Prime Time

by Liza Marklund

  ‘Gällnö? That’s the boat at the far end. Have a nice Midsummer.’

  Thomas tried to smile at the employee from Waxholmsbolaget shrouded in raingear, gripped the handle of the stroller firmly, ploughed through a deep puddle and managed to ram a young woman in the legs from behind.

  ‘It’s customary to apologize, you know,’ she hissed at him.

  Thomas averted his gaze and felt how the plastic handle on the package of diapers cut into his wrist and the frame of his backpack slammed against his hip bones.

  ‘I want ice cream,’ Kalle declared, pointing at the stand behind them on the pier.

  ‘Once we’re on the boat, I’ll get you some ice cream,’ Thomas promised, his forehead breaking out in a sweat. A gust of wind splattered rain against his face. Ellen whined. His heart sank as he gazed down the pier.

  The old steamer Norrskär was tied up at the far end, and it was pitching and rolling. She looked like a humpbacked old lady next to the potent modern brutes. In this weather, on this boat, it would take them more than three hours to reach his parents’ place out in the islands.

  One of the last passengers to make it aboard, Thomas stashed the stroller, their bags and his backpack indoors, under the bridge.

  ‘Come on, time for a snack,’ he said, hearing how feeble he sounded.

  The sea was pretty rough. Kalle was seasick before they even passed the first islands on the route, Fjäderholmarna. He threw up all over the table in the cafeteria and dropped his jumbo ice-cream bar in the slimy puddle.

  ‘My ice cream!’ the boy sobbed, trying to pick up the slimy stick while wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

  ‘Hang on,’ Thomas exclaimed while Ellen tried to wriggle out of his arms.

  The other passengers edged away from them as inconspicuously as possible.

  ‘Clean it up yourself,’ the girl behind the counter said resentfully, handing Thomas a roll of paper towels.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, sensing how the stares of the other passengers were growing more disapproving. ‘It’s okay, Ellen, Kalle, everything’s going to be fine …’

  Thomas fled out on deck, clutching his daughter under one arm, the stroller under the other and urging a tearful and unwilling Kalle on in front of him.

  There, in a shelter by the stairs, he deposited his children. He pulled off his raincoat, wrapped it around the boy and sat him down on the bench. The boy stopped crying at once and fell asleep in less than a minute. Thomas lowered the backrest of the stroller, tucked his daughter in snugly with a blanket and began to rock the stroller quickly back and forth, back and forth. Aided by the rolling motion of the boat, it did the trick. She too fell asleep.

  Thomas applied the stroller brakes and made sure that his children were protected from the rain before going up to the railing to be embraced by the spray and the wind. A sudden and inexplicable sense of loss engulfed him. There was something here that he no longer had.

  It struck him that it was the sea water, the semi-salty water found in this part of the world. The way it felt, its characteristic scent.

  Something he had grown up with. The sea was a part of his frame of reference, it had always been there. Its pure transparent depths were not only a feature of Thomas’s childhood and the summer season, the sea had been a presence in Vaxholm as well, where he had lived until the age of thirty-two. That facet of his life had only slipped away during the past few years, and he had forgotten one of the cornerstones of his life.

  She isn’t worth it, he thought.

  And suddenly another thought struck him with full force: I regret it.

  Thomas gasped, never having allowed these feelings to surface before. The acknowledgement of his deceit tied his stomach up in knots, threatened to bring him down.

  He had betrayed Eleonor, his wife, all because of a fling with Annika Bengtzon. He had left his fine house, his home and his life to go and live in Stockholm, in Kungsholmen, in Annika’s ramshackle apartment building that was scheduled to be torn down, where there was no hot water. He hadn’t kept his promise to God and to Eleonor, he had let his parents, his friends and his neighbours down. In Vaxholm, he and Eleonor had been important members of the community, involved in the church and various societies. She was a bank manager and he had been employed by the local authorities as a chief financial officer.

  ‘All for a piece of tail,’ he told the wind.

