He still looks lovely even with short hair.
‘Thanks for doing this,’ he said quietly.
She swallowed and kept her eyes on the screen.
‘Thomas, are you coming?’
How can he put up with that voice?
He disappeared from the doorway and she heard keys and mobiles being dropped into pockets and bags, then the door closed and silence spread through the horrible penthouse suite.
The children went to bed at the same time and with the same amount of fuss as they did at hers. They washed and brushed their teeth, then sorted out their clothes and put the dirty ones into the laundry basket, chose a bedtime story and snuggled down under the covers. Ellen had had a sleep during the day and had trouble settling down. Annika lay beside her in the narrow little bed and sang to her quietly until she fell asleep. She stroked the little head and soft shoulders, closing her eyes and inhaling the smell of her daughter’s hair, feeling it tickle her nose.
You’re a little miracle.
She carefully disentangled herself from Ellen, then stood in the doorway looking at her. She was getting more and more like Thomas, with her blonde hair and blue eyes. She felt a tightness in her chest and went out into the flat. She shivered and wished she’d brought a cardigan.
It wasn’t just that the temperature was low: there was a draught coming from somewhere and the pared-back furnishing emphasized the chill. Everything was white, apart from the black-leather seating, and the tables, which shimmered with glass and chrome.
The children had small rooms next to each other in the furthest corner of the large studio. There was just enough space for their beds and a small shelf with a few toys; the walls were bare and there were no rugs on the floor, no curtains and no extra blankets.
I’m just looking for faults. The children aren’t suffering here. As long as Thomas cares about them, they’ll be fine.
She had never thought she might divorce. Naïvely, she had assumed that love would be enough: if she loved him enough, everything would turn out all right, pretty much like a bedtime story.
I forgot to love him, and now it’s too late.
She looked in on Kalle, tucking him in and picking up Chicken, who had fallen to the floor. Then she walked through the flat to the little space behind the kitchen, and sat down in front of Thomas’s laptop. He hadn’t changed his user ID or password, still using his first name for both. The connection was fast, as good as at the paper.
She went on to the national ID database and typed Lena Yvonne Nordin’s details into the search page. She called herself Yvonne, she was forty-two, and her address was a post-office box in Skärholmen, on the outskirts of Stockholm. According to the list of old records, she had previously lived in Uppsala, and her marital status had been ‘widow’ for the past ten years. She tried searching for other people called Nordin, male and female, age unspecified, registered at the same post-office box to find out if she had any children.
No. At least, none called Nordin.
Annika couldn’t see a printer in the office. She went out into the hall and fetched her notepad and pen from her bag and jotted down the details. She opened another window in her browser and checked to see if Yvonne Nordin had a landline or a mobile. She got forty-nine results for that name, from Boden in the far north to Simrishamn in the south, but nothing in either Skärholmen or Uppsala. Lena Yvonne Nordin brought up one result, in Uddevalla, but that woman was also named Mari, so it wasn’t her.
She went into the register of property and searched for anything connected to Lena Yvonne Nordin’s ID number.
Nothing.
Annika logged into the database of car registration numbers.
Nothing there either.
She chewed her lip.
She used to run more than one company …
She went into the register of companies and brought up the details of the three companies that Lena Yvonne Nordin had been linked to. The only one that was still active was Advice Management Investment AB, the company on whose board David Lindholm had sat. The other two had been deregistered. But there was a name there that she had seen before and not yet checked: Niklas Ernesto Zarco Martinez, also registered as living in Skärholmen.
She opened another window and looked up his details.
Deceased.
Annika blinked.
Niklas Ernesto Zarco Martinez, thirty-five, had died on Christmas Eve the previous year.
Lena Yvonne had a remarkable ability to spread death around her.
Feeling uneasy, she looked up Advice Investment Management AB’s business activities. The company was based at the post-office box address in Skärholmen. Going back to the vehicle-registration site, she typed in the company’s registered number and there it was. Bloody hell!
The company owned a Toyota Land Cruiser 100, registration number TKG 298. The vehicle was a couple of years old, but was listed as being taxed, insured and roadworthy, which meant that it was in use and on the road somewhere in or not far from Sweden.
Yvonne, I’ve found your car.
Encouraged by this success, she went back to the property register and typed in the company number, waiting patiently as the laptop chewed through several million legal transactions.
I ought to be pleased he cares about the children. It’s a terrible thing to accuse me of having set fire to the house, but can I really blame him? Everyone thinks I did it, after all. And he does look after the children …
The computer bleeped and Annika looked up at the screen.
One result.
Number 2:17 Lybacka, in the parish of Tysslinge, in Örebro Council district.
What?
Yvonne Nordin’s company owned a property north of Örebro?
Annika’s pulse started to race.
The transaction was dated exactly a year before, 2 December.
What does this mean?
2:17 Lybacka wasn’t an ordinary address, but one of those hopeless property allocations that didn’t tell her anything. How could she find out where 2:17 Lybacka was?
