The Chosen

by Kristina Ohlsson

  At any price.

  And now Simon was standing here with his tennis racket on his back in the bus shelter on Karlavägen, waiting for his friend yet again.

  Five minutes, he thought. If he’s not here in five minutes, I’m going.

  To his surprise he realized that he meant it.

  He had had enough. He had already waited for Abraham approximately a hundred times too often. Even his own father had told him he ought to draw the line.

  The minutes crawled by as the snow came down, heavier and heavier. It was windy, too. And cold. Really cold.

  “Excuse me, do you have the time?”

  The voice came from the side and belonged to an elderly lady wearing a big purple woolly hat. She looked nice.

  Simon found his watch in the gap between his sleeve and his glove.

  “Five past four.”

  “Thank you. I’m sure the bus will be here in a minute,” the woman said.

  She was probably right, and Simon would be getting on it. He straightened his back and his breathing slowed down. He was going to do it this time. Just get on the bus and go. He would look at Abraham with the same nonchalant expression he had encountered so often, and he would say something along the lines of:

  “Oh, did you think we were supposed to be going together?”

  A few minutes later he saw the bus approaching. The woman in the hat looked relieved and stepped forward. But Simon didn’t.

  His determination ebbed away, seeping into the snow beneath his boots. Was it worth arguing about a few minutes here or there?

  His cheeks burned with embarrassment and self-loathing as the bus pulled up and the doors opened. He didn’t move; he just stood there as if he were frozen to the pavement.

  He was so weak.

  No wonder Abraham despised him.

  He kicked angrily at the ground as the bus disappeared in a cloud of snow, leaving Simon feeling tired and furious.

  Then he saw the car. It was moving so slowly that it almost seemed to be floating toward him. Someone was waving from the front seat. Hesitantly, almost cautiously.

  He looked around in surprise, but there was no one else nearby. The hand must be waving to him.

  It was only when the car pulled up in front of him that he saw who was in the passenger seat.

  Abraham.

  The window slid down and Abraham looked out.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “We’ve got a lift—hop in.”

  Simon was lost for words. He couldn’t see who was driving.

  “Hop in,” Abraham said again.

  Or was he pleading with Simon?

  Simon wasn’t sure. His friend’s voice was so shrill, his face so stiff.

  “Come on, Si!”

  The window began to slide up. Another bus appeared a few hundred meters behind the car.

  Simon felt the weight of his sports bag on his shoulder and thought that it would be nice to have a lift. But most of all he thought that Abraham didn’t seem to want to be alone in the car, so he opened the door and slid into the backseat.

  It was only when the car began to move that he realized what had just happened.

  Abraham had said “Sorry I’m late.”

  Sorry.

  A word Simon had never heard him use before.

  He was overwhelmed by a feeling so strong, he could almost touch it.

  Out of the car. They had to get out of the car.

  Nybrogatan, just after six o’clock in the evening. Dark and almost deserted. The call had come less than an hour ago. A man who spoke English had introduced himself as the person responsible for human resources at the Solomon Community in Östermalm; it was about the post of head of security. Was Peder able to attend an interview that same evening?

  Absolutely. Peder Rydh had become the man who never said no.

  Once he had had everything. Now he had virtually nothing.

  Here comes the king of sand; here comes the king of nothing at all.

  Unless you counted Ylva and the boys, which he did, of course. Every day Peder thanked his unlucky star that he had at least been allowed to hold onto his family, even though he had almost lost them, too.

  After he had lost his job with the police, things had gone downhill. Fast.

  He had ended up in an abyss he hadn’t even known existed, rolling in filth in a way not even a pig would have considered. He had staggered home drunk at four in the morning and thrown up in the children’s shoes. Collapsed on Ylva’s lap and wept until there was nothing left. She had leaned forward and whispered in his ear:

  “You can try as hard as you want, Peder, but I’m not leaving you. Not again.”

  Counseling had been good but expensive. It had formed part of his package on leaving the police, thank God. At least they hadn’t chucked him out at thirty thousand feet without a parachute.

  He still found it difficult to sleep and only occasionally slept right through the night. He had spent many long hours lying there wide awake, staring up at the ceiling.

  Could he have done anything differently?

  Had he really had a choice?

  He always reached the same conclusion. No, he couldn’t have done anything differently. No, he hadn’t had a choice. And therefore there was no room for regret.

  “Why don’t I feel guilty?” he had asked his counselor. “I shot a man in cold blood. Three times. Two of the bullets went into his heart.”

  “You do feel something,” the counselor had said. “That’s what differentiates you from the man you killed. You know you did the wrong thing.”

  No one who knew Peder regarded him as a murderer. He had been confused; he couldn’t be held responsible for his actions. The court had agreed; the man who had been killed had to carry his fair share of blame for the way things turned out. The prosecutor hadn’t been happy. He had appealed against the verdict of the magistrates’ court, determined to see Peder convicted of manslaughter or premeditated murder, but the crown court had acquitted him as well.

