But he had to show a degree of tolerance – there was such a torrent of posts, and it took a bit of talent and application to keep coming up with gems, dedication and persistence to make a name for yourself.
He logged out and pushed the computer away. He had called the department and told them he wasn’t well. Now he was sitting in his gloomy living room with a cup of instant coffee, watching the storm-clouds race across the sky. Professionally, however, he felt a degree of optimism.
All the opinion polls suggested that the government would lose power in September’s election. That meant new bosses taking charge of existing work, at least to start with, for key personnel like him. All he had to do was drag out the inquiry until after the election. If the right-wing parties appointed that former hairdresser to be justice minister, he himself would be in a very favourable position indeed. He would have every chance of pushing the legislation through as he wanted it.
He heaved himself up to refill his mug as the doorbell sounded. His whole body stiffened. Who could it be? He looked automatically at the hook to see if it was attached, and of course it was: it was the first thing he did every morning, and the last thing he saw to at night before switching out the light on his bedside table. His doctor (a large, menopausal woman) had explained that it was important to use a prosthesis continually to prevent future problems with his arm, shoulders, neck and back. Your posture was better and you avoided uneven weight distribution, as if that mattered. He had one arm. What difference would bad posture make? Like having a brain tumour and worrying about a fungal infection in a toenail.
He walked silently to the front door and the peephole that Annika had installed – maybe she’d changed her mind, wanted to move back home if he was prepared to forgive her. He wasn’t sure that he could, considering the extent of her betrayal.
He held his breath and put his eye to the hole. Sophia was standing outside. His heart sank. He considered not opening the door.
She rang again.
He opened the door. ‘Sophia,’ he said, trying to sound pleasantly surprised. ‘Come in.’
Her cheeks were a little flushed, possibly from shyness. It made him feel a bit embarrassed on her behalf. He took a step back to let her into the flat (it really wasn’t a grand apartment). She kept her eyes on the floor as she walked in and took her shoes off. ‘Am I disturbing you?’ she asked softly.
‘Oh, no.’
‘I tried calling you at work, but they said you were off sick.’
She’d called him at work? What was she playing at?
He forced himself to smile. ‘The department’s very understanding when I need time to recuperate,’ he said, and she nodded. She understood that too.
She took a step forward, right up to him, put her arms round his waist and laid her cheek against his chest. ‘I’ve missed you so much,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so pleased you stayed with me.’
He didn’t know what to do: if he put his hand on her back, what would he do with the hook? Just let it hang by his side? Or should he put that on her back too, a stiff lump of rubber?
She kissed him and, to his surprise, he found himself kissing her back.
She smiled. ‘Have you a coffee for me too?’
He took a step back. She could tell he’d just had some, so embarrassing. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Sit yourself down in the living room and I’ll get you one.’
He boiled some water in the kettle, put two heaped teaspoons of Nescafé in a mug, added water and a little milk, then stirred it.
‘Oh,’ she said, as he handed it to her. ‘You remembered how I like it.’
He smiled and sat down beside her. She was still blushing.
‘I really enjoyed yesterday,’ she said, her eyes sparkling. ‘It felt lovely being able to spend the day with you, go for a walk and just cuddle on the sofa.’
He had been so hung-over that she’d ended up dragging him all the way round Östermalm to help him stop feeling so sick.
‘It all felt so natural, like we’d never been apart,’ she went on. ‘I’ve been wondering if we couldn’t . . .’ She fell silent, as if she was trying to find the right words. ‘You might think I’m being a bit forward now,’ she said, putting her mug on the coffee-table. ‘But I was wondering if you’d like to move out to the estate with me. To Säter.’ She glanced at him.
He didn’t know how he was expected to react, so he kept his face impassive.
‘Like I said, Dad can’t manage the estate now. There’s eleven hundred hectares of forest and five hundred of arable land, and the manor house needs renovating.’
