Into a Raging Blaze

by Andreas Norman

  “How are you, darling?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “I’m okay.”

  The weather had cleared up and a glowing evening light that would soon turn into darkness lay across the trees. The chapel and the edge of the woods on the ridge came alive momentarily in a blaze of light before quickly darkening. They aimed for the large cross that towered up toward the purple sky.

  Jamal looked tired and haggard; he had dark circles under his eyes. He had probably been working around the clock for the last few days; the kind of negotiations he had been involved with in Vienna could go on all night.

  As they walked toward the chapel, she told him in detail about what had happened. How the police had turned up, how she had fled the apartment, and that she had stayed at Alex’s.

  They passed the bare chapel building and were soon in among the pine trees. The woods rose around them like a columned hall filled with straight, dark trunks. Rows of older graves ran through the lines of trees. They walked along the gravel path that led through the woods while she told him about how Greger’s friends had helped her to find Jean. Jamal walked silently alongside her, listening.

  A hundred meters ahead, the track twisted. Low barracks could be glimpsed, dark and barred up. Not a soul was visible. But, by one of the barracks, there was an SUV parked. She reacted to the expensive car being parked there, but couldn’t say why and let go of the thought.

  They turned off the track and began to walk along a small gravel path that led between the trees, past a number of family graves.

  “My God, Carina,” Jamal said finally, when she had told him everything.

  It upset her to hear him sound so skeptical. A chilling thought crossed her mind: what if he said he couldn’t cope with her situation? What if she was going to lose him too?

  “You don’t think I’m doing the right thing, is that it? Be honest.”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t know,” he said in a low voice. “By doing what you’re doing, you just risk complicating things. It’s one thing to try and work out what happened and quite another to flee the police. And tracking people down on the Internet . . . That’s . . . hacking. I mean, wouldn’t it be better to talk to the police, explain what happened?”

  “And what would I say to them? No one believes what I’m saying. I have to get hold of the man who gave me the report, otherwise there’s no point in going to the police. Surely you understand that? I have to go to Brussels.”

  He shrugged his shoulders as if he didn’t know what to say and stared off between the trees.

  She felt the anger welling up and said sharply, “I’ve fought for eight years to get to where I am today, and there’s no fucking way I’m going to let them consign me to the scrapheap just because it suits them. I haven’t done anything wrong. I was just doing my job. And I’m going to prove it to them. I won’t back down.”

  “I know. I understand that,” said Jamal in a conciliatory tone. “But you shouldn’t have started trying to trace this man,” he added. “I think, if you talked to the police, things would sort themselves out.”

  “How can you know that?” she said abruptly. “I tried, didn’t I? I did everything by the book. And what did I get in return?”

  He spread out his hands. Naturally, he didn’t know. He kicked a root that was sticking out of the ground.

  “Don’t you care?” she said.

  “Yes, I do care,” he said. “I care about us. About us, Carina.”

  “Then help me.”

  “Can’t you try talking to the MFA?” he said.

  “I have tried! There’s no point!”

  The air went out of her. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps she had been wrong, despite having tried to do the right thing all along. Maybe she should never have accepted the report and maybe she shouldn’t have asked Greger for help. She was so tired of it all and she was very close to tears. They were standing here, opposite one another, like any old quarreling couple. That wasn’t how it was meant to be, not with Jamal.

  She reached for him. “Say something—please.”

  He shook his head and gave her a hug, but it was a brief and edgy embrace, a placatory gesture. Neither of them knew how to continue the conversation, every word had become so overwrought with meaning.

  They had reached the outer edges of the cemetery and continued walking between more recent graves. The ground had leveled off here. It was beginning to get dark. High above them, the treetops bristled.

  When the wind turned and carried sound toward them, she heard tires on gravel and, for a second, she thought she saw something moving on the gravel road—two or three darker shadows moving between the trees and breaking off into the shelter of the motionless trunks, a shift in the horizon that caught her attention.

  “What is it?”

  “There’s someone there.”

  “Where?” He squinted.

  “Over there. On the road.”

  Jamal stood still and looked in the same direction. He couldn’t see anything. Perhaps she had imagined it. The darkness between the trees was so dense that it created its own shapes, darker patches in the dark of night. Maybe there was nothing to see.

  They left the cemetery via one of the small roads that led through the wall, and came out next to two ochre-red wooden houses with white trim, lying there like a dreamy postcard in the darkness. The main road carrying traffic into Stockholm was just a few hundred meters away.

  They walked along the road and came to a twenty-four-hour burger joint, sat enthroned in the middle of a deserted parking lot like an illuminated temple.

  Jamal had been quietly walking a few paces behind her since they left Skogskyrkogården, but asked her now whether she wanted to come back to his place. She could stay there, then go to Arlanda from his. She had hoped he would ask. A taxi picked them up them ten minutes later and drove them to Fruängen.