  Things had been different when it came to the police. They couldn’t simply disregard the fact that he had voluntarily placed himself in the situation which led to the shooting of a suspect. His actions showed a lack of judgment which, combined with a whole load of other old crap, was enough to lead to his dismissal, as they put it.

  Perhaps he could have appealed.

  Alex had suggested it, and Peder should have listened. But Alex also said quite a lot of other things. He thought it was time Peder pulled himself together and stopped brooding. Those demands had come much too soon after what had happened; it was as if Alex expected Peder to function like some kind of machine. He couldn’t do it.

  Sorry to disappoint you, Alex. I have a heart and a brain; I can’t just stop feeling the way I do.

  To hell with the police; there were other careers for someone with Peder’s background. The private security industry was growing, and there were plenty of jobs. It hadn’t been difficult to get a foot in the door: at the moment Peder was working for two agencies who took it in turns to provide him with assignments. One of them had put his name forward for the post of head of security with the Solomon Community. Peder had no objections; admittedly he knew nothing whatsoever about the community, but stuff like that always became clear once you were on the spot. If you weren’t happy, you just moved on.

  Alex helped Peder by providing a reference, and whatever had happened between them in the past, Peder almost always got the jobs he applied for. So Alex must have said something good about him.

  Hopefully he would do the same this time.

  • • •

  Peder had already heard that a teacher had been shot dead outside the Solomon school in Östermalm and had tried to read as much as he could in the media before he went to the meeting. There had been very little concrete information in the flow of news: a young woman, shot in the back. No trace of a suspect so far.

  He had briefly considered calling one of his former colleagues to ask for more
details, but he had a feeling it was far too early for that. Besides which, he didn’t know who to call. It was a long time since he had had a handle on who was dealing with what.

  When he arrived, it was clear that he was expected. A security guard asked him for his ID, and he had to pass through a metal detector before entering the building. He could see a police cordon on the opposite side of the street, and officers trudging around. The body had been removed, but he could still see blood on the snow.

  Red snow.

  Unusual in Stockholm. Unusual anywhere, perhaps.

  Peder was shown into a small office where two men were waiting for him. One of them was the man who had called him.

  “Efraim Kiel—thank you for coming at such short notice.”

  “No problem. I realize it’s urgent.”

  The other man was the community’s general secretary. Peder was surprised at the title; he had thought it was only major organizations like the United Nations that had a general secretary.

  “You’ve heard what happened?” Efraim said.

  Peder nodded.

  “How far have the police gotten?” he asked.

  A flash of approval in Efraim’s eyes.

  “That’s exactly what we’re wondering. Perhaps that’s not entirely fair: we think we’ve established a good relationship with the police, and it seems as if they already have an idea of the direction in which they’re going to start looking for the perpetrator. So far, we’re satisfied.”

  “Who’s leading the investigation?”

  “DCI Alex Recht,” Efraim said. “The officer you gave as a reference in your application.”

  Peder swallowed hard. This was something new. A few years ago he wouldn’t have been sitting here, asking questions about an investigation that was being led by Alex. He would have been a part of the team.

  He had lost so much.

  “He’s good,” he managed to say.

  “That was our impression, too.”

  Silence followed, and Efraim gazed at Peder for a long time.

  “I’ll be completely honest with you,” he said eventually. “We have another candidate who is perfect for the post of head of security, but he’s not available until the summer, and the community can’t leave the post vacant for that length of time, particularly in view of what has just happened.”

  Peder waited for him to continue.

  “If you would consider accepting the post on a temporary basis until July 15, it’s yours. On two conditions.”

  Efraim Kiel held up two fingers.

  “Which are?”

  “First of all, we would want you to start immediately, preferably tomorrow. And secondly, that you are able to maintain a good relationship with the police, regardless of your background.”

  “No problem,” Peder stated firmly. “I’m just finishing an assignment with a large company, but I only need a few hours to clear that up. And as for the police . . . I don’t foresee any difficulties there either.”

  He had been surprised at Efraim’s words: “regardless of your background.” What did he know about that? Quite a lot, apparently. And yet they still wanted him in such a sensitive position.

  As if he could read Peder’s mind, Efraim said:

  “We know you lost your job with the police, and we know why. Given the circumstances, we have no problem with that. Okay?”

  Without realizing how tense he had become, Peder suddenly relaxed.

  “Okay.”

  “We’ll take up your references this evening, and if you don’t hear anything to the contrary, I’ll expect to see you here at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. There’s a great deal to do, and you’ll have a lot of new routines to get used to.”

  An old feeling gradually came to life inside Peder. This was the closest he had been to police work for several years. The adrenaline started pumping, and his heart rate increased.

  A murder had been committed at his new place of work, and his employers had no problem with the fact that he had shot dead his brother’s killer.

  That told him something about their expectations of him.

  It told him a great deal, in fact.

