Last Will

by Liza Marklund

  But not everyone—he was aware of that.

  He took criticism very seriously.

  The traffic heading out of the city was terrible. It took him three quarters of an hour to reach the expressway heading out toward Norrtälje, and it was gone half past six before he turned off it toward Danderyd Church.

  Tomorrow morning he was due to meet Jimmy Halenius, the undersecretary of state, and go through everything with him. If he thought everything looked okay, there’d be a briefing on Monday.

  He was looking forward to it. All the civil servants seemed to think there was something special about the presentations in front of the minister in the Blue Room.

  He had only spoken to the minister once.

  The minister had walked into Thomas’s office on the fourth floor one day, just after lunch, and had asked him how it was going. Departmental gossip had it that he liked to do this occasionally, unlike his predecessor. Thomas had been taken aback and had fumbled nervously with his papers as he explained the situation.

  “Remember, there are innocent people in bars and brothels as well,” the minister had said when Thomas had stopped talking. “Not everyone who works there is a criminal, and they won’t like being kept under surveillance. We’d be breaching their human rights, and that’s the strongest argument against this legislation.”

  Thomas had replied that he was aware of that.

  The minister had got up, and stopped in the doorway on his way out.

  “One of my first jobs as a lawyer was a bugging case,” he said, more to himself than to Thomas. “I was acting for the Kurds who were bugged in the Ebbe Carlsson affair. I don’t think I asked a single question throughout the entire trial.”

  He left without saying anything else.

  Thomas drove on and turned into Vinterviksvägen, and let the car roll toward his drive.

  He grabbed his briefcase, not bothering with the umbrella, and dashed for the front door.

  The children came rushing over from the television, Kalle first, with the speed and intensity of a leopard on the prowl, then Ellen, hopping over with Ludde and Poppy under her arms.

  “Hello, darlings,” he said, bending over and catching both of them, and they roared back in delight, kissing and hugging him, “Daddy, Daddy, do you know, we built a car out of boxes, a proper one with a wheel, and Daddy, Daddy, I made the salad today, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, can you see that Poppy’s a bit broken here, can you mend her?”

  He couldn’t hold them anymore, and sat down on the floor.

  “Careful,” he said, “let me take off my jacket.”

  But they threw themselves on him, tickling him in the stomach, Daddy, Daddy, and he felt the wet and the dirt from the hall floor soaking through the trousers of his suit.

  “Okay,” he said, “can I get up now, please … ?”

  And they let him go and helped him get up—Kalle, so like his mother, and Ellen, who looked just like he did at her age—and they pulled him by the fingers until he was on his feet again and could brush the dirt off.

  “Have you had a nice day?” he asked. “Did you do anything good at nursery school?”

  “Kindergarten,” Kalle corrected. “Made a car with boxes, I told you. And I got to join in, because teacher said everyone could join in …”

  Suddenly he looked tearful, his bottom lip jutting out. Thomas ruffled his dark hair.

  “Of course you could join in,” he said. “You’re a proper rally driver. What about you, Princess Ellen of Vinterviksvägen? What did you do today?”

  He picked up the girl and her stuffed toys, making her squeal.

  “You’re tickling me, Daddy …”

  He put her down and she wriggled out of his arms, running off toward the television as the theme music of Tom and Jerry started.

  Thomas let out a deep breath, then unlaced his shoes and pulled them off with a feeling of relief. Taking his briefcase upstairs with him to stop it being in the way of the door, he put it down beside the desk in his office. It was great having his own room to work in again; he’d forgotten how much he had taken that for granted long ago. He could hear Annika clattering with some dishes downstairs, then paused before quickly turning on the computer and logging into his email. He’d invited several of his colleagues around on what would have been his last day, Monday, and he wanted to see who had replied.

  Cramne, naturally, he never missed a party, and two other supervisors on the same floor, and their partners.

  And then Halenius, the undersecretary of state.

  He read it once more. Yes, Halenius had replied that he’d like to come, even though Thomas had only invited him out of politeness. He had been discussing the party with a few of his colleagues when Halenius had appeared, and it would have looked rude not to ask him to come. Thomas had assumed that he wouldn’t accept the invitation. The politicians tended not to socialize with the civil servants, particularly the undersecretary of state and the minister.

  Okay, so there’d be eight of them. Maybe the children could eat a bit earlier than usual—perfect!

  He took off his suit and hung it up. The back of the jacket and left trouser leg were smeared with mud—damn! He’d have to remember to ask Annika to take it to the dry cleaners.

  He dropped his shirt in the laundry basket and pulled on a pair of jeans and a rugby shirt.

  Annika was standing by the sink with her back to him when he went down to the kitchen.

  “Hello,” he whispered, putting his hands on her shoulders and blowing on her neck. “And how’s my darling girl?”

  She stiffened under his touch and dropped the washing-up brush in the bowl.

  “Fine,” she said. “We’ve already eaten. The children were so hungry that we couldn’t wait for you.”

  He leaned over her and picked up a half-eaten carrot from one of the plates on the draining board.

  “Sorry,” he said. “The traffic was terrible.”

