Last Will

by Liza Marklund

  Annika trudged after the police officer through the winding passageways of the City Hall until they reached a long corridor. In the distance she could make out chandeliers hanging from heavy roof beams, but here there was nothing but gloom, shadows, and silence.

  Irritated, she sped up and walked past the police officer.

  “How long is this going to take?” she asked, looking at her watch.

  “I’ll see if this is where he meant,” the officer said, stopping. He took hold of her upper arm as if she were a suspect, someone who was likely to make a break for it. She pulled free as the officer knocked on a door bearing a sign saying this was the Bråvalla Room.

  “If I wanted to get away I’d already have done it,” she said.

  Inside sat two officers in plain clothes, along with a reporter Annika recognized from television news. The reporter was crying so much that her shoulders were shaking. One of the officers let out such an angry yell that Annika’s officer almost hit his own nose as he hurried to shut the door.

  “Not that room,” he said, the tips of his ears starting to glow.

  They carried on walking in an odd silence, passing gray doors in gray walls, then the broad opening to an office where another bout of questioning had just begun with a member of the Swedish Academy. Annika couldn’t hear what was being said, but she saw the police officer making notes and the Academician nervously fingering the leg of his chair.

  I have to remember, she thought. I have to be able to describe this afterward.

  She noted that the scene was also being observed by Ragnar Östberg, architect of the City Hall, whose bronze bust watched over events with a concerned expression.

  Did you have any idea that something like this could ever happen in your building? Annika wondered, then was stopped once more by the police officer’s damp fist.

  “Can you wait here a moment?”

  “Do I have any choice?” Annika said, turning away.

  It was brighter here. She could see the details more clearly: marble busts above the doors, bronze hinges and door handles, ostentatious chandeliers.

  “Look, I need time to write up my story,” she said, but the officer had already slid off down the corridor.

  A door opened and someone was standing there calling her name. Light flooded out of the doorway, falling over a painting on the other side of the corridor. She went in without saying anything.

  “Close the door behind you.”

  The voice made her stop.

  “I might have guessed you’d be here,” she said.

  Detective Inspector Q was unshaven, his features more drawn than usual.

  “I asked to be able to take care of you myself,” he said, sitting down at the end of a heavy oak table. “Sit down.”

  He gestured for Annika to take a seat on his left, turned on a tape recorder, and poured himself a glass of water.

  “Interview with Annika Bengtzon, reporter on the Evening Post newspaper, date of birth and full name to be noted later, conducted by Q in the Small Common Room of the Stockholm City Hall, on Thursday, December 10, at …”

  He paused for breath and ran his hand through his hair. Annika settled carefully into a black-framed chair with red-leather upholstery, glancing up at the somber gentlemen in oils who were staring down at her from their heavy frames.

  “… at 11:21 PM,” he concluded. “You saw someone acting suspiciously in the Blue Hall at approximately 10:45 this evening, is that correct?”

  Annika let go of her bag on the floor and clasped her hands in her lap, listening to the traffic of central Stockholm rumbling somewhere in another world.

  “I don’t know that she was acting suspiciously,” Annika said.

  “Can you describe what happened,” the detective inspector asked.

  “It was nothing special,” Annika said in a voice that was now slightly shrill. “I haven’t got time to sit here making small talk. I didn’t see anything special at all, I was dancing and I just got pushed by a girl. It’s hardly reasonable that I should have to sit here when the whole newsroom is waiting for me and my article …”

  The detective inspector leaned forward and turned off the tape recorder with a little click.

  “Now listen, you headline-chasing bitch,” he said, leaning toward her, his eyes clouding over. “This isn’t the time to be egocentric. You’re going to tell me what you saw, exactly as you remember it, right here, right now. It was only half an hour ago, and you were one of the people standing closest when it happened.”

  She stared back for a moment, then looked away, her gaze sliding over the heavy leather-bound books on the dark oak shelves. Then she nodded.

  Did he really just call her a headline-chasing bitch?

  “We’ll question you more thoroughly later,” Q said quietly, sounding friendlier and more tired now. “Right now we need a description. Take it chronologically, from the moment you saw this person, and leave us to work out what’s important.”

  He started the tape recorder again. Annika cleared her throat and tried to relax her shoulders.

  “A woman,” she said, “it was a woman who pushed me, with her elbow; then she stood on my foot.”

  “What did the woman look like?”

  The room was collapsing on top of her, with its heavy oil paintings and dark oak bookcases. She put her hands over her eyes and heaved a sigh.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  Her cell phone started to ring; the sound made her pull herself together. They waited in silence for it to stop.

  “Okay, let’s try it a different way,” Q said when it had finally fallen silent. “Where were you when she pushed you?”

  She summoned up the music, the glamour, the happiness, the darkness, the crush.

  “On the dance floor, I was dancing. At one end of the Golden Hall, not the one with the orchestra, the other end.”

  “Who were you dancing with?”

  Confusion and shame washed over her and she looked down at her lap.

  “His name’s Bosse, he’s a reporter for the opposition.”

