When she finally got through the junction she accelerated hard down Karlavägen and swung right, into the mess of one-way streets around Jungfrugatan and Sibyllegatan, until she finally found a space to park, albeit illegally, outside Holy Trinity Church.
Screw it, she thought as she pulled on the handbrake.
Anne Snapphane’s flat was a bit of a walk, and she hesitated for a moment about whether or not to take her bag.
She ought to really, otherwise the damn thing would probably get stolen.
She hoisted it onto her shoulder with a groan.
Östermalm really is a weird part of town, she thought as she trudged slowly past the heavy turn-of-the-century façades. The atmosphere was completely different from Kungsholmen, Södermalm, or Vasastan. Everything was a bit more sober, a bit better off, a bit duller.
It doesn’t really suit Anne very well at all, she thought guiltily.
She had been the one who spotted the flat. She had been the one who told Anne to buy it.
She consoled herself with the fact that she had also been the one who paid for it, so she shouldn’t feel too sorry for Anne.
She turned onto Kommendörsgatan, and groaned at the thought of how far she still had to walk with the dead weight hanging from her shoulder. Maybe she ought to give in and buy a rucksack, as Thomas had suggested once when she had complained about how heavy her bag was.
Over my dead body, she thought, and shifted the bag onto her other shoulder.
At that moment she suddenly noticed a woman some ten steps ahead of her on the pavement, a slender woman with a blond page cut who wiggled as she walked. She was wearing a dress that made her shoulders look round and soft, and her knee-length skirt revealed a pair of surprisingly powerful calves. A small handbag swung from one shoulder, and in the other hand she was carrying a light-brown leather briefcase. She was balancing expertly on a pair of high heels and seemed to be enjoying the afternoon sun.
Annika slowed down and stared at the woman’s back, not quite sure why she seemed to recognize it.
Then the woman stopped to look in a shop window and Annika saw her face in profile.
It took another couple of seconds before Annika realized who it was.
She heard herself gasp and felt the ground sway beneath her.
It was Sophia Grenborg.
It was really her.
Annika stopped, unable to move. All sound vanished—this isn’t happening, this isn’t happening.
She looked the way Annika remembered her, the way she appeared in her dreams, the way she did that winter’s evening when she kissed Thomas outside the NK department store, the way she looked on the passport photograph that Annika had ordered and then torn into tiny little pieces and flushed down the toilet.
And now she was standing there looking at the window of an antiques shop, curious, interested, standing on tiptoe to peer at something further inside the shop.
Without consciously realizing how it was happening, Annika realized she was heading straight toward the woman. She was gliding over the pavement, getting closer and closer until she was right next to her, and suddenly Annika was standing there, staring at the blond woman’s face.
Sophia Grenborg straightened up and noticed Annika with a look of surprise.
“Sophia Grenborg?” Annika asked, in a voice that came from far away.
“Yes?” the woman said, with a slightly bemused smile.
“I’m Annika Bengtzon,” Annika said. “I’m married to Thomas Samuelsson. I was just wondering what you thought my husband was like in bed?”
The woman continued to smile for another second or so, before gasping and turning pale. Her face twitched as if she had been slapped, and she took a step back, her foot hitting the wall. Her eyes fluttered, it looked like she was going to faint.
Annika stood there, staring at the pale woman until she felt she was going to suffocate in her own hatred.
“Fucking hell,” Annika said. “Fucking hell! How could he?”
And she suddenly felt that she couldn’t stay a moment longer, not a single moment, she didn’t want to take another breath in the presence of this person, this whore.
So she turned and hurried away, walking toward the blinding sunlight. She walked and walked, feeling the woman staring at her back. She saw the buildings sway and felt like she was going to be sick, and when she reached the end of the street and looked back, she could have sworn that the woman was standing there smiling.
Anne opened the front door with a mascara brush in one hand and a pair of eyelash curlers in the other. She was more or less concealed by a dressing gown and was wearing nylon stockings.
“Christ, what’s happened to you?” she said. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Annika was clinging to the doorframe and swaying slightly. Her heartbeat was still pounding in her head, her mouth completely dry.
“Can I have something to drink?” she said, trying to moisten her lips.
Anne stepped back and let Annika into the flat. The hall was a complete mess, newspapers and clothes piled up everywhere, and in one corner stood a bicycle.
Annika went into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water, drank it thirstily, and refilled it.
“That was fucking horrible,” she said. “I just bumped into Sophia Grenborg.”
“What, the scarlet woman?” Anne said. “Where?”
“Right outside, just a couple of blocks away,” Annika said. “She lives around here, a bit further down Grev Turegatan.”
She gestured vaguely toward the south with her glass.
“Why was it so awful?” Anne said, letting her dressing gown slide to the hall floor and walking into the bathroom. Underneath she was wearing a G-string and a transparent white bra.
Annika stayed in the kitchen for a moment, eyes closed, holding the glass to her forehead to cool herself down.
