Sebastian quickly took on board Billy’s argument and realised there was something in it, but he had no intention of letting the other man win. Not now. He shrugged in order to trivialise what had just been said.
‘Either he made a mistake, in which case we’re in luck, or the time frame won’t help us at all.’
‘It has to. How many families and children disappeared in October 2003?’
‘None, as far as we know at the moment.’
‘OK, let’s leave it there,’ Torkel said, getting to his feet to underline his words. ‘We’re not going to get any further tonight, and we’ve got plenty to do tomorrow.’ His gaze swept over his five colleagues. ‘Our top priority is to identify those four bodies. We’re not going to solve this until we know who they are.’
Ellinor glanced at her watch as she pushed open the door of the apartment block on Grev Magnigatan. It was late, well after eleven. She hoped Sebastian would still be awake. The lights came on automatically as she stepped inside. She glanced at the stairs, but opted for the lift. She had done enough standing and walking today; she had worked until the store closed at nine o’clock. She often wondered about the point of staying open so late, but today they had been busy all the time; it was the week after pay day. When she had finished she had popped over to Västmannagatan, to her old apartment. That was how she thought of it: her old apartment. Home was with Sebastian.
The anxiety and anger she had more or less managed to suppress all day came flooding back. He had sounded unusually harsh this morning.
No, not harsh. Nasty.
‘The home help I have sex with.’
Terrible, ugly words. And then that horrible tale of someone called Gunilla. For a while she had wondered whether to come straight home and spoil him, smooth things over, restore his good mood. She didn’t like it when they quarrelled, but this time he had gone too far. It was up to him to make amends, he was the one who ought to apologise, not her. That was why she hadn’t called him all day. It was unusual, and several times she had been on the point of picking up the phone, but she had gritted her teeth and stayed strong. She wanted him to know that he had hurt her; her silence was his punishment.
She closed the lift gate behind her and pressed the button for the third floor.
She had spent longer than planned in her old apartment. On the way up she had met the widow Lindell, who had naturally been curious. Where was Ellinor these days? She was never around! Ellinor had actually called in just to water her plants and to check that the carrier bag containing the documents about Valdemar Lithner was still where she had put it, but fru Lindell had insisted on inviting her in for a cup of tea. Absolutely insisted. In spite of the fact that she didn’t really have time, Ellinor couldn’t help thinking it would be quite nice to tell someone about the great love of her life, the renowned Sebastian Bergman. She wouldn’t mention today’s quarrel. What couple didn’t have the occasional tiff? No relationship was a bed of roses all the time.
Forty-five minutes later Ellinor unlocked the door of her apartment. Fru Lindell had been impressed, Ellinor could see that, even though she had tried to hide it. She had even pretended that she didn’t know who Sebastian was, but Ellinor didn’t believe that for a moment. Typical Swede, eaten up with envy.
She went straight into the bedroom, opened the wardrobe door and saw the bag exactly where she had left it. She didn’t know why, but she had had a bad feeling about everything to do with Valdemar Lithner ever since he had put an end to their professional relationship before the weekend. Most of the time she was able to tell herself that he had felt – quite rightly – that it wasn’t leading anywhere, but occasionally she got the idea that she had been found out, that Valdemar or one of his criminal associates had broken into her old apartment to find out who she really was, and whether she knew anything about their shady dealings. However, there was no sign that anyone had been here, and if they had, they would hardly have left the incriminating material lying in her wardrobe. It occurred to her that she was foolish not to have made a copy of everything, but it no longer mattered. Tomorrow she was going to hand it all over to the police and let justice take its course.
She closed the wardrobe door and busied herself watering her plants. It was late, but still she didn’t ring Sebastian. For a moment she considered staying the night in her old apartment. Let him worry, miss her. But if she didn’t go home, he couldn’t beg her forgiveness, which meant they wouldn’t be able to sort out the unpleasantness between them. So now she was standing here in the lift, hoping he hadn’t gone to bed.