She went into the website of Örebro Council, to see if they had any maps, and found, to her surprise, that you could search for specific properties using their virtual satellite images.
I love the Internet! This is almost too easy!
She entered the property details in the search box. The map on the right flickered and a low-resolution satellite image popped up, apparently showing a patch of forest.
‘2:17’, it said, in the middle of the picture, and she zoomed out to see where on earth it was. A couple of clicks later, she could tell from the satellite picture that 2:17 Lybacka was a small house with an adjoining barn in the middle of the forest. Another couple of clicks took her to an ordinary map, showing roads and villages. Because she didn’t have a printer she drew a sketch-map, then zoomed out a bit further to discover that the property lay north-west of Örebro, through Garphyttan and up in the forest.
So why did you buy that place a year ago, Yvonne? Does it play a part in your plan?
She went back to the Örebro Council website, looked up Tysslinge parish and the area known as Lybacka, and discovered there was a small national park there, and a few abandoned earthworks known as the Lybacka Pits. Nearby was a bog called Ängamossen, which was described as being ‘covered with scattered, low-growing pines. The bog is surrounded by magical, ancient woodland …’
She clicked away from the natural description and went into the online telephone directory, but couldn’t find a number for 2:17 Lybacka. In the end she fetched her mobile from the hall and rang Directory Enquiries instead, but that didn’t work either.
She hesitated for a moment, then called Nina Hoffman and asked if she had got the photographs.
‘I haven’t had time,’ Nina said.
‘It’ll be interesting to see if Julia recognizes any of them. I’m sitting here checking—’
‘Sorry to interrupt, but I’m in the car. Can we meet outside Police Headquarters early to
morrow morning? Eight o’clock?’
Annika could hear the rasping voice of the police radio in the background. ‘Sure,’ she said.
They hung up, and Annika closed all the windows. Her eye was caught by the Outlook Express icon.
I’ve read Thomas’s memo and I need to get hold of him at once. Can you give him a message?
Why? What’s so urgent?
She started up the email program, clicked on ‘sent messages’ and looked through the list of recipients. The last one was sent to [email protected], Swedish District and County Councils, presumably, and had the heading ‘miss you darling’.
She gulped and carried on looking.
Almost at the bottom of the screen she saw it.
[email protected], with the heading ‘memo’.
She opened the email and clicked on the attachment without even blinking.
She shivered as she read it. Thomas was telling the under-secretary of state that the directives he had been given to work with in the inquiry were impossible to follow. It simply couldn’t be done. If life sentences were abolished, the cost of the criminal justice system would increase so greatly that the long-term state budget would have to be renegotiated.
This is absolute dynamite!
That was followed by a careful analysis of the effects that time-limited sentences would have on the criminal justice budget. The reasoning seemed to be that a very long, fixed-term sentence instead of life would drive up all the other tariffs in the criminal code, which would result in the cost of the prison service rising by at least 25 per cent within three years.
She left the computer on and went out into the big room. She stopped and looked up at the ceiling; she felt as though she was in a church.
Penthouse flat! How pretentious could someone actually get?
She glanced at the time: the opera-goers should be back soon. She walked restlessly round the studio, past the dining-table and the seating area, and went back into the television room. The late news was due to start in a few minutes. She managed to get the digital box working and find the right channel just as the programme began.
Julia Lindholm’s life sentence was the lead item. The news presenter managed to call Julia a ‘double-murderer’ and ‘police-killer’ in her short introduction to the piece.
First on was Prosecutor Angela Nilsson, marching quickly, her back ramrod straight; the cameras were wobbling about like the worst Danish Dogma film. She declared that the verdict was both expected and justified. She looked simultaneously pleased and stern. ‘The court unanimously shared my opinion,’ she said, ‘so I think it was a deserved sentence.’
Anything else would be rather odd.
The crush inside the court building on Fleminggatan was chaotic. Journalists kept bumping into each other and Prosecutor Nilsson had to raise her hand against the camera lights to see where she was going. ‘There are no words to describe the calculated cruelty that Julia Lindholm has shown the families of the victims,’ she said, sweeping through a security door.
What families? She’s the only one left, along with her parents. And Nina, I suppose.
Then her lawyer appeared on screen, the young Mats Lennström, his hair stiff with gel, and beads of sweat on his forehead. He seemed to be leaning so far forward that he actually bumped his nose on the camera, leaving a little smear on the lens.
‘Well, it was obvious that the court was going to reach this verdict, seeing as my client was kept in custody while we waited for the sentence,’ he said, his eyes flickering over the crowd of journalists. ‘But I don’t agree with the sentence imposed. In particular, I find it difficult to understand the court’s reasoning with regard to the boy, er, Alexander. The problem is that we still don’t know how he was killed.’
Annika shifted irritably on the sofa. How do you know he’s dead?
‘Will you be lodging an appeal?’ one male reporter shouted.
‘Well, I’m considering that, but I haven’t had time to talk to my client yet, so I really can’t comment …’
Mats Lennström stumbled further along the corridor and disappeared through another security door.
