‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘The Kitten.’
‘Does Thomas know how much money is in that account?’
‘No. Nor do I. Not down to the last krona, anyway. Why?’
‘But he has a rough idea? That there’s about a million dollars there?’
‘Yeah, I’d say so.’
Halenius wrote something in a notebook. ‘Have you got anything valuable that you could sell? Anything of Thomas’s?’
‘He did have a yacht, but his ex-wife got that. And then he bought a motorboat with Sophia Grenborg, but she got that when he left her. As a consolation … Why do you ask?’
‘Why Handelsbanken?’ Halenius asked.
‘Because they don’t pay bonuses to their directors,’ Annika said.
The under-secretary of state let out a short, genuine laugh. ‘I’ve switched my accounts too,’ he said, ‘for exactly the same reason. The bankers took it for granted that they had a right to their millions in bonuses, even though the financial crisis was their fault.’
‘Mind you, to start with they need several million as an annual salary just to turn up at work. And then they demand the same again as a bonus to do anything,’ Annika said.
‘For bankers, money is purely hypothetical,’ Halenius said. ‘They don’t understand that someone always has to pay, and it’s usually the poor fellow at the bottom of the food chain.’
‘Or girl,’ Annika said.
They smiled at each other.
‘So, one million dollars,’ Halenius said. ‘That’s what we’ve got to play with.’
‘One million dollars,’ Annika confirmed.
* * *
It was radiant white, like an angel’s wing, the Andreas Church in Vaxholm, the church of the missionary parish (although in those days it was called the Swedish Missionary Society): I was one of Paul Petter Waldenström’s young lambs, small and innocent (at least to start with).
Sunday school was great. It was always sunny in the parish hall, no matter what the weather was like outside. First we would sing and pray together, then the bigger children would go off into the back room for Bible study, and not just any Bible study: the Bible in cartoon form! Every Sunday we got a new sheet, folded in half to make four pages. The paper was of such poor quality that there were splinters in it. If you tried to rub out a pencil mark, it disintegrated. If you were really lucky, there were cartoons on all four pages, but that didn’t often happen. On the fourth and final page, and sometimes even on the third, there were questions to be answered, crosswords made up of Christian words, articles of faith to discuss, and that was all very boring, but I still went, every Sunday, because the cartoon was like a serial that seemed to have no end.
But of course it did. Everything comes to an end.
Even this will come to an end.
They’ve been to collect the Spaniard now, Alvaro Ribeiro. I remembered his name because my grandfather was called Alvar and there was once a promising tennis player called Francis Ribeiro. He trained in Finland for a while. I wonder what happened to him.
They collected him after it had got dark. He didn’t say anything when they came for him. No goodbye, nothing.
The Romanian hadn’t come back.
I listened to the sounds inside me, to the darkness.
The lambs who were thirteen and above and were good at Bible study became shepherds for the younger ones – actually, everyone did except me. I don’t know why I wasn’t allowed to be a shepherd. I haven’t thought about it for ages but I used to wonder about it. Perhaps I wasn’t pious enough. Perhaps I played too much ice-hockey. Perhaps the older shepherds knew that Linus and I smoked behind the boat refuelling station, or that we’d drunk the beer Linus’s dad kept hidden in the boot of his car.
There were far more mosquitoes now. They were biting me the whole time, on my fingers, arms, ears, cheeks, eyelids.
Annika’s laughter was echoing around me. She doesn’t believe in God. She usually says He’s a patriarchal construct invented by men to hold the masses and women in their place. I know it isn’t rational, but every time she says something like that, I get a bit scared. I find it so unnecessary, because if He exists I doubt He’d appreciate being described as a patriarchal construct. Who would? I said that to her once, and she stared at me with a really odd look in those big eyes of hers. She said: ‘If God does exist, then He knows what I’m thinking, doesn’t He? Otherwise He’s not really up to much, is He? Maybe He appreciates the fact that I’m not a hypocrite.’
Now there were only me and the Dane left. He was lying completely still beside me. It was a relief that he wasn’t rattling and groaning any more. His chest seemed nice and quiet. It was completely dark. The guards had lit a fire outside the shack – I could see the light from the flames through the gaps around the tin door.
We hadn’t been given anything else to eat. I had emptied my bladder on the floor once.
I wondered if God could see me now.
* * *
The landline rang at 23:44.
Annika had almost dozed off on the sofa and jumped as if she’d been kicked.
‘Do you want to listen in?’ Halenius asked. His eyes were red and his skin chapped; his shirt had come un-tucked from his trousers.
Annika shook her head.
But perhaps she should. She could be some sort of support in the bedroom, pointing at notes on the walls to remind him of different aspects and keywords they’d agreed on, make sure that the recording equipment was working and that everything was being saved to the hard-drive the way it should be.
‘I’d rather not,’ she said.
The telephone rang a second time.
Halenius stood up rather heavily and went into the bedroom, shutting the door behind him. Now he was starting the recording. Now he was checking that it was working. Now he was waiting for the next ring, and then he would answer.
The third ring and, sure enough, it was cut off halfway, and Annika could hear Halenius speaking, forming sentences, but couldn’t make out the words.
