Prime Time

by Liza Marklund

  The smile remained. His gaze drew her in, engaging her in a dance that began in her belly and whirled up through her chest, making her giddy.

  ‘How about we grab a beer sometime up in Stockholm?’

  Annika blinked a few times, her heart suddenly fluttering in her chest like a bird. When she spoke, she didn’t recognize her voice.

  ‘Sure, why not, maybe, I guess we could …’

  ‘I’ll call you.’

  She turned around and fled to her car. Her breathing was so shallow that it barely made it past her larynx.

  Anne Snapphane was crying as she sat in the car. Annika got into the driver’s seat and looked at her friend who was leaning forwards, her hands up by the windshield. Anne was resting her forehead against the glove compartment, her shoulders heaving with soundless spasms. The unexpected and confusing impression of drunkenness evaporated in seconds.

  Gently, Annika placed a hand on Anne’s back.

  ‘Everything will be all right,’ she said. ‘The worst part is over now.’

  Thomas got out of bed carefully. His back was stiff and he straightened the sheet to cover the children. He hoped that Kalle wouldn’t wet the bed during his nap – he couldn’t face doing any more laundry. He stopped in the doorway and looked at them. The girl looked so much like Annika, while the boy was a copy of himself. Their downy hair was tousled by the wind that found its way behind the drawn curtains, and their bodies were shapeless blobs under the sheets. Desperately, Thomas tried to find the feeling of love and connection, the usual pride and fulfilment, but it slipped away, refusing to materialize. He knew why and gritted his teeth.

  Doubt.

  Were they really worth …?

  He slipped out and quietly closed the door, a draught making the last ten centimetres slow going. He padded carefully across the hall and got two chairs to block access to the stairs.

  ‘Holger?’ he carefully called out in the direction of the kitchen. ‘Mother?’

  No reply.

  The sun was almost hot. The sea’s surface seemed to be covered with slivers of mirrors casting reflections that made his eyes smart. Thomas walked down towards the rocky shore, the ground so smooth to the touch, balancing along the waterfront. He caught sight of her too late. She was sitting on the rock out in the water, their favourite spot, and she was smiling at him.

  ‘There you are,’ Eleonor said. ‘The others were wondering where you went.’

  He stopped and cleared his throat, his embarrassment upsetting him.

  ‘I was putting the kids down,’ he said, aware that Annika would have told him off if she had known. You weren’t supposed to lie down next to the kids to get them to go to sleep, she’d read that in some parenting manual – children were supposed to fall asleep on their own, in their own beds.

  Eleonor patted the spot next to her, and without thinking Thomas sat down and put his left arm around her like he had always used to do. Her bare thighs burned his, causing a rush of blood to his loins.

  ‘Gällnö must be paradise on earth,’ she said as she looked out to sea, unaware of the effect she had on him.

  Eleonor was much softer-looking than he remembered, taller and shapelier. It struck him that Annika was small and hard.

  ‘Don’t you miss this island?’ she asked, looking into his eyes.

  Thomas’s diaphragm contracted. He had a hard time breathing and invested her words with a different message.

  ‘Maybe I do,’ he said.

  She looked out over the water again, shaded her eyes and peered at Hägerön.

  ‘They swam over there,’ she said, ‘those nuts. Can you see them?’

  Thomas pretended to look, her presence making him feel faint. She raised an arm and waved, unintentionally hitting him on the nose with her elbow. He grabbed his nose, amazed at the pain, and she laughed.

  ‘Isn’t Martin nice? I’m so happy, Thomas. Aren’t you happy for me?’

  He blinked away the tears brought on by the punch in the nose, confused and angry.

  ‘We met at a dinner that the bank had for the IT consultants who are going to build our new control system. Martin is one of the partners.’

  Thomas checked his nose. It wasn’t bleeding.

  ‘Don’t fuss,’ Eleonor said with another laugh and jumped into the water, hiking up her shorts a little more. The waves lapped at her thighs and she walked carefully along the sharp rocks on the seabed.

