Paula grabbed the countertop so hard she broke a fingernail. Staring at the message, she heard Jens snore.
Outside in her yard, the night was dark. There was a rustling sound beneath a birch tree by the patio. She didn’t dare look outside, and she erased the message.
Although she should have shown it to Jens to get him to understand that someone was stalking her, she decided not to wake him. The fact that she could prove it to him made no difference.
Instead, she sneaked into the bathroom and locked the door carefully. She sat down on the edge of the bathtub. Her fingers shook as she tapped the number she’d saved earlier that morning.
“Hello, Passi here.”
“Hi. It’s me, Paula. From last night.”
PART TWO
CHAPTER 29
He had no new car yet, so he thought it would be safest to ride his bike. He had no desire to use public transportation all the way to Djursholm. Not so much because it was always crowded, but simply because he didn’t want anyone to notice him. Not yet, anyway.
His front tire needed some air, so he used the pump strapped to the frame. After checking the back tire as well, he threw on his backpack and led the bicycle through the courtyard and out the gate. He biked up Narvavägen, and when he passed the accident site, he couldn’t see any trace of the “tragic hit-and-run,” as the newspapers called it. He smiled to himself. It did feel good.
He had two sandwiches and a sports drink in his backpack. He thought he’d be waiting for quite some time. As he crossed Valhallavägen and turned up Erik Dahlbergsgatan, his cell phone rang.
“Hi, it’s me. What are you up to?”
He cringed and realized he had to come up with a sensible lie on the spot. He took a deep breath and said, “I’m going to a lecture. What about you?”
“I got off to a late start. Too bad, I thought we’d see each other—I miss you.”
“Hmm, maybe later this evening? I’ll be alone.”
“You will? Can I come over and study? I have a test tomorrow.”
“Sure, but I don’t know when I’ll be back. Maybe about nine or so?”
He ended the call and slid the phone back into his jacket pocket. The call had disturbed his focus. Next time, he’d skip answering and just reply later with a text. That girl was going to be a problem. It could ruin everything.
Lill-Jan Forest was quiet, and just a car or two passed him. The air was clean and clear, and he breathed deeply, filling his lungs. He had always enjoyed the fall. Everything felt pure—school was starting and things were returning to normal. This year, his studies would be tough and demand a great deal of his energy. He had no desire to be a loser—he was going to continue to get the highest possible grades. All the rest was irrelevant.
He passed the tall light-blue buildings of the University of Stockholm on his right. He had to push harder going uphill past the National Museum of Natural History.
He wondered when the funeral would take place. He wondered whether he should attend. He didn’t think a funeral would be held quietly with just the family. It was hardly their style. They’d invite all kinds of folks to honor his memory. Honor! He wondered if that man had felt so honored that morning—or if he’d even understood what was about to happen.
He thought their eyes had met, but that could just have been his imagination. Wishful thinking. But the more he thought about it, the more he realized that is how truth is written. Their eyes had met for a second, before his fear and panic over what was about to happen took over.
That’s how he wanted to remember it.
CHAPTER 30
Marianne had already been awake for over half an hour when the alarm beeped. She sat up on the edge of the bed and stretched her arms over her head, her breasts sluggishly following her movements. Through her nightgown, her nipples clearly showed that they didn’t appreciate the cold air outside the blanket.
She wrapped her robe around her body and slipped her feet into slippers, whose sheepskin lining had been worn down with use. It was high time to buy a new pair. No sunlight appeared in the kitchen yet, so she turned on the lamp above the stove. She switched on the coffee machine and headed into the hallway. The newspaper had gotten stuck in her mail slot, and the first page of Dagens Nyheter was torn.
Over the weekend, Marianne had prepared, mentally and physically, to start work. She had bought a new scale with not only digital numbers but also a memory system, whatever that could be good for. At a new store called Gertrude, she bought a new shower curtain. She loved the abundance of beautiful bed and bathroom sets and had difficulty choosing from the wide selection. The friendly saleswoman had guided her through the store and helped her decide between a striped and a rose-patterned curtain. She’d chosen the one with the roses. Hans had always hated anything with flowers on it, and he would certainly have hated how much she’d spent. He’d hated excess in all its forms. Marianne felt a bit childish making such a strong statement with that purchase, but she realized she’d soon be over that phase.
Her daughter Sigrid had helped her go through her wardrobe, also checking her own clothes, to find suitable work outfits. They chose outfits that weren’t too striking—the Prosecutor’s Office wasn’t a place for outlandish fashion.
Part of her weekend had also been devoted to staving off the feeling of starvation. It hadn’t been easy. Although she was still skeptical about this diet, she followed it rigorously, and she had lost about one and a half pounds. The result seemed to mock her efforts. In desperation, she had gone with her father, Harry, for a long afternoon walk on Sunday. She had already begun regretting it by the time they reached the Djurgård Bridge. Harry stopped to chat with every person he knew, and Marianne finally begged him to stop. They were out to exercise, not to have a walking cocktail party. Harry scolded that she could hardly force him to act like an idiot. In seething silence, they walked across the bridge and then back. As they approached Djurgård Bridge the second time, it started to rain. Marianne hadn’t felt tired at all after the five-kilometer walk, but now, this morning, her legs were slightly sore.
