He’s coming back, she thought. Daddy’s coming back home to us again.
She couldn’t bear the thought that there might be any other alternative. She pushed her pain aside the only way she knew how, by going into the office and turning on the computer.
And she wrote—she wrote about it all, about Caroline’s blackmail, her secret, and her shortcomings, about what Bernhard had said, Ebba’s reactions, her own conclusions, the arrival of the police.
Then she mailed the text to two recipients: Q and Jansson. As a heading to the email she typed Please note: disclosure ban!
They could do whatever they wanted with it.
She switched off the computer, then sat and stared out of the window for a few minutes. The summer night outside was blue, breezy but warm. There were still lights on in old Hopkins’s house, in the kitchen and the basement. Ebba’s house was dark; presumably she wasn’t back from the hospital yet.
I’m not going to be able to get to sleep, she thought, her eyes stinging.
She headed to the bathroom, then paused in the doorway, staring at the bathtub. It was empty and clean; she’d polished the enamel with chamois leather. She wasn’t going to have any more dead women in there.
She took a deep breath, a gasp that turned into a long sigh, then finally a sob.
He’ll come back, she thought. He has to come home to us again. Dear God, please, let him come home to me again!
She slumped onto the toilet seat and leaned her head in her hands, listening to her own heavy breathing. Her pulse was throbbing in her ears, her arms shaking.
I need you, she thought. I love you. Forgive me.
“I didn’t mean it,” she whispered.
And she cried, with her head in her hands, until she couldn’t cry any more, until the house was completely silent and she was completely empty inside.
She stayed there for another minute or so, then finally stood up, giddy and drained.
It’ll sort itself out, she thought. Somehow this will all sort itself out.
She reached for her toothbrush, only to discover that the toothpaste tube was empty. So she brushed her teeth with water instead, then washed her face with her expensive soap and brushed her hair. She looked into her own eyes in the mirror, puffy and distant. She leaned forward over the basin until the light above her threw dark shadows over her features.
She closed her eyes, pulled away from the shadows and looked around the bathroom.
Scrubbed and shining, with an antiseptic smell of bleach.
She switched out the light and went onto the landing. Darkness enveloped her, and she breathed out and relaxed.
It’s up to me, she thought. I can do this, if I try. It’s no worse than that.
She had gotten halfway along the landing when the crash came. The sound reached her as if in a dream, unreal and far away; it didn’t scare her, just came as a surprise, a huge crash followed by a crystal rain of shattered glass.
What the hell … ?
She walked toward the stairs and was met by a gust of wind; the picture window next to the front door gaped jaggedly against the night beyond. She took several steps before realization and fear struck. Someone had broken her window in the middle of the night, someone had walked up to her house and smashed her big picture window …
Her heartbeat exploded and she started breathing as if she’d been on a forced march, taking the steps three at a time and landing in the middle of all the glass splinters just as the second crash shook the house. She stopped midstride—it was above her this time.
The window of Ellen’s room.
She turned and raced up the stairs again, yanking open the door to the girl’s room, and at that moment something flew through the smashed window, something dark and heavy and rectangular, with a little sparkling tail.
The instant before it hit the floor she realized what it was.
A large glass bottle, full of liquid, sealed with a burning rag. A Molotov cocktail.
She slammed the door shut as the bottle shattered on the floor and the room exploded in fire. Annika could feel the heat smash against the door, hitting her like a shock wave. She staggered back, her arms flailing in the air, hearing the flames roar on the other side of the thin sheet of wood. Oh God, this can’t be happening. The next moment the window of Kalle’s room crashed in, and through the half-open door Annika saw a brick land on the boy’s bed. She saw it lying there and knew she should be heading toward it but her body wouldn’t move, it wouldn’t obey her, and she felt her own distorted face stare at the shattered window, watching the same heavy bottle fly through the room, the same rectangular darkness with its burning tail, unless it was another bottle—was there more than one?