The clock on the DVD-player clicked to 23:45, the exact angle of the tilt of the Earth.
She had spent the evening answering all the text messages, voicemail and emails she had received from journalists wanting to interview her. ‘Thanks for your enquiry about interviewing me on my husband’s situation. But I won’t be making any comment for the time being. If I change my mind I’ll get in touch. Please respect my decision.’
Bosse, from the other evening paper, was the only one to get in touch after that, with a long, antagonistic text in which he demanded at least to know what was going on, even if he didn’t use it in an article the following day. He thought they could discuss the matter, if nothing else, maybe come to some agreement. Annika answered, ‘Do I look like a carpet-seller?’
Possibly a little too abrupt, she thought, as she stared at the time on the DVD-player. The truth was that she found Bosse difficult to deal with. He was the one who had tried to stir up a scandal around her Spanish air-kiss with Halenius outside the Järnet restaurant. It had been his revenge for her breaking off the beginnings of a flirtation between them about a century and a half ago.
Halenius was talking and talking and talking in there.
Anders Schyman was the only person she hadn’t replied to. She realized she had reacted irrationally to his proposal. It wasn’t that bad an offer. The real question was what it actually meant. They would hardly stretch to forty million dollars, but on the other hand it was unlikely that the ransom would end up being that large, not if Halenius’s theory was correct.
23:51. He had now been talking to the kidnapper for six minutes. That was roughly how long the first conversation had lasted. Halenius had listened to the recording several times during the evening, and had made a transcript, which he had asked her if she wanted to read. ‘Maybe later,’ she had said. She didn’t want to hear what the kidnapper sounded like, but maybe she could read what he had said, absorb his message without needing to deal with t
he individual. But not now, not tonight.
Right now it was quiet in Kidnap Control, but the phone hadn’t clicked, so the call hadn’t ended. What was he doing in there? Had something gone wrong?
‘Yes?’ she heard him say, and felt herself letting go of the air in her lungs.
She would have talk to Schyman again and find out what his offer actually meant. How much money was the paper prepared to pay? How much would she be forced to reveal about her relationship with Thomas? Sex, cooking, their favourite television programmes? Would the children have to be involved?
She went out into the kitchen with Halenius’s muffled voice surrounding her like fog. They had eaten grilled goat’s cheese on rocket salad with pine nuts, cherry tomatoes, honey and raspberry balsamic vinegar as a starter (an old classic), then pork chops with potato wedges and chanterelle sauce (she had picked her own, then parboiled and frozen them). Halenius had had the last of the sticky chocolate cake as dessert.
‘I’m going to end up rolling out of here,’ he had said, as he pushed the chocolate-smeared plate away from him.
Annika had loaded the dishwasher without replying.
Between six and sixty days: that was the usual length of a commercial kidnapping. And a politically motivated kidnapping could last much longer. Terry Anderson, head of the Associated Press bureau in Beirut, had been held for almost seven years by Hezbollah. Ingrid Betancourt had spent the same amount of time with the FARC guerrillas in Colombia.
She could still hear Halenius murmuring on the other side of the wall; they seemed to have a lot to talk about. She wiped the draining board again. The stainless steel sparkled. She opened the fridge, took out a cherry tomato and bit into it. It exploded with a little pop inside her mouth.
Why was he talking for so long?
She went back into the living room and sat down on the sofa.
23:58. Almost a quarter of an hour now.
The television was still on, with the sound turned down. She switched it off.
All the news programmes that evening had included short items on Thomas Samuelsson, the Swede kidnapped in Kenya. The rest of the hostages hadn’t been named. News that the Frenchman’s body had been found hadn’t yet leaked out, but it was only a matter of time. Tonight, or tomorrow morning at the latest, it would crash-land in the mass media. Then all the colleagues she had replied to that evening would get in touch again and ask if she had any comment on the fact that the hostages had begun to be executed.
She shut her eyes.
What would she do if Thomas died – if they killed him? How would she react? Would she go to pieces? Go mad? Feel relieved? Would she agree to cry in public? Maybe Letterman would call. Or Oprah. Did she still have her own programme, or had she stopped doing it? Who would she ask to the funeral? Would it be a small, intimate affair for close family, or should she invite all the news crews, the papers, everyone he had studied with in Uppsala, Sophia Grenborg and his first wife, Eleonor, the stuck-up bank director?
She opened her eyes.
He wasn’t dead.
He was still living and breathing: she could feel his breath right beside her.
Or was she just imagining things? Like when old people lose their husband or wife and suddenly start seeing ghosts, conjuring up the image of their deceased soulmate and communicating with them in words and thoughts.
00:07.
It was taking a very long time. Twenty-three minutes now. What were they talking about?
The telephone gave a little ring. 00:11. They had talked for twenty-seven minutes.
The whole flat was filled with thunderous silence. She was breathing softly, shallowly.
Now he was checking that the recording had worked, saving it on the server, switching it off …
Her legs felt heavy. Halenius came out of the bedroom door and Annika watched him float across the room.
‘He’s alive, and contactable,’ the under-secretary of state said, sinking on to the armchair.
