Last Will

by Liza Marklund

  He had made an unwelcome approach to her, she had pulled away and gently declined, and then odd things started to happen to her research.

  Katerina was adamant that Bernhard Thorell had changed the labels on her samples so that her experiment failed. She was absolutely convinced, and I can still remember how upset I got.

  How dare she come to me with such absurd gossip? How could she? Had she no sense of honor? A week later I saw to it that she was expelled from the Institute and sent back to the concrete bunker outside Prague where she belonged.

  I never found out what happened to her. I still don’t know what happened when she got home. Her young daughter must be grown up by now, an adult.

  I’ve thought about you so often, Katerina.

  Oh God, if only I had listened in time!

  The next woman who came to me with stammering accusations was Tuula, a brilliant Finnish girl with her roots in the Swedish settlements of Ostrobothnia. She was on her way to making a remarkable discovery, and had finished the first draft of her article, which had been preliminarily accepted by the Journal of Biological Chemistry. She was already renowned within the Institute.

  She had spent three years on her research, three years of eyes red with overwork, three years of neglected social life, but it was worth it, she said. It was worth it.

  And she smiled as she said it, the only time in three years that I saw her smile.

  And she smiled until Bernhard went to see her and reminded her of something she had forgotten: that a few months earlier he had helped with some mundane matter, the sort of thing we occasionally do for each other.

  He asked Tuula to list him as the coauthor of her article, and naturally Tuula refused. Naturally! There was no reason whatsoever to name him. Bernhard asked her to think about it until Friday, saying that if would be for her own good if she changed her mind.

  But Tuula held firm. She challenged him, and it went on to cost her dear.

  When she arrived at the lab the following Monday the plug of her freezer had been pulled out at the wall. The lid was open and three years of research had melted into an ill-smelling sludge at the bottom of her test tubes.

  Tuula left KI that day. She moved to England and repeated all of her experiments at Cambridge. She published her findings in Science two and a half years later.

  Only after publication did she tell me all of this, in a long letter that I burned at once.

  As time went on Bernhard no longer asked for permission. He simply stole other people’s research and published it under his own name. He had his unpaid assistants take care of his own doctoral thesis, and he was lucky. One of the young women, I forget her name, was a prodigious talent who secured his doctorate for him.

  My own awakening was especially painful.

  I have always had a soft spot for the animals. In those days there were all sorts of different ones, and they were all over the place, not only in isolated premises but in all sorts of locations.

  I arrived at the lab late one evening to check on a small puppy that was unwell. The lights were off and all the doors were locked in the corridor leading to the lab, but over by the operating table some bright lights were on.

  I went over to see if someone had forgotten to turn them off, but halfway there I stopped. An animal scream cut through the lab, deathly anguish echoing around the bare walls, and I saw shadows moving among the rows of shelves.

  There was someone there, someone hurting one of the animals. The screaming rolled round the walls, muffling my footsteps through the shadows, and I got myself into a position where I could see what was happening.

  It was Bernhard. He had secured a female cat in the stereotactic apparatus and was busy cutting out its womb. The cat hadn’t been drugged or sedated, and was screaming with a raw anguish I had never heard the like of before. He had secured the animal with a screw through the base of the skull and into its brain. And I could see Bernhard’s face in profile, and the look of complete ecstasy on it.

  He was beside himself with joy.

  I felt I was about to faint, but stood my ground.

  I stood in the shadows as the cat bled to death, screwed into that contraption, as its screams grew weaker and Bernhard sat there enchanted with its organs in his hands, a womb containing embryonic kittens, with a pair of small ovaries stuck to the side.

  Afterwards he washed the table carefully. He burned the body of the cat in the furnace, the way we did in those days, then filled in a report about his experiment.

  Tests on the optical nerve, he wrote.

  Then he left the lab, turning the lights off behind him, and whistling as he went.

  I spent the following week at home, with a terrible fever and horrible stomach cramps.

  When I got back to the Institute I summoned Bernhard, the Institute’s magical charmer.

  I told him I was terminating his doctoral position with immediate effect. He had thirty minutes to leave the premises.

  But Bernhard just smiled.

  Why? he asked simply.

  The cat, I said.

  Oh, he said, tilting his head.

  Thirty minutes, I said.

  I don’t think so, Bernhard said.

  Then he told me about the group photograph from the conference in Helsinki. He had it in a safe place, together with documentation confirming the date the picture had been taken.

  He had also dug out the dates of when the supplementary research for my article in Science had been carried out, and—would you believe it?—they were the same dates.

  The same dates.

  Bernhard Thorell laughed, he laughed and laughed.

  So, my dear Caroline, he said, standing right next to me, you’re going to pass my dissertation, and you’re going to do it this spring.

  Never, I said, still hearing the cat’s screaming through my whole body.

  But I did. I did it. I did it.

  I passed his dissertation.

  I fell in line, and I am still ashamed.

  I have never told anyone, not even you, Birgitta.

  But now I have to, because he’s come back.

  He’s here again, and this time he wants more.