“I have nightmares about her,” she said quietly. “I dream of killing her, and that she’s a corpse. I’m scared of her, and I hate her. That’s why it was so awful.”
Anne returned to the door of the kitchen, this time with eye shadow on one eyelid.
“I hope you didn’t do anything silly,” she said, looking at Annika sympathetically.
Annika took a deep breath and sighed.
“No,” she said, “I didn’t. I just said what I thought of her.”
Anne had been walking away again, but stopped and came back.
“Christ, Annika,” she said. “So what did you say?”
Annika jerked her head back.
“I told her who I was, and who I’m married to. Then I asked how good she thought my husband was in bed.”
Anne stared at her open-mouthed for a few seconds. Then she closed her eyes and banged her forehead against the doorframe three times.
“You’re mad,” she said, giving Annika a deeply suspicious look. “How stupid can you be? I mean, really! You said that? You asked her how good she thought your husband was in bed?”
Annika poured herself another glass of water and resisted the urge to tip it over her own head.
“Talk about making a fool of yourself!” Anne said, throwing her hands out. “Talk about making a fool of yourself! Do you know what you’ve just gone and done? You showed Sophia fucking Grenborg how important she is. You confirmed that she meant something—you chucked fuel on a flame that was pretty much dead. Fucking hell, Annika, sometimes you’re so damn stupid.”
She turned and went back into the bathroom.
“I didn’t do anything of the sort,” Annika said, aware of the uncertainty in her voice.
“Oh yes you did,” Anne Snapphane said, “and you know it. She probably meant very little to Thomas, seeing as he seems to have let go of her so easily. She was just there, and he took his chance. But now you’ve elevated her to something completely different, to VIP status, someone who affects your family every second of every day. And that’s a really stupid thing to do.”
“But she do
es,” Annika said.
“Wrong,” Anne said from the bathroom. “She affects you, no one else, and it’s all in your head. You should have gone to see a therapist instead of flying at her in the street.”
Annika emptied the glass in the sink, her cheeks burning.
“Do you want to go through your lecture?” she asked.
Anne came out of the bathroom, in full war paint.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, “but Robin called. We’re off to the salsa club.”
“Who?” Annika said, feeling lost.
Anne was pulling on a loose, blood-red salsa dress that she had fished out of the mess on the floor and turned her back on Annika.
“Can you help me with the zip? Thanks! Haven’t I told you about Robin?”
Annika zipped her up and Anne spun round, making her skirt billow out.
“He’s so lovely!” she said, trying a few dance-steps on the hall floor. “Sweet as anything and only twenty-four. And he dances salsa like a real man.”
“But what about your lecture?” Annika said, feeling foolish.
“Can we do it later in the week? This feels like a really big opportunity for me!”
Annika stood in the hall, staring at the mess all around her, with thoughts and images flashing through her head like a speeded up film—Sophia Grenborg’s pale face, her illegally parked car, her children, whom she’d be lucky to see at all today, Anne’s lecture hanging over her like a wet blanket—and she felt her heart sink lower and lower until it landed somewhere in the darkest, dankest cellar.
“Sure,” she said. “We’ll do it another day.”
And she turned and headed for the door, feeling so small that she could hardly reach the door handle.
She had gotten a parking ticket. Seven hundred kronor for parking in a space for deliveries only. Once upon a time she would have appealed against the fine, even though she was in the wrong and the fine entirely justified. She would have written and lied and argued and corresponded and made the council really work for their seven hundred before she capitulated and paid up.
Now she couldn’t be bothered.
She tossed the parking ticket in her bag and forgot about it at once.
Then she sat in her car, just staring out through the windscreen.
Was it stupid to have confronted Sophia Grenborg?
She shut her eyes, feeling her cheeks burn. Yes, Anne was right. It was a huge damn mistake.
“I didn’t mean it,” she whispered, feeling tears well up. “I really didn’t.”
I just want him to be mine, she thought.
She dried her eyes, then dug out some tissues from the glove compartment and blew her nose.
Really she should go home. Really she should take over from Thomas and put the children to bed, then watch a film with Thomas on the sofa. Or do some gardening, or discuss what to do about the lawn.
“I can’t,” she said out loud. “Not right now. Maybe soon, but not yet.”
She pushed her hair back behind her ears and took several deep breaths, then started the engine and let the car idle in neutral.
She pulled her cell phone from her bag and called Schyman.
No answer, damn.
She took out her notebook and looked through it to find Lars-Henry Svensson’s phone numbers. She called his flat on Södermalm, no answer. Then called the address out on Värmdö, no answer.
Where would you go if you’d just been released from questioning by the police? Go and have coffee somewhere in town? Hardly—you’d go home and hide away. To a flat on Södermalm? Would you sit there all day, not answering the phone?
Not very likely.
Or would you go to your summer cottage on Värmdö? Maybe sit yourself down in the middle of a patch of lily of the valley and leave the phone to ring as much as it liked indoors?