  Alex was still out. The apartment was dark. Carina quickly gathered together her clothes and emptied the contents of her bag into the suitcase Greger had brought for her earlier. There was still a creased copy of the report in the bag, as well as the other documents, along with the USB memory stick. That damn report. What should she do with it? She couldn’t take it to Brussels; if she was discovered carrying sensitive material like that, she would be charged with breach of secrecy. But the papers couldn’t be allowed to disappear, although right now she felt like throwing the whole lot down the garbarge chute. She looked around the apartment.

  There was a small gap under the fridge, just a few centimeters high, where the electronics of the fridge were located. An oblong plastic grill covered it. She gently coaxed it off and pushed the report and other documents into the gap. They just fit. Then she put the USB stick in as well, before replacing the plastic grill. When she stood up, nothing was visible. To discover the hiding place, you would have to be on all fours, peering under the fridge.

  She wrote a short note for Alex, thanking her, and promising to let her know when she was back in Sweden. Then she left the apartment, locked the door, and pushed the key through the mailbox.

  It felt like a huge exhalation to arrive at Jamal’s place. The quiet, tidy two-room apartment was just as it always was. Jamal turned on some music and went into the kitchen to make tea and sandwiches. She lay stretched out on the sofa and closed her eyes. The phone rang. She could hear the mumble of Jamal’s reply in Arabic and saw him go into the bedroom.

  She watched Jamal as he sat huddled up on the edge of the bed with his cell pressed to his ear. She didn’t understand what he was saying, but it was clear he didn’t want to talk to whoever was at the other end and was trying to end the conversation. He looked so anguished. Who was it that kept calling him all the time? Perhaps she was just tired and worried, perhaps she just wanted to be left in peace with Jamal, but the call annoyed her.

  Finally, Jamal flipped his cell shut and came out to her, sitting down heavily on the sofa.

  “How are things, darling?”

  H
e sighed, just shook his head.

  “Who was on the phone?” she said.

  “You don’t want to know,” he mumbled.

  “Yes,” she said with emphasis. “I do.”

  He looked dead tired. “It’s like this,” he said in a low voice. “My mother . . . isn’t well. She’s sick. She imagines lots of things.” The words came out slowly, as if getting them out of his mouth was a huge struggle. “She thinks she’s being watched by the police—things like that. Then she calls me, says a lot of stuff.” He sighed deeply and slumped slightly.

  “I didn’t know . . .”

  “It’s okay. It’s just me who knows. Me and a quack,” he said with a sad smile.

  “Oh, love.” She stretched out her hand.

  They sat quietly beside one another on the edge of the bed.

  “Are you getting any help?” she said after a while. “I mean . . . is anyone taking care of her?”

  “No.” He shrugged his shoulders. “They prescribe her medication. She takes it for a while, and then she stops and gets ill again. That’s when she starts calling me.”

  Carina stroked his neck. He was alone, it occurred to her. She wanted to hold him until that loneliness went away, but something in his manner made her hold back.

  “I’m used to it,” he said slowly after a long time, during which she thought he had decided to say nothing more. “It’s been like this for years—ever since we came to Sweden. My father was never happy here. He missed home. What was he supposed to do in Sweden? In Egypt, he was a lawyer, had all his friends and family. But here? Nothing.” He spread his hands out. “When Dad died, Mom lost it completely. She had been getting by while he was alive. It goes up and down. It’s been a long time, but she’s getting sick again.”

  He got up and went into the kitchen.

  While they were eating their sandwiches on the sofa, Jamal said, “The report . . . I didn’t mean that you weren’t doing the best you could. I understand that you are.”

  “It’s okay, Jamal,” she said. “You’re entitled to be worried. I’m fucking worried.”

  “Things will work out.”

  “I hope so.”

  She looked at him and stroked his arm. Here they were, sat together like an old couple, full of troubles. Why couldn’t they just live their lives in peace and be happy together? Her vision became blurry. Angrily, she brushed the tears out of her eyes.

  Later, when the apartment was dark and still, Jamal lay close beside her in bed. They were quiet. She felt his breath on her neck. She needed to get up in five hours’ time, but that didn’t matter; she didn’t feel like sleeping.

  “Are you asleep?”

  Jamal was awake too. She turned over and shuffled closer. Their naked bodies were soft and warm, fragile in a way that was completely different from the hardness of their bodies when they made love. She carefully slipped her arms around him and kissed him.

  In less than a month they would be in Egypt. Just the two of them, in Cairo. She saw it through the darkness: the cafés, the bazaars. She imagined how they would wander the city during the day, returning to the hotel for the hottest hours of the afternoon, and at night, when they had visited various restaurants, they would lie together, just like this, but with the nocturnal sounds of a metropolis murmuring through an open window. She leaned toward Jamal. “I love you,” she whispered. But Jamal didn’t answer; he was asleep.