  “I know,” she said. “I was up at the paper today, went to see Schyman.”

  “How did it go?” he asked, chewing energetically on the carrot.

  “Good,” she said. “I start work again on Tuesday.”

  It was his turn to stiffen. He stopped chewing as the consequences of this raced through his head.

  “I see,” he said. “You don’t think we should have talked about this before?”

  “About what?” she said aggressively. “About whether or not I can have permission to leave the house?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said.

  “Anyway, your job ends soon, doesn’t it?” she said. “It was a six-month appointment, wasn’t it?”

  “It’s being extended,” he said. “I found out today.”

  She threw the dishcloth at the draining board, making it splash.

  “And we don’t need to talk about that? So we only have to talk about me and my job?”

  He picked up a glass from the countertop, rinsed it, and filled it from the tap.

  “Okay,” he said. “We’ll start with me. What do you want to talk about?”

  She turned around and leaned back against the dishwasher.

  “Why is this new terrorism law that you’ve been working on really necessary?”

  He sighed.

  “I thought we were going to talk about the practicalities of work,” he said.

  “Why should Sweden be at the forefront of this bugging crap?” Annika said. “Why are we the ones pushing issues like this in the EU?”

  “They think I’ve done a good job,” he said, “and they want me to stay on in the Department. Or do you think I ought to go?”

  “You’re just evading any sort of criticism,” Annika said.

  Thomas ran his fingers through his hair, making it stick up.

  “The fact is,” he said, “that all the other Nordic countries already have this legislation. We’re fifteen years behind, because the former Social Democratic ministers never wanted to deal with the fuss that kicks off whenever anyone tries
to discuss these issues.”

  “What about the EU, then?” Annika said. “They said on the news last week that Sweden is pressing for service providers to be obliged to store any information sent over their networks.”

  “That’s a different question,” Thomas said. “All that information is already kept, and we want that to carry on, just as before. We just want its use and the associated costs to be regulated. At the moment there’s a load of horse-trading every time the police want to get hold of any information from the networks. Do you think that’s a better system?”

  “What do you mean, ‘horse-trading’?”

  “The police say: we can solve this rape if we find out who called this cell phone at this time. The network replies: okay, 25,000 kronor. The police say: we can let you have 15,000. Network: nope, at least twenty.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Annika said.

  “The fact is that the Swedish police have become a hell of a lot better at negotiating in recent years,” Thomas said. “The cost of getting information out of the networks has gone down from seventy to fourteen million.”

  Annika bit her bottom lip and balanced on one foot, and he knew she was thinking hard.

  “Terrorists usually commit crimes like murder, kidnapping, sabotage, and destruction constituting a public danger, don’t they?” she finally said. “Unless I’ve been misinformed, there are already laws covering those crimes?”

  Thomas drank some water, not saying anything.

  “I don’t know how you can put up with yourself,” she said shrilly. “How can you justify what you’re doing? That we need special laws for terrorists, what sort of rubbish is that?”

  “It’s about intent,” Thomas said, putting the glass down on the kitchen table. “The important thing is the purpose of the crime, if the act is likely to threaten the entire system. Because that means it has to be treated differently. If the whole point isn’t to blow up a building, but rather to scare people senseless, then we’re talking about terrorism. Or about some other form of organized crime, like motorcycle gangs or international narcotics syndicates, or groups smuggling weapons or people.”

  “Motorcycle gangs aren’t terrorists, are they?”

  “Their criminal activities could still be part of an attempt to destabilize and instill fear in society. This is about gathering evidence! You don’t need to bug petty thieves and out-of-control kids, they get themselves caught anyway.”

  He threw out his hands, aware that he was pleading with her.

  “We’re talking about drug mafias and motorcycle gangs here, the sort of people no one dares to stand witness against. Which means we need technical evidence, and we have to bug their hangouts and listen to their phone calls. For God’s sake, this is about national security!”

  She looked at him with her arms wrapped tightly around her body, so small and dark and jagged. He suddenly felt completely and utterly worn out, and just wanted to take her in his arms, stroke her hair, and forget the rest of the world.

  “Berit showed me a proposal for a new law today,” she said.

  “Did she?” Thomas said, sinking onto a chair. “What law?”

  “The one saying that the security police should have the right to listen to whoever they want to,” Annika said. “That’s completely insane!”

  “That’s not a new law,” he said. “That’s a comment on a piece of legislation, and it’s doubtful it will get passed, but what it’s all about is trying to prevent …”

  “Exactly,” Annika said, her eyes flashing. “If the security police start arresting people before they’ve decided to do anything criminal, then that’s certainly taking preventive action.”

  “What this is about,” Thomas went on in a monotone, “is a minor change to legislation that can be used in two specific types of scenarios where the police are acting to prevent …”

  “It’s like the old witch trials. You throw the suspected woman in a river and if she sank and drowned she was innocent, and if she floated she was pulled out and burned at the stake!”

  Silence erupted between them, filling the kitchen and creeping downstairs to the basement.

  “Do you want to know what those scenarios are, or would you rather I didn’t bother?” he asked.