Much better.
Tavastbodavägen—it sounded nice. So where was it?
She put the address into her sat-nav and got a location way out in the archipelago, in Fågelbrolandet. Past Nacka and Gustavsberg, out toward Stavsnäs.
What if she were to head out and pay him a visit? Ask for a comment as he sat there among the flowers?
She looked at the time again.
It was time to go home. It was time to call Schyman again. It was time to talk to Jansson, who would just have started his shift.
He answered at once, his voice rough, newly woken.
“You sound shattered,” Annika said, holding onto the steering wheel, glad that someone else sounded shaky.
“I’ve got the kids this week,” the night editor said.
“All of them?” Annika asked.
“Are you mad? Just the two oldest. That’s bad enough. Can’t we hold the Kitten until later in the week? We’ve got to run Berit’s extradition tomorrow.”
“The Kitten will start to leak after midnight,” Annika said. “If we’re lucky, we’ll be the only ones running the story if we can do it tonight.”
Jansson groaned.
“It’s going to a pretty full issue,” he said. “Schyman has forbidden us from adding any extra pages. Do you know where he is?”
“I never know anything,” Annika said. “Ask him to call me when he gets in.”
She sat there with her earpiece in after she hung up.
Didn’t want to go home.
Didn’t want to remember Sophia Grenborg.
So instead she put the car in gear and headed east, toward the sea, toward Fågelbrolandet.
The landscape grew craggier and sparser the closer she got to Stavsnäs. She opened her window and thought she could smell salt and seaweed, but it was probably only her imagination. Clear blue water stretched away on either side of the car, sometimes small lakes, sometimes icy-blue sea. Light gray rocks stuck out from beaches and inlets; gnarled pines and slender birches edged the road. Yellow wooden houses with white gables and silver-gray jetties nestled securely on rock foundations and in meadows.
She had never been out here before.
As she passed the Strömma Channel she found herself in a picture-book version of Swedish archipelago life.
How beautiful it was!
Her sat-nav was looking after the directions; otherwise she would never have stood a chance. About five kilometers beyond the channel, she turned off to the right and found herself on a twisting gravel road that wound over hills and through clumps of birch trees, past Friden and off toward the jetties of Tavastboda.
She drove past Lars-Henry Svensson’s cottage without realizing, and had to do a three-point turn and drive back. She stopped above the plot, parking behind an old Ford, and looked down at the little house.
The setting was idyllic, on a slope looking out across the sea, no neighbors, surrounded by nature. The wooden façade was painted rust red, with white eaves and original old windows.
It must have been a fisherman’s cottage once. The sunset was reflecting off the windows.
At the back she could make out an outside toilet and a large bonfire, and further down toward the water lay another little wooden house, presumably a wood-fired sauna.
Annika turned the engine off and opened the car door.
The worst he could do was throw her out.
It was cooler here than in the city, crisper and fresher. She took several deep breaths, letting the wind whip at her hair.
Maybe this was the way to live? Maybe she could feel at home on Tavastbodavägen?
She walked down into the garden, which was really just a patch of wilderness with clumps of wild flowers. There really was lily of the valley there, as well as buttercups, wood anemones and a large patch of cranesbill beside a little stream. There were paths strewn with pine needles running in various directions, neatly edged with perfectly smooth stones.
I wonder if he did all this himself? Annika wondered. Does he spend his holidays looking for stones, leveling the ground, laying out paths?
Lars-Henry was listed as single in the national register, but that was no re
ason to suppose he didn’t have lady friends.
She walked up to the veranda and knocked on the door.
No answer.
She knocked again, harder.
No response.
“Lars-Henry Svensson?” she called, loudly and clearly.
The wind rustled through the pine trees.
She stepped down and went around to the back of the cottage, to the outside toilet and bonfire. The burned wood was flaky and white, there couldn’t have been a fire for several days. The toilet was small, painted red in the traditional way, and even had a green heart on the door. It made her think of Grandma and Lyckebo again, as a streak of gold flashed past at the edge of her field of vision.
“Beautiful …” she whispered.
She went back to the house and knocked again. She tried the door. It wasn’t locked. Carefully she pushed it open and peered into a small, pale-blue hallway.
“Hello … ?”
No answer.
She went in. There was a small kitchen to the left, then a little bedroom.
On the right was a larger room, which functioned as both dining and living room. A television was on, with the sound turned down. A plate of herring and potatoes lay on the little dining table, along with a small glass of schnapps. One of the lamps was on.
Svensson couldn’t be far away.
Maybe he’s down by the shore, Annika thought. Or maybe he’s gone off to get some beer to drink with his meal.
But his car was parked outside, the old Ford—that had to be his, didn’t it?
She walked out of the house again, feeling guilty at her intrusion, relieved to be back outside.
The sun was going down in the water below the cottage, and she walked slowly toward the jetty, where a rowboat rocked gently back and forth.
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