  The Nobel Prize, Birgitta. He wants the Nobel Prize for Medicine for Medi-Tec’s research into the ageing process, otherwise he’s going to expose me. Not this time, I’ve told him, never again. I’d sooner fall.

  He doesn’t believe me, I can see that he doesn’t believe me. For him the choice is so straightforward, and he presumes that it is for me too.

  But he’s wrong.

  He’s wrong.

  He’s wrong, and now he’s given me an ultimatum.

  We make our announcement in three weeks’ time, and if Medi-Tec’s researchers aren’t honored, I’m going to die.

  Spectacularly, he says. Like the cat.

  But now this is about Alfred, Alfred Bernhard Nobel’s last will and testament, and thank goodness that there are things that are bigger than all of us.

  Annika stared at the screen when she had finished reading, feeling dizzy and sick. She had the same feeling as when she had woken up a short while ago, that she didn’t know how much time had passed since she started reading.

  Bernhard Thorell.

  Was he at the seminar on Saturday?

  He must have been.

  How much would the Nobel Prize for Medicine be worth to Medi-Tec?

  She reached for the phone again and called Birgitta Larsén.

  “I’ve found Caroline’s archive,” Annika said, before the professor had time to say anything. “She’s written all about her deception, and about the person who was threatening her. Please, Birgitta, tell me what happened on Saturday …”

  “Who was it?” Birgitta Larsén said. “Who was threatening her?”

  “Tell me what happened on Saturday and I’ll forward Caroline’s email to you.”

  “No! It’s not up to you to make the decisions here!”

  Annika didn’t answer, just stared at the last
line of Caroline’s text:

  But now this is about Alfred, Alfred Bernhard Nobel’s last will and testament, and thank goodness that there are things that are bigger than all of us.

  “Okay,” Annika said. “You decide. Either I hang up or you tell me exactly what happened on Saturday afternoon.”

  “It’s confidential,” Birgitta Larsén said.

  “Oh well,” Annika said, and hung up.

  She sat quietly on her chair, listening to the sounds in her head, and wondering how long it would be before Birgitta dug out her phone number and called back.

  One minute and twenty seconds.

  “I was the one Carrie told about her archive,” the professor said, sounding both hurt and angry. “How can you do this?”

  “Everything,” Annika said. “From the meeting of the Nobel Committee to the seminar and the buffet. All the background information I need to work out what happened. When you’ve finished, I’ll forward the email to you.”

  Birgitta Larsén groaned loudly and demonstratively.

  “I can’t just tell you who said what on Saturday,” she said. “It’s considerably more complicated than that.”

  “I’m all ears,” Annika said.

  Another groan.

  “Okay, then,” Birgitta Larsén said. “This is what happened.”

  She thought in silence for several long seconds.

  “Everything to do with the nominations for the Nobel Prize is only made public after fifty years,” she said. “The names of the people nominated, which experts were consulted and what they said.”

  “Okay,” Annika said.

  “The Nobel Committee consists of six people: the chairperson, the vice-chairperson, three members, and the secretary of the Nobel Assembly.”

  “I presume this is relevant,” Annika said.

  “You’ll have to be patient,” Birgitta Larsén said, “because what I’m about to tell you ought to be kept confidential for another forty-nine years. What happened last year was that Caroline refused to sign the nomination papers identifying Medi-Tec’s researchers as potential recipients of the prize. None of the other five could understand why, but she refused point-blank.”

  Annika felt her pulse begin to race.

  “What had Medi-Tec done to deserve nomination?”

  “I told you, they found a way to inhibit dystrophy in axons.”

  “Ah yes,” Annika said. “The wellspring of life. How much would it have been worth to them, if they had been awarded the Nobel Prize for that particular discovery?”

  “A Nobel Prize? In monetary terms? To Medi-Tec?”

  She pondered.

  “It’s funny you should ask that, because Ernst had actually worked it out. He was the one at the Institute who knew about things like that. The recognition and marketing that the prize would have given to what you call the wellspring of life would have been worth at least fifty billion dollars, he worked out, maybe double that.”

  Fifty billion dollars.

  Three hundred and fifty billion kronor, Annika thought. Did that much money even exist?

  “From a purely objective point of view, Medi-Tec should have been listed in the preliminary report,” Birgitta Larsén said. “But Caroline was adamant. She said she’d resign if Sören carried on pressing their claim.”

  “Did you see this for yourself?”

  “Of course I didn’t—I wasn’t elected to the Committee until this year. Carrie told me.”

  “And last Saturday?”

  “A similar situation, oddly enough, seeing as Medi-Tec have been proposed again this year, and by the same person, Sören Hammarsten. Ernst dug his heels in from the outset and refused to put them on the list. Sören was furious, said it was corrupt and underhand. Ernst blew up and called Sören an indentured lackey. Well, you can imagine what it was like. The other members had candidates they wanted to promote, or get rid of, so it all got a bit rowdy.”

  “And then… ?”

  “After the meeting the Committee went down to listen to the seminar. Most of us went on to the buffet. Lars-Henry, who was there last year but who had been excluded now, turned up at the seminar. We couldn’t stop him, seeing as it was open to all members of staff.”

