by Asa Larsson
She’d agreed because she didn’t think she had any choice. She’d embarrassed the firm, got them involved in a compensation claim and lost a client. It was impossible to say no. She owed them, and she nodded and smiled.
At least she managed to get herself out of bed on the days she was sitting in court. Usually it was the accused who drew the first glances from the jury and the judge, but now she was the main attraction in the circus. She kept her eyes fixed on the desk in front of her and let them look. Criminals, magistrates, prosecutors, jurors. She could almost hear them thinking: “so that’s her…”
She’d arrived at the gardens in front of the hotel. Here the grass was suddenly fresh and green. They must have had the sprinklers going like mad during the dry summer. The scent of the last dog-roses of summer drifted inland on the evening breeze. The air was pleasantly warm. The younger women were wearing sleeveless linen dresses. The slightly older ones covered their upper arms with light cotton cardigans from IBlues and Max Mara. The men had left their ties at home. They trotted back and forth in their Gant trousers with drinks for the ladies. Checked out the charcoal in the barbecue and chatted knowledgeably with the kitchen staff.
She scanned the crowd. No Maria Taube. No Måns Wenngren.
And one of the partners was heading toward her—Erik Rydén. On with the smile. “Is that her?”
Petra Wilhelmsson watched Rebecka Martinsson coming up the track toward the hotel. Petra had only just started with the firm. She was leaning against the railing outside the entrance. On one side of her stood Johan Grill, also new to the firm, and on the other side stood Krister Ahlberg, a criminal lawyer in his thirties.
“Yes, that’s her,” confirmed Krister Ahlberg. “The firm’s very own little Modesty Blaise.”
He emptied his glass and placed it on the railing with a little bang. Petra shook her head slowly.
“To think she killed somebody,” she said.
“Three people, actually,” said Krister.
“God, it makes my hair stand on end! Look!” said Petra, holding her arm up to show the two gentlemen in her company.
Krister Ahlberg and Johan Grill looked carefully at her arm. It was brown and slender. A few very fine hairs had been bleached almost white by the summer sun.
“I don’t mean because she’s a girl,” Petra went on, “but she just doesn’t look the type to…”
“And she wasn’t. She had a nervous breakdown in the end. And she can’t cope with the job. Sits in on the big name criminal trials sometimes. And I’m the one that does all the work then gets left behind in the office with the cell phone switched on just in case something comes up. But she’s the star.”
“Is she a star?” asked Johan Grill. “They never wrote anything about her, did they?”
“No, but in legal circles everybody knows who she is. Sweden’s legal circle isn’t very big, as you’ll soon find out.”
Krister Ahlberg measured out a centimeter between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. He noticed that Petra’s glass was empty, and wondered if he ought to offer to get her a refill. But that would mean leaving little Petra alone with Johan.
“God,” said Petra, “I wonder what it feels like to kill somebody.”
“I’ll introduce you,” said Krister. “We don’t work in the same department, but we went on a course together on commercial contract law. We’ll just wait until Erik Rydén’s let her out of his clutches.”
* * *
Erik Rydén took Rebecka in his arms and welcomed her. He was a stocky man, and his duties as host were making him perspire. His body was steaming like a bog in August, surrounded by a miasma of Chanel Pour Monsieur and alcohol. Her right hand patted him several times on the back.
“Glad you could come,” he said with his broadest smile.
He took her bag and gave her a glass of champagne and a room key in return. Rebecka looked at the key ring. It was a piece of wood painted red and white, attached to the key with a clever little knot.
For when the guests get drunk and drop them in the water, she thought.
They exchanged a few remarks. Gorgeous weather. Ordered it especially for you, Rebecka. She laughed, asked how things were going. Bloody great, just last week he’d landed a big client, something in biotechnology. And they were about to start negotiations on a merger with an American company, so it was all go at the moment. She listened and smiled. Then another latecomer arrived, and Erik had to carry on with his duties as host.
