by Viveca Sten
By this stage Andreis must have realized that she wasn’t coming home. If he’d been furious on Monday, that was nothing compared to how he’d be feeling now. He never forgave a betrayal. He demanded total loyalty; he always had.
I will never let you go.
His words haunted her. He’d uttered them so often. She wanted to put her hands over her ears, but they would still echo inside her head.
When they first met, she’d thought it was a loving thing to say. Beautiful, in fact. The promise of a lifelong partnership, just like her parents’ marriage—two people who always wanted the best for each other. She’d loved the idea of her and Andreis against the world.
Gradually that sentence acquired a different meaning. It metamorphosed into a terrible reminder that she would never be free again.
If Andreis hadn’t been interrupted, he would have killed her on Monday. The realization hurt her more than the physical pain, the conviction that he would have carried on until she stopped breathing.
Who would take care of Lukas if she weren’t around?
While she was in the hospital she’d managed to avoid her reflection, but it was impossible here. The battered face in the hall mirror filled her with shame. Her tongue sought out the broken molar. The sharp surface was as damaged as she was, and the gum all around it was swollen and tender.
In spite of the pain she kept on until she cut her tongue, and the taste of blood filled her mouth.
She’d hoped that things would improve when Lukas was born, that Andreis would change. He’d been so happy at the birth. His voice and expression had softened. He had held his son to his chest and whispered in Bosnian in Lukas’s little ear.
This is a fresh start, Mina had thought. Everything’s going to be fine.
How wrong could she be?
Only weeks later Andreis was arrested and held in custody for several weeks. When he came out, he was worse than ever. There were so many accusations; he found fault after fault. He yelled at her, not caring if he woke Lukas. In the end she hardly dared do anything for fear of making yet more mistakes.
It wasn’t long before he started hitting her again.
Her room was too hot. She couldn’t breathe. With some difficulty she got out of bed and went over to the window. Hiding behind the curtain, she opened it a little way and allowed the cool night air to pour in.
What if he was out there watching her?
She slammed the window shut, and Lukas whimpered. Mina lifted him out of his crib in spite of her broken ribs, and rocked him back to sleep. She lay down on the bed with Lukas beside her. She could feel the warmth of his body, smell his hair, the baby powder after his bath.
For a moment, when madness blazed in Andreis’s eyes and her own body was rigid with fear, she had actually wanted to die.
Kill me, she’d thought. Go on, do it!
Then at least she would have escaped from everything, the terror and the pain. The shame that never left her. It was Lukas who had made her resist, fight back, fill her lungs with air. She had screamed for Lukas.
It had felt like a miracle when she’d heard the sound of approaching sirens. Someone rang the doorbell, and the police were there. A paramedic touched her gently and whispered reassuring words. Someone comforted Lukas, and Andreis was taken away in handcuffs.
She had been saved, against all odds. But what would happen next time he lost control?
Her phone beeped. She ought to keep it switched off, but she didn’t dare. Her parents had to be able to contact her; the results of the tests on her mother’s heart were due any day.
The message glowed at her in the darkness. Andreis’s number. Two short words.
Come home.
CHAPTER 24
The house in Skuru was at the far end of a narrow cul-de-sac, with nothing but forest and overgrown common land behind it. The sparse streetlamps provided little light.
When Dino arrived, there was a blue Passat parked on the drive. It was almost midnight. A chilly drizzle was falling, and the dampness covered the windshield like a veil of ice.
He pulled up a short distance away and waited in case anyone had heard the engine. Then he got out and checked the neighboring properties in case someone was peeping out to get a look at whoever was visiting at this late hour.
He walked up to the fence and studied the unassuming single-story house. The wood panels were painted gray, and a narrow graveled path led up to the front door, which had a large frosted pane of glass in the top half. The place reminded him of the 1970s homes in Nyköping where the Swedish kids lived; he’d seen them from a distance when he was at school.
The door didn’t appear to be particularly robust. It wouldn’t take much to break it down.
There was a faint light in the kitchen. Through the window Dino could see clean surfaces and a refrigerator with a white door. The light seemed to be coming from an extractor fan that someone had forgotten to switch off.
Was Mina there?
He looked around again before quietly opening the gate and entering the garden. He headed for the backyard, where a lawn was surrounded by apple trees growing along the fence. Generous picture windows looked out onto a wooden deck; a table and chairs had already been set out, even though it was only April. The main light in the living room was off, but a night-light in one corner made it possible to see the combined dining and living room.
There should be some sign of Mina and Lukas if they were hiding here.
Dino moved closer, stepped up onto the decking, and went up to the window. He scanned the room; he couldn’t see any toys or baby equipment or a stroller.
There was a collection of framed photographs on an antique painted cupboard—several pictures of Mina with her parents, and one where she was holding Lukas in her arms, smiling happily into the camera.
But no wedding photo of her and Andreis.
Dino silently stepped off the deck. It was raining harder now. He turned up the collar of his leather jacket, but the cold drops still found their way down the back of his neck.