She decided she’d avoid the scale for a few days, not wanting to give herself an excuse to stop the diet. Perhaps the pounds would fly off before the tenth day.
The aroma of freshly brewed coffee hit her when she returned to the kitchen. She reverently poured some steaming, black liquid into her favorite cup. Then she boiled her egg, placing it on a napkin next to her newspaper. The radio was playing a concert by the London Philharmonic, which she thought might be a reprise from last week. Nothing in the paper made her raise an eyebrow. On the other hand, the fall season of the City Theater looked promising. Marianne liked to alternate between the City Theater and the National Theater. A number of her friends would never set foot in the National Theater, but Marianne liked to provoke her friends’ snobbery. This was also true of her choice of the daily paper. Harry still thought that only Communists read Dagens Nyheter, and he couldn’t understand why she had a subscription. Marianne thought DN was fresh and exciting, although she couldn’t see much difference between the two morning papers any longer.
Marianne had remembered to buy panty hose, which she pulled on over suitable underwear. The fashionable trousers of the day demanded the right kind of underwear. Marianne hated the thought of panty lines or a muffin top. At work, one’s behind should not call attention to itself—she felt that was true for both men and women.
Her trousers fit well, but she worried they’d be itchy if the weather turned warm. She’d just have to make sure she didn’t run around too much. At any rate, she couldn’t picture herself jogging through the hallways.
She’d been told that the department had been reorganized, affecting how the offices were laid out. Perhaps a change would be useful, although Marianne had her doubts about the open floor plan. It could hardly induce peace and quiet.
Marianne checked her purse one
last time, then locked her door behind her. She took the stairs down and, stepping outside, she breathed in the fresh September air. She followed Storgatan up through Östermalm Square and past Sibyllegatan. She stopped to wait for Bus 62 in front of the ancient shop selling ladies’ undergarments and the now almost-extinct “day dress.” That’s when she realized her new routine was now a fact. Many months had gone by since she’d last taken this bus to work, but it now seemed like only yesterday. The bus came six minutes later. Marianne smiled at the driver as he stamped her multiple-ride pass. He had a gray beard and kind eyes. She had thought she’d walk to work every morning, but she changed her mind. She would walk home instead—at least on this first day. She needed to keep everything under control.
CHAPTER 31
Harsh sunlight beat down upon the Stocksund Bridge. The wind tugged at his bicycle, and he had to hold on tightly to the handlebars to keep from hitting the railing. Once across, he took the exit toward Stocksund, which was more pleasant for biking, and he preferred the smaller roads. His body signaled that it wanted coffee. For a while he’d been drinking several cups a day, and he’d gotten addicted. He thought it almost sweet that his body had a will of its own. It was not at all interested in the sports drink he had in his backpack. Where could he buy some coffee but go unnoticed?
He steered his bicycle onto Djursholm Square, where groups of schoolchildren laughed and talked. Two boys were chasing a girl, and when they caught her, they lifted her into the air. He thought they were ridiculous. It was so obvious what they were playing. Childish. With a snort, he parked his bicycle on the other side of the street and made his way through the kids to a café.
The line was long and straggling. He stood patiently at the back, forcing himself to think about the coffee he’d soon be drinking. That kept him occupied during the long wait. When he finally reached the counter, the girl behind it smiled. Her hair was blonde and in tight corkscrew curls, wildly framing her somewhat round face.
“So, your number?”
“What?”
“We have a number system. Take a number from over there.”
The blood left his face, and his rage bubbled up. The girl must have noticed the shift in his expression, and she hurried to say, “Don’t worry this time. I’ll take your order now. What would you like?”
Stammering slightly, he asked for two caffe lattes to go.
“Which size?”
“Large, please.”
The girl hurried to make the coffee and soon came back with two paper cups with lids.
“Seventy-two crowns, please. That is, unless you’d like a sandwich or a cinnamon bun?”
He shook his head and pulled a hundred-crown note from his back pocket. As she handed him his change, she looked him in the eyes flirtatiously and said, “Come back soon.”
He lowered his eyes and hurried out. He decided to walk his bicycle with the paper cups of coffee in the basket. Two Asian women were ahead of him. He suspected they were from the Philippines and probably on their way to cleaning jobs in the large, fin-de-siècle houses in this neighborhood, which seemed to be Svalnäs. He remembered reading in the tabloids about a female bank executive who’d bought a house here. It had been nicknamed Fort Knox because of all the alarm systems she’d put in. He imagined it would still be easy enough to break into her place. Swedish alarm systems were worthless compared to the ones in Italy or the United States. In those countries, people took potential threats seriously—probably due to experience. The latest brochures for alarm systems boasted direct connections to the police, not to some useless office building with inexperienced security guards whose uniforms did nothing to scare off serious thieves.
So what if an entire SWAT team was on his own trail? What could they do? He’d have to show firepower for them to use force—otherwise they wouldn’t dare shoot. He knew they were incompetent cowards. In his latest issue of Lethal Weapons magazine, he’d read that in trial runs, police officers were outgunned by serious criminal gangs. The latter never hesitated to shoot. Shoot first—ask questions later. The police had tried to justify their terrible performance, but as far as he was concerned, they gave the weakest excuses.