A lawyer from the criminal cases department came over to her. He greeted her as if they were old friends. She searched frantically through her mind for his name, but it had vanished into thin air. He had two new employees trailing after him, a girl and a boy. The boy had a tuft of blond hair above the kind of brown face you only get from sailing. He was a bit short, with broad shoulders. Square, jutting chin, two muscular arms protruding from the rolled-up sleeves of his expensive jumper.
Like Popeye the sailorman, styled by experts, she thought.
The girl was blonde as well. Her mane of hair firmly anchored by a pair of expensive sunglasses on top of her head. Dimples in her cheeks. A cardigan that matched her short-sleeved jumper was hanging over Popeye’s arm. They said hello. The girl chirruped like a blackbird. Her name was Petra. Popeye was called Johan, and he had some sort of elegant surname, but Rebecka couldn’t remember it. That’s how things had been for the last year. Before, she’d had compartments in her head where she could file information. Now there were no compartments. Everything just tumbled in, and most of it tumbled straight out again. She smiled and managed a handshake that was just firm enough. Asked who they were working for at the office. How they were settling in. What they’d written their essays about and where they’d done their articles. Nobody asked her about anything.
She moved on between the groups. Everybody was standing there at the ready, a ruler in their pocket. Measuring each other. Comparing everybody else with themselves. Salary. Where they lived. Name. Who you knew. What you’d been doing during the summer. Somebody was building a house in Nacka. Somebody else was looking for a bigger flat now they’d had their second child, preferably on the right side of Östermalm.
“I’m a complete wreck,” exclaimed the house builder with a cheerful smile.
Somebody who had just become single again turned to Rebecka.
“I was actually up around your home turf back in May,” he said. “Went skiing from Abisko to Kebnekaise, had to get up at three in the morning while the snow was still firm enough. During the day it was so wet you just sank right through it. All you could do was lie in the spring sunshine and make the most of it.”
The atmosphere was suddenly strained. Did he have to mention where she came from? Kiruna forced its way into the circle like a ghost. All at once everyone was gabbling the names of other places they’d been. Italy, Tuscany, parents in Jönköping, Legoland, but Kiruna just wouldn’t disappear. Rebecka moved on, and everybody breathed a sigh of relief.
The older associates had been staying in their summer cottages on the west coast, or in Skåne, or out in the archipelago. Arne Eklöf had lost his mother, and told Rebecka quite candidly how he’d spent the summer quarrelling about her estate.
“It’s bloody true,” he said. “When the Lord turns up with death, the devil turns up with the heirs. Can I get you another?”
He nodded toward her glass. She refused. He gave her a look that was almost angry. As if she’d refused further confidences. Presumably that was exactly what she’d done. He stomped off toward the drinks table. Rebecka stayed where she was, gazing after him. It was a strain chatting to people, but it was a nightmare standing there on her own with an empty glass. Like a poor pot plant that can’t even ask for water.
I could go to the bathroom, she thought, glancing at her watch. And I can stay in there for seven minutes if there isn’t a queue. Three if somebody’s waiting outside the door.
She looked around for somewhere to put her glass down. Just a
t that moment Maria Taube materialized at her side. She held out a little dish of Waldorf salad.
“Eat,” she said. “Looking at you frightens me.”
Rebecka took the salad. The memory of last spring flooded through her when she looked at Maria.
* * *
Harsh spring sunshine outside Rebecka’s filthy windows. But she has the blinds pulled right down. In the middle of the week, on an ordinary morning, Maria comes to visit. Afterward Rebecka wonders how come she opened the door. She should have stayed under the covers and hidden.
But. She goes to the door. Hardly conscious of the doorbell ringing. Almost absentmindedly she undoes the security lock. Then she turns the catch of the lock with her left hand while her right hand pushes down the door handle. Her head isn’t connected to anything. Just like when you find yourself standing in front of the refrigerator with the door open, wondering what you’re doing in the kitchen anyway.