He continued around the side of the house, sticking to the wet grass so that no one would hear him.
He saw the glow of a bedside lamp behind a closed roller blind, and a shadow moving around. So there was someone home, but he couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. Was it Mina, or one of her parents?
He stopped. It wasn’t a good idea to ring the doorbell at this time of night, for many reasons, but Andreis was expecting answers.
He made his way back to the front door. The external light was off, but he had no difficulty picking the lock and slipping into the hallway. He glanced around in the darkness. Coats and scarves were hung up on hooks, with a shoe rack below. The living room was straight ahead; he’d already checked that. The bedroom where he’d seen the shadow was on the left.
Was Mina hiding in there with her baby?
Dino moved forward without making a sound. The two closest rooms, a study and a bedroom, were empty. He paused by the door of the third room, where the lamp was lit. He could hear the murmur of voices. It seemed as if both parents were still awake.
“What if Andreis finds her?”
That sounded like Katrin, Mina’s mother. Dino remembered meeting her briefly in the maternity ward when she came to visit Mina.
“He’ll never track her down there,” Stefan replied. “It’s impossible.”
Dino listened hard. Mina and Lukas definitely weren’t here, but her parents seemed to know where she was.
“He’ll hunt her down and kill her,” Katrin said. “He’s a monster.” She sounded as if she were on the verge of tears. “I wish he’d stayed in Bosnia and never set foot in Sweden. This country should never have taken in his sort.”
Dino’s jaw tightened.
“Don’t say that,” Stefan murmured. “I wouldn’t be here either if that was the case.”
“It’s his fault that Mina’s had to go into hiding. He should have been deported long ago!”
Dino’s
fingers closed around the knife in his back pocket; the metal felt cool against his skin. He wanted to fling the door open and put the blade against Katrin’s throat, just as his own mother had been threatened before they left Bosnia. He wanted to see the fear in her eyes until she understood that she needed to watch her tongue. What did Mina’s mother know about real pain? Torture and rape? Men and women shot dead in front of their children, with the neighbors looking on? Her own husband was an immigrant, and yet she thought she had the right to say whatever she liked.
Dino loathed the supercilious attitude of so many Swedes. The way they boasted about their open borders. The way they took responsibility for the world’s war refugees, while other countries turned a deaf ear. They weren’t so keen to talk about the fact that they treated immigrants like second-class citizens and refused to let them become a part of society.
“The police assured us that she’s in safe hands,” Stefan reassured his wife. “They’ll take care of her and Lukas.”
Dino was breathing heavily.
It would be easy to walk into the bedroom and find out everything he needed to know in order to track down Mina. He was no novice when it came to extracting information. He would have no problem getting the address of Mina’s hiding place out of her father—and he could teach her mother a lesson at the same time.
But Andreis had only asked him to find out if Mina was here. Dino had offered to go because he didn’t trust Andreis not to lose control.
He let go of the knife. He was not Andreis.
He could always come back.
“We need to get some sleep,” Stefan murmured. “Try not to worry so much.”
The light went off.
Dino turned and left the house without a sound.
Saturday
CHAPTER 25
Nora ran down to the steamboat jetty on Sandhamn to catch the morning ferry to Stavsnäs. Leila had called her half an hour earlier to tell her that Mina had been in touch, against all odds. She was ready to talk to them about the assault.
Nora didn’t want to risk her changing her mind. After a quick check on the timetable, she found a boat that would get her to Runmarö at twelve fifteen.
The deckhand was about to remove the gangway when she arrived.
“Wait!” she shouted, and managed to board just before the captain set off. Slightly out of breath, she made her way to the cafeteria and bought a cup of coffee and a cheese roll. She sat down at a table by the window and took out her laptop in order to refresh her memory before the meeting. It would mean a lot if she could get Mina to testify.
“Next stop Harö” came the announcement over the loudspeaker, and Nora automatically looked up. She saw Thomas’s tall figure on the jetty. She waved to him, but wasn’t sure he’d seen her. However, a couple of minutes later he came into the cafeteria with a shabby knapsack over his shoulder.
In the daylight the graying hair at his temples was clearly visible. The last few months had taken their toll.
“Morning,” he said. “I thought you were spending the weekend on Sandhamn?”
Nora explained the situation before Thomas joined the line to buy something to eat and drink.
“Leila Kacim is in charge of the investigation, isn’t she?” he said when he came back with a mug of tea and an egg sandwich. He and Leila had met briefly when Nora introduced them to each other.
“Yes, she’s meeting me on Runmarö.” She instinctively lowered her voice; not many people knew about the shelter on the island.
“I met someone who worked with her when she was with the city police,” Thomas said. “Apparently she’s really good.”
Nora was a little embarrassed; she hadn’t known that Leila had been with the city police before she came to the Economic Crimes Authority. Then again, Leila rarely talked about the past. Nora knew she’d grown up in one of Stockholm’s poorer areas, with her mother and younger brother, but that was all. Training to be a police officer couldn’t have been an easy choice, and it must have been tough for Leila to establish herself among the veterans in the city when she was newly qualified and came from an immigrant background.