The first thing she saw when she opened the lift door was the case. Her black cabin case. What was it doing on the landing? With a plastic carrier bag next to it. She went over and looked in the bag. Her things! He had dumped her things on the landing! Enough was enough. She took out her key.
Odd – it didn’t seem to fit.
She checked; yes, it was the right key. She tried again, with the same result. She couldn’t even insert it in the keyhole.
The light went out. Ellinor went over and pressed the little orange button, glowing in the darkness, and switched the light back on. Then she rang the doorbell. No response. She pressed the bell again, for longer this time. She was starting to get annoyed. There wasn’t a sound from inside the apartment. She bent down and peered through the letterbox: darkness and silence. She rang again, more or less leaning on the bell. No one came.
Now she really was angry. He couldn’t treat her like this! She had put up with a great deal because she loved him, but even she had her limit, and he had crossed the line with a vengeance. She took out her mobile and scrolled down to ‘Darling’ in her contacts list. Called him. She opened the letterbox again as she heard the tone ring out in her ear; it wasn’t ringing inside the apartment. Ellinor ended the call, breathing heavily. What should she do now? Where was Sebastian, and why couldn’t she get in? She glanced down and saw a white envelope stuck to the side of her case. She grabbed it and ripped it open.
The light went out again.
When she had switched it back on, she took out the single sheet of paper and unfolded it.
I meant what I said. You have to move out. I’ve had the lock changed. I’m not home and I will be away for some time, so there’s no point in standing there ringing the bell. If you call me, I won’t answer. I should never have let you move in. It was my fault, and I apologise for that.
Sebastian
Ellinor read the short message again. And again. Then she screwed up the piece of paper and threw it on the floor. Little black dots were dancing before her eyes. She let out a scream, like a wounded animal. It echoed through the stairwell, then she calmed down. Took a deep breath, regained control.
So many emotions, all at the same time. Rage, shock, fear. She had to try and think clearly.
He couldn’t throw her out.
She wouldn’t let him throw her out.
He hadn’t thrown her out.
She tried the key one more time. It didn’t fit. But it should fit. She lived here! She tried again. Pushed harder. Same result. She started stabbing at the lock. The light went out again, but she hardly noticed.
She had to get in! This was her home!
The key slipped and she gashed her thumb on a piece of metal on the door. The keys fell to the ground and she crouched down, feeling her way across the stone floor. She couldn’t find them. She got on her knees, sweeping her hands from side to side. Hit the keys and sent them cannoning into the neighbour’s door. She didn’t have the strength to get up and fetch them. She was finished. She collapsed in a heap and burst into tears.
She didn’t know how long she sat there crying in the darkness, but eventually it stopped. That was how it felt. As if it just stopped. She had finished weeping. Sitting there wasn’t helping the situation. Ellinor got to her feet, her movements calm and controlled, and wiped her wet cheeks with the back of her hands. She went over and switched the light back on, sniffing to clear the snot from
her nose. She bent down and retrieved her keys, put them in her pocket, went over and picked up the cabin case with one hand and the plastic carrier bag with the other. She would go back to Västmannagatan, try to work this out. Nothing had changed, she told herself. This was just temporary. A crisis. But it was a crisis that could be sorted out. There was no reason to panic or to do anything rash. She had a plan. She would stick to it.
First of all she would take care of Valdemar Lithner.
Then she would take care of Sebastian.
Sunshine.
Brilliant sunshine.
His upper body was bare and the sweat was pouring down his back. The air was damp. Sticky. The heat and the humidity made him want to sit in the shade with a book; he found it exhausting. She didn’t; she was a bundle of pure energy, perched on his shoulders exhorting him to go faster. She wanted to get down to the water, to the cool waves and the games. She laughed out loud when he stumbled, and held his stubbly cheeks more tightly in her soft little hands.
‘Daddy, I want one of those.’