  Then the pendulum of guilt swung back again, striking him with the same shattering force.

  Oh, Kalle, he thought. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it that way.

  Turning his back on the sea, Thomas studied the children asleep in the shelter. They were fantastic, and they were his. His!

  Eleonor didn’t want to have children. He hadn’t really given it much thought until Annika had turned up on their doorstep that night right before Christmas, pregnant and weeping. How long ago was it? Three and a half years ago? Not longer than that?

  It felt like much longer. After that scene, he had only been back to the house once, accompanied by the movers. Eleonor had kept the house and he had put his share of the settlement into the stock market, into the Tech sector that his broker had so warmly recommended.

  ‘Don’t buy junk like that,’ Annika had said. ‘What’s the point of broadband connections when they can’t even make computers that work, for God’s sake?’

  Then she’d dropped her laptop on the floor and stomped on it.

  ‘Now that’s mature,’ he had told her. ‘Your analysis of the stock market is truly confidence-inspiring.’

  Of course, in the end she was right. A month later, the market took a nosedive, and his stocks took the worst beating of them all.

  Thomas moved out of the wind and noticed that he was cold and wet.

  And they hadn’t even passed Gåshaga yet.

  ‘Why isn’t the elevator working?’ Anders Schyman wheezed as he reached the fourth floor of the paper’s high-rise office building.

  Tore Brand regarded him with a sulky expression.

  ‘It’s the damp weather,’ he said. ‘The repairman will be here on Monday.’

  The managing editor tried to catch his breath, deciding that he wouldn’t broach the subject again until some other member of the maintenance staff was on duty.

  All on his lonesome, Spike was parked at his desk: feet up and the phone practically glued to his ear. He jerked in surprise when Schyman put his hand on his shoulder.

  ‘I’ll get back to you,’ he said, slamming down the receiver.

  ‘Where’s Torstensson?’ Schyman asked.

  ‘With his family in the province of Dalarna, playing the fiddle. Ever see him gussied up for traditional folk music?’

  Spike grinned. The boys in the newsroom had absolutely no respect for their editor-in-chief. Schyman knew it was of secondary importance. As long as the boys could push Torstensson around, make him do their bidding, the man would stay on the job.

  Schyman sat down facing the news-desk editor and leaned back. He knew that the boys respected his know-how and experience, but that was of little consequence as long as he didn’t have the executive power.

  Suddenly Annika Bengtzon’s name for the newsroom editors popped into his head. ‘The Flannel Pack’, she called them, due to their virtually interchangeable dark-blue flannel jackets. He grinned.

  Then he cleared his throat.

  ‘So what do we do about poor Miss Carlsson?’

  ‘Annika Bengtzon was supposed to call me around noon, but she hasn’t.’

  Schyman raised his hands in a gesture of impatience.

  ‘Who’s she riding with?’

  ‘Bertil. They left not long after ten.’

  ‘Then I bet they’ve hardly passed the city limits. The traffic is unbelievable.’

  ‘Damn right,’ Spike exclaimed. He lived in Solna and drove his company car four kilometres to work every day. ‘Now that would be something to start a crusade about.’

  Schyman stifled a sigh.

  ‘
You’re aware that Michelle Carlsson had filed two court cases against us for defamation of character, aren’t you?’

  ‘So what?’ Spike countered. ‘Are we supposed to hold back at a time like this because some broad was a legal disaster while she was alive?’

  Schyman regarded his news editor in silence for ten seconds.

  ‘Who’s doing what?’ he finally asked.

  In a somewhat agitated manner, Spike leafed through stacks of paper, his upper lip beaded with perspiration.

  ‘Like I said, Annika Bengtzon and Bertil are on their way to Flen, and Berit Hamrin is on her way from Öland. She was supposed to write a piece about kids boozing it up and causing Midsummer mayhem. We booked a photographer for the assignment and I’ve spent the better part of an hour on the phone with the guy. He’s pissed off now that the assignment’s been canned.’

  ‘It goes without saying that we’ll pay him anyway,’ Anders Schyman replied and extracted a newspaper from the mess on Spike’s desk.

