Leona

by Jenny Rogneby

  Without looking to see whether I was following he turned around and started quickly walking back. His confidence made me even more suspicious. I didn’t like his tone, either. It wasn’t impossible that he had managed to sniff out something about the investigation that I didn’t know; journalists were good at nosing around where they didn’t belong. But why did he want to give the information to me this way?

  “So you were the one who bribed some snot-nosed kid to leave notes for me at the station. Is that Aftonbladet’s new strategy?”

  “You don’t answer the phone or email,” he said. “This worked.”

  I had no desire to play into his hands. At the same time I wanted to find out what this was about. I walked a couple of meters behind him back to the car. I didn’t want to be seen walking with a journalist. That wouldn’t look good. Someone might get the idea that I was leaking information to the press.

  “Drive!” he said as soon as we were sitting in the car.

  “Who the hell do you think I am, your private chauffeur?”

  He didn’t answer. I didn’t like him dictating the conditions but I let him have his way and started driving north, out of the city. We drove past Karolinska Hospital and out toward Haga Park. Neither of us said a word. I glanced at him. He mostly sat staring straight ahead. I noted his laptop case, which he held tightly between his legs on the floor in front of him. At an empty parking lot at Haga Garden I drove in. Turned off the engine.

  “I hope you have a damned good reason why I’ve devoted my valuable work time and taxpayers’ money driving you around in a police car. If you’d hoped to get to ride in a marked car I’m sorry to have disappointed you.”

  He didn’t reply.

  “What was your name again?” I asked.

  “I must’ve left more messages than anyone else on your voice mail in the past few days, so it’s strange that you don’t remember the name. Christer Skoog.”

  “You’ll have to excuse me, but you actually aren’t the only journalist who calls me. You’re swarming around me like flies.”

  Christer picked up the laptop case from the floor. He took out a folder, from which he pulled out a photograph. It showed me walking on a sidewalk in the city. I raised my eyebrows.

  “I see, you’ve taken a picture of me when I’m out walking? Flattering. Your hand seems to have been a little shaky, because it’s not very sharp, but otherwise, a completely okay picture. I looked good in that coat, by the way.”

  I was trying to be funny, but in reality the whole thing was starting to become unpleasant. He didn’t say anything, he just watched me. This did not seem to be about information that would add anything to the investigation.

  “Honestly,” I continued. “I got up early this morning and I’m starting to feel really tired. If this is all you have then you’ll have to excuse me, but I have more important things to do than play spot-the-difference with a journalist.”

  “You know very well where that picture was taken,” he said.

  His voice was calm. That worried me. I pretended to look at the picture more carefully. You could see the Östermalm Food Hall in the background farther away.

  “It’s me taking a walk on Nybrogatan in Östermalm. Where are you going with this?”

  He took out another picture. The picture showed me stepping through a doorway.

  “I’m probably going into a store or something.”

  I did not like where this was headed. Christer took out yet another photograph from the folder. Now my mouth was starting to feel dry. When he took out another photo, showing three people in a car, my whole body turned cold. Where the hell did he get hold of that? I stared at the photograph. There was no doubt that I was the one sitting in the passenger seat. At the wheel sat a man and in the backseat a small, dark-haired girl could be seen. It was dark inside the car and the picture was grainy, but a trained eye would easily see that it was the same girl as the seven-year-old who had robbed SEB. Christer Skoog knew.

  I couldn’t produce a sound.

  My heart was pounding.

  I swallowed.

  Sucked in air and pressed it down into my lungs. I tried feverishly to work out how to handle the situation. I had only seconds to decide on a strategy. Should I threaten him? I was the one carrying a gun after all. But I would still never be rid of the knowledge that he could release the information that he was now showing me at any time. I rejected that option. He was not some Joe Average you could threaten in any old way. With a journalist it was much too risky — he could do far greater damage. There was no point in flatly denying it either. I breathed in. And out. Slowly, gaining a little strength and calmness. Without looking at him I said quietly, “What do you want?”

  “Information.”

  I was surprised. I had expected he was after money. I looked at him with raised eyebrows and he repeated, “Information. About the Hooker Affair.”

  “What? I’m not investigating that case. It’s not even in my squad. I don’t know anything about it.”

  “Then you’ll have to find out. I want to know what happened in that investigation, and what is required to put those big shots away. You can reach me here.”

  He handed over a business card. I took it reluctantly. He smiled.

  “It looks like you’ll be the one chasing me on the phone from now on, Leona. I’ll expect the first call in a few days. If I don’t hear from you then I’ll assume you think it’s okay that the information I have here goes to press before next weekend. I’m convinced that your bosses and your family would find this information very interest —”

  “I get it, asshole. Get out of my car!”

  I was suddenly furious. Couldn’t even look at him.

  “I’m not getting out here. You’ll have to drive me into town again.”

  “Out!”

  I heard myself scream. I seldom had such outbursts. But now — now everything was at risk of being destroyed. I had planned this for far too long to let a lousy journalist mess it up for me. If he did not get out of the car fast enough, I would draw my weapon. Aim it at his head. Without hesitating. I couldn’t stand this idiot.