  32

  Brussels, Friday, October 7

  Bente took the car to Arlanda on the gray and dreary autumn morning. She was leaving Sweden without telling anyone. On the plane, she allowed herself to relax. She had slept badly during the night. Thoughts about the investigation had floated around, uninterrupted, until, at three in the morning, she had realized that there was no point in trying to fall asleep and, instead, she had gotten up to read through the papers again. She had gone through all the documents one more time. The suspicion, the doubt she had felt during the evening, had at first seemed exaggerated, and that had calmed her down. Perhaps she was unnecessarily disbelieving of people; there was always that risk, in her line of work; disbelief became part of your vision and, in the end, you didn’t believe anything, didn’t trust anyone, and didn’t know what was real. But the more she reread the material, the more convinced she was that she was right. She didn’t want to be right. She didn’t want to discover what she had discovered.

  She woke up with a jolt as the plane landed.

  Daylight streamed through the enormous windows in the gate area at Brussels airport. The runways gleamed following the early morning rainfall. She took a taxi home and dropped off her bags. She knew that Fredrik would be at work and the children at school. The rooms of the house were resting in the morning sunshine—all was quiet and familiar. It felt good to be home. She would have liked to lie down on the sofa and nap for an hour, but there was no time for that. She wrote a note to say she was home and left it on the kitchen table before taking the taxi into the city center.

  Mikael was standing by one of the steel tables outside a little café in Schaerbeek. He was smoking. Just this morning, that struck her as odd. During the year or so they had worked together, she had never seen him holding a cigarette. Presumably he smoked in his private life, but not at the office; she didn’t know much about his life beyond SSI. At the Section, no one knew much about anyone at all; you left that life outside when you entered the office through the security doors. She was careful about involving herself in the private lives of her employees—work was stressful enough. Perhaps her number two had completely different habits when he wasn’t at work, perhaps he was a completely different person compared to the tidy, efficient, sharp Mikael who turned up at the Section every weekday morning. The thought made her smile.

  Mikael caught sight of her; he returned her smile, stretched, and stubbed out his cigarette. “Good morning.”

  “Good morning.”

  “Everything okay?”

  She nodded: yes.

  She ordered a double espresso from the waiter clearing the next table along. It was morning in Brussels. People had left the surrounding offices and shops to drink their coffee in the glorious weather at one of the many small bars and bistros in the area. It was rare that she visited this part of the city, but Schaerbeek was a pleasant area. She smiled, listening for a while to the lively hubbub around them. Then she reminded herself why they were there. They had to do this first. She couldn’t tell Mikael yet, she decided. Not everything. She wanted to think things through first, needed to sure that her doubts were well founded.

  “This . . . colleague. He lives here?”

  “Yes. Around the corner. We agreed to meet at eleven o’clock. He wanted us to visit him at home.”

  She drank her espresso. The strong, sugared coffee had an immediate impact: she felt more alert right away. It would be a day filled with lots of coffee. Mikael looked at the time and lit another cigarette. He looked at her as if he really wanted to ask a lot of questions, but said nothing. This wasn’t the right place for a discussion about what he was probably wondering—they both knew that. They chatted for a while. Mikael had found a new Taiwanese restaurant and told her about their fantastic noodle soups while she finished her coffee and paid. They had ten minutes left. Rodriguez, the head of the Section’s cell team, and his people were already in place. They began to walk. A block from the café, they turned off the busy boulevard.

  “So we have a problem?”

  “Yes.” She hesitated. “I think so.”

  Mikael nodded and looked calmly over his shoulder while they kept walking. A sparse flow of people moved around them but no one caught Bente’s attention. A garbage truck thundered past them; shortly thereafter a sedan slowed down and pulled into an empty parking space about ten meters in front of them.

  “I’m not sure what’s going on,” she said. “Kempell was right. We’re relying too much on the British.”

  “The British?”

  “They knew Bernier was dead. I don�
�t understand why they didn’t say.”

  “Are you sure? London seems just as surprised as we are.”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “I think they knew he was dead. And that worries me.”

  They said nothing and carried on another two blocks along the boulevard until Mikael dropped his pace. They were getting close to the address, a modern residential building squeezed between two older brick buildings.

  “The guy we’re meeting is called Florian Klause. He works in the same department as Jean Bernier. He’s a stagiaire.”

  “An apprentice?”

  Mikael shrugged his shoulders and passed her an ID card, dangling in a frame.

  “You’re Maria Lundvall. I’m Eric Smith. We’re from the HR department at the EU Commission—that’s all he knows. We’re carrying out an internal investigation following the death of Jean Bernier in order to close his personnel file, close his accounts, and make sure all personal possessions are retrieved on behalf of the estate. Routine procedure.”

  The Section had found Florian Klause by chance. He had contacted the police and said he had something that belonged to Bernier. The Belgian police suspected no crime and provided his cell number when one of the Section’s employees turned up and claimed to be from the EU Commission.

  They had reached the main door. Mikael pressed a button beside the name KLAUSE. A moment later, the door buzzed.

  A pale young man opened the door to the apartment on the fourteenth floor. He had a small, round, childish face with freckles on his nose, where there perched a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles. He was wearing a light blue shirt and chinos. According to the records of the EU Commission, he was twenty-eight years old, but the neatly buttoned shirt and his gentle face made him look much younger. He shook hands energetically. He was nervous; Bente could feel his hands sweating.