The plume of flames in Kalle’s room hit the ceiling the moment the glass bottle shattered against the wall above the boy’s bed. The gasoline vaporized in an instant, the fire riding on its back, throwing itself at the blue curtains with cars on them, the picture books on the Billy bookcases from IKEA.
Annika stared at the flames, unable to move; she felt the heat hit her hair and skin and stumbled backward instinctively, against the closed bedroom door.
The children. Oh God, the children!
She managed to get the door open and staggered in, closing the door behind her. She saw the hazy shapes under the covers, out, now, at once!
It was the smoke that was most dangerous, it was smoke that killed, not the flames, at least not at first. She glanced at the closed door and saw the deadly gases already rolling in under it, then threw herself at the bed and dragged the covers off Ellen.
“Kids!!” she screamed, throwing the covers onto the floor by the door, stamping on it to block the crack at the bottom, then ran back to the bed again.
“Ellen!” she shouted, pulling the child upright. “Ellen, we’ve got to get out of here.”
The girl stared at her in horror, still groggy with sleep. Annika picked her up and ran over to the window, with Ellen’s little body feeling slippery and hot under her pajamas.
“Ellen,” Annika whispered, scarcely able to breathe. “There’s a fire, I’m going to help you get out, and when you do I want you to run over to the hedge and sit there and wait for me and Kalle. Got it?”
The girl started to cry, loud and scared.
“Mommy,” she howled, “Mommy, no, Mommy …”
Annika peeled the girl’s arms away from her neck and put her down on the floor by the window. She ran back to the bed and pulled off Kalle’s covers.
“Kalle!” she shouted, shaking the boy as she pulled the sheet off Thomas’s side of the bed. “Kalle, go and stand over there with Ellen, the house is on fire!”
The boy sat up, blinking, his hair standing up. The white bandage on his forehead shone in the darkness. Annika could hear the fire roaring on the other side of the door.
“Kalle, over here!”
She rushed back to her daughter, winding the sheet into a thick rope that she tied around the girl’s stomach as the child shrieked—she didn’t want to have a sheet tied around her stomach, she wanted Daddy, and she ran for the door. Annika caught her and swept her up into her arms.
“Ellen!” she shouted. “Ellen, listen to me, Ellen, we’re going to die if you don’t do what I tell you!”
Kalle had started to howl over by the window, the whole of his little frame shaking. From the corner of eye Annika saw a dark stain spread over his pajama trousers as he wet himself.
“Mommy!” he cried. “I don’t want to die!”
I can’t do this, Annika thought fleetingly. We’re going to die here, this is impossible.
And somewhere she knew that was the wrong thought, it was entirely up to her, she just had to seize control and take the children with her. The same as always.
She made her way to the window and put the little girl down next to her brother, then crouched down beside them and hugged them both.
“Okay, this is what we’re going to do,” she said, as calmly as she could manage.
“We’ll start with you, Kalle, because you’re a big boy and I know you can do this, it’s going to be easy. I’m going to tie this sheet around your tummy, it’ll be like a big rope, and then I’m going to lower you down to the terrace, and then I want you to wait there and help your little sister when she comes down, okay?”
“I don’t want to die,” the boy sobbed.
“Kalle,” Annika said, lifting his chin with her hand and looking him in the eye. “Listen to me, Kalle, you have to help me now. You’re a big boy and you have to help your little sister when I lower her down, do you hear me? She’s still very little.”
“I’m not little,” Ellen said.
Annika stroked her daughter’s cheek and tried to smile.
“You’re just right,” Annika said. “Can you help me lower Kalle down, do you think?”
She nodded eagerly, her tears forgotten.
The boy looked very doubtful as Annika knotted the blue sheet around his waist.
Can I really do this? Annika thought. What if I drop him?
Smoke was starting to pour into the room, and it looked as if the bedding by the door was starting to smolder.