  He opened the door and got out. I stepped hard on the accelerator, making the car jerk forward and the door slam shut. I spun around, the gravel spraying up and hitting the underside of the car, and then I tore off down the highway. In the rearview mirror I saw Christer Skoog hold up his phone and shake it back and forth in the air. Fucking idiot! How the hell did he get hold of that information!

  I turned off at the next exit and stopped the car. I didn’t want to admit to myself that I was really shaken. I had counted on someone suspecting something.

  But not so soon.

  And not a journalist, of all people.

  It was the worst possible scenario.

  Still, it would have served no purpose to play dumb. Christer seemed much too bloodthirsty. I could not risk him publishing the pictures or reporting me. Too much was at stake.

  The question was, how the hell was I going to get hold of information about the politicians’ case? Officers on different squads didn’t talk to each other about their investigations. And what if I got hold of the information? How great were the risks of giving it out? I would be the kind of police officer that everyone despised.

  A leak.

  Leaking information that other officers had fought hard to bring in was worse than committing a crime. You no longer stood behind the force and its values. You were a rat, a traitor. Of lower standing than a crook.

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Would everything fall apart now? Now, when I had finally started to be true to myself. Now, when I had finally realized that the existence I had been striving toward for so long was not a real life. That I was not free. Not alive. That I was trapped instead inside daily schedules, patterns, routines.

  It was a jail without bars.

  Should I retreat, get back in line again, act like everyone else, and endure the tedium of everyday life? No, that wouldn�
��t work. I couldn’t live that way. Just as I had created my own schedule-driven life, I had also started the journey out of it. I owed myself this. No one else could do it for me. But who would be hurt along the way? I pictured my family. My job. My reputation. I risked losing everything. I wanted to get away from it, but not like this. Not by being exposed.

  With clenched teeth and fists I tried to halt the fluid that spilled out from underneath my still-shut eyelids. Negative thoughts whirled around in my head. I had to turn them around. I had to. Now! It wouldn’t do to sit here and feel sorry for myself. That wouldn’t help anyone. I told myself to get a grip. Blinked away the tears and opened my eyes. Had to start thinking clearly. I knew one thing. Whatever I thought or did, I couldn’t go back now.

  Everything was already in motion.

  The die was cast.

  FIFTEEN

  Deep down I had probably always known that an average life would be impossible to maintain. That I couldn’t cope with living within the confines of normality.

  For years I had struggled, repressing the real me. I would wake up in a cold sweat, feeling as if a noose was tugging at my neck. I was caught in my self-created, structured world. But it was no longer possible to ignore who I was. Once I started to question my own desire to be like other people, everything became clear. Then there was no longer any choice.

  I had to be free.

  I didn’t make the decision until I was thirty-two years old. I would stop fighting it. Stop striving to be like other people. Only then, finally, did life have real meaning. But suddenly I was faced with a new challenge. I needed to learn to live without being able to lean against everything that was conditioned, accustomed, structured. I would be forced to risk a lot to get where I wanted. To make difficult, daring decisions. From that moment on, I began to grope my way toward existence.

  I was a newcomer in an unfamiliar world.

  My own.

  A week had passed since the robbery. It was seven-thirty. Half an hour earlier than I usually got to work in the morning. I went in through the long, grand entry in the older part of the police station, which had been preserved during the renovations. Everything looked different now. Distant, somehow. I felt like I was being observed. By someone who knew that I never really had been one of them.

  That I didn’t belong here.

  That I shouldn’t be allowed in.

  The guards who always sat by the entrance to the security passage looked at me for longer than usual. Or was that an illusion? I swiped my card to open the security passage. The first door opened. I went in and it closed behind me. It would take a few seconds before the next door opened. It always did. Several seconds passed. Nothing happened. Everything was quiet. Silent. I felt as if my ears were blocked. A vacuum. I could feel a faint pressure inside my head that was increasing. Drilling itself in. Then came a sound. A very high and distinctive sound. I put my hands up to my ears to muffle it. Opened my mouth to try to force air down into my lungs. I felt the blood rushing to my head. My forehead and cheeks were hot. I couldn’t get any air, and the sound was insufferably loud now. I turned around. Saw the guards sitting with their backs to me. Went closer to the glass to make them aware that something was wrong with the passage. Suddenly the door opened on the other side. I quickly stepped out. Into the corridor. Into the inner courtyard.

  Stopped.

  Breathed.

  Hyperventilated.

  I tried to take long, deep breaths. To calm down. I must remember to report that the security passage needed to be inspected.

  I continued toward the escalators, through the corridor and into the elevator up to the squad office. I positioned myself with my back to the mirror. To avoid looking at myself.

  Even though I was walking quickly I was experiencing everything in slow motion. A colleague came toward me in the corridor and opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Had I lost my hearing? I think I said “Good morning,” but I couldn’t be sure. I arrived at my office. Remained standing in the doorway. The room looked empty. Soulless. As if I had already left it for good. I went up to the window. Opened it. Closed my eyes and breathed right out into the nothingness. The cool air rushed deep down into my lungs and balanced me. I had to pull myself together.

