by Lars Kepler
The instant he’d signed his name to the employment contract, he’d taken over all of the late Carl Palmcrona’s duties and responsibilities.
It felt very good, it felt right. First thing I do, he told himself, is begin a collaboration with the United Nations as regards the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
He smiles to himself and marvels at how life can take strange turns. Then he remembers Beverly. His stomach flutters with worry. Once she’d told him that she was going to the store, but four hours later, she still hadn’t returned. He’d gone out to search for her. He’d finally found her sitting in a wheelbarrow outside the Observatory Museum. She was confused, smelled of alcohol, and her underwear was missing. Someone had stuck gum in her hair.
She said she’d run into some boys in the park.
“They were throwing stones at an injured dove,” Beverly explained. “So I thought that I’d give them my money so they’d stop. But I only had twelve crowns. That wasn’t enough. They wanted me to do something else instead. They told me they would stamp the dove to death if I didn’t.”
She became quiet and tears came into her eyes.
“I didn’t want to do it, but I felt so sorry for the dove.”
Axel takes out his mobile phone and calls Beverly’s number.
As the signal roams, he looks down the road, past the building that once housed the Chinese embassy, and down to the dark house where the Catholic network Opus Dei has its main headquarters.
His own building is an enormous mansion he and his brother, Robert, share. It is situated on Bragevägen in the middle of Lärkstaden, an exclusive district between Östermalm and Vasastan. All the houses there look alike, as if they were children produced from the same family.
The Riessen residence has two apartments, one on each side. Each one is three stories tall and is completely separate from the other.
Their father, Erloff Riessen, has been dead for twenty years. He was the Swedish ambassador to France and then England, while his brother, Torleif Riessen, had been a famous pianist who’d performed at Symphony Hall in Boston and the Grosser Musikvereinssaal in Vienna. The noble house of Riessen always ran to two professions, diplomats and classical musicians, and the two were strangely similar: they demanded absolute obedience and submission.
The father and mother, Erloff and Alice Riessen, decided on a logical agreement: from childhood Axel should devote himself to music while his younger brother, Robert, would be trained in his father’s profession as a diplomat. This arrangement was turned upside down when Axel made the greatest mistake of his life. He was seventeen years old when he was forced to leave the music profession. Instead, he was sent to a military academy while Robert now trained as the family musician. Axel accepted his punishment, even thought it was fair, and since that day, he vowed never to pick up the violin again.
Axel’s mother never spoke to him again.
After nine rings, Beverly answers the phone, coughing.
“Hello?”
“Where are you?” Axel demands.
“I’m—”
She must have turned her face from the receiver because he couldn’t understand her next words.
“I can’t hear you,” he says, even more frightened. His voice is sharp and forced.
“Are you angry with me?”
“Just tell me where you are,” he pleads.
“You’re going on and on!” she says and laughs. “I’m here in my apartment, of course. Are you all right?”
“I was just worried.”
“Silly, I was just about to watch a show on Princess Victoria.”
She hangs up and he feels that ongoing worry. There is a vague tone to her voice.
He looks at the phone and wonders if he should dial her number again. He jumps when the phone starts to ring.
“Riessen.”
“Jörgen Grünlicht here.”
“Hello,” Axel says with a little surprise in his voice.
“How was your meeting with the team?”
“It was fairly fruitful,” Axel replies.
“You made Kenya the priority, I hope.”
“As well as the final user certificate from the Netherlands,” Axel says. “There was a lot on the table and I’m waiting to decide where I stand. I need to research a little more—”
“But Kenya,” Grünlicht says. “Have you signed the export form yet? Pontus Salman is on my back wondering why it’s still held up. You understand that this is a damned big piece of business already way behind schedule. ISP had given them a positive preliminary decision and they’ve gone ahead with production, a damned large shipment already sent from Trollhättan to the docks in Gothenburg. The owner is sending a container ship from Panama tomorrow. They’ll unload their cargo during the day and then the next day they can load the ammunition.”
“Jörgen, I understand all this. I’ve gone over the paperwork and sure … I’ll sign it, but I’ve just started this job and I need to be thorough.”
“I, myself, went through the whole business,” Jörgen says in a brusque manner. “There’s nothing unclear about it.”
“No, but—”
“Where are you now?”
“I’m at home,” Axel says, even more mystified.
“I’ll send the paperwork by messenger,” Jörgen says shortly. “The messenger will wait while you sign it. Then we won’t lose any more time.”
“That’s not really necessary. I’ll look at it tomorrow,” Axel protests.
Twenty minutes later, Axel goes to the door at the persistent ring of the messenger sent by Jörgen Grünlicht. He’s greatly troubled by Grünlicht’s obstinacy. On the other hand, there doesn’t seem to be any reason to delay this piece of business.
53
the signature
Axel opens the door and greets the bike messenger. The warm evening air sweeps into the house along with the pounding music from the end-of-year party at the School of Architecture.
Axel takes the folder and yet feels awkward about signing the contract in front of the messenger. He feels he would look like he’s caving in under a bit of pressure.