She took a breath and met his gaze. ‘We could have a wonderful life,’ she said. ‘Hunting in the autumn, seeing in the spring in the villa on the Riviera, making candles at Christmas in the old country kitchen. Ellen could have her own horse, and we could make a go-kart track for Kalle . . .’
‘But I’ve got a job,’ he said.
She nodded. ‘I respect that,’ she said. ‘What you’re doing is important for Sweden. Of course we could keep the penthouse as an overnight flat. You can go on working for as long as you want to. I can take care of most of the estate on my own, but I’d like to share it with you.’
He looked at her and tried to hide his contempt. Did she really think she could bribe him with promises of a trouble-free future? What did she think he was? Some cheap whore?
The wind had died down, leaving behind it a suffocating vacuum. The trees rose up towards the sky, like stone statues. Not a single leaf was moving. Black clouds hung over the rooftops, erasing any sense of contrast.
Annika drove into town from Granhed, careful to look the other way when she passed the turning to Tallsjön.
Your behaviour is characterized by avoidance.
She parked outside the discount store and got out of the car on leaden legs. This was uncomfortable, but no worse than a two.
She slung her bag over her shoulder and locked the car, the electronic bleep bouncing briefly into the silence. Steven was waiting on his own in the gloom of the café terrace. A mother with two young children was sitting inside at the counter, staring at her mobile, but otherwise the café was deserted. Annika bought the same type of ciabatta roll and cappuccino as she had had the day before, then went out into the stagnant air and sat down opposite him. He had half a cup of coffee in front of him, his hand fluttering on the table.
‘Was the drive okay?’ she asked. She didn’t know if Parkinson’s affected things like driving, or if his medication might.
‘Fine,’ he said.
‘Where’s Destiny? With Mum?’
He nodded, then looked down at the table. ‘I’ve tried explaining about Birgitta’s mobile phone, and that she’s been in Hälleforsnäs, but Barbro doesn’t understand, and I’m not sure I know how that works either. Could you explain it to her?’
She took a sip of cappuccino, and had to swallow hard to get it down. ‘Sure,’ she said.
The silence was oppressive, the air sticky.
Your behaviour is characterized by avoidance.
‘Shall we deal with the assault now and get it out of the way?’ she asked.
Steven looked at the car park. His big hands were clutching the coffee cup. He thought for a long time. Eventually he said, ‘I went for treatment in Eskilstuna. ATV, ever heard of it?’
Annika had a rough idea of what Alternative To Violence treatment was (admit your violence, take responsibility for it, and understand its consequences) but shook her head: she wanted to hear him explain.
He coughed, hard and rattling. ‘It was hard work,’ he said. ‘Understanding what I’d done to her. I never did it again.’
She waited in silence for him to go on, but he said no more. The two children inside the café started to fight about something, and their mother yelled at them. ‘How did you meet?’ she asked.
‘You’re wondering how she ended up with someone like me? Well, it took a long time, but I didn’t give up. She used to come and see me sometimes w
hen she felt lonely, and in the end she stayed. I’ll never leave her, she knows that.’
Maybe she was all too aware of it, Annika thought. Maybe she’d had to run away in order to escape. ‘Have you got those text messages she sent?’
Steven took his mobile out, pressed the screen a few times, then handed it to her.
The three last messages from Birgitta’s phone to Steven’s were sent on 19, 22 and 25 May, the same dates indicated by the trace.
The first one read:
Hello Steven, Sorry. Everything’s fine, but I want to be alone for a while. Don’t tell anyone I’m gone. There are some things I need to sort out with my sister.
Annika stared at the message. What had Birgitta suddenly felt a need to ‘sort out’? Did it have something to do with her drinking? Did she want Annika to take part in some sort of family therapy, to sit in a big circle with loads of strangers and be a target for all Birgitta’s failures, like in some American film?
‘What did she text you?’ Steven asked.
