Leona

by Jenny Rogneby

  “Now, now, should a police officer talk that way? You don’t answer when I call, so what do you think I should do? I need more information.”

  “You leave my family the fuck alone, do you understand that?”

  I walked past him, yanked open the car door, and got in. As I drove away, I could see his provocative smile.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  It was nine minutes past seven, which meant that the last real estate agent who was coming to appraise our apartment was late. Peter, who was actively pushing what he thought was our impending relocation project, had contacted the agent a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t get involved until it occurred to me that I could benefit from an appraisal. Now I intended to take part in selecting the real estate agent.

  The appraisal was important because I needed to persuade the bank to give us a bigger loan. We had replaced the pipes, after all, and taken the opportunity to lay new floors in the apartment when the kitchen and bathroom were renovated. The apartment was in much better shape now than when we bought it, so it ought to be appraised higher.

  What characters some of these real estate agents were. One of them distinguished himself by storming in and throwing himself on the couch without even pretending to look around the apartment. The only thing he had with him was a wrinkled sheet of paper on which he jotted various numbers and tables while he babbled on at high speed, explaining that he definitely knew what he was talking about because he had worked in the industry for ten years. He appraised the apartment at almost twenty percent more than the other agents, which presumably gave a hint of his craziness. Probably his tactic was to overappraise apartments to get an advantage over the other agents. I couldn’t draw any other conclusion because he hadn’t bothered to look around the apartment and couldn’t have assumed any statistics different from the other agents where the value of similar apartments in the area was concerned. But in the present situation I was completely uninterested in his motives. I was only focused on the amount. The hard thing would be to convince Peter that we should pick this particular agent. I had told him that I didn’t want to make any decisions before we met them all.

  Peter poured a glass of juice and put his arms around me in the kitchen.

  “Listen, if the agent who is coming now doesn’t beat all the others then I think we should go with the first one who was here. She was nice, knowledgeable, and seemed to have both feet on the ground. I assume you think the same?” he said, stroking back the hair from my neck.

  “I’m leaning more toward that man who was here on Tuesday,” I said.

  “What?”

  Peter let go of me and backed away.

  “The one who had worked for ten years and —”

  “I know exactly who you mean but I don’t know if you’re joking,” he said, taking a gulp of the grapefruit juice. After a grimace he poured what was left in the glass into the sink.

  “He was overbearing, totally uninterested in the apartment, and completely ignored what we said to him.”

  “He was probably just nervous, Peter.”

  Excusing an idiot by saying that he was probably just nervous would drive anyone crazy. I would need to come up with some better arguments for why I thought we should hire that weirdo.

  I felt a vibration in my pocket. Took out my work phone and looked at the display. Christer Skoog. I declined the call. Why was he calling me in the evening?

  “He has ten years’ experience, after all, and he seems driven,” I said. “Besides, he appraised the apartment highest of all, which means that he must be prepared to fight to sell at that price. It would be embarrassing for him if he was mistaken and appraised the apartment a million kronor too high.”

  “Embarrassing? Hardly,” said Peter. “He would just shrug and brag to the next seller. After he’s taken home our fee, that is. No, I think that we —”

  Peter was interrupted by the doorbell.

  “I wanna get it, I wanna get it!”

  Beatrice ran to the door. I grimaced: it was time again. Peter saw my expression.

  “Put Bea to bed and I’ll take care of the real estate agent,” said Peter.

  Relieved, I took Beatrice’s hand.

  “Come on honey, let’s go and read a good-night story.”

  “No, I want to talk with the rel’tor.”

  “Daddy will take care of that creep. We’ll go and crawl into bed together and get cozy.”

  “Then I want to play computer like Mommy.”

  Bea had picked up that I played poker at night and had started talking about it during the day. I wasn’t sure whether Peter understood what she meant.

  “Come on, let’s go and read The Kid’s Book instead.”

  She wasn’t happy with that, letting out a shrill screech.

  “Noooo, play computer, play computer.”

  I cast a glance at Peter.

  “Shh, you’ll wake Benjamin,” I said as I took a firm hold of her hand and pulled her away from the hall.

  “We’ll tiptoe together.”

  As usual I fell asleep after a few sentences and woke up when Peter came into the room. Beatrice had fallen asleep, so I slipped out of bed.

  “I think this agent has —”

  “Can we talk about it tomorrow, Peter? I’m going to bed. It was a big day at work.”

  I went to bed. When Peter had gone to bed and fallen asleep I would get up and play. As usual.

  The hours flew by. It was 3:36 a.m. the next time I looked at the clock. It wasn’t possible to get comfortable in the office chair we had bought from Ikea no matter how I adjusted it. Even though I got up and stretched occasionally, my back felt like a piece of wood. I was cramping. And tired. I only had a few minutes of dozing at the desk in the scheduled breaks of the tournaments. During a couple of them I had lain down on the guest bed and slept, with my phone timer set for five minutes.