  ‘All right, but the guy wasn’t doing it for the money, he was after a byline in the paper. I told him to shoot something anyway and send it over to us with details about the names and ages of the people in the photos.’

  ‘I’d like to see those pictures before we use them,’ the managing editor said. ‘We’ve had our fill of faked shots of trashing teens.’

  Spike went pink. Last year he had sent two reporters who weren’t on the regular staff to Öland, and they’d brought in some fabulous material. The only drawback was that the reporter and the photographer had been hitting the bottle as hard as anyone else, and they had forgotten to tell their new-found friends that they would be immortalized barfing, crying and defecating in the pages of Kvällspressen. The result of this episode had been that the Swedish Press Council found the paper guilty of unethical behaviour in five instances, and therefore liable for damages of more than SEK 150,000 to keep things out of court. Kvällspressen would have won in court, but the whole business was so sordid that it was better to buy out the Council and preserve whatever was left of the paper’s good name.

  ‘That’s why we sent Berit this year,’ Spike replied curtly and clicked on his computer screen. ‘I only said that crap about the photos to get that freelancer off my back.’

  ‘Just make sure that he doesn’t clog up the modem with five hundred useless pictures five minutes before deadline,’ Schyman countered drily and got up. ‘I want to talk to Bengtzon when she calls.’

  ‘If she calls,’ Spike said. But by then Anders Schyman had already left the room.

  The holiday motorcade inched its way along Route 55. Rain was coming down in buckets and the car’s windshield wipers creaked. The slow monotonous pace charged the atmosphere in the Saab with tension, and the silence was oppressive. Annika tried to get comfortable, but the seat belt chafed and the seat itself was designed to support the small of a taller person’s back. She realized that her discomfort had nothing to do with the seat, really; her feelings of insecurity were the culprit. Her maternity leave was over and she had only worked a few weeks so far, but she could tell that the others were already questioning her presence on the crime-desk team.

  During her pregnancy, Annika had been posted to other departments – Women’s Issues and stupid trivia assignments. Despite feeling demoted and dismissed, she hadn’t raised a fuss. Naturally, she was fully aware of management’s attitude towards young women who got pregnant soon after being made a permanent staff member. She knew that in their eyes she had let them down, that she was seen as deadbeat, as using the system to get paid maternity leave and leave the paper in the lurch. Adding insult to injury, a very pregnant crime reporter was something to joke about. One, it was presumed that she went brain-dead as soon as one of her eggs had been fertilized, and two, she had to be punished for letting everyone down. She could still remember the bitter tears that she’d shed and how Thomas, unable to really understand, made clumsy attempts to comfort her.

  ‘You’ll feel better soon, you’ll see,’ he had said, bringing her a glass of milk.

  Annika never told him that she wasn’t crying because she felt sick to her stomach.

  Her neck ached. She massaged the uppermost vertebra and tried to unclench her jaw muscles. During most of the trip she hadn’t been able to use her cellphone: her worthless service provider, Comviq, didn’t have enough coverage out in the sticks.

  The tiny morsels of information that she had told her that both the Eskilstuna police force and the national homicide division had been called in, a fact she found simultaneously comforting and disturbing. Annika was pretty familiar with the national homicide division, particularly Q, who was often in charge of these investigations. Her relationship with the Eskilstuna police force was somewhat more complicated. They had investigated the death of Sven Matsson in Hälleforsnäs, and she was certain that they hadn’t forgotten her.

  She stared out the car window, saw the blur of pine trees flash by; the same lush green landscape that she had been chased through all those years ago. Escaping from her stalker.

  It had been a chilly autumn day, the air crisp and clear. She had left Sven the night before, had broken off their sadistic relationship once and for all. His response had been to threaten to kill her, and he had chased her through the woods with a hunting knife and then attacked her cat, gutting the animal.