  ‘Has he moved into the house?’ Thomas asked, suddenly territorial.

  ‘No,’ she said and smiled. ‘But we have bought a sailboat. It’s moored over at the marina in Torsviken.’

  ‘What type of a boat?’ he wondered, trying to sound polite.

  Eleonor craned her neck in a preening gesture, a quirk she had when she was proud of something.

  ‘It’s a 2001 Beneteau Oceanis 36 CCCli, with a fully equipped centred cockpit, a wind-powered generator, sun panels, rubber raft davits, the works when it comes to navigational equipment, adjustable mainsheet rails, supersized Swedish Albatross sails, and waterborne heating. It had travelled seventeen hundred and fifty nautical miles when we bought it, one hundred and forty hours by engine.’

  Thomas nodded, impressed but trying to conceal the fact.

  ‘What kind of engine does it have?’

  ‘A Volvo, thirty-eight horsepower. A 20:40.’

  ‘How much was it?’

  Eleonor came ashore, shook the water off her legs, slipped on her sandals and gave him a sideways glance.

  ‘I told you it was a used boat.’

  He motioned her to spit it out.

  ‘One point three million kronor,’ she said.

  Thomas crowed with laughter, something he’d already decided to do no matter what the answer was.

  ‘One point three? Talk about being shafted!’

  Her joy evaporated and her body language showed it. She pouted, causing a double chin to appear.

  ‘You don’t even like sailing,’ Thomas said.

  She looked up at him with a condescending air.

  ‘That depends on the company I keep,’ she said. ‘You criticized me all the time.’

  Eleonor turned her back on him and walked along the bluff in the direction of the house. His protests remained stuck in his throat – No, I didn’t, you never wanted to learn. In a flash he knew she was right; he had been impatient, getting upset when she was seasick, finding her weakness irritating.

  Thomas saw her get something on the porch and then rush over to Hemfladen and wave at some heads bobbing in the water. The realization made his lungs sting.

  I don’t deserve her.

  Tore Brand rapped on the glass door.

  ‘You’ve switched off incoming calls,’ he said disapprovingly when Anders Schyman opened the sliding door.

  ‘Yes, and I did so for a very good reason,’ the managing editor maintained.

  ‘The police are on the line. They want to talk to you.’

  Without waiting for an answer, the attendant turned away and went back to the front desk. Dread sunk its claws into Anders Schyman’s gut, the same emotion that strikes anyone when the police come knocking on your door – the sense of not knowing what you’ve done wrong, a desperate and fruitless attempt at justification.

  It was a woman.

  ‘I’m calling from the Impound Department,’ she said, ‘to notify you that the DA has released your property. Do you have the number?’

  Anders Schyman cleared his throat.

  ‘There must be some kind of misunderstanding,’ he said. ‘We don’t have any impounded material.’

  ‘No,’ the woman conceded, ‘but we do. We’ve got rooms full of stuff. So you can pick up your property now.’

  He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes.

  ‘I must say I don’t quite understand this.’

  ‘According to the inventory, this property was seized during the murder investigation at Yxtaholm Castle.’

  Schyman heard the rustling of papers
.

  ‘It’s a camera,’ the woman said, ‘and it has no bearing on the case. The DA’s office is anxious to return all impounded property as soon as possible. We don’t want to have this stuff here all summer.’

  ‘And it belongs to us?’

  ‘I must request that you pick it up as promptly as possible. Go to our offices on Bergsgatan 52, tell the staff why you came, and you will be able to sign for the release of your property.’

  The managing editor jotted down the address on his blotter.

  ‘Are you certain that you won’t be needing it?’

  ‘Obviously, we’ve made copies of the pictures that we deemed were of interest.’

  Schyman thanked the woman and hung up, his hand lingering on the receiver.

  Then he asked Tore Brand to go and pick up the camera as soon as possible.