  “Blond guy, quite well built?”

  Annika nodded, still staring at her lap, her cheeks hot.

  “Can you answer verbally, please.”

  “Yes,” she said, slightly too loudly, and straightened her back. “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Might he have seen anything?”

  “Yes, obviously, although I don’t think she trod on him.”

  “And then what happened?”

  Then what happened? Nothing else. Nothing at all, that was all she saw.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I turned my back on her and didn’t see anything else.”

  “And you didn’t hear anything?”

  The hubbub? The music? Her own breathing?

  “Only a couple of poufs.”

  “Poufs?”

  “Muffled noises, sort of, like puffs of air. I turned around and saw a man slump to his knees. He was dancing with a woman and she looked surprised when he just collapsed like that—she looked up and she looked at me and then she looked down at her chest and then I looked as well and saw she was bleeding—it was sort of pumping out and she looked up again and looked at me and then she slumped to the floor and everyone started screaming …”

  “When did the second pouf come?”

  Annika glanced at Q.

  “The second?”

  “You said ‘a couple of poufs.’”

  “Did I? I don’t know. There was a pouf and then the woman was looking at me and then there was another pouf—yes, two poufs, I think …”

  “How far away were you from the couple when they fell?”

  She thought for several seconds.

  “Two meters, two and a half maybe.”

  “The woman who pushed you, did you see her as they fell?”

  Had she? Had she seen a woman? Had she seen shoulder straps?

  “Shoulder straps,” Annika said. “She had narrow shoulder straps. Or a
bag with a narrow strap.”

  Q nodded and made a note in his pad.

  Annika pressed her fingertips to her eyelids and tried, searching through images, moods—was there anything there behind the noise?

  Bosse’s hand had been scorching through the fabric on her back, Bosse’s hand holding her so tightly to him that she could feel his cock against her stomach, her own hand behind his neck, that was what she felt, that was what she remembered. The music was there like an apron, dull, neatly ironed, but it was only there to conceal them, so they could hold on to each other in the glittering golden light.

  “I was elbowed in the side,” she said hesitantly. “And someone stood on my foot. I don’t know which came first.”

  Her cell phone started to ring again.

  “Turn it off,” Q said, and she clicked to end the signal.

  It was Jansson, of course.

  “Was it done on purpose, you being trodden on?”

  She put down her mobile, now on silent, and looked up in surprise.

  “Definitely not,” she said. “There was a big fat man trying to boogie right next to us, and he knocked into the woman and she bumped into me.”

  Something happened in Q’s eyes, a little flicker of interest.

  “Did she say anything when she bumped into you?”

  Annika looked down the bookcase, to a leather-bound volume of council protocols from 1964, the way she had looked down at the woman, the woman with the shoulder straps.

  “She was looking for something in her bag,” Annika said. “The strap was quite short so she had to lift her arm up a bit to fish it out, like this …”

  She raised her right arm and showed how she was looking for something in an imaginary evening bag.

  “What color was the bag?”

  “Silver,” she said, to her surprise and without hesitation. “It was matte silver-colored. The shape of an envelope, like an electricity bill or something.”

  “What did she take out of her bag?”

  Annika looked away from the protocols from 1964, searching and searching.

  Nothing, just the pain in her foot.

  “It hurt,” Annika said. “I let out a yelp. She looked up at me.”

  Annika nodded hesitantly.

  “Yes,” she said, convincing herself, “she looked up at me, right at me.”

  “Did she say anything?”

  Annika gazed out across the polished table.

  “She had yellow eyes,” she said. “Completely cold, yellow eyes, almost golden.”

  “Yellow?”

  “Yes, golden yellow.”

  “And how was she dressed?”

  She shut her eyes again and heard the throb of the music, seeing the shoulder strap before her. It was blood-red, unless it was the bleeding woman’s dress that was red? Or the blood? Unless the shoulder strap was white, maybe, white as snow against brown skin, unless the shoulder was pale and the strap dark?

  “I don’t know,” she said, perplexed. “My memories are sort of black and white, and then they change, like they’re negatives or something, I really don’t know …”

  “Yellow eyes, could they have been lenses?”

  Lenses? Yes, of course they could have been lenses, unless they weren’t actually yellow, but green?

  Q’s cell phone started to vibrate, and a genuine Eurovision song rang out, “My Number One,” the Greek song that won a few years ago. The detective inspector glanced at the display and muttered “have to take this.” He switched off the tape recorder and turned toward the closed door as he spoke.

  He went on and on, his voice rising and falling. Annika had to get up and move away, drawn by the sound of traffic seeping in through the gaps between the windows. Slowly she breathed out onto the cold windowpane, and the view vanished for a moment, and when it returned she could see Hantverkargatan, the street she lived on, and beyond that the Klara district of Stockholm, trains thundering past, and the old Serafen health center over to the left.

  Her health center! Her doctors, where she had been with Kalle only that morning, another ear infection.

  So close, in another reality, just four blocks from home.