Afterward she thinks that maybe there’s a sensible little person inside her. A little girl in red Wellingtons and a life jacket. A survivor. And that little girl had recognized those high heels tip-tapping along.
The girl says to Rebecka’s hands and feet: “Ssh, it’s Maria. Don’t tell her. Just get her up and make sure she opens the door.”
Maria and Rebecka are sitting in the kitchen. They are drinking coffee, just on its own. Rebecka doesn’t say much. The pyramid of dirty dishes, the drifts of post and junk mail and newspapers on the hall floor, the crumpled sweaty clothes on her body say everything there is to say.
And in the middle of all this her hands begin to shake. She has to put her coffee cup down on the table. They are flailing about like mad things, like two headless chickens.
“No more coffee for me,” she tries to joke.
She laughs, but it comes out more like a discordant hacking noise.
Maria looks her in the eyes. Rebecka feels as though she knows. How Rebecka sometimes stands out on the balcony looking down at the hard asphalt below. And how she sometimes can’t make herself go out and down to the shops. But has to live on whatever she happens to have in. Drink tea and eat pickled gherkins straight from the jar.
“I’m no shrink,” says Maria, “but I do know things get worse if you don’t eat and sleep. And you have to get dressed in the mornings and go out.”
Rebecka hides her hands under the kitchen table.
“You must think I’ve gone mad.”
“Honey, my family is crawling with women who’ve got Nerves. They faint and swoon, have panic attacks and hypochondria the whole time. And my aunt, have I told you about her? One minute she’s sitting in a psychiatric ward with somebody helping her get dressed, the next she’s starting up a Montessori nursery. I’ve seen it all.”
The following day one of the partners, Torsten Karlsson, offers to let Rebecka stay in his cottage. Maria used to work with Torsten in the business law section before she moved over and started working for Måns Wenngren with Rebecka.
“You’d be doing me a favor,” says Torsten. “It would save me worrying whether somebody had broken in, and driving up there just to do the watering. I ought to sell the place really. But that’s a load of hassle as well.”
She should have said no, of course. It was so obvious. But the little girl in the red Wellingtons said yes before she’d even opened her mouth.
Rebecka ate some of the Waldorf salad dutifully. She started with half a walnut. As soon as she got it into her mouth, it grew to the size of a plum. She chewed and chewed. Got ready to swallow. Maria looked at her.
“So how are things?” she asked.
Rebecka smiled. Her tongue felt rough.
“Actually, I have absolutely no idea.”
“But you’re okay about being here this evening?”
Rebecka shrugged her shoulders.
No, she thought. But what can you do? Force yourself to go out. Otherwise you’ll soon end up sitting in a cottage somewhere with the authorities after you, terrified of people, allergic to electricity and with a load of cats crapping indoors.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It feels as if people are checking me out when I look away. Talking about me when I’m not there. As soon as I come along, the conversation kind of starts afresh. You know what I mean? It seems as if it’s ‘Tennis, anyone?’ in a mad panic as soon as they see me coming.”
“Well, it is,” smiled Maria. “You’re the firm’s very own Modesty Blaise. And now you’ve gone to stay out at Torsten’s place and you’re getting more and more isolated and peculiar. Of course everybody’s talking about you.”
Rebecka laughed.
“Oh, thanks, I feel much better now.”
“I saw you talking to Johan Grill and Petra Wilhelmsson. What did you think of Miss Spin? I’m sure she’s very nice, but I just can’t take to somebody whose backside is up between her shoulder blades. Mine’s like a teenager. It’s kind of liberated itself from me and wants to stand on its own two feet.”
“I thought I heard something dragging along the grass when you turned up.”
They fell silent and gazed out over the channel where an old Fingal was chugging along.
“Don’t worry,” said Maria. “People will soon start to get really pissed. Then they’ll come weaving over to you wanting to chat.”
She turned to Rebecka, leaned in close and said in a slurring voice:
“So how does it actually feel to kill somebody?”