  If I weren’t a police officer, the obvious option would have been to ingest some strongly energizing substance. Lots of coffee helped a bit. The eyedrops I let run into the corner of my eyes at regular intervals took away the dry, gritty feeling I got from staring at the screen for hours. When the cooling fluid streamed over my eyeballs it was as if my whole head was being rinsed with clean, rippling water. Could you become addicted to eyedrops? That and the coffee, however, no longer produced as great an effect. They presumably only managed to dampen a certain tension. Now I was simply too tired. In a couple of hours the kids would rise. After that the whole machinery would start up. The very thought exhausted me.

  If, in addition, I hadn’t lost, I probably would have been in a better mood. The night’s gambling included cash games and two slightly longer tournaments. I lost both the tournaments and most of the other games, which had resulted in a significant monetary loss. I knew that there was not much left of the money I had borrowed from our joint savings account, either. And the money from the robbery had to stay hidden until the whole plan was completed. Numbered euro bills from bank robberies could not be used in just any old way.

  The currency I was playing poker in was American dollars, but I did not intend to calculate exactly how much the combined losses were in Swedish kronor.

  I couldn’t bear to.

  Not now.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  I looked out the big café window on Södermalm. The rain meant Götgatan was almost empty of pedestrians who otherwise would be window-shopping. Those who hurried past struggled to keep hold of their umbrellas, which were bent back by the wind. I was not generally one to complain to others, but with Larissa I could let down my guard a little. Larissa and I had first gotten to know each other at the Police Academy.

  I was overjoyed when I got into the academy. My determination about my choice of occupation had made me almost fanatical where schoolwork was concerned. All my available time I devoted to studying, to improve my knowledge on everything from the legal system to gun handling.

  Larissa was my exact opposite, a party girl who took life lightly. She didn’t
study much and spent all her free time at the gym and the bar. A strange combination, I thought. Fitness fanatics usually didn’t go out and stuff themselves with toxic substances like alcohol and cigarettes after a workout session, but Larissa did whatever she felt like.

  After graduation I had done everything that was expected of me. Of an ordinary Swedish girl. I had married a nice man, had two children, and worked my way up through the ranks of the police to where I was now. Larissa had gone a different way. She worked a year or two after graduation but soon realized that the police force did not suit her. After that she changed occupations and became a fitness consultant and personal trainer. She had calmed down considerably since our schooldays.

  “How are you two getting along, you and Peter?” she asked.

  I sighed deeply. Whether the sigh was too deep to be credible I had a hard time deciding. I never thought all that much about our relationship. Peter was just a part of the plan.

  “Peter wants to have more kids and move to a house in the suburbs,” I said.

  Larissa, who had recently gone through a divorce and now lived by herself in the house she and her ex-husband had shared, closed her eyes and shook her head. I took it as a sign she understood the problem. I could lay it on further.

  “I shudder at the very thought,” I continued. “In my mind I see only grass cutting, sealing windows, water leaks in the cellar, replacing roof tiles, painting the exterior, snow-plowing the driveway, all that sort of thing.”

  I looked at Larissa to see whether there was anything that suggested that the reality of living in a house was any different. She said nothing. That was answer enough. But my reluctance was not only connected to the work and maintenance that owning a house requires.

  I was in fifth grade and had gone home with my classmate Sanna after school. Just inside the door, I was already astonished at how messy it was in her house. Shoes lay jumbled, and jackets were hanging in disarray. Not in rows and on hangers like at our house. Their home had no top floor, either.

  And no cellar.

  They lived in an apartment. It seemed good. When I grew up I didn’t intend to live anywhere with a cellar. I would live high up.

  Sanna’s home had a strange atmosphere. Her family was big, but no one seemed to have to think about what they said; everything just bubbled out of them. At home I was always reprimanded when I talked too much. Here I couldn’t think of anything to say. Mostly I just sat quietly, observing the others. Sanna’s parents laughed a lot and often touched each other. Hugged. Once her mother patted me on the cheek and I jerked back.

  “Oh, sorry, Leona,” she said.

  She put her head at an angle and rested her eyes on me. It was strange. I couldn’t interpret her look. I had never seen that expression before. Was I expected to say something? Do something?

  I went home with Sanna every now and then, as often as Mother allowed. I saw it as practice. When I didn’t know what to do, or how I should behave, I imitated Sanna. I did exactly what she did. Because Sanna never made mistakes. Her mother and father never scolded her.

  Sanna didn’t understand how significant she was to me. From her I learned everything important.

  How to behave.

  How to be.

  How to fit in.

  “You don’t want to have any more kids?” said Larissa.

  I sat quietly. Genuine feelings always arose when I thought about the children. I wanted to be a good mother, but I couldn’t find the right words to describe the darkness I saw before me when I thought about continuing to live that life. It simply didn’t work anymore. I looked out toward the street. The water ran in furrows along the café window. It struck me that the weather in many ways symbolized my existence. Gloomy. Gray. I fixed my gaze on a man on the other side of the street, who in the rain was trying to wrest his bicycle loose from a row of bikes that were lying on the sidewalk.