  She felt her throat constrict—oh God, I don’t want to move!

  “The victims have been identified,” Q said, pulling her back into the room. “Maybe you recognized them?”

  She went back to the chair on shaky legs, perched on the edge and cleared her throat.

  “The man was one of the prizewinners,” she said. “Medicine, I think. I don’t remember his name off the top of my head, but I’ve got it in my notes.”

  She reached for her bag to indicate that she could find out, just an arm’s length away. She stopped halfway through the gesture.

  “Aaron Wiesel,” the detective said. “An Israeli, he shared the prize with an American, Charles Watson. The woman?”

  Annika shook her head.

  “I’d never seen her before.”

  Q rubbed his hand over his eyes.

  “Wiesel’s in surgery in Sankt Göran’s right now. The woman was Caroline von Behring, chair of the Karolinska Institute’s Nobel Committee. She died on the dance floor, pretty much instantly.”

  All warmth vanished from her hands, cold eating in through her fingers and into her bloodstream, making her joints seize up. With an effort she pulled up the shawl that had fallen behind her and draped it over her shoulders again.

  Her eyes as she was dying, she was looking at me when she died.

  “I have to go now,” she said. “I’m really sorry, but I’ve got an awful lot to do.”

  “You can’t write about this,” Q said, leaning back heavily in his chair. “Your observations about the woman who pushed you match the description of the fleeing killer. You’re one of our key witnesses, so I’m imposing a ban on disclosure, effective as of now.”

  Annika was halfway out of her chair, but sank down again.

  “Am I under arrest?” she asked.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Q said, as he got up, clutching his cell phone in his hand.

  “Disclosure bans only happen during arrest procedures,” Annika said. “If I’m not under arrest, and no one else has been arrested, how can you impose a ban on disclosure?”

  “You’re not as smart as you think,” Q said. “There’s another form of disclosure ban, according to chapter twenty-three, paragraph ten, final clause, of the Judicial Procedure Act. It concerns the accounts of key witnesses and can be imposed by the head of an investigation where a serious crime is suspected.”

  “Freedom of speech is protected by the constitution,” Annika said, “and that carries more weight. And you’re not the head of the investigation—in a case like this that would have to be a public prosecutor.”

  “No, you’re wrong there as well. A head of this investigation hasn’t been appointed yet, so I’m acting head right now.”

  Annika stood up angrily and leaned over the table.

  “You can’t stop me saying what I saw!” she said in a shrill voice. “I’ve got the whole article in my head, I can write a fucking brilliant eyewitness account out of it, three double pages easily, maybe four—I saw the murderer in the act of killing, I saw the victim die …”

  Q spun around toward her, pressed his face right up to hers.

  “For God’s sake!” he yelled. “You’ll get a fine so big you won’t know what hit you if go ahead with this. Sit down!”

  Annika fell silent and sat down with a bit of a thump, hunching her shoulders. Q turned his back on her and dialed a number on his cell phone. She sat in silence beneath the huge portraits as Q made his call and gave angry orders about something.

  “You’re putting me in an impossible position if I can’t write anything,” Annika said.

  “My heart bleeds,” Q said.

  “What are my bosses going to say?” Annika went on. “What would your bosses say if you refused to investigate a crime because I said you couldn’t, because I have to write about you?”r />
  Q sat down again with a deep sigh.

  “Sorry,” he said, and gave her a slightly guilty look, then paused for a moment before saying: “Ask me something, and I might be able to give you an answer.”

  “Why?” Annika said.

  “Because you can’t write about it anyway,” he said, smiling for the first time.

  She thought for a moment.

  “Why couldn’t anyone hear the shots?” she asked.

  “You could hear them. You said so.”

  “But only as little poufs.”

  “A pistol with a silencer would fit into the sort of oblong bag you described. And you don’t remember anything else about her appearance? Her hair, or her clothes?”

  Eyes, just eyes and the shoulder straps.

  “She must have had long hair, otherwise I would have remembered, but I don’t think there was anything special about it. Dark, I think. I don’t think it was loose, maybe it was tied up somehow? And her dress—she must have been wearing an evening dress? I didn’t notice anything odd, so I suppose she must have looked like everyone else? How did she get into the Golden Hall, do you know?”

  Q looked through his notes.

  “We’re checking to see if she could have been on the guest list, but we don’t really know. There are other witness statements saying that it could have been a man dressed as a woman. What do you think about that?”

  A man? Annika snorted.

  “It was a girl,” she said.

  “How can you be sure?”

  Annika looked over at the protocols from 1964.

  “She looked up at me, so she must have been shorter than me. How many men are that short? And she moved quickly, easily.”

  “And men don’t?”

  “Not in that sort of stiletto heel. It takes a lot of practice to move as easily as she did.”

  “And you saw her heels?”

  Annika stood up and hoisted her bag onto her shoulder.

  “No, but I’ve got the bruise one of them made on the top of my right foot. Please, can I call you later tonight?”

  “And where do you think you’re going?”

  She stopped against her will, stifled in spite of all the air in the room.