Annika reached for her bag and dug about for her old mobile, clicked to bring up Birgitta’s texts, then handed it across the table. Then she read the second message Birgitta had sent to Steven, on 22 May:
Hello Steven, Everything’s fine. I just need to think, re-evaluate things. Sorry for everything I’ve done. Don’t call me again, I need some breathing space. I’m engaged in important matters that can’t be interrupted.
And the last, sent on 25 May:
Hello Steven, I’m fine, but I need to get hold of my sister. Can you ask her to call me? She’s got to help me.
‘Do you know what she was “engaged in”?’ Annika asked. ‘Or what she wanted help with?’
He put her mobile on the table between them. ‘No idea.’
‘She didn’t say anything before she left?’
He shook his head. ‘How do they know the messages were sent from Hälleforsnäs?’
‘They were sent via a mast in the area,’ Annika said. ‘Apart from the last one, which was sent from Luleå.’
Annika pushed away the ciabatta roll – there was no way she going to get that down. ‘I agree with you,’ she said. ‘Something’s wrong. She sounds so strange. Does she normally express herself like that?’
‘How do you mean?’
Annika hesitated. ‘Elevated language. I mean, “re-evaluate”, “engaged in”?’
‘That hadn’t occurred to me,’ Steven said.
Annika looked at her watch and sighed. ‘Shall we go, then?’
The smell of cooking hit them when they entered the flat in Tattarbacken. The sound of cartoon voices filtered out from the living room. They took off their shoes, and Annika put her sandals on the shoe-rack that had been there since she was a child.
Steven went into the living room. ‘Hi, Diny, what are you watching?’
Annika didn’t hear Destiny’s reply. She stood in the hall, looking towards the kitchen, the source of the smell. Fried Falun sausage: her mother’s signature dish. Until she’d met Thomas she’d eaten it several times a week, but Thomas refused to touch it. He ate proper meat, not reconstituted rubbish.
She walked towards the kitchen, over the rag-rug, her feet remembering where to stand so that the floor didn’t creak.
Barbro was standing by the kitchen window, smoking. She had got old – when had that happened? Her hair had always been blonde, like Birgitta’s, but now it was silvery-white.
‘Hello, Mum,’ Annika said.
‘Hello,’ Barbro said, blowing smoke through the gap in the window. She watched the plume until it dissipated, then turned to Annika. ‘Have you heard anything?’ she asked.
Annika sank on to her seat at the kitchen table. She was a stranger now but her body remembered: it knew exactly how the pine chair felt. She ran her fingers over the grain of the table. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Have you?’
Barbro took another drag on her cigarette, then reached for an almost empty wine glass on the worktop. ‘You’re the one married to the government,’ she said. ‘Shouldn’t you be able to use your contacts? For our sakes, just this once?’
Her mother’s anger struck her like a punch in the stomach. Annika gasped for breath. Uncomfortable, uncomfortable, not at all dangerous, just go with it, a three at most, no more than that. ‘Birgitta was seen here in Hälleforsnäs last week, and her mobile was traced to here the week before, we know that much.’
‘So Steven said. Where was she?’
‘They can’t see exactly where she was, only which mast her mobile phone was communicating with.’
Barbro took another deep drag. ‘That’s not right,’ she said. ‘The police can trace missing people to within ten metres – I read it in the paper.’
Annika clenched her fists so tightly that her colourful nails hurt her palms. ‘If the mobile is switched on, the operator can trace it in real time, by triangulation. You measure the signals from three base-stations to get a relatively reliable idea of where the phone is at that precise moment. It’s impossible to do that retrospectively.’
Another drag. ‘I don’t believe she was here at all because she’d have called in.’ Barbro emptied her glass. Her eyes were already slightly unfocused.
‘Do you think it’s a good idea to be drinking now?’ Annika said, aware of the anger and contempt that had slipped into her voice.
Her mother slammed her glass down, and her blue eyes were black as they fixed on Annika’s. ‘So I’m going to be told how to behave as well now? And by you, of all people?’
