“I’ll come and see you next week and we can do it together,” Annika said quickly. “When are you free?”
Anne looked thoughtful for a few seconds.
“I’m really busy next week,” she said. “But maybe Tuesday afternoon would work.”
“Okay,” Annika said. “I’ll come round to yours then. How are things otherwise? Do you like the apartment?”
Anne looked up at the ceiling.
“There was a meeting of the residents’ association yesterday evening,” she said. “Wine, canapés, all that shit. We’ve got a new chairman, von Dummkopf from the third floor, who water-combs his hair and wears a silk cravat. Honestly, the people in that building are so full of themselves it drives you mad. It must be almost as bad as out here.”
Annika felt her neck stiffen.
“I had coffee earlier with a neighbor over the road,” she said. “A girl the same age as us, who sold her biotech company for millions and millions and is now doing research into Alzheimer’s at Karolinska …”
“Heavens, how absolutely splendid!” Anne said. “So you can sit there comparing your bank balances. It’s terribly nice of you to let us guttersnipes from the city come and breathe some of your lovely fresh air out here.”
She laughed raucously as Annika gulped.
“I have to finish cooking,” she said, getting up.
“Have you got a bag?” Anne wondered, picking up the boots.
Annika pulled a plastic bag from one of the kitchen drawers.
“Nordéns ICA, Djursholm,” Anne read on the bag. “Whatever’s happened, Anki? Have you abandoned the Co-op after all these years?”
Annika turned to face Anne, leaning back against the countertop and folding her arms.
“Why are you being so mean?” she asked quietly, and Anne’s laughter died away.
“Mean?” Anne said, surprised. “What do you mean? Come on, you’ve got to able to be honest in a decent friendship. That’s something I say in my talks, about the importance of self-criticism and not always insisting on being the focus of attention.”
Annika could feel her face coloring.
“That’s not what I meant,” she said. “I would have loved to stay in the city, but this is better for the kids, before they start school …”
“I think you should stand up for your decision,” Anne said. “You weren’t exactly forced to move to the place with the highest number of millionaires and the lowest council tax in the country. Did you really do this for someone else, or were you just satisfying your own needs?”
Annika opened her mouth to reply, but couldn’t find any words.
At that moment the doorbell began to ring.
“Move that car!” a male voice shouted angrily outside the door. “You’re not allowed to park on the street—is that so hard to understand?”
“Oh no,” Annika said, horrified. “Where did you park?”
Anne Snapphane opened her eyes wide.
“Outside the house. Why?”
“This road isn’t a public parking lot!” Wilhelm Hopkins yelled. “Open this door!”
“Please,” Annika said breathlessly, “would you mind moving your car? That’s our neighbor—he gets so angry if anyone blocks the road.”
“But I’m not blocking anything at all,” Anne said, wide-eyed. “I parked really close to the curb …”
The doorbell went on ringing as the man kept his finger on it. Annika ran over to the door and pulled it open.
Wilhelm Hopkins’s solid bulk almost filled the doorway.
“If this carries on I shall phone the police!” he roared.
“It’s my friend,” Annika said. “She’s just leaving.”
“Fucking hell,” Anne said, pushing past Annika and looking derisively at the man. “How can you bear it out here?”
The bag containing Annika’s new cowboy boots had caught on the door handle and Anne tugged to free it, then marched off toward her car.
The man took two steps inside Annika’s porch.
“I’m terribly sorry,” Annika said, backing away. “That was my friend—she didn’t know …”
“It’s always people like you,” the man said in a hoarse voice. “I know exactly what sort of person you are.”
Annika blinked.
“What … ?”
“You’re the sort who moves out here to change things. You want to change things, and we don’t like that out here. We don’t like it at all.”
The man stared at her for several long seconds.
Then he turned and walked out through the door and across the ruined lawn, toward his own house.
SUBJECT: The Greatest Fear
TO: Andrietta Ahlsell
How abandoned he is, how restless and exposed! A decade before his death, Alfred Nobel writes to Sofie Hess:
When one is left alone in the world at the age of fifty-four, and the only person to show one any friendliness is a paid servant, the darkest thoughts arise …
His greatest fear is not death, but the lonely walk toward it: lying forgotten on his deathbed.
And he worries about his funeral, and about what will happen after that. Above all, he doesn’t want to be buried underground.
To his brother Robert he writes:
Even cremation seems to me to be too slow. I want to be dropped into hot sulphuric acid. Then the whole business would be over and done with in a minute or so …
He has friends, of course, although they are often his employees. He has relatives, of course, but they also work in his companies. Sofie Hess has married a riding master, Kapy von Kapivar (and now both she and her husband write for more money).
He has two friends in England, Frederick Abel and James Dewar. They work in his British company and Alfred is generous; he pays them well.
But then he is informed of a new patent: someone in England has registered a discovery that is exactly the same as his own ballistite.
Someone has stolen his work.
Frederick Abel and James Dewar.