He looked where she was pointing. A little girl was playing with an inflatable dolphin.
They reached the sea. He could feel the sun burning his shoulders as soon as he put her down. Two thoughts, almost simultaneously.
Not much water today.
He’d forgotten the sunscreen.
They ran out into the water. The splashing. The laughter. The shouts from the shore.
The roar.
The wall of water. He saw it coming. Ran towards her. Grabbed hold of her. Her little hand in his. He thought he could feel the butterfly ring he had bought her. He mustn’t let go. Never let go. All his strength, all his concentration. Focused. His whole life, right there in his hand.
But then she was gone. His hand was suddenly empty. He had let her go.
Sebastian woke up tangled in the thick duvet. Hot. Sweaty. Out of breath. The cramp in his right hand spreading up to his elbow. With wild, flailing movements he fought his way out of the bedclothes and sat up. Painfully he straightened his fingers. Blood on his palm.
The dream.
That fucking dream.
So vivid.
Detailed. Like a film. More. He could feel it. Smell it. Like reality. The whole thing.
Sometimes it consisted of disconnected fragments, and he would wake with a manageable level of anxiety, the sticky remnants of impressions, memories and fantasies that he knew would go away. This time it was as if he had experienced the whole thing all over again. It was many years since it had affected him so badly. He felt paralysed. His heart was racing. The sweat was pouring off him. He was weeping in silent, bottomless despair.
It was the children’s fault. The children in that fucking grave. He shouldn’t have anything to do with dead children. He couldn’t handle it any more. They had led him straight to Sabine, straight to the heart of the pain and guilt he had tried to lock away over the years, but without success; it always leaked out just a little, slowly poisoning him. Now the lock had given way, and the door was wide open, leaving him mentally bruised and battered. His body felt just the same as it had done all those years ago. Afterwards. When he came round to the Boxing Day devastation. Alone.
Eventually he managed to get up. To his surprise he discovered that his legs were capable of carrying him. Then as now.
He staggered over to the chair where he had dropped his clothes and pulled on his T-shirt. He wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep. What time was it? Twenty past four. Just over four hours’ sleep. When would he be able to sleep again? He was already afraid of going to bed tonight, even though it was more than twenty hours away. He didn’t want to spend another night in that bed. He didn’t want to be in this room.
He opened the door and went out into the corridor. The hotel was silent. It was colder out here and he wondered whether to go back and put on his trousers, but decided not to bother. He padded barefoot past reception and into the restaurant. He went over to the chill counter and took out a can of Coke.
‘Are you intending to pay for that?’
Sebastian gave a start and almost dropped the can. He spun around to see Ursula sitting over by the window, with two beer bottles on the table in front of her – one empty, one half-full.
‘What are you doing here?’ Sebastian asked as he walked towards her.
‘I couldn’t sleep. How about you?’
‘I had a dream . . .’
‘A nightmare?’
‘Yes.’
Sebastian pulled out the chair opposite her and sat down. He opened the can and took a swig. Ursula gazed searchingly at him.
‘So bad you had to get up?’
‘Yes.’
‘What was it about?’
‘Why can’t you sleep?’
‘I asked first.’
‘Why can’t you sleep?’ Sebastian repeated in exactly the same tone of voice.
Ursula met his eyes as she raised the bottle to her lips. Nocturnal conversations at the kitchen table. There had been a few. Quite pleasant, as she recalled. Perhaps she needed to confide in someone. Sebastian was someone. He knew her, but he wasn’t too close. Not now. Not any more. And he was capable of being objective, of keeping a welcome distance from the whole thing. He wouldn’t try to console her with trite sentimentality, or try to cheer her up. It could work. On one condition.
‘You can’t tell anybody.’
‘Keeping secrets is actually one of the things I’m really good at.’