“So why are you going into town?” she asked Thomas. “I thought you were staying on Harö for the whole weekend?”
“Pernilla’s sick—she’s got a terrible cold.” Thomas fished out his tea bag and placed it on the tray. “She texted to see if I could pick up Elin today, even though we usually swap on Mondays. Apparently her temperature is sky-high.”
“It’s good that you can help each other out when there’s a problem.”
Thomas shrugged. Nora couldn’t decide whether the gesture was positive or negative, or merely resigned.
“So how’s it going in general?” she said tentatively. “Has Elin gotten used to spending every other week with you and Pernilla?”
“It works. Of course it would have been better if it could have been avoided. If we hadn’t separated.”
Nora placed her hand on his. She recognized the bitterness; she’d reproached herself in exactly the same way when she eventually decided to leave Henrik. The anguish at splitting up her family had almost broken her, even though he was the one who’d been unfaithful.
“You can’t stay together for the sake of the children,” she said. “Believe me. I tried with Henrik, and you know how that went. You can’t live with someone when the love has gone, however much you want to.”
“I still care about her.” Thomas ran a hand through his hair and turned away.
Outside the window the sky was as blue as if it were June. The sunlight sparkled on the waves. Soon the trees would begin to turn pale green, the grass would grow, and the wood anemones would appear. Things always felt better when spring was on the way.
However, Thomas didn’t seem to have noticed.
“I really miss her,” he admitted, sounding as if he didn’t quite know how to explain what he’d just said. “Every night. I hate coming home if there’s no one in the apartment. I hate Elin’s room being empty when it’s Pernilla’s week.” He stirred his tea with such force that the hot liquid spilled over. “When we’re together . . . it’s as if we’re speaking different languages. We misunderstand each other all the time. We can’t reach each other. Or . . . I can’t reach her.”
Two years earlier Pernilla had taken up a new post as Scandinavian brand ambassador for a telecom company. The role carried a great deal of responsibility, and the salary and benefits were considerably more attractive than Thomas’s. In return Pernilla was expected to travel a great deal, and to be constantly available.
Somewhere along the line, things had begun to go wrong.
Nora had noticed the tension between her friends the previous year: the constant sniping about overtime and misplaced priorities. Gibes that were nonexistent during the twenty years they’d been together, jokes with a serious undertone.
On several occasions when they were due to visit, Thomas had showed up alone with Elin, because Pernilla was stuck in some meeting. When Pernilla was there, she always seemed tired but wound up at the same time. She constantly checked her cell phone and disappeared to take calls. Thomas sulked and Pernilla was irritated.
Nora had started to worry. She knew how destructive it could be when one person’s career was set against the other’s. When partnership tipped over into some kind of competition.
She’d been there herself.
It was hard enough to balance work and leisure, the role of parent and partner in a successful relationship. If the love faded away, then everyday life became impossible.
“The whole thing just feels like a massive failure,” Thomas said, pushing away his mug. “First of all losing Emily, then the separation. We could hardly bear to see each other, because we were still alive and Emily was gone. Then we managed to find our way back, and we had Elin. We finally had everything we wanted, life was good—and we had to go and sabotage it.”
The rumble of the engine increased as the ferry began to reverse toward the je
tty on Idholmen. A woman with a stroller was waiting to board.
“It’s so stupid.”
Thomas sounded as if he were talking to himself; Nora ached with sympathy for him.
“It makes me so mad,” he went on. “It’s such a waste. We fucked up, even though we ought to know better.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
“Well, I can’t blame anyone else, can I?”
The harshness of Thomas’s tone brought tears to Nora’s eyes. She hadn’t seen him this low since they lost Emily to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. He had suffered from depression and been unable to sleep; he’d almost gone under. It had taken him a long time to come back, and a part of him had never really recovered. There was always a streak of melancholy just below the surface.
“Maybe you can find your way back to each other again?” she said gently. “Time apart can give people space to rethink, distance that allows you to see what’s good rather than getting stuck in the bad stuff.”
Thomas made a sad little noise. “I think we’re past fixing. It’s gone too far.”
“Don’t say that.”
“You don’t understand. The mere sight of her cell phone makes me angry. I’m so sick of her job coming before everything else. We’ve talked about it over and over again, but nothing changes.” He sighed heavily. “She used to say that I was always working, that I couldn’t separate my job from my private life, that I put the needs of others above those of my family. Guess who prioritizes their job over everything else now?”
Nora hadn’t dared to ask who had initiated the separation, but she suspected she knew now. “It’s not easy when you feel you come second,” she murmured. “But I can’t imagine that Pernilla would choose her job over you and Elin.”
“She already has.”
CHAPTER 26
Nora was the only passenger to disembark on Runmarö. Leila was already waiting, having taken another ferry direct from Stavsnäs, which was very close.
Leila’s black jacket was covered in dog hair.