* * *
Rebecka’s and Maria’s boss Måns Wenngren was standing a little way off, watching them.
Good, he thought. Nicely done.
He could see Maria Taube was making Rebecka Martinsson laugh. Maria’s hands were waving in the air, twisting and turning. Her shoulders moved up and down. It was a wonder she could keep her glass under control. Years of training with upper-class families, presumably. And Rebecka’s posture softened. She looked brown and strong, he noticed. Skinny as a rake, but then she always had been.
Torsten Karlsson was standing a little way to the side behind Måns studying the barbecue buffet. His mouth was watering. Indonesian lamb kebabs, kebabs of beef fillet or scampi with Cajun spices, Caribbean fish kebabs with ginger and pineapple, chicken kebabs with sage and lemon, or Asiatic style, marinated in yogurt with ginger, garam masala and chopped cucumber, along with lots of different sauces and salads. A selection of red and white wines, beer and cider. He knew they called him “Karlsson on the roof” at the office, after the character in Astrid Lindgren’s books. Short and stocky, his black hair sticking up like a scrubbing brush on top of his head. Måns, on the other hand, always looked good in his clothes. There was no way women told him he was sweet, or that he made them laugh.
“I heard you’d got a new Jag,” he said, pinching an olive from the bulgur wheat salad.
“Mmm, an E-type cabriolet, mint condition,” answered Måns mechanically. “How’s she getting on?”
For a split second Torsten Karlsson wondered whether Måns was asking how his own Jag was getting on. He looked up, followed the direction of Måns’ gaze and landed on Rebecka Martinsson and Maria Taube.
“She’s staying up at your place,” Måns went on.
“She couldn’t stay cooped up in that little one room apartment. She didn’t seem to have anywhere to go. Why don’t you ask her yourself? She’s your assistant.”
“Because I’ve just asked you,” snapped Måns.
Torsten Karlsson held up his hands in a don’t-shoot-I-surrender gesture.
“To be honest, I don’t really know,” he said. “I never go out there. And if I am there we talk about other things.”
“Like what?”
“Well, about putting fresh tar on the steps, about the red Falun paint, about her plans to replace all the putty round the windows. She works all the time. For a while she seemed to be obsessed by the compost.”
The expression on Måns’ face encouraged him to go on. Interested, almost amused. Torsten Karlsson pushed his fingers through the
black mop of hair on his head.
“Well,” he said, “first of all she set about building. Three different compost bins for garden and household waste. Bought the rat proof kind. Then she built a rapid compost heap. She practically made me write down how you had to layer it all with grass and sand—pure science. And then, when she was supposed to go on that course on corporate taxation in Malmö, you remember?”
“I do, yes.”
“Well, she rang me up and said she couldn’t go, because the compost was, now how did she put it, there was something the matter with it, not enough nitrogen. So she’d fetched some household waste from a nursery nearby, and now it was too wet. So she’d have to stay at home and scatter and drill.”
“Drill?”
“Yes, I had to promise to go out there during the week she was away and drill down through the compost with an old hand drill—the kind you use to make holes in the ice. Then she found the former owners’ compost heap a little way into the forest.”
“And?”
“There was all sorts in there. Old cat skeletons, broken bottles, all kinds of shit…so then she decided to clean it. She found an old bed behind the outhouse with a kind of mesh base. She used that as a huge sieve. Shoveled the stuff onto the bed and shook it so the clean compost fell through. I should have brought along some of our clients and introduced them to one of our promising young associates.”
Måns stared at Torsten Karlsson. He could see Rebecka in his mind’s eye, rosy cheeks, hair standing on end, frantically shaking an iron bed on top of a pile of earth. Torsten down below with wide-eyed clients dressed in dark suits.
They both burst out laughing at the same time and almost couldn’t stop. Torsten wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.
“Although she has calmed down a bit now,” he said. “She isn’t so…I don’t know…the last time I was there she was sitting out on the steps with a book and a cup of coffee.”