A third person appeared on the screen, Professor Lagerbäck, an expert in criminology of the more populist persuasion, and he briskly summarized the verdict against Julia Lindholm in four cliché-ridden sentences: ‘It was obvious she was going to get life, nothing else was ever on the cards. She blasted the manhood off an iconic police officer, and then tried the old line about hearing voices. The only thing that I think has been astonishingly shoddy in the investigation of this case is that the police haven’t managed to find the little boy’s remains. I actually think that’s a great scandal.’
Annika switched off the television, leaving a deafening silence.
Everyone’s so sure. Why can’t I let go of the idea that Alexander is still alive?
She checked the time: twenty past eleven.
Where on earth are they?
Annoyed, she stood up and went out into the hall to get her mobile. She sent Thomas a fairly neutral text message. Do you know when you’ll be back?
A minute later she got a reply. In an hour or so.
She sighed. What on earth was she going to do until half past twelve?
She walked over to the rooms where the children were sleeping, then leaned over and kissed their necks. She went out into the kitchen to get something to eat from the fridge but changed her mind, she didn’t want to touch any of Sophia F. B. Grenborg’s food.
She ended up standing by the door to the bedroom, their bedroom. She stood there listening to noises from outside, from the stars up above, and out in the stairwell.
At least an hour before they get back. I’ll make sure I leave everything as I find it.
Holding her breath, and without making a sound, she pushed the door open. One bedside lamp was on. The bed wasn’t made. The bed-linen was black. There were dried white stains on the under-sheet. On the floor lay a pair of black panties with stains in the gusset. She looked towards the wardrobes. They filled an entire wall. She went over to the first and cautiously opened the door.
Suits. Thomas had bought new ones. She opened the door wide. These were more expensive than his old ones, which had gone up in the fire. Carefully she stroked the material, wool, cotton, silk.
He’s always had good taste, although he looks best in jeans and a T-shirt.
She closed the door and opened the next. Soph’s dresses. They were yellow and red and white and black and flowery, a few of them covered with sequins. The pressure in her chest increased. She closed the door and opened the next. Her underwear. Pants, suspender-belts and bras, all made of lace with hooks and pearls.
I don’t have a single bra like this, I never have done. Does this sort of thing turn him on?
They were cream and red and deep purple and black, some with shoulder-straps, some without, some wired, others not.
She picked up a silky push-up bra, decorated with lace, and held it in front of her. It was far too small. She made to put it back, then stopped.
She’d never find out I took it. She might wonder where it’d gone, but she’d never know for sure.
She closed the wardrobe door with the bra in her hand, looking round the room. She hadn’t touched anything else.
She went out quickly, closing the bedroom door behind her, then into the hall and stuffed the bra into the inside pocket of her bag.
At that moment a text message arrived. From Thomas. We’re going to be a bit late.
She tossed the mobile away.
I don’t want to be here any longer now! Fuck!
Tears welled in her eyes. The chalk-white walls leaned in on her and she ran into Kalle’s room and knelt by his bed. ‘Darling,’ she said. ‘I miss you so much …’
He opened his eyes and looked at her, bewildered. ‘Mummy? Is it time to get up?’
She forced herself to smile. ‘No, not yet, I’m just giving you a kiss. Go back to sleep.’ She
got up and left the room, stumbled through the studio space and stopped at a low cupboard against the far wall. Above it was a row of pictures in elegant frames, the sort they had in American television programmes. They showed Thomas and FB with their arms round each other on a yacht, Thomas and FB with their arms round each other in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Thomas, FB and the children at his parents’ place in the country, out in the archipelago …
All of a sudden she couldn’t breathe. The bastard!
She started to cry.
His mum must be so pleased now I’m out of the picture. I bet she thinks Sophia Fucking Bitch Grenborg is a much better mother than me. How could he do this to me?
Self-pity hit her like a wave, with a force that knocked the breath out of her.
He’s going to pay, the bastard!
She hurried back to Thomas’s office behind the kitchen, sat down at the computer and wiped her tears with angry fingers. The computer was on standby but woke up at once when she touched the mouse.
She pulled up the email to the under-secretary of state again. If this memo leaked, the consequences for the whole inquiry would be immense. If the basic directives couldn’t be followed, the entire proposal would collapse. The whole thing would have to be scrapped and they would have to start again from scratch, the government formulating the terms of reference for a new inquiry with new directives and new members.
Thomas would lose his job.
She stared at the memo, feeling her heart race. She looked at the time.
Half past twelve. They’d be back soon.
He’ll be okay. After all, he’s got little Soph.
How could she make sure no one knew where the email had come from?
She couldn’t just forward it because Thomas’s email address would be visible. And she couldn’t send it from her own account, because everyone would be able to work out how she had got hold of it.
She would have to set up a fake address, anonymous and inconspicuous, but still credible enough for her colleagues on the paper to sit up and take notice of it.
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