Ursula nodded; she couldn’t argue with that. He had been sleeping with her sister while they were in a relationship. With her sister and God knows how many other women. Ursula hadn’t had a clue. Edward Hinde had forced them both to think back to those days, and to her surprise Ursula had discovered that the anger she had nourished for so many years had more or less disappeared, and been replaced by something that resembled sadness. The man who had betrayed her so badly no longer existed. The Sebastian who had come back to them was someone different. Still brilliant, still selfish, irritating, self-confident and impossible in every way, but it was as if he had to make more of an effort to do what had come naturally in the past. When she saw him at the chill counter, when he didn’t know that anyone was watching him, barefoot in his boxer shorts and a T-shirt, he had looked lonely. That was the first word that came into her head.
Lonely.
Miserable, or at least sad.
She didn’t know why. The Hinde case and Sebastian’s personal links to the victims had taken their toll on him, but the old Sebastian would have got back on his feet and moved on with comparative ease. Not this Sebastian. Not now. For whatever reason. What he had just said was true: he was good at keeping secrets. His own, at least, and she hoped it would apply to others’ secrets too. Hers in particular.
‘Micke has left me.’
Sebastian nodded. He had suspected there was a problem at home, but thought it was probably to do with Bella. He didn’t think anything involving Micke would affect Ursula so deeply. He was an intermittent alcoholic who worked too hard at a job in which Ursula had never had any interest whatsoever; they had a daughter, but very little else in common, if he had understood correctly. As far as he could tell, that had always been the case. Their marriage was a complete mystery to him.
‘Are you really upset about that?’
Ursula stared at him. She didn’t know quite what response she had expected, but not that.
‘My husband has left me for another woman after twenty-five years. So yes, I am . . .’
‘I didn’t think you loved him,’ Sebastian said, leaning back with the can of Coke in his hand. Ursula realised she could add ‘brutally honest’ to ‘objective’ and ‘keeping a welcome distance’.
‘I didn’t want to be left,’ she said candidly, without commenting on his remark.
‘Did you want to leave him – is that it?’ Sebastian eyes gleamed in the semi-darkness. ‘It’s not the fact that you’re getting a divorce that bothers you, but the
fact that he’s left you. You wanted to call the shots.’
‘You know what, just forget it,’ Ursula said, hands palm-down on the table to indicate that the conversation was over. She decided to go back to bed, but Sebastian leaned forward and placed his hand on hers.
‘I didn’t mean to tease you. I can see you’re upset, I just don’t really understand why. You’ve been unfaithful to him for twenty years.’
‘Twenty years ago,’ Ursula corrected him.
‘So the fact that you’re screwing Torkel doesn’t count?’
Ursula stiffened. How did he know? Or was he just guessing? She met his gaze.
‘Yes, I do know, and no, he hasn’t said anything,’ Sebastian reassured her. ‘It’s obvious.’
The fight went out of Ursula and she slumped back in her chair. What he said was true. Not about Torkel – well, that was true of course, but about Micke. He wasn’t the great love of her life. No one was. It could have been Sebastian once upon a time, but now she thought she was incapable of loving the way other people expected to be loved. Micke had put up with her, for a long time. Torkel was willing to try, she knew that. Accept her for what she was, on her terms. The problem was that she didn’t want him. She wanted only one thing. Since Micke’s departure it had emerged as the single most important element in her life, and it was the one thing she was pretty sure she could never have.
Her daughter’s love.
She looked at Sebastian again. He sat in silence, giving her space.
‘You’re right,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s not really Micke. It’s Bella.’
‘What about her?’
‘She’s always been Daddy’s girl, but as long as we were together, at least some of her love spilled over onto me.’
Sebastian could see the tears in her eyes in the faint light. Change.
If we don’t believe that everything is pre-ordained, that nothing we do has any effect, then change always means that we have to look closely at ourselves. How did I end up here? What could I have done differently? What’s happening? What shall I do now? Change brings about a certain level of self-awareness, which is not always entirely painless, and doesn’t necessarily show the individual concerned in a very good light.
The Man Who Wasn't There Page 10