“Just a minute,” he says and gestures for the messenger to wait in the hallway.
Axel walks through his side of the house, through the library, and into the kitchen, past its granite counters, the glossy black cabinets, and up to the double-door refrigerator with its ice machine. He takes out a mini-bottle of mineral water and drinks straight from it as he loosens his tie. He sits on a high stool next to the bar counter and opens the folder.
Everything is neat, tidy, and appears to be in order. Every appendix is in its proper place: the opinion of the Export Control Committee, the classification, the preliminary decision, the copies for the Foreign Office, and the tender notice. He scans the document concerning export permission and flips to the line where the general director for the National Inspectorate of Strategic Products is supposed to sign his name.
A chill shivers through his body.
This is really big business. It appears to be a routine matter only delayed by the tragic suicide of Carl Palmcrona, but it is clear that it seriously affects his country’s trade balance. He understands that Pontus Salman’s situation is so precarious that this delay might drive his company under if drawn out much longer.
But while he understands this, Axel also understands that he is being pressured to approve export of ammunition to Kenya without being given the opportunity to personally weigh the decision.
Axel makes a decision and immediately feels much better.
He’ll devote his attention to this matter over the next few days—and only then will he sign the approval.
He will sign, he’s pretty sure of that, but he can’t sign now. He doesn’t care if they get angry or upset. He is the person who must make the decision: he is now the general director for the National Inspectorate of Strategic Products.
He doodles a smiley face and draws a one-word dialogue bubble on the sign
ature line.
Axel returns to the hall wearing a stern expression and hands the folder back to the messenger. Then he goes upstairs and into the salon. He’s wondering if Beverly is really upstairs or if she didn’t dare tell him that she had sneaked out.
What if she sneaks out and then disappears?
Axel picks up a remote for his music system and selects a mix of David Bowie’s earliest work. His music system looks like a shiny sheet of glass. It’s wireless and the speakers are completely invisible and set into the walls.
He goes to the elaborate drinks cabinet, opens its embossed doors, and considers the gleaming bottles. He hesitates before he picks up a numbered whisky bottle of Hazelburn from the Springbank Distillery, one located in Scotland’s Campbeltown region. Axel once visited the area and had marvelled at the hundred-year-old barrels. They were well worn, painted in clear red, and still in use. He pulls out the cork and breathes in the scent of the whisky: deep earth and dark like a thunderstorm. Then he pushes in the cork again and slowly returns the bottle to the cabinet. The music system is playing a song from Hunky Dory. David Bowie sings:
But her friend is nowhere to be seen.
Now she walks through her sunken dream,
To the seat with the clearest view,
And she’s hooked to the silver screen.
The door to his brother’s apartment slams shut. Axel looks out through the enormous panorama windows with their view of the overgrown garden. He wonders if Robert is going to stop by and at the same moment, he hears the knock on his door.
“Come in,” Axel calls out.
Robert marches in looking disturbed.
“I realise that you play that crap in order to drive me crazy, but—”
Axel smiles and starts to sing along:
Take a look at the Lawman,
Beating up the wrong guy.
Oh man! Wonder if he’ll ever know:
He’s in the bestselling show …
Robert does a few dance steps and walks over to the open drinks cabinet. He takes a look at the bottles.
“Go ahead and help yourself,” Axel says drily.
“Could you take a look at my Strosser—can I turn off the music for a moment?”
Axel shrugs. Robert hits stop.
“The Strosser is finished?”
“I was up all night,” Robert says with a broad smile. “I attached the strings early this morning.”
There’s a moment of silence between them. A long time ago, their mother had been adamant that Axel would be a famous violinist. Alice Riessen had been a professional musician and played for ten years as second violin in the Stockholm Opera’s chamber music orchestra. She’d openly favoured her firstborn son.
Everything fell apart when Axel, at the Royal College of Music, had become one of the three finalists in the Johan Fredrik Berwald Competition for young soloists. It would have been a straight shot from there into the world’s elite.
But after the competition, Axel had entered the Military Academy in Karlberg. Robert had enrolled in the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. He never became a star violinist. On the other hand, he plays in a chamber orchestra and now owns a renowned atelier where he takes orders for stringed instruments from around the world.
“Show me your violin,” Axel says after a while.
Robert nods and goes to get the instrument. It’s a beautiful violin with a fiery-red lacquer and a bottom of tiger-striped maple.
He stands before his brother and begins to play a trembling strain from a Béla Bartók piece inspired by a journey through the Hungarian countryside. Axel has always liked Bartók, who as an open opponent of Nazism was forced to flee his native land. Axel admires Bartók’s ability to be deeply thoughtful yet able to create short bursts of pure joy. Or to write melancholy folk music amid the ruins of a great catastrophe, Axel thinks as Robert finishes the piece.
“It sounds very good,” Axel says. “But you should move the sound post slightly as there’s a dead spot that—”
Robert’s face shuts down.
“Daniel Strosser said that he wanted … a sound like this,” Robert says. “He wants the violin to sound like a young Birgit Nilsson.”