  Now was exactly the right time to go somewhere. Get away for a while. Just for a few days. For several months I had planned the trip. I would go away and prepare my move out of the country and the arrival of my new life.

  Two years ago we had been there on vacation. Malta. One of Peter’s colleagues had recommended it, and until then I didn’t even know where it was. I’d had to look for it on the map: a tiny, tiny dot in the middle of the Mediterranean. Europe’s southernmost nation, but otherwise not much to look at. I’d known nothing about the country but had thought a vacation there would be as good as any. On my way home after the trip I’d known it wasn’t the last time I’d go there.

  What I knew now was that Malta was a mecca for gaming companies. Even though there are only four hundred thousand inhabitants in the whole country, there are numerous casinos. Because Swedish Games has a monopoly in Sweden, several Swedish gaming companies had established themselves on Malta. During our first visit I had already started gradually testing online poker and if I hadn’t been there with my family I probably would have tried playing live at a casino too.

  I had quickly taken a liking to this lovely little cliff in the Mediterranean. I would go there and live. Find myself.

  “I’m going abroad for a few days. Without Peter and the kids,” I said, continuing to look out the window.

  The man with the bicycle was wearing a rain cape and apparently suit pants underneath. He kept looking at his watch as he yanked and tore at the bicycles to get his loose.

  “Oh my God, that sounds great. I’ll come with you!”

  The plan to prepare my flight out of the country hadn’t included a travel companion.

  “Lie on the beach, have drinks at outdoor bars, and nice dinners at restaurants on warm evenings under an open sky,” she continued.

  The man outside had managed to get two bikes loose and had started tugging at a third that was on top of the one that seemed to be his.

  “But can you really take time off?” I said, hoping she had only temporarily forgotten that she had a job to take care of.

  I had requested leave back in March when the vacation applications for the whole year were supposed to be turned in. I had asked for two days, so that I could go from Thursday to Sunday. The leave was already granted and if Claes were to protest about it now he would be forced to order me to recall the vacation and presumably work overtime, which would cost too much. Overtime was a sensitive subject for management. Those who gave their personnel too much overtime were considered unable to manage their personnel planning and, as a result, their managerial role. And if you couldn’t manage your role, there was always someone else who would manage it better. The organization was packed with supervisors. For once I could be happy that the vacation planning was done so early. If Claes complained, I’d point out that we had those excellent workers he’d arranged, Minna and Sam, who could hold down the fort while I was gone. I wasn’t particularly worried about leaving the investigation. I knew what information would conceivably come in. Preparing for my arrival in Malta was a must.

  “Oh, I can arrange the time off. I’m self-employed, you know. I mostly have workout sessions with clients at the moment. I’ll just have to reschedule a few of them.”

  I thought about it. It might be good to have Larissa along anyway. I had told Peter I needed to get away from home for a while and that I would be traveling with a colleague. Now I could say that the colleague had conflicts and that Larissa would go along instead. When I got home I could show him pictures of the two of us. Larissa would presumably want to lie on the beach all day anyway. Then I could take care of my business.

  “A nice weekend at a hotel somewhere on the Mediterranean. Spain. Barcelona maybe?”

  “I’ve already booked it,” I said. “Malta. I’m going this Thursday.”

  “Malta? I see…Okay, whatever. I’ll book this evening, there’s always a leftover seat. At least one good drunken night and a lot of chitchat. Maybe I’ll be courted by some Stavros.”

  I smiled at her enthusiasm and impulsiveness. For Larissa, anything was possible.

&n
bsp; “Stavros is a Greek name.”

  “Oh, you know what I mean,” she said, waving one hand. “Marvelous!”

  I looked out the window. The man was still there. The rain was pouring down now. After another quick look at his watch he abandoned the bicycle and jogged away.

  It really was the right time to go.

  THIRTY-SIX

  I put the car in reverse to get out of the hospital parking lot. My thoughts were whirling. The meeting with Dr. Elerud had dragged on, and the news we’d received did not make life any simpler. I couldn’t bear to talk to Peter about what had been said.

  “Shall I drive you to work or are you done for the day?” I said.

  “Work.”

  Peter’s tone was short. He too seemed affected by the meeting with the doctor. Benjamin’s intestine was more inflamed than they had previously thought and it wasn’t possible to surgically remove more of it. He would most likely need a bowel transplant, which was an extremely complicated operation. Not to mention risky. But a life with tube feeding could be the only alternative if it wasn’t done.

  “Why can’t they do it at Sahlgrenska Hospital in Gothenburg like the last operation?”

  “The operation takes fifteen hours and there is a risk of blood poisoning. Weren’t you listening?” said Peter. “She said that when they started doing the operation in the nineties in England patients died on the operating table.”

  “Strange telling that to parents of a sick child,” I said, pressing down on the accelerator to cross before the light changed.

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “Too bad the local council won’t pay for the operation, or at least part of it. That along with travel and lodging in Oxford for a whole family will cost a fortune,” I said.

  “We have to be happy it’s possible to operate.”

  “Yes, but can we be sure he’ll really get better? What if…”