  Twenty-five minutes later he was holding the impounded object in his hand. It was sealed in a plastic bag and labelled with a police code, a registration number, the case designation, and a serial number. Tearing the bag open, Schyman hefted the device; it was small, compact and heavy. A digital camera bearing a nameplate on the back declaring that it was the property of the Kvällspressen Picture Department. He pressed the button marked power – the device sprang to life with a ring tone, and the word ‘Hello!’ appeared on the orange display.

  He studied the buttons, which were logical. He had never used a camera like this before, but he had attended the meeting when the paper decided to buy a few for the Picture Department. It wasn’t much different from a conventional camera, only the images were stored on a device a bit like a floppy disc instead of on film. The great advantage was that no processing was required; you could view your pictures straight away.

  Anders Schyman made a selection and the first shot appeared. The subject was a young woman whom he vaguely recognized as a friend of Annika Bengtzon’s. She was laughing and holding a beer, a slightly fuzzy look in her eyes. A man he didn’t recognize was sticking his tongue out at the camera. The next shot showed Carl Wennergren in an easy chair, his feet propped up on a dining table.

  He clicked through a few more shots, one party picture after another flashed by. He was just about to turn the camera off when he stopped short.

  Picture number seventeen showed two people having sex on the dining-room table, in a position that could only be described as advanced. It was obvious who they were: Michelle Carlsson and John Essex. For a few seconds, Anders Schyman stared at the image in disbelief before switching to the next shot. It was out of focus and dark, but he could tell that the couple had changed position. The next shot had Michelle leaning over the table with the man behind her.

  I should be turned on, the managing editor thought, surprised by his lack of emotion. In one way or another, these should have an effect on me.

  He glanced through the rest of the shots quickly. They were all dark and out of focus to some extent. Taken secretly. A white door frame on the right of some of the shots revealed that the photographer had been hiding in a nearby room or space.

  In picture number thirty-nine, the outline of another person could be seen. A dark silhouette was present in the upper left-hand corner and the couple on the table had changed to yet another position. The silhouette was closer in picture number forty and in forty-one he could see who the person was.

  It was Mariana von Berlitz, Carl Wennergren’s girlfriend. Mariana had been a summertime extra on the night shift during the first summer he had worked at the paper.

  She was holding a large revolver.

  Anders Schyman felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Christ, he had to stand up, he couldn’t believe his eyes. It felt like the camera had grown hot to the touch – was he holding the murder in his hands?

  With slightly trembling hands, he clicked to the next shot and wound up back at Annika Bengtzon’s tipsy friend again. Square one. He flicked through the pictures a few times, making certain that he hadn’t missed anything.

  Schyman gazed out at the newsroom. No one was looking in his direction; they were all working for the company’s, or possibly their own, benefit.

  What should he do with the pictures?

  According to the police, these pictures had no bearing on the case …

  No, he corrected himself, the camera has no bearing on the case. They made copies of the pictures.

  So the logical question was: Who took them?

  As far as Schyman knew, no camera had been reported stolen, which would seem to suggest one of the members of the paper’s staff.

  In other words: either Barbara Hanson or Carl Wennergren.

  What the hell should he do with the camera?

  He put it on his desk, a potentially explosive lump of metal. He rocked his chair a bit, concentrating on the shiny contours of the camera, letting the background grow fuzzy.

  The pictures were unique; they were probably the last ones ever taken of Michelle Carlsson while she was still alive. Publishing them was out of the question. Turning them over to the newsroom staff would be like wallpapering the main square, Sergels torg, with them. Deleting them would be like a journalistic crime.

  Schyman leaned back in his chair and covered his eyes with one hand. He remained in this position until he’d made his decision. Then he leaned forward and scooped up the camera. He opened the second desk drawer from the top, tossed the camera in there along with all the paper clips and locked it.

  The silence after the drawer closed with a bang echoed in his head. It would just have to stay there – he didn’t have the strength to think of another solution right now. He closed his eyes for a brief moment, then surveyed the newsroom and let his gaze rest on Torstensson.