CHAPTER 32
Marianne took a deep breath as she entered the Main Police Station. There was no possibility of turning back now. Somehow, the thought calmed her.
“Hello, I’m Marianne Jidhoff, a secretary for the Prosecutor’s Office. I’m coming back from leave.”
“And you’re in the system?”
“I don’t know. Olle Lundqvist would take care of such matters if he remembered, but that I doubt.”
“Chief Prosecutor Lundqvist?”
“Yes,” Marianne said, and the receptionist typed on her keyboard.
“Jidhoff. One F or two?”
“Two—just as it sounds.”
Marianne bit her tongue. She didn’t think her last name was all that unusual.
“Yes, here you are. Do you know your way to the office?”
“I think so. They’ve moved things around since I was here last.”
“Take the first elevator to the fourth floor and then take a right. I’ll give you a pass card, so you can open the door yourself.”
“Has anyone else come in yet?”
“Yes, Olle Lundqvist came in earlier this morning. Alexandra Baranski is also here.”
Marianne’s brow furrowed. She couldn’t put a face to the name. Baranski…Hans had probably mentioned her, but Marianne didn’t know how she fit in.
“If you would stand against the wall, please, I’ll take your picture.”
Marianne stood against the yellow stone wall and tried to look calm. She knew that the picture would look terrible no matter how she stood, so she kept her mouth shut and hoped that the worst flaws—like the dark circles under her eyes—wouldn’t stand out too much. She hadn’t tried to cover them with makeup. Her sad hair color seemed to make them worse. Sigrid had pointed out that women do dye their hair these days, but Marianne had pretended not to hear. Luckily, the pass photo was in black-and-white. It was hard to make out her wrinkles, and her name was spelled correctly.
She took the elevator, which smelled like sweat and stale air, up to the fourth floor. Anxiously, she sniffed near her armpits to make sure the odor wasn’t coming from her. She smelled her own deodorant and a trace of moth repellant from her jacket, but nothing offensive.
She wondered when she’d see Torsten Ehn, who’d said they’d have a chance to talk on Monday.
The investigators of the National Police seemed like the children of the house. They were in tight with the Prosecutor’s Office even fifteen years ago, when Hans was Lead Prosecutor—before he climbed the career ladder and became Attorney General. Marianne was skeptical about his political career, but that’s where Hans felt most at home. His close buddies operated in the upper levels of the Social Democratic Party and the Workers’ Movement, where Marianne—with her upper-class background—could never have entered. Even if she’d been more saintly than Mother Teresa, she couldn’t have opened those doors. Hans, on the other hand, had grown up in Knivsta with a drinker of a father and a hardworking mother who did her best to keep the family together. He had no difficulty fitting into that scene, and he used his working-class background to his advantage. He worked his way into the Prosecutor’s Office. He’d not been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Even though both Hans and Marianne knew their backgrounds weren’t so simple, Hans made this version public for political reasons. Marianne felt it wasn’t her place to protest, although it seemed to her that Hans’s social climbing had long ago taken him out of the working class. Marianne could never really comprehend the distance he’d traveled or why he had decided to marry a woman from the social class he publicly denounced. He certainly had never refused any of the advantages he received from her background whenever it suited his needs. Their relationship had always
gone according to his wishes, and Marianne had learned to accept it.
Marianne adjusted her jacket and turned to the right, as the receptionist had told her. She looked around and realized that she needn’t have worried so much about the open office space. The length of the hallway was lined with doors that could be shut to discourage random visiting. That fit her style perfectly. She didn’t expect work to be like a cocktail party.
She heard voices from farther down the hallway and then saw Torsten Ehn and Olle Lundqvist leave an office together. They were speaking in low tones. Olle’s body language told Marianne that he liked Torsten and had confidence in him. Olle caught sight of Marianne, excused himself from Torsten, and hurried up to her.
“Marianne! Welcome back!”
He gave her a hug, holding her just a shade too long for comfort. She disengaged herself and then held her hand out to Torsten. He took it, smiling.
“Here you are! I was just telling Olle that we’d met over the weekend.”
Olle gave Torsten a thump on the back. “Nobody can escape Torsten. He’s like a pit bull. Perhaps you two can get going on the case while I make some phone calls. Marianne, you’ll be fine without me, won’t you? I’m trying to shake free an office for you. You’ll probably be able to get into it after lunch.”
Torsten looked after Olle and shrugged. “Well, I really don’t have anything new to tell you. Why don’t you take a look around, and I’ll find you if something turns up. Do you need any help?”
Marianne looked around for a place to hang her jacket but shook her head.
“No, thanks. I’ll be fine.”
Torsten smiled and winked at her. If she had been anywhere besides the Prosecutor’s Office, she would have thought he was flirting. She managed a stiff smile as he hurried off. She truly hoped that Torsten Ehn hadn’t gotten the wrong idea—she hadn’t been sending out signals as far as she knew. That would be painfully embarrassing. She certainly didn’t want the reputation of a merry widow.
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