The Gilded Cage

by Camilla Lackberg

  ‘Come on, say yes! Johan’s the best! Best teacher ever!’

  Chris put her hands over her mouth and Johan looked suddenly nervous. Chris swallowed and held out her hand with tears streaming down her cheeks.

  ‘Of course I will,’ she whispered. The schoolchildren cheered.

  Johan grinned at them and gave them the thumbs-up, which prompted even louder cheering and applause until they slowly dispersed. He fumbled with the ring before he managed to slip it on to Chris’s outstretched finger.

  ‘I love you,’ she murmured, pulling him to his feet and kissing him.

  Faye found a suitable café on Götgatsbacken called Muggen, ordered coffee, opened her laptop and connected to the Wi-Fi. She’d downloaded a VPN app to keep her IP address hidden and impossible to trace. She inserted the USB memory stick where she had arranged everything she had found in Jack’s Gmail account, and looked through the material. She had organized it clearly and logically, a dream haul for any ambitious business reporter.

  Faye had picked out a young journalist called Magdalena Jonsson at Dagens Industri. Faye had had her eye on her for a while. She was sharp, thorough, and she wrote well.

  There’s more if you’re interested, she typed, and pressed ‘send’.

  As simple as that. She was getting ready to leave when her inbox pinged.

  Can we meet?

  Faye thought for a moment. She was aware that reporters were careful to protect their sources, they were their most valuable assets. But at the same time they were only human. One loose word when they were drunk, a mislaid mobile, a confidential conversation with a boyfriend and everything would get out. She couldn’t take the risk. Not yet.

  No. Let me know if you’d like more.

  The answer came instantly.

  OK, thanks! I need to get our experts to check the authenticity, so it might take a few days, but this is incredible – if it’s true …

  It is, she typed, then closed her laptop and left the café.

  The front-page headline in Dagens Industri read: Compare MD Jack Adelheim told staff to target the vulnerable and elderly. The article was accompanied by stills from the video Faye had sent Magdalena Jonsson.

  Faye was drinking coffee at the island unit in the kitchen. The story of how Jack Adelheim, managing director of the recently floated Compare, encouraged his staff to lie to elderly customers to get their money was splashed across four pages. It included everything Faye had gathered from his emails and sent to Magdalena Jonsson, divided into juicy headlines. The most incriminating evidence was a video taken with a mobile phone from the early days of Compare’s rise, and showed Jack instructing his staff at an internal sales conference in no uncertain terms to sell anything they could to ‘oldsters’, using whatever means necessary. Results were the only thing that mattered. The video ran for ten minutes, ten minutes that completely destroyed Jack’s moral credibility as a business leader. The film was the smoking gun that Faye had been hoping to find in his Gmail. The rest was merely the icing on the cake. The video alone would have been enough to sink Jack. And inflict serious damage on Compare. She had seen it before, and had been counting on the fact that he was arrogant enough to have saved it.

  Now all she had to do was wait to see how much damage she had done. She was worried it wasn’t going to be enough. The world was a cynical place. The media, the public, the business community – they were all very fickle. And self-interest was always the guiding principle. All she had been able to do was lay out the evidence.

  Faye read on. Hungrily, greedily, full of schadenfreude. With a flutter of happiness in her chest at the realization that Jack was now the prey, the vulnerable one.

  To her relief, the media were merciless. The angle Dagens Industri had taken was clear and consistent. Politicians, local councillors, relatives of the elderly customers who had been tricked – they all spoke out in the article. One of DI’s columnists called it the worst scandal of the past decade and declared that it was now impossible for Jack Adelheim to remain in his post. Faye read on eagerly. When she had finished she checked Aftonbladet, Expressen and Dagens Nyheter. All three had the story as the lead article on their websites, with clips from the film. Aftonbladet even devoted its morning broadcast to a discussion of what the revelations might mean for Compare and its share value. They were competing with each other to seek out the harshest condemnation from the most heavyweight names. And the public joined in. How dare Jack? How dare Compare?