  The editor-in-chief was sitting at the foreign correspondent’s desk, looking vacant and out of place.

  He doesn’t belong here, Schyman thought, surprised by the sense of certainty that the thought aroused in him.

  Annika’s knuckles whitened as she gripped the steering wheel.

  ‘Want me to drive?’ Anne Snapphane asked.

  Annika shook her head and let her gaze sweep across the lake. The shoreline followed the road like a cat follows its mistress during a walk through the woods, taking certain diversions along the way but never straying too far, taking off incomprehensibly, but still present, always close to home.

  They had stopped at the Statoil station in Flen and bought a bunch of summer flowers wrapped in plastic for SEK 39.50, checked out from the motel across the road and then headed for Mellösa and Hälleforsnäs.

  The countryside was lush with the greenery of early summer, that lovely freshness before an orgy of chlorophyll made the different shades of green merge into one: saturation. The silence in the car was heavy but warm and friendly nonetheless. Anne’s tears had subsided, leaving her joints limber and her sinuses swollen. She stared unseeingly out of the window, allowing herself to be rocked and transported.

  Annika knew the route without being consciously aware of it. The road and countryside were as familiar to her as if they were carved into her backbone; every last turn in the road, every stone and building had been a daily experience, come rain or come shine, in the heat and in the snow – the route she had taken to school, her childhood’s points of reference, her foundation.

  ‘When was the last time you paid your respects at the grave?’ Anne asked in a voice that was composed without being tense.

  Annika swallowed.

  ‘It’s been way too long. When I was expecting Ellen.’

  She turned off on the road to Harpsund, crossing the railroad tracks and heading up through the ancient village where the church reposed on the hilltop. She made a left turn at the No Stopping sign and parked next to a pine hedge. She sat still for a few minutes before picking up the flowers, now limp from the heat, and venturing out into the sun.

  The dazzling white church was on the left, and Annika noticed a couple leaning on their canes proceeding slowly past the older grave sites. The newer pa
rt of the cemetery was on a slope facing the lake, enclosed by hedges of pine and murmuring birch trees. The crunch of the gravel underfoot echoed in the silence. Annika walked carefully, almost furtively. Her gaze swept over the headstones, the old-fashioned Swedish names, the sharecroppers and farmers with time-honoured last names like Andersson, Petersson, Johansson and Eriksson. As she reached the steps, she hesitated and took three deep breaths, watching the sun play a cat-and-mouse game with the shoreline.

  It’s beautiful here, Gran, Annika thought. This is a fine place for you.

  She descended the five steps to the next level and went to the left, above the area with the watering cans, plastic vases and garbage cans, passing the grave of the twenty-one-year-old soldier who had died at the Finnish front, on the Svir River, fighting for the freedom of the Nordic countries. There was the reddish-grey granite headstone, polished and lettered with gold: Sofia Katarina. Annika’s grandfather rested by Sofia Katarina’s side. Annika sank to her knees, the soft grass coating her legs with moisture. Not bothering to use a vase, she laid the flowers, still wrapped in plastic, on the grave.

  You would have believed that I was doing the right thing, she thought.

  Gran’s voice resonated inside her, as strangely youthful and vibrant as when she was alive: You have to be able to support yourself, you need to have a job. Never let yourself be dependent on a man to put food on the table, do you hear that, Annika? Get a good job.

  ‘I have a daughter,’ Annika whispered. ‘I have two children now.’

  The next thought she didn’t speak aloud.

  You wouldn’t have approved of me not being married.

  She tried to pray: Our Father Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come … But the prayer trailed off, leaving only the whispering of the birch trees, the gentle rustling of the aspen and the rhythm of a train on its way to Eskilstuna.

  I miss you, Gran. I miss you every single day. I need you. The loss of your love is like a hole in my soul.

  Grief and self-pity shot hot tears into Annika’s eyes. She swiped at them impatiently and quickly walked away.

  ‘Do you have time for a detour?’ she asked her friend as she got back into the car.