  With closed door and drawn curtains I put the first disk of the surveillance footage into the computer. Even though the police who had been first on the scene hadn’t been able to identify the girl on the video, I needed to reassure myself that no details could lead to me. I couldn’t afford to make any mistakes now.

  I sat up straight in the chair. Opened my eyes wide. Forced myself to concentrate. The first image I got up was from a camera angled above the entrance and aimed at the door to the bank. The image quality from surveillance cameras usually varies considerably, and I had seen both better and worse. The image was in color, but grainy and choppy because of the inadequate frame rate. A clock in the upper left-hand corner showed the time.

  A few people went in and out of the bank. Mostly elderly people, as I had expected. Not many younger people went to the bank these days. The timing had been carefully chosen. Some senior citizens had the habit of waiting in the morning by the locked doors outside stores and banks, so right at the ten o’clock opening time would not have been a good choice. Not too close to lunchtime, either. I skipped forward a little. The people were moving quickly across the screen. From that angle I could see a short distance out onto the sidewalk. As always on Nybrogatan the cars were parked very close together. The girl had been instructed to walk as close to them as possible the short way she had to go to and from the bank. Then she was less noticeable.

  When the doors opened I could see more of the outside. I was struck by the gloominess and darkness. Autumn was the worst time of year, with the long, dark winter waiting just around the corner. In this situation, though, autumn was my friend. Gray, rainy weather was a prerequisite to the whole thing being carried out. If it had been sunny I would have been forced to cancel everything and wait a day or two. But the weather that Monday had been as gloomy as usual in autumn.

  The passersby wore light coats, huddled against the wind and rain. They held on to their umbrellas and angled them downward so they would not be bent back by the wind. People looked down at the ground as they walked quickly past. They only wanted to get from place to place as quickly as possible, not looking at anyone or stopping for anything. No one would notice a girl in a black rain cape walking past on the street.

  There she was. When the doors to the bank opened again the girl was standing there. It was strange to see her that way. Judging by her appearance and posture she looked closer to five than seven. She was very slender, and she was hugging the teddy bear. I paused the video and sat with my head bent down and my hands against my forehead. I squeezed my eyes together as hard as I could, as if that would make everything disappear.

  The girl looked so vulnerable.

  What had I subjected a child to?

  The whole thing was surreal. I had watched many surveillance videos at work, of fistfights, knifings, rapes — even murder. But nothing like this. I was seeing strange images in my mind. I saw myself there, as a little girl.

  I got up and walked back and forth around my office, drinking from the bottle of mineral water that was on the desk. I had to pull myself together.

  I knew.

  It wasn’t real.

  It wasn’t me.

  And the girl was not injured.

  But everything looked so realistic, with wounds and the blood, that even I almost believed it.

  After a few deep breaths I sat down again. Browsed through the other disks. Searched for a camera that showed the whole place from inside. Preferably with the girl in front. The videos weren’t labeled by camera angle, which meant that everything took even more time than I had thought it would. I looked at the clock. Ten minutes left until the morning meeting. I had to be there.

  To keep up appearances.

  In went another disk. Same p
rocedure. This camera showed the angle seen from one of the tellers. From there I could look out over almost the entire floor inside the bank. The queue ticket dispenser. The windows. The big potted plants. The chairs for waiting customers. Everything. I skipped ahead to 10:37:40. The girl came in. Positioned herself in the middle of the floor. I tried to see her face. The camera angle was better but the image was still grainy and choppy. The backlight from the windows behind made the girl’s front side dark, which I had been counting on. Just as planned, she positioned herself right under one of the spotlights that lit up the space from the ceiling, forming deep shadows on her face. It was impossible to get a clear image of her. I could make out darker patches on seven places on her body, the bruises or wounds from which the blood appeared to have run. Just as the officers had said, it was impossible to see the girl clearly enough on the surveillance video to identify her. There were no other leads either, as far as I could see.

  That was good.

  Everything would work out.

  SIXTEEN

  As usual a heavy, gloomy fog hung over my parents’ villa out in Bromma. Everything was quiet. The children were not even running around Mother’s painstakingly set dinner table. I tried to breathe calmly. Normally I would have enjoyed a quiet dinner, but not now. Not here.

  Months had passed since I had seen them. My brothers Stefan and Samuel came here often for dinner. I had to force myself to go.

  For the children’s sake.

  For normality’s.

  As always my parents’ home, and everything else about them, was polished on the surface. The decorative objects were dusted and set up in rows on the shelves, the curtains were hanging in straight lines, and the pillows were placed precisely on the couch. Even though some of the furnishings had been replaced since I was young — to lighter, warmer tones — the old, dark, closed-in feeling was still there. Wherever I looked memories flooded me. The dark stairway to the top floor. Mother’s embroidered Bible quotations framed on the walls. The door that led down to the cold, damp cellar. A musty, suffocating odor of mold and earth spread from the cellar up to every corner in the house. It made me lose my appetite. I clenched my jaw. Tried hard to rid myself of these feelings. At the same time, though, part of me wanted to keep feeling them, because it astounded me that my parents and their home could evoke emotions in me.