Alfred refuses to believe it’s true. He refuses! And he refuses to use the law against them, against his friends, but he has no choice. The lawsuit grinds on for years, and in the end Alfred loses.
By then he has just a year or so to live.
On December 7, 1896, he is sitting at his desk in his villa in San Remo in Italy writing letters, always writing letters. He is commenting upon a shipment of powder samples from Bofors, they are particularly beautiful, and that’s when it happens, it happens, he slumps down, just slumps.
None of his friends is close at hand, none of his relatives, none of his colleagues. The servants carry him up to the bedroom; an Italian doctor diagnoses a massive stroke.
Alfred tries to talk. He talks to his valet but his memory is damaged. He, the cosmopolitan gentleman who could communicate fluently in Russian, French, English, German, can only remember the Swedish of his childhood.
He lives for another three days.
For three days he lies paralyzed in his bed, trying to talk.
The staff understand one word, one single word—telegram.
So they send word to his colleagues in distant Sweden, but they don’t get there in time.
And so he dies, at two o’clock on the morning of December 10, exactly as he had feared: entirely alone, without anyone who was able to understand his last words.
THURSDAY, MAY 27
The rain was pounding. Annika was caught in a bicycle shed in the nursery-school playground, staring out at the wall of water surrounding her. The car was parked out on the road, ten meters away, and there was a whole ocean between them.
I can’t do it, she thought. I can’t go on like this.
Her chest ached nonstop, wearing away at her. She tried to take a deep breath and raised a hand to her chest to massage the pressure away.
The children were safe and dry, sitting in circles for their respective classes. There were people around them who were there to look after them, care for them
. There were children the same age who wanted to be with them.
I can’t just stand here any longer, she thought. Everyone will be looking at me, wondering what’s wrong with me, standing here sniveling, wondering what effect it must have on the children. Look at that funny lady standing under the cycle shed—is that Kalle and Ellen’s mom? Kalle, why’s your mom so weird? Why’s she standing there, Ellen? Hasn’t she got a job?
Oh yes, Annika thought. She’s got a job but she’s not allowed to do it, because they don’t want her there.
Suddenly it was too much effort even to stand up. She slumped onto the bicycle rack. The rain was bouncing off the ground, splashing her backside.
The move had kept her going, but now that was done and life had taken over: routine, waiting, patience, basic maintenance. She stared out at the rain and felt like crying.
I’ve got to find something to do, she thought. I’ve got to have some sort of meaning to my life.
What about the children, then?
She started, taken aback by her own nonchalance. How self-centered could a thirty-three-year-old be?
I have responsibilities, she thought. Everything depends on me; I have to cope.
There was a buzzing sound from her bag: she’d gotten a text message.
She dug her cell phone from the depths of her bag, pressed read.
Hi Annika! Is it raining where you are? Hope the move went well. Coffee next week? Signed “wet&lonely.”
The warmth spread from her stomach and out through her whole body, easing the burden on her chest a little.
Bosse.
She couldn’t help laughing. He never gave up, never lost touch. No matter how far out in the cold she was, he didn’t care. Her colleagues on the paper never got in touch, apart from Berit, and Jansson very occasionally, but one of their rival reporters cared about how she was.
Maybe, she texted back. Seeing the Big One today, don’t know what he wants. Might have all the time in the world … Signed “it’s never too late to give up.”
She dropped the phone back in her bag and stood up, brushing the worst of the wet from her trousers. Then she hoisted her bag onto her shoulder, steeled herself, and made a dash for the car.
Her cell phone rang as she was searching for her keys. It rang and rang as the rain found its way in under her collar and down her neck and back.
“Hello?” she yelled, trying to unlock the car at the same time as holding the phone and balancing her bag on her knee.
“Are you standing in the middle of the Niagara Falls?” Q asked.
The car flashed as the central locking clicked open. Annika managed to get the driver’s door open, but dropped her bag on the ground, spilling the contents.
“Fucking shit,” she said, on the brink of tears.
“Nice to hear your voice as well,” Q said. “I’ve got a picture I’d like to show you.”
Annika leaned down to pick up her Filofax, wallet, lip balm, a pack of headache pills, and half a pack of tampons from the puddle they were lying in.
“I didn’t know you’d taken up painting,” Annika said, throwing her soaking wet bag on the passenger seat.
And to think she had promised herself that she would never, ever get the inside of the car dirty.
“It’s a man,” Q said. “I’d like you to take a look at him, to see if you recognize him.”
She settled into the driver’s seat, shut the door and took a deep breath.
“God, this rain,” she panted, leaning her head back against the headrest.
“It’s not raining in this part of Kungsholmen,” Q said. “In fact it never rains anywhere on Kungsholmen. How soon can you get here?”
The traffic ought to have eased up a bit by now, but the rain was making the traffic toward Stockholm slow and heavy.
There’s no point getting worked up, she thought. You only end up getting stressed and dying of a heart attack. She tuned the radio to Easy-Listening Favorites on 104.7 and thought about Bosse.
She didn’t have to be at the paper until the afternoon.