  Faye tried to visualize Jack. What was he doing now? How would he react? Would he follow the advice of his critics and resign to save Compare and stop the share price from sinking any lower?

  Maybe. If he felt sufficiently panicky, sufficiently skewered. With his background, he was more sensitive to public approbation than anything else. The heavy, damp burden of shame from his childhood might make him simply drop everything and run. That mustn’t happen. That would go against everything she had planned. She had to encourage him to go into battle, to fight to the last to cling on. Massage his ego, tell him no one was better able to save and lead Compare than he was. She didn’t think it would be particularly difficult. She knew exactly which buttons she needed to press.

  She called Kerstin, who had gone in to the office early.

  ‘Have you seen?’

  ‘I’m reading it now. It’s incredible. They’re really going for it. Better than expected.’

  ‘I know. What … what do you think I should do?’

  ‘Lie low. He’ll come to you.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘No, sweetheart, I know. In times of crisis we turn to people who can validate us. When Jack needs validation he comes to you. He’ll ask for your advice. He’s always needed you. He just hasn’t had the sense to realize it.’

  ‘What’s happened to the shares?’

  Faye heard Kerstin tap at her computer.

  ‘They’re down from ninety-seven kronor to eighty-two since the market opened.’

  She cleared her throat. It was a big fall, but still a long way from her target. If they fell below fifty kronor she would instruct her stockbroker on the Isle of Man to buy every share he could get his hands on. That would probably be enough to give her a majority.

  Jack and Henrik owned 40 per cent of Compare. They had needed a lot of investors at the start, and the investors had bought shares in the company. Jack and Henrik had made a big deal of the fact the people buying shares had the same vision for the business as them. But the fact that the two of them didn’t have a majority made them vulnerable. As she had pointed out on many occasions. In vain.

  ‘There’s a way to go yet,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t worry. It’s going to work. It might take a few days, but the more unhappy everyone gets with Jack, and the worse he handles it, the lower the share-price will sink. All you have to do is persuade him to cling on, that it will all blow over.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ Faye said.

  A brief silence followed.

  ‘When are you coming into the office?’ Kerstin asked.

  ‘I’m probably not coming in today, Chris needs me.’

  ‘Go to Chris,’ Kerstin said. ‘I’ll hold the fort here.’

  Chris’s doorbell echoed shrilly in the stairwell. Faye hadn’t called ahead to say she’d be calling round – she hardly ever did. Chris’s door was always open for her, she still had her own key. She waited and listened. After a while she heard slow footsteps inside the flat, the lock clicked and the door swung open.

  Chris looked tired. Her face was grey and she had big, dark bags under her eyes. When she saw it was Faye her face cracked into a weary smile.

  ‘Oh, it’s you. I thought it was a burglar.’

  ‘And yet you opened the door.’

  ‘I needed someone take my frustration out on,’ Chris said as she bent down to unlock the white metal grille.

  ‘Poor burglars. They wouldn’t stand a chance. Have you eaten anything?’

  ‘Not since yesterday. I ha
ven’t got any appetite, I don’t even feel like drinking champagne. That gives you some idea of how bad it is. I was thinking of asking the hospital if I can take it intravenously instead.’

  Chris lay down on the sofa while Faye made coffee and looked through the fridge and larder for something to force into her. All she could come up with were two crisp-breads with cod roe. Chris took a few bites before pushing the plate away with a grimace.

  ‘The cod roe is Johan’s. I never liked it even when I was well.’

  She wiped her mouth with a napkin.

  ‘Why didn’t you say?’ Faye said. ‘If you’d said you didn’t like it I’d have got you something else.’

  Chris shrugged.

  ‘The chemo seems to have killed my tastebuds. I thought that might mean I could actually eat the stuff. But not even chemo can get my tastebuds to accept it. I’ve tried telling Johan that it’s horrible, but he refuses to listen.’

  ‘So what are your doctors saying?’ Faye asked gently as she moved the plate.