Annika closed her eyes. ‘Mum,’ she said. ‘Don’t start.’
‘You’ve got no idea what it’s like for me, how things have been here.’ She stubbed her cigarette out hard in the ashtray.
‘Mum . . .’
‘What do you think life’s been like for me, all these years? All the whispering, all the nasty gossip? You just ran away and left me to deal with it.’
Her voice was low but aggressive. Annika kept her fists clenched and focused on her breathing. The cartoon voices were laughing hysterically in the living room.
‘You killed a boy and got away with it. People don’t forget something like that. Maj-Lis never shopped at Konsum again – did you know that? She and Birger used to drive to the ICA store in Flen, right up until she died, because they couldn’t bear seeing me behind the till. Have you any idea how that made me feel?’
Anger gave way to darkness, swirling round Annika’s head. Not at all dangerous, just go with it.
‘Mum,’ she said, ‘I’m really sorry about what happened.’
‘Are you?’ Barbro lit another cigarette. ‘You’ve never apologized to me,’ she said.
Annika let the darkness come, embracing her from all sides, making its way in through her mouth and nostrils. Strangely, she could still talk. ‘Are you really the one I should be apologizing to?’
‘Yes, because you never spoke to Sven’s parents. You never had the decency to do that.’
Annika closed her eyes and let the darkness win. That was true. She hadn’t apologized to Maj-Lis and Birger. She’d never dared to imagine doing so. She had been weak and evasive, taking refuge in shadows and work.
She heard Steven come into the kitchen.
‘Has Diny eaten?’
She opened her eyes. She could still breathe. Steven was standing in the doorway with his daughter on his arm.
‘Sausage and macaroni,’ Barbro said, as she took her glass to the fridge. She filled it from a three-litre wine-box.
Annika stood up. ‘I’ve got to go,’ she said.
‘Yes. Your job’s more important than everything else,’ Barbro said.
Infinite weariness washed over Annika. ‘The newspaper’s being shut down,’ she said. ‘It was made public this morning. I’ll be out of work in a few months’ time.’
Her mother took a slurp from the glass and looked at her, her eyes less harsh now. ‘Life’s catching up with you,’ she said, ‘the way it does with everyone.’
Annika pushed past Steven to escape, get out, away, but by the shoe-rack she stopped and stood there, staring at the letterbox. She put her sandals on, then went back to the kitchen. She looked at her mother, her sad eyes, tired hands. ‘It doesn’t matter how much I apologize to you,’ she said. ‘I can never make up for what I’ve done to you, but I’m going to try.’
A flicker of uncertainty crossed her mother’s face.
‘I apologize for being born,’ Annika said. ‘I didn’t mean to be.’
Then she left, stumbling over the rag-rug towards the daylight, out of the flat.
Once she was back in the car, she wept.
She could have clenched her teeth and held it in, as she usually did, just switch off and move on, leave it all behind, but she decided not to struggle. She sat in the stuffy car and let the pain come, until it misted the windows and she had no energy left.
What would happen when her mother died? Annika had been mourning her all her life: would her death make any difference? She didn’t know.
There was now lightning down to the south-west, towards Julita. She couldn’t hear any thunder yet, but it would be there soon enough. There was tension in the air, and it needed release.
She started the car, wound down the window, drove to the junction, then turned left.
Slowly she drove towards Tallsjön, the beach she hadn’t visited for over twenty years.
She stopped beside the turning, two wheels on the verge. She switched the engine off and listened to her heartbeat. Then she looked, eyes wide open, at the place where her father had died.
The tarmac didn’t quite cover the whole of the carriageway, and was ragged and sandy at the edges. There were weeds growing right up to the road, their leaves dark and motionless in the peculiar light. There was nothing to indicate what had happened there. It was just a patch of road, a turning, like thousands of others, yet her pulse was still hammering, like a turbine, right through her body.
The Final Word Page 24