  She wrapped her arms even more tightly around her waist and looked down at the floor.

  “Suppose two men come here seeking asylum,” Thomas said. “But the police hear that they’re really here to carry out an attack. They know that the target is the Muslim community in Malmö, but they don’t know where, when, how, or even who or what the exact target is. The legislative proposal you mentioned would mean that the police, in this instance, would be able to tap their phones. Today that’s permitted only if you know who or what the target is. The proposal is that the line be drawn at an earlier stage of events, instead of everyone having to sit and wait for the bang.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “The second scenario,” he said, “is also about stopping attacks in advance. And we’re talking about phone-tapping, not arrest. If the Hells Angels are due in court and the police find out that someone is going to be killed—the prosecutor, the judge, a police officer—then they would be allowed to tap their phones and intercept their post. If the intention is to stop the trial, that would be regarded as a threat to the system, which would allow the new law to be applied.”

  He gulped audibly.

  “But you and your integrity-worshipping pals will probably see to it that it never gets passed.”

  He stood up, toppling the chair behind him.

  “The result will be that we have to sit twiddling our thumbs until the next terrorist bomb goes off, and then this proposal will sail through Parliament so fast you’ll hardly be able to see it. And you know what? When that happens, you and Berit and all the others will be sitting there screaming, Why didn’t you do anything? Why didn’t you act on the tip-off? Resign, resign!”

  He walked out of the kitchen, and out of the house, and over to the small rocky outcrop at the corner of the garden. As the rain drummed against his back, he put his head in his hands and chewed his cheek until he could taste blood in his mouth.

  FRIDAY, MAY 28

  Annika was sitting on her bed looking out through the open window. It had stopped raining, but the sky was ash-gray through the leaves. The wind was pulling and tearing at the branches, and the pennant on Ebba’s flagpole was whipping in the air.

  She had had nightmares again last night. It was a long time since she’d had so many of them so close together. For the first year after Sven died they had tormented her almost every night, but since she met Thomas they’d become much less regular. After that night in the tunnel under the Olympic Stadium they had got worse again, and then the angels had appeared. The angels from her dreams that sang to her even when she was awake. For now they were keeping their distance, but she sometimes got a sense of them in the shadows or hiding in corners.

  Caroline von Behring had died all over again last night, her eyes crying out to Annika through time and space, but Annika couldn’t hear—the message got garbled—she didn’t understand what Caroline was trying to say.

  She stood up and brushed her hair from her face, then made the bed. She tossed the bedspread over it and straightened its sides.

  Thomas had hung his filthy suit on the door of her wardrobe, and she felt a little stab of anger in her chest. Presumably he was assuming that by some miracle it would be hanging in his own wardrobe in a few days’ time, neatly pressed and in a plastic bag from the dry cleaners.

  She was never good enough, no matter how hard she tried.

  Yesterday he had promised to come home in time for dinner. He had promised to play with the children and repair the puncture in Kalle’s bicycle.

  Instead he had gone straight up to his damn office and sat in front of the computer. Then he had drifted down to the kitchen, expecting a plate of warm food on the table, an hour later than agreed.

  He never lis
tened to her; he didn’t care about her opinions and ambitions. The fact that they had bought a house in Djursholm didn’t help, it didn’t help, didn’t help …

  She slapped the wall hard with her palm, so hard it made her eyes water with pain.

  “Ouch,” she said, holding her wrist.

  She went slowly down to the kitchen while her mood settled. She cleared away the breakfast things, wiped the granite countertop, got out the vacuum cleaner, and did a quick circuit of the ground floor. Made coffee. Drank it. Looked at the time, loads of time before she had to start getting dinner.

  She pulled on her jacket and went on into the gale. The grass was begging for her attention, with its brown ruts full of water, but she turned her back on them and went out into the road.

  Ebba’s red Volvo was standing outside her house, and Annika walked over and up the steps to the door.

  Perhaps you didn’t just go over and ring on your neighbors’ doorbells out here?

  She gulped, then rang the bell, hearing it echo inside the thick walls.

  Almost a minute passed before Ebba answered, with Francesco trying to push his nose past her legs, waving his tail happily.

  “Oh, hello!” Ebba said, looking genuinely surprised. “It’s you! Come in …”

  “Thanks,” Annika said, stepping into the hall. “I don’t want to take up any of your time, but there was something I was wondering about …”

  Ebba smiled. Today she was wearing a gray jacket and dark-gray slacks.

  “Yes?”

  Annika cleared her throat.

  “Would you mind if I took another look at your painting, the girl who was beheaded?”

  Ebba looked rather taken aback.

  “Of course not,” she said, gesturing with her hand toward the library. “I have to head off to the lab soon, but please …”

  Annika kicked off her shoes and walked quickly into the room with the enormous fireplace, padding soundlessly over the thick rugs toward the painting.

  The background was different shades of brown, and the child-woman’s face was very pale, her slightly parted lips soft pink. She was wearing a white turban around her hair, and her dark blond locks curled around her neck and down her back. Her body was swathed in something white and shapeless, possibly a sheet, or a gown that was too big for her.