‘Did you talk to him?’ Annika asked, her mouth dry. She could feel a pip from the cherry tomato between two of her teeth.
Halenius shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair; he seemed utterly exhausted. ‘They seldom call from where they’re holding the hostages. They’ve watched too many cop shows on television and think the police and authorities just have to press a button to trace where the call is being made from.’
‘Do they have cop shows in Somalia?’ Annika asked.
‘The man who phoned is clearly in touch with the guards somehow, probably by mobile phone. I asked the control question we agreed on, “Where was Annika living when you first met?”, and a couple of minutes later I got the answer. “Across the yard from Hantverkargatan thirty-two.”’
Across the courtyard from Hantverkargatan 32.
She had a flash of memory, of her demolition-threatened flat at the top of the building in the yard, with no hot water or bathroom, the light from the sky and the draught from the badly fitting window in the kitchen. The sofa in the living room was where they had first had sex, her on top of him.
‘Can the call be traced? Can we find out where they’re calling from?’
‘The British are working on it. The calls seem to be routed through either Liboi or a mast on the other side of the border, inside Somalia. But the areas covered by each of those masts are enormous.’
‘So where’s Thomas? Do they know which country he’s in?’
He shook his head. ‘Not from these conversations, anyway.’
‘The Frenchman was found in Mogadishu,’ Annika said.
‘But it’s not certain he was killed there. Bodies start to decay very quickly in those areas because of the heat, but a doctor at the Djibouti embassy thought he’d been dead for at least twenty-four hours before he was found. And we know that the kidnappers have access to a vehicle. Or vehicles. At least three.’
‘The truck and the two Toyotas,’ Annika said.
A fleeting smile crossed Halenius’s face. ‘So you were listening, then.’
‘Toyota Takeaways,’ Annika said. ‘What were you talking about for so long?’
He rubbed his eyes. ‘Building trust,’ he said. ‘We were discussing politics. I basically agreed with everything he said, and I didn’t actually have to lie. I think Frontex is a disgrace, but at least I’m not involved with it at the department. We could rid the developing world of poverty tomorrow, if we set our minds to it, but we don’t want to. We profit too much from it.’
Annika didn’t answer.
‘I said you weren’t in a position to pay a ransom of forty million dollars. I explained that you live in a rented flat and have two young children, and an ordinary job, but I mentioned that you have some savings from the insurance pay-out after a house fire, and that you’d be seeing your bank on Monday to find out how much you can get hold of.’
Annika straightened on the sofa. ‘What the hell did you tell him that for? Now he knows we’ve got money!’
‘They’ll ask Thomas all about your assets, and he’ll tell them.’
‘Do you think so?’
Halenius looked up at her. ‘Guaranteed.’
Annika stood up and went out into the kitchen. Halenius followed her.
‘They must never think we’re lying to them. If they do, we have to start the negotiations again. Not just from zero, but somewhere way below that.’
She leaned back against the draining board and folded her arms over her chest. ‘So you and the kidnapper are best friends now?’
Halenius stopped right in front of her. His eyes were bloodshot. ‘I’d stand on my head and sing “The Marseillaise” backwards if it would help get Thomas home to you and the children,’ he said, then went into the hall and put on his coat and shoes. ‘I’ll leave the computer here,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back first thing tomorrow morning.’
And before she had time to say anything else or apologize or thank him, he was gone.
DAY 4
SATURDAY, 26
NOVEMBER
Chapter 10
The smell woke me up. It was like nothing I’d ever smelt before. Not fermented herring, not rotting prawns, not rubbish: something thick and heavy and acrid, with a hint of ammonia.
‘Hey,’ I whispered to the Dane. ‘Can you smell that? Do you know what it is?’
He didn’t answer.
It was light outside the shack: the rectangle around the door was dazzlingly bright and clear. I wondered what time it was. It got light early on the equator, maybe six or seven o’clock. Sweden was two hours behind, so it would be four or five there. Annika was probably asleep. The children might be with her, in our big bed. We had supposedly agreed that beds were personal space, and that everyone should stick to their own, but I knew Annika relaxed the rules when I wasn’t there, especially with Kalle. Sometimes he had really bad nightmares, and she used to let him come into our bed so she could rock him back to sleep.
The lack of water was making my head pound. My mouth was full of dust. Both my hands had gone numb, and I rolled on to my stomach to try to get some feeling back into them. They had tied them with rope this time, perhaps because they’d run out of cable ties.
In the middle of the night the tall man had come into the shack, shone a torch in my face, dragged me up into a sitting position and yelled, ‘Soma, soma!’ Then he had given me a piece of paper with the words ‘Where did Annika live when you met her?’
‘What?’ I said, my heart hammering. The torch was dazzling me and all I could see were spots of light. How could he know about Annika? Was this some sort of trick? What did he want?
I turned towards the Dane, but I couldn’t see him through all the spots of light dancing in my eyes.
‘Andika,’ the tall man shouted. ‘Andika jibu.’
He leaned forward with a large knife in his hand, and my vision went dark. He didn’t stab me, just cut the cable tie binding my wrists, then tossed a pencil into my lap.
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