work. She usually wore a jacket and dark trousers, perhaps with a bit of expensive but discreet jewellery. It had never even occurred to her that Berit might be capable of having an affair. That her serious, well-educated colleague was a sexual being. It was actually a bit uncomfortable, a bit like realizing that your mum and dad must have had sex once upon a time.

  Then she was struck by the most obvious thought of all: who had she had the affair with?

  Someone at the paper?

  It was almost bound to be.

  Or one of her sources? Berit met a lot of different people to get information. She had said the farm was the last chance for her and Thord, and when had they bought it? A couple of years ago? Annika had been working at the paper then. Maybe it had happened longer ago, when she had been on maternity leave, so perhaps it wasn’t strange that she’d never noticed anything.

  As long as it wasn’t Spike!

  Please, don’t let it be Spike!

  Somehow the idea of Berit having an affair was strangely heartening. Annika felt like calling her colleague back and asking her all about it.

  It was possible to carry on. Everything wasn’t finished just because things had been a bit difficult.

  Her eyes fell on the mobile phone. She must remember to buy a charger next time she was in the city.

  Suddenly anxiety overcame her and she took several shallow breaths to keep it at bay.

  Got to get through this. There’s no way round it.

  She went back into the cottage, picked up the phone and rang Thomas’s mobile.

  One ring: she could hear the children racing around outside.

  Two rings: the sunlight on the water caught her eyes.

  Three rings …

  ‘Hello, this is Thomas …’

  ‘Hello,’ she managed.

  Her heart was thudding so hard that she could hardly hear his reply.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’

  She was shaking, and had to hold the receiver with both hands. ‘I’ve … The house has burned down.’

  ‘Really? You didn’t think it was worth telling me before now?’

  ‘It was yesterday morning—’

  ‘Why haven’t you called? Why didn’t you tell me? How the hell do you think I felt, driving out there and seeing the house like that, in ruins? Have you any idea what sort of shock it was?’

  ‘Yes, sorry—’

  ‘And how the hell did the fire start? I mean, the whole house is a wreck! What on earth did you do?’

  ‘I didn’t do anything. I just—’

  He cleared his throat loudly. ‘How are the kids?’

  ‘Fine. They’re playing. Do you want to see them?’

  He put the phone down and was gone for a long while. ‘Now isn’t a good time,’ he said when he came back. ‘What do the insurance company say?’

  He doesn’t want to see the children! He doesn’t care about Ellen and Kalle!

  Her tears overflowed and ran down her cheeks. ‘I haven’t sorted that out yet,’ she whispered. ‘I suppose I’ll do it next week.’

  ‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘How long does it take to get the money?’

  ‘Don’t know …’

  ‘I need to get this sorted as soon as possible,’ Thomas said, sounding as if he really meant it.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Annika said.

  ‘Not half as sorry as I am,’ Thomas said, and ended the call.

  She put the receiver down carefully and let a wave of self-pity course through her. She wiped her cheeks with her fingertips, gazing out through the window at the sunlight and the children playing.

  Why isn’t this enough for me? Why isn’t life ever enough?

  She went out on to the porch again and sat down, still watching the children.

  Where was she going to go with them?

  Their nursery and pre-school were in Djursholm, but the thought of taking them back there made her feel ill.

  No more suburbs, never again.

  The countryside was fine, but she was happiest in the city.

  Maybe they could go back to Kungsholmen. Things had been good there. If they were lucky, their places at nursery and pre-school would still be available: they didn’t usually take new children until the start of term. Maybe she should phone and find out.

  She picked up her mobile and switched it on. Thord’s old charger had managed to squeeze a bit of power into the battery. She dialled the manager’s number and got a message telling her that the nursery was closed for a training day.

  She wrapped her arms round her shins.

  Was she wrong about this? Would it be better to make a fresh st
art? Move to a new part of the city, maybe even a different town? Go home to Katrineholm?

  Her mobile buzzed: it had connected properly to the network and the messages were tumbling in. Annika looked at the screen. There weren’t that many. Five voicemails and three ordinary texts.

  The voicemails were, in order, from Spike, Schyman, Spike, Thomas and Thomas. The texts were all from Thomas, their tone progressively angry.