  Peder had found a place where he thought he could be happy.

  If it hadn’t been so icy, the cold and the snow would have made her start running. Home to Spencer, home to the children, with her violin case in her hand. But her brain knew better than her heart and sensibly exhorted her to go carefully.

  Her cell phone rang when she was a hundred meters from home.

  “Fredrika Bergman.”

  “It’s Alex—did you pick up my messages?”

  She hadn’t listened to her voicemail, but she had seen that he had called. She had been in too much of a hurry to get home to wonder what Alex wanted in her free time.

  It’s Spencer I’m married to. Not the job.

  Spencer with his tall, lanky body and those eyes that could see straight through her.

  “Was it something in particular?” she said, wanting him to know that she did care, even if it might not seem that way.

  “You could say that. A preschool teacher was shot dead outside the Solomon school in Östermalm a few hours ago.”

  Fredrika came to an abrupt halt.

  “Do you need me?”

  “If you’ve got time, it would be very helpful if you could come with me to see her parents.”

  “I’ll be there. I just have to go home and drop off my violin first.”

  “In that case I’ll wait for you.”

  Spencer was in the bathroom with the children when she got in; she could see them through the open door from the hallway, her son in the bath and her daughter perched on the toilet, fully dressed. It could have been a perfectly ordinary chair as far as Saga was concerned. Spencer was kneeling beside the bath with his back to Fredrika, his shirt creased and his sleeves rolled up.

  So many people had told her it would never work, that she would have to do everything herself because Spencer was too old to be supportive; a man of his age didn’t have enough energy to be the parent of small children.

  And they had all been wrong. Fredrika had met people her own age who seemed older than Spencer. It wasn’t the number of years that mattered but the general attitude toward life.

  “Hi,” she said.

  She dropped her bag and her violin case on the floor, kicked off her shoes, and went into the bathroom. She sank to her knees behind her husband and wrapped her arms around him. Just a brief moment of closeness, then she would turn her attention to the murder Alex had told her about. A woman had been shot. In the middle of the city.

  Spencer’s body was like part of her own. After holding him for only a few seconds she knew that something was wrong. The feeling was so strong that she stiffened, didn’t even reach out to the children.

  “Hi,” he said.

  Saga greeted her mother cheerily like an echo of her father, energetically waving the book she was holding. Isak splashed away happily in the bath, in a world of his own.

  “Has something happened?”

  She had lowered her voice without knowing why.

  Spencer didn’t reply; he just reached down into the water and fished out a bottle of shampoo that Isak had knocked down.

  “What is it?”

  “Fredrika, we need to talk. When the children are asleep. It’s nothing serious.”

  Her arms dropped. He still hadn’t turned around. Fredrika was never more sensitive to the possibility of a setback than when she was happy. The sense of impending problems was so powerful that it bothered her as much as a foul smell would have done.

  “Okay,” she said. “Alex called—I have to go into work for an hour or so.”

  “You’re going into work? Tonight?”

  “A teacher has been shot dead at the Solomon school in Östermalm.”

  “I heard about that. What’s it got to do with you?”

  “Apparently we’re investigating the case.”

  “Since when have yo
u been involved in hate crimes?”

  He lifted his son’s slippery body out of the bath and wrapped him in a towel. He still hadn’t looked at her.

  She made an instant decision.

  “I’m not leaving here until you tell me what’s happened.”

  Isak tore himself free and scampered out of the bathroom stark naked. Saga hopped down from the toilet and followed him, yelling at the top of her voice. Brother and sister. Created by Fredrika and Spencer. Yet another incomprehensible mystery: the fact that it was possible to make a new person. Biological magic.

  Spencer was still on his knees, while Fredrika had gotten to her feet.

  “For heaven’s sake, what is it?”

  She rarely snapped or raised her voice, but she was angry now. Or just scared?

  Eventually he turned and looked at her as he had done so many times before. But only for a moment. Then he disappeared again.

  “I was called to a meeting today,” he said.

  “And?”

  She still hadn’t taken off her coat, and the sweat was trickling down her back.

  Spencer stood up.

  “I’ve had an offer, but we have to make up our minds right away. Ernst has had a stroke.”

  Confusion made Fredrika take a step afterward. An offer? Ernst, Spencer’s colleague at the university, had had a stroke. What did that have to do with anything?

  “And?” she said again.

  Spencer reached for a towel and dried his hands.

  “Ernst was supposed to be going to Jerusalem. He was going to be one of the principal tutors on a course at the Hebrew University. But now he can’t go.”

  “And they’ve asked you to go instead?”

  “Yes. It’s a two-week course.”

  Two weeks. That was a long time to be away, but even so, Fredrika felt calmer. She had thought he must have terrible news of some kind.

  I must stop getting so stressed.

  “When would this be?”

  “I’d be leaving on Sunday.”

  “On Sunday? In four days?”

  “Yes.”

  “But, Spencer, that’s out of the question!”