  “And he started shouting during the seminar?”

  “He kept quiet during the lecture itself, then he went out and started helping himself to the wine. We provide a buffet and a glass of red for each participant, but after that they have to pay. Nobel’s money is supposed to fund the prize, not drinks parties out on the Institute’s lawns.”

  “And?” Annika said.

  “Oh, he ended up having several heated discussions during the course of the evening—they got quite noisy.”

  “Did Lars-Henry say anything to Bernhard Thorell?”

  “Yes, he had a go at him and shouted a whole lot of …”

  “Anything personal, anything specific?”

  “He said he knew what sort of person Bernhard was, that he’d do anything to get his hands on a Nobel Prize. Then he said Bernhard should watch out, that he wouldn’t get away with it, because Lars-Henry knew what he had done with the test animals, Caroline had told him about the cat, she saw him, and had said he was evil incarnate …”

  “He said that?” Annika said. “That Caroline told him about the cat?”

  “Lars-Henry was very close to Caroline,” Birgitta Larsén said, with a certain degree of irritation. “He wasn’t like this before she died. She probably told him loads of things that …”

  “Could Bernhard have found out that Ernst stopped Medi-Tec being included in the report?” Annika asked.

  “No,” Birgitta Larsén said, “you’re straying a long way from the facts there.”

  “Birgitta,” Annika said, “could Bernhard have gotten any inside information about what was said in the meeting? Is there any way at all? Could someone have talked?”

  Birgitta Larsén was quiet for several seconds.

  “He spent a long time talking to Sören,” she said, “but Sören would never …”

  “Have you got access to your email? You’ll be getting a message from Caroline in a few seconds.”

  “I’ve got my in-box open on the screen in front of me.”

  Annika sent off the text marked Alfred Bernhard to the professor’s address at the Karolinska Institute.

  “Ah, there it is,” Birgitta Larsén said. “Do you want me to read it?”

  “I’ll wait on the line,” Annika said.

  “Literary ambitions,” the woman muttered.

  “Carry on reading,” Annika said.

  The professor’s breathing got heavier at the other end.

  When she had finished she didn’t say anything.

  “Have you said anything to Bernhard that might have made him feel angry and insecure?”

  “What do you mean?” the professor asked in a hoarse voice.

  “He knew which animals were yours,” Annika said, “Didn’t he? You showed them to him, and he killed them. What did you say to him?”

  “Nothing, we just had a fairly general chat.”

  “About ageing, about Medi-Tec’s research?”

  “Amongst other things,” Birgitta said.

  “If you read the email carefully,” Annika said quietly, “Caroline admits her deception. But she doesn’t mention your involvement. You’re in the clear. Do you want me to forward the text to the police?”

  Birgitta Larsén wept quietly on the other end of the line.

  “Yes,” she finally whispered. “Do it.”

  And Annika clicked to open the email again, then forwarded it to Q.

  Annika picked up the children from nursery school with burning cheeks and trembling hands. She had a price to pay for throwing her weight around, and now might well be the time for her to get her wallet out.

  The playground was empty, as a swing swayed in the breeze.

  Lotta was sitting playing a game with Kalle and Ellen when she walked in. None of the other children were
there.

  “Hello darlings,” Annika said, hugging the children as they ran to meet her. “Are you the last ones here?”

  “I think Linda’s in the dolls’ corner with some of the younger girls,” Lotta said with a smile. “A long day?”

  Annika raised her eyebrows.

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” she said.

  “Ellen’s finished her bag,” Lotta said, getting up. “Do you want to take it home today, Ellen?”

  The girl nodded.

  “I’ll go and get it,” Lotta said, and headed off toward the sewing room.

  Annika bent down toward Kalle and stroked the bandage on his forehead. It was a bit grubby.

  “Did you have a nice time today?” she asked quietly.

  The boy nodded.

  “But Ben and Alex had to go home, and Alex wet himself.”

  Annika could feel her cheeks burn.

  “Goodness,” she said.

  “We teased him about it,” Kalle said gleefully. “We called him pissypants!”

  Annika took hold of him, slightly harder than she had intended.

  “Kalle,” she said, “you mustn’t call Alexander that. Or anyone else either. You wouldn’t like to be called pissypants, would you?”

  “But he was mean to me,” the boy said sullenly.

  “I know, but you mustn’t be mean back,” she said, fully aware of her own gross hypocrisy.

  “I’m hungry, Mommy,” Ellen said.

  “Okay, let’s go home,” Annika said.

  The children’s favorite television program had just started and Annika let them cuddle up on the sofa while she started the meal. She chopped some vegetables and a couple of turkey fillets, put a small pan of jasmine rice on to boil, and got out a tin of coconut milk, chili, fish sauce, and some chopped coriander. She quickly laid the table with napkins and candles as the oil heated up in the wok.

  She didn’t work all the time. She usually managed to be at home and prepare a meal, even when she was working full time.

  She scampered around the kitchen nervously, trying to get everything done before Thomas got home, wiping the countertops and pressing the garbage down in the trash can.

  He walked through the front door just as she was taking the wok off the heat.