Anders Schyman had sent her an email saying he wanted to see her at three o’clock, and the very thought of the meeting made her stomach churn.
Well, if he wants to buy me out, he’d better have his biggest checkbook handy, she thought.
She tried to think rationally, in terms of the numbers: how much was she willing to sell her job for? For what amount would she be prepared to walk away from something she had put so much time and effort into?
Ebba Romanova had got 185 million. And even that didn’t seem to have bought her peace of mind. You probably couldn’t sell the things that gave your life meaning.
God, she thought, roll on three o’clock so we can get this over with.
Suddenly she remembered something an American millionairess had said on television a week or so before: Those who say you can’t buy happiness don’t know where to shop.
The car in front of her rolled forward two meters.
“Damn it, you’re soaked,” Q said as she walked into his office. “So, have you moved out to the suburbs?”
“The closest I could find a parking space was on Pipersgatan,” Annika said. “There must have been some serious climatic change on Kungsholmen after we spoke.”
Q looked out at the rain running down the windowpane.
“Oh yes, look at that,” he said. “Go and dry yourself off—you’re ruining my Persian rugs.”
“Where’s the picture?” Annika said, sinking onto an armchair.
Q handed her a photograph of a man of about twenty-five or so standing in front of a large yacht. His dark hair was ruffled by the wind; he had bright blue eyes, a suntan, a sweet smile. She stifled an impulse to smile back at him.
“Cute,” she said. “So what about him?”
“Do you recognize him?”
She studied the photograph carefully. It only showed his top half, which made it hard to judge his height and bearing.
“Don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think so.”
She screwed up her eyes and held the picture closer.
Had she seen him somewhere? Was there something familiar about him? Would she remember him if she bumped into him?
She put the picture down in her lap.
“I suppose it’s something to do with the Nobel banquet?” she asked.
Q sighed.
“Great, we’ve got to Twenty Questions already,” he said. “Can you think of where you might have seen this lad?”
Annika picked it up again.
“No,” she said after a long minute. “No, I’ve never seen him before.”
She put the photo on the desk.
“Sorry,” she said. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“Frozen to death,” Q said, picking the picture up. “He was found dead in a freeze room in one of the Karolinska Institute’s lab buildings on Monday morning.”
A shiver ran down Annika’s spine.
Frozen to death?
An image flashed into her mind: a frozen compressor shed at the end of the iron-ore railway, people freezing to death.
“How is that possible?” she said.
“We don’t know,” Q said, putting the photograph away in a desk drawer. “There’s no indication of any crime, so we haven’t begun an official preliminary investigation yet. The door was unlocked and the emergency release was in working order.”
“So how could something like that happen?” Annika said in a low voice. “How cold was it? How long was he shut in there? Why couldn’t he get out?”
She remembered the cold in the compressor shed, the way it had turned into burning, cutting knives.
“He’s something to do with Nobel, isn’t he?” she said. “How?”
“Time’s up,” Q said, standing up. “Well, we’d like to thank you for taking part in Twenty Questions. Thanks so much for coming.”
Annika left puddles of water behind her on the floor and the chair as she got up.
�
�What’s his name?” she said.
“Johan Isaksson,” Q said.
Johan Isaksson. His whole life ahead of him.
“Hang on,” Annika said, standing still again. “He must have been a student or researcher out at Karolinska, seeing as you don’t think it’s odd that he was found in that freeze room. So either he won a ticket in the lottery for students, or he was a waiter …”
She studied the expression on Q’s face.
“A waiter,” she said. “He worked at the banquet. You think he was involved somehow. Could he have been the contact on the inside? The one who sent that text message, dancing close to st erik? What makes you think that? What had he done that makes you think he was involved?”
Q sighed.
“He may not have been involved. It’s not certain he knew what the information was going to be used for.”
“So he started behaving strangely after the killings?” Annika said. “Guilty, irrational? The other students hardly recognized him? And you’ll have checked all the texts and calls and God knows what from loads of innocent people all spring to see if you can find some sort of link between the inside contact and the Kitten, but presumably you haven’t found anything? Which is why you’re wondering if I saw them together?”
“The lad was always a straightA student,” Q said. “But after the attack he started to neglect his research. The postmortem indicates that he’d consumed a number of different things before he died, and he must have screamed like a lunatic. His vocal cords were in tatters. No crime suspected though.”
Annika stared at Q.
“The Kitten?” she said.
“No one knows if she works this way,” Q said.
“So how does she normally work?”
Q looked at her, suddenly seeming very tired.
“You’ve been off work too long,” he said. “You’re not really tuned into this, are you?”
“Come on,” Annika said.
Q sighed.
“All we know is that she shot two men in Jurmala in Latvia four days after the Nobel banquet, a doctor and an American, a former marine.”
He looked carefully at her for a few seconds.
“And how do we know that?”
Annika didn’t look away, her mind racing.
“The gun,” she said. “The bullets and the gun were the same, and the fingerprints from the shoe you found on the steps. You found her fingerprints at the crime scene in Latvia.”
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