  Spike wanted her to go in and write about David Lindholm, Schyman wanted the same thing, then Spike wondered if she could write an eyewitness account of her house burning down. Finally her husband had called, with the fury he had shown in the text messages.

  This was actually fairly symptomatic of her life, she realized. This was what happened whenever she was hit by some catastrophe. These were the people who got in touch. Two of her bosses, wondering if she could do some work, and an angry man who thought she didn’t fuck him often enough.

  She went back into the house and called Schyman.

  ‘How are you?’ the editor-in-chief asked. ‘You’re still in one piece?’

  She sat down. ‘I’m okay. Berit came to get me last night. I’m at her place in the country now.’

  ‘We’ve been trying to call you but couldn’t get through.’

  ‘I know, but now I’ve got my mobile going again. Was it anything in particular?’

  ‘First of all it was this business with Julia Lindholm. You know her, don’t you?’

  ‘Well, I spent a night in a patrol car with her five years ago.’

  ‘They’re keen to publish the story,’ Schyman said. ‘But I understand the situation you’re in. Did you have time to rescue anything from the house?’

  ‘The children.’

  He coughed awkwardly.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘It’s hard to imagine. Do you need some time off?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a lot to sort out.’

  ‘Do you think you could write up the story about Julia Lindholm? “My Night With the Cop-killer?” You could do that from home.’

  ‘I don’t have a computer.’ She didn’t have a home either, but she didn’t mention that.

  ‘You can pick up a new laptop here at the newsroom, I’ll sign a requisition slip at once. When can you get in to pick it up?’

  She looked at her watch. ‘This afternoon,’ she said. ‘And if I’m going to write about Julia Lindholm, I ought to talk to the other officer who was with us, Nina Hoffman. She was the one I was actually profiling.’

  ‘Okay, I’m counting on you.’

  8

  She left the children in Berit’s care, playing on the lawn, and went off to the bus-stop. She took out her mobile and checked the contact list. She tried ‘N’ for Nina, then ‘H’ for Hoffman, and finally found a number under ‘Police Nina H’.

  She pressed dial, and waited as the phone rang.

  ‘Hoffman.’

  She swallowed. ‘Nina Hoffman? My name’s Annika Bengtzon, I’m a journalist on the Evening Post. We met five years ago – I spent a night with you and Julia?’

  ‘Yes, I remember.’

  ‘Is this a bad time?’

  ‘What’s it about?’

  She looked out over the fields and meadows around her, at the clouds slowly drifting north towards the horizon, at red-painted wooden houses, the old glass in their windows flashing. ‘You can probably guess,’ she said. ‘My editors want an update on what we did that evening, what Julia said and did, what I made of it all. I’ve said I’ll do it, but I wanted to talk to you first.’

  ‘We have a press spokesman who looks after all communication with the media.’

  ‘I know that,’ Annika said, and heard her irritation. ‘But I wanted to check with you before I write anything about Julia because I got the impression you were quite close.’

  Nina Hoffman said nothing for a few moments. Then: ‘What are you thinking of writing?’

  ‘Julia said quite a lot about David. And now our idle chat has suddenly become very interesting. Have you got time to meet me?’ Annika could see the dust of the approaching bus at the brow of the hill. ‘I’m not planning on dishing any dirt,’ she said. ‘That’s not why I’m calling. In fact, it’s rather the opposite.’

  ‘I believe you,’ Nina Hoffman said.

  They agreed to meet at a pizza restaurant close to where Nina Hoffman lived on Södermalm an hour and a half later.

  The bus drove up and stopped. Annika clambered aboard and held out Berit’s last five-hundred-kronor note as payment.

  ‘Haven’t you got anything smaller?’ the driver said.

  Annika shook her head.

  ‘I can’t change a note that big. You’ll have to take the next bus.’

  ‘You’ll have to throw me off,’ she said, picking up the note and walking towards the back.

  The driver sighed, then put the bus in gear and pulled away.

  She sat right by the window, and watched the landscape flash past. Everything was different shades of green. The speed of the bus blurred the edges and turned the world into an abstract painting.

  Annika shut her eyes and leaned her head back.