“Then you should absolutely move the sound post,” Axel says with a smile.
“You don’t understand! I just wanted you to—”
“Otherwise it’s an excellent instrument,” Axel hurries to add.
“You hear the sound—dry and sharp and—”
“I’m not saying it’s a bad violin,” Axel continues impassively. “I’m only saying that there’s a spot in the sound that is not alive—”
“Alive? This is a Bartók performer buying this violin,” Robert says. “We’re talking about Bartók, and that’s not the same thing as David Bowie.”
“Maybe I heard wrong,” Axel responds quietly.
Robert opens his mouth to answer when there’s a knock on the door. It’s Robert’s wife, Anette.
She opens the door and smiles when she sees Robert holding his violin.
“So you were trying out the Strosser?” she asks expectantly.
“Yes,” Robert says harshly. “But Axel doesn’t like it.”
“That’s not true,” Axel says. “I’m sure his customer will be perfectly satisfied. What I was saying might just be a figment of my imagination—”
“Oh, Robert, don’t listen to him,” Anette says with irritation. “What does he know?”
Robert now just wants to leave and take his wife with him to avoid a scene, but she turns to Axel.
“Confess that you just imagined a fault,” she demands.
“There is no fault in it. Just an adjustment of the sound post that—”
“And when was the last time you played? Thirty years ago? Forty? You were nothing more than a child then. You owe Robert an apology.”
“Let it go,” Robert says.
“Say you’re sorry,” Anette demands.
“All right. I’m sorry,” Axel says. He feels his cheeks flush.
“You don’t want Robert to have the fame his new violin deserves.”
“I’m sorry.”
Axel turns his stereo back on very loud. Ziggy Stardust drops into rotation. The music sounds like two guitars that haven’t been tuned properly and a singer who is searching for the right note: Goodbye love, goodbye love …
Anette mutters something more about Axel’s lack of talent, but Robert tells her to just shut up as he pulls her out of the room. Axel raises the volume even higher and the drums and bass guitar turn the music around: Didn’t know what time it was and the lights were low oh oh. I leaned back on my radio oh oh.
Axel shuts his eyes and feels how they burn in the dark. He is already very tired. There are times when he can sleep for half an hour and at other times he can’t sleep at all, even when Beverly is in bed next to him. At those times, he wraps himself in a blanket and goes to sit on the glassed-in veranda with its view of the beautiful old trees in the garden. He will sit there until the dampened light of dawn appears. Of course, Axel understands completely what is wrong with him, and he closes his eyes and thinks back again to the day when his whole life changed.
54
the competition
Penelope and Björn study each other with tired, serious eyes. Through the closed door, they can hear Ossian Wallenberg singing ‘Do You Want to See a Star?’ like Zarah Leander as he’s rearranging the furniture.
“We can take him on,” Penelope whispers.
“Maybe so.”
“We’ve got to try.”
“And what then? Are we going to torture him to get his PIN number?”
“I think he’ll give it to us once we’re in control,” Penelope says.
“What if he doesn’t?”
She sways from exhaustion as she walks to the window and begins to loosen the hooks. Her fingers are tender and swollen. Her fingernails are broken and embedded with dirt and clay and scabs.
“Maybe we can head further up
the beach,” she says.
“Good,” he says. “Go ahead.”
“I’m not going to leave you behind.”
“I can’t keep going, Penny,” he says, and he doesn’t look at her. “My feet—I can’t run any more. At the most, maybe I could walk for another half hour.”
“I’ll help you.”
“Maybe there’s no one else with a phone on the whole island. We don’t know. We haven’t the slightest idea.”
“I don’t want to be part of his disgusting—”
“Penny, we have to contact the police. We have no choice: we have to use his phone.”
Ossian throws open the door with a grin. He’s wearing a leopard-patterned jacket with only a loincloth beneath. Ceremoniously he leads them to an enormous sofa. The curtains are still closed and he’s moved the other furniture to the side to open a big space in the living room for him to move freely. The little man steps into the spotlight formed by two floor lamps, stops, and turns.
“Ladies and gentlemen! Time flies when you have fun on a Friday evening!” he announces, winking. “We’ve reached the competition segment of our show and tonight we welcome this evening’s special guest, known from her appearances on television. She’s a shitty communist and she has an underage lover. This is a truly mismatched couple, if you ask me. A hag and a young man with a well-sculptured torso.”
Ossian winks again, and flexes his arm for the imaginary camera.
“Everybody ready?” he calls, jogging in place. “Do you have your approval buttons? I present: Truth or Consequences! Ossian challenges—the Hag and the Cutie!”
He spins an empty bottle on the floor. It rotates a few times and points to Björn.
“Cutie!” Ossian calls, smiling. “Cutie is the first man to play! Here’s the question! Are you ready to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth?”
“Absolutely,” Björn says with a sigh.
A drop of sweat falls from the tip of Ossian’s nose as he opens an envelope and reads out loud, “Who do you think about when you’re making love to the Hag?”
“Very funny,” says Penelope.