  ‘Do we have to talk about it?’

  ‘No. But I’m worried.’

  Chris let out a deep sigh.

  ‘It’s not looking good, Faye. Not good at all, in fact.’

  The hairs on the back of Faye’s neck stood up.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Exactly that. The treatment hasn’t had any effect whatsoever. Well, apart from the fact that I feel sick the whole time, I keep throwing up and I’ve started to lose my hair. But at least I’m thin, so I don’t have to go to the gym any more.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  Chris waved her hand dismissively.

  ‘Can’t we talk about something else? Act like you normally do. What’s new?’

  ‘You’re not reading the papers any more?’

  Chris shook her head wearily. Faye went out into the hall, pulled the crumpled copy of Dagens Industri from her bag and returned with it. She put it down on Chris’s lap.

  After a quick glance at Faye Chris opened the paper and leafed through the article.

  Faye ate the rest of the crispbread while Chris read. She didn’t share her friend’s opinion of cod roe.

  ‘This is incredible,’ Chris said, folding the paper. ‘Did you expect them to write this much?’

  ‘No. And it gets better: the evening papers and Dagens Nyheter have joined in, along with the online media. There’s pretty much a witch-hunt on Facebook and social media.’

  ‘You must be delighted?’

  ‘I don’t want to count any chickens.’

  ‘You’re more boring than me, and I’m the one who’s dying! We need to celebrate this somehow. I wonder how quickly I can get hold of a drip full of cava?’

  ‘There’s no need, Chris. We can celebrate later, when it’s over. When you’re better.’ She forced herself to smile. ‘So how’s life as a newly engaged woman?’

  ‘Wonderful. Well, as wonderful as it can be when you’re being sick three times an hour. Johan’s brought me breakfast in bed every day.’

  ‘But you’re not eating?’

  ‘No, but he doesn’t know that. And I haven’t got the heart to tell him that if I ate it I’d be throwing up his lovely breakfast half an hour later.’

  ‘When’s the wedding?’

  ‘That’s the problem. Johan wants to get married within a year and all that. I don’t know what it is with young people today, they really are incredibly conservative. I don’t think I can deal with that.’

  Faye refrained from pointing out that Johan, who was only five years younger than Chris, could hardly be described as young. She looked at Chris sternly instead.

  ‘You need to tell him that,’ she said, in a stricter voice than she’d intended.

  She didn’t want Johan to put any pressure on her friend. Chris had time. She had to have time.

  ‘The problem is that it might not happen otherwise. I’ve got some uninvited tumours that want to gate-crash the party.’

  ‘The treatment will help. It has to.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ Chris said, and turned her face away from Faye. Soon after that she fell asleep.

  Faye laid a blanket over her and patted her knees when she tucked her up. Then she crept quietly out of the flat and locked it using her own key.

  Faye felt deflated as she walked down the stairs. Chris had always been able to see the funny side of everything, but now she seemed to have resigned herself to dying.

  The financial news on Swedish Television was showing a downward graph to illustrate the collapse in Compare’s share-price during the day. Pictures of the entrance to Compare’s head office on Blasieholmen were intercut with shots of the gates to the house on Lidingö. But no one had been able to get hold of Jack.

  ‘Where could he be?’ Kerstin murmured as she sat beside Faye, hunched towards the screen.

  ‘He’s probably locked away with frowning PR consultants who are trying to tell him how to deal with this.’

  ‘Will that do any good?’

  ‘I doubt it. But the PR consultants will be able to send in some hefty invoices for all that wasted advice.’ She turned to look at Kerstin. ‘You went to see Ragnar today, didn’t you? How was it?’

  Kerstin shook her head. ‘You know I don’t want to talk about him.’

  Faye nodded and did as Kerstin wanted. This time.