  Annika closed her eyes and let the poorly paved road in combination with the new Saab suspension rock her, concentrating on relaxing. Eyes closed, she saw Sven’s head being crushed by an iron pipe by her own hand. Saw him slowly crumple and fall over the railing into the blastfurnace and disappear. She started breathing rapidly and the skin of her legs was crawling, so she forced the image to recede.

  She had been convicted of manslaughter. The Eskilstuna County Court sentenced her to two years of probation. The court determined that she had acted in self-defence, so the charge had not been second-degree murder. She wasn’t certain that the verdict was the right one – she had wanted to kill Sven. Cradling her dying cat in her arms, its intestines spilling from its belly, she had been convinced that she had done the right thing.

  ‘Is this the right exit?’

  Annika looked up.

  ‘Yeah. Make a left.’

  They followed the long avenue leading to the drive at Yxtaholm. As they reached the side road leading to the stud farm, the drive was sealed off by a large road barrier.

  Bertil Strand groaned.

  ‘Now isn’t that just damn typical?’

  Annika looked over to the left and caught a glimpse of the white walls of the castle through the foliage. Further up the drive she could see people walking around and an uplink bus pulling up in the parking lot next to the Stables.

  ‘Everyone in the whole fucking media sector is here already,’ the photographer said.

  ‘Quit complaining,’ Annika said.

  She opened the door and got out while Bertil revved up the car to leave.

  Calling out to the police officer at the barrier Annika asked: ‘How much of the area is sealed off?’

  ‘The whole point.’

  ‘Why were the others allowed to enter?’

  Pretending not to hear Bertil Strand’s angry protests, she slammed the car door.

  ‘We’re going to seal off and clear the entire area bit by bit,’ the officer replied in authoritative tones that were belied by his behaviour; his Adam’s apple bobbed nervously and he gazed out uneasily over the lake. He was a local, probably a member of the Katrineholm police force.

  Annika decided to try an aggressive approach. She whipped a press card out of her pocket, marched up to the policeman, shoved the card in his face and glared.

  ‘Are you trying to interfere with my work?’

  The officer gulped.

  ‘I have my orders,’ he replied, gazing intently at Lake Långsjön.

  ‘Do they include obstructing the press? I don’t think so.’

  The officer looked at Annika.

 
‘Say, aren’t you from Hälleforsnäs?’ he asked.

  Annika recoiled. Then she spun around and got back into the car, landing in the front seat with a thud.

  ‘We won’t be getting in this way,’ she said, slamming the door.

  ‘Damn it, how many times do I have to tell you––?’

  Bertil Strand released the clutch carefully to avoid a spray of gravel that would scratch up the paint job.

  ‘Hang on,’ Annika said. She closed her eyes, smoothed her brow, and felt the adrenalin start pumping away. ‘There’s got to be some other route.’

  The photographer revved up the car and put it in second gear, skidding slightly on the wet gravel.

  A sense of failure felt like a stone slab on Annika’s chest.

  ‘Stop the car,’ she pleaded. ‘We’ve got to think.’

  Bertil Strand parked next to a faded traffic sign.

  ‘There’s got to be some other way to get in,’ she said.

  The photographer gazed out over the lake.

  ‘Is it possible to approach this place from the other side?’

  ‘The castle’s on an island located between two lakes,’ Annika told him. ‘This is Lake Långsjön. On the other side, Lake Yxtasjön continues quite a long way up to the left. I don’t think there are any public roads there. There could be a tractor path, but they’re usually gated.’

  She scanned across the lake and caught a glimpse of Finntorp Farm through the foliage. When she’d been a teenager, she’d been to riding camp there, jumping her horse Soraya and winning ribbons. Impressions flashed through her mind: the scent of new-mown hay, the warmth of the horse between her thighs, the dust of the dirt road, the love and the sense of utter harmony she felt in the mare’s company.

  Suddenly she knew.

  ‘Go left,’ she said, ‘and then make another left.’

  Without questioning her, the photographer did as she said; either he trusted her or he was pissed off. It made no difference, she decided.

  ‘Where do we go now?’ he asked when they reached Finntorp.