  Thomas walked briskly into the government offices at Rosenbad with his back straight. Without looking left or right, he slid past a group of citizens queuing at the security desk in the white hallway, and prayed that his pass would still work.

  Officially his secondment had ended on Monday, and his pass hadn’t been renewed, which had come as an unexpected and unpleasant surprise. So far in his career he had been recruited from one job to the next without having to produce a lengthy CV or tortured application. It would be a blow if that were to change now, when he had finally managed to get a research post with the government.

  Yesterday the head of his section in the Ministry of Justice, Per Cramne, had asked him to look in, and Thomas had been careful not to sound too keen. He had said he had a meeting in the morning, which was true, even if it was with Sophia.

  If he was in luck his entry code would still work, and he could avoid the humiliation of having to wait in the queue of visitors. He held his breath and pressed in the digits. There was a whirring sound and the green light came on.

  He pulled open the heavy steel door and stepped into the corridors of power. He could feel the eyes of the people in the queue on the back of his neck: Who’s that? What does he do? It must be someone important.

  Naturally, he went over to stand by the lift on the right – the one on the left was a goods lift that stopped at every floor. Waiting for the one on the left was an elementary mistake. He got out on the fourth floor and walked straight to the head of section’s office.

  ‘Good to see you,’ Cramne said, shaking his hand as if they hadn’t met for several months. In fact they had had dinner together at Thomas and Annika’s house in Djursholm as recently as Monday.

  ‘Awful business about the house,’ his boss went on, gesturing to a chair. ‘Are you going to rebuild it?’

  Nice and calm, Thomas thought. Just relax and wait for what he’s got to say. ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ he said, sitting down and leaning back.

  ‘Well, the bugging proposal’s going through smoothly,’ Per Cramne said. ‘Everyone’s very happy with the research you did for us.’

  Thomas swallowed and held up his hands as if to stop the praise. ‘It was really just a continuation of my work for the Association of County Councils.’

  Cramne was leafing through some files in a cabinet to the right of the desk. ‘Now we’ve got to take care of the follow-up work,’ he said. ‘The government will be appointing a parliamentary inquiry which will go through all the clauses and suggest changes.’

  ‘A proper inquiry?’ Thomas wondered. ‘Or to bury the proposal?’

  The problem with inquiries was that they were set up both to get something done and to prevent something you didn’t want done.

  The assistant under-secretary opened another drawer and carried on leafing through it.

&n
bsp; ‘You haven’t read the memo? I thought it went out while you were still here.’

  Thomas fought an impulse to cross his legs and arms in a sort of basic defence posture. ‘No,’ he said. ‘What are the conditions?’

  Cramne slammed a drawer and sat down. ‘The directives are simple,’ he said. ‘Any proposed reforms mustn’t drive up the cost of criminal custody. We need an economist in the group to analyse the consequences of any proposals, and it’s going to require a fair bit of political dexterity. One of our aims is to abolish life sentences, and some of our critics are already screaming that this is going to be bloody expensive. I’m absolutely convinced that they’re wrong.’ He smiled and leaned back in his chair. The back hit the wall. ‘This is where you come in,’ he said.

  ‘As an economist?’ Thomas said, his heart sinking.

  He hadn’t reckoned on this. He’d hoped for some sort of position within the department. Being an economist for the Justice Ministry didn’t sound much, scarcely better than caretaker.

  ‘We need an expert on the committee,’ Cramne said, with a nod.

  ‘To provide economic analysis?’

  ‘Exactly. We’re extending your appointment until the inquiry is complete, and that could take a couple of years.’

  Thomas could feel the blood rushing to his head. A couple of years! His immediate reaction had been wrong. This was brilliant! It meant he’d be guaranteed employment protection, would have first chance at any permanent post, and he’d get to stay in the department. A government official! That’s what he’d be.

  He had to show how sharp he was, right from the start. ‘Abolishing lifetime sentencing,’ he said, ‘why should that be expensive? Shouldn’t it make things cheaper?’

  ‘Any change has cost implications. Today a lifetime prisoner serves on average thirteen, fourteen years because they get out after serving two-thirds of their sentence. If you get rid of the lifetime sentence, the new maximum term would be something like twenty-five years.’

  ‘Really?’ Thomas said.