  For every hour that Jack managed to evade the reporters, their frustration seemed to grow. When Julienne came into the living room, Faye discreetly changed the channel. She got ready to put her to bed, but Kerstin offered to do it instead. A special bond had grown up between Faye and Kerstin, with Julienne as the glue. These days Kerstin pretty much only used her flat to sleep in, and Faye wouldn’t have it any other way.

  The sound of laughter was coming from Julienne’s room and Faye smiled. She had Julienne and Kerstin in her life, couldn’t she be happy with that? Did she have to crush Jack? Julienne had always worshipped her dad, and children needed both their parents. Even if Jack didn’t always have time for his daughter, and even if Julienne sometimes cried before visits to her father. Faye knew that was natural for children with divorced parents. Eternal separation anxiety.

  Faye honestly didn’t know if Jack loved Julienne. He had always treated her like a princess, but sometimes it felt like she was primarily a beautiful accessory that he enjoyed showing off to the world. And a father’s love wasn’t necessarily unconditional, she was all too aware of that.

  Faye allowed herself brief moments of doubt, but she knew there was no alternative. Jack had ground her down, humiliated and betrayed her. He had discarded the family that she had sacrificed everything for. Men had held power over her throughout her whole life. She couldn’t let Jack get away with it.

  She decided to skip the rest of the news bulletin and went out into the kitchen to get a glass of wine. When she returned to the living room and was reaching for her iPad, she got a message from Jack.

  I need to see you, he wrote.

  Where? she replied.

  A minute passed before her mobile buzzed again.

  Where we first met.

  Rain was falling steadily as Faye shut the door of the taxi and ran at a crouch to the door on the N’See Bar. There were three guys in their twenties nursing beers at one table. Jack was sitting right at the back. The same place she and Chris had been sitting sixteen years before.

  Jack was sitting with his head bowed over his half-drunk beer.

  The bartender nodded to her.

  ‘Two beers, please.’ She guessed Jack’s glass would soon be empty.

  The bartender filled two glasses and Faye carried them over to Jack’s table.

  He looked up and she put one of the glasses down in front of him.

  ‘Hi,’ he said with a sad smile.

  He looked vulnerable. Small.

  His dark hair was brushed back and one wet strand was hanging forlornly over his cheek. He was pale, his skin looked puffy. His eyes bloodshot. She had never see
n him this dejected. Faye had to suppress a first instinct to put her arms round him, comfort him, tell him everything was going to be all right.

  ‘How are you?’

  He shook his head slowly.

  ‘This … this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.’

  Her last ounce of sympathy vanished when she realized just how sorry he felt for himself. He was absolutely wallowing in it. He hadn’t spared a thought for how it must have felt for her to lose everything. Become a social pariah, isolated, rejected. She had experienced everything he was going through now, and more besides. And he hadn’t felt the slightest sympathy for her then. So why should she be any different?

  But in order to get what she wanted she had to give him what he wanted.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ She made her voice soft.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said quietly.

  She wondered how to phrase it. He mustn’t resign, because then everything would have been in vain. That would leave him as just another businessman who had turned out to be greedy. And there were plenty of those in the world. Jack’s downfall needed to be far more spectacular than that.

  She had to persuade him to stay on. She wanted him to have a long way to fall. And it was as if her mere presence made him more ready to fight. He looked at her with a fresh glint in his eye. In the background Carly Simon’s ‘Coming Around Again’ was playing. She’d always liked that song. That said, her own heart had felt smaller since Jack broke it. As if it had shrunk.

  ‘That all happened over ten years ago,’ Jack said. ‘How can it even be news? I was young and hungry back then. You do what you have to, it’s business. The only thing people care about is results. No one gives a damn about how you do it. But now? It must be envy. People hate anyone who’s successful. They hate people like you and me, Faye. Because we’re smarter than they are.’

  Faye didn’t answer. Suddenly they were ‘we’ again. And after all those years of telling her how stupid she was, here he was talking about how intelligent she was. Rage washed over her and she gripped her glass tightly. Jack went on with his tirade. His voice was whiny and he had flushes of red on his neck. She’d never seen that before.