“Okay,” Annika said, opening the window. “Are you ready?”
She forced herself to smile at her son, as his lower lip started to tremble again and he took a step toward the door. Annika quickly lifted him onto the windowsill, turned him around to face the garden, then pushed his legs over the edge so they were hanging down the side of the house. She looped the sheet around the central bar of the window, then nudged the boy over the edge. There was a sharp jolt and the child screamed in terror and slid half a meter, but she managed to stop the sheet from sliding further.
What if he slips through the loop? she thought, letting out a bit more of the sheet, then a bit more, then a bit more, until finally there was no more sheet wound around the window-frame.
She couldn’t let go and lean out to see how far he had gotten.
“Are you down, Kalle?” she called.
The boy didn’t answer.
“Is there far to go?”
No answer.
She had to risk it.
She steeled herself as best she could, then let the sheet come free of the window-frame, and after just a couple of decimeters she heard him land on the terrace below. She let go of the sheet and leaned out.
“Kalle? Are you all right?”
The boy was sitting huddled up on the terrace, staring back into the house.
“Mommy!” he shouted. “The kitchen’s on fire!”
Inside the bedroom the smoke was gray and thick. The bedding by the door was alight now.
“Kalle,” Annika said. “I’m going to lower Ellen down now, and I need you to help her when she gets down, okay?”
Without waiting for a reply she crouched down beside Ellen.
“Now it’s your turn,” she said, trying to smile. “Kalle’s already down, and he’s going to help you. That’s good, isn’t it?”
And the girl just nodded and waited quietly and patiently as Annika knotted the other sheet around her chest with trembling fingers. Then she sat the girl in the window as she had with Kalle, then nudged her out.
The jolt wasn’t so hard this time, Ellen was much lighter than Kalle.
The door behind Annika caught fire with a muffled oomph.
She lowered the girl down the last meter or so.
The heat hit her from behind, wiping out all focused thought. Unable to think rationally, she clambered up onto the windowsill and threw herself out. She tumbled through the air, straight out and straight down, falling from the upper floor to the terrace just as the room behind her exploded into a firestorm.
She landed on the terrace table.
Her feet hit the middle of the table, which shuddered under her weight. The jolt sent a shock of pain through her system, from skeleton and muscles to skin and nerves. Her momentum sent her crashing to the edge of the table on all fours. She almost tumbled headfirst off the edge, but managed to stop herself by grabbing hold of one of the chairs in front of her.
The world stopped. She shut her eyes and took a deep breath.
The pain quickly subsided. She sat up, straightening her legs. Sore all over, but nothing broken.
The children?
She clambered down from the table and stood up, carefully. Her hips felt very sore.
Kalle and Ellen were standing close together just below the terrace, she could see their wide-eyed faces peeping above the edge.
“Are you all right?” she asked, going down to them carefully, still not sure that her bones really were intact. “Did you hurt yourselves when you landed?”
The children shook their heads, their hair blowing in night wind.
A window behind her exploded in the heat, sending a shower of glass through the air, and she ducked instinctively and put her arms out to shield the children.
“Come on,” she said, heading across the grass, “let’s get farther away.”
And the children went with her in their pajamas, over the dew-damp grass in the direction of Ebba’s house. In the distance came the sound of sirens, a choir of emergency vehicles, and in the houses around them lights started to come on in the summer night.
That was when she saw him.
Her entire body knotted up, becoming as hard as a ball, adrenaline rushing through her, making her arms shake again.
He was standing behind his hedge looking into her garden. He hadn’t seen her, because he was craning his neck to look at the upper floor, dodging and hopping between the branches to get a better view.
“Look!” Kalle said, pointing at Wilhelm Hopkins. “There’s our stupid neighbor.”
Annika hushed him and huddled down in the darkness.
I mustn’t let him know that we’re alive, she thought. He didn’t see us get out and now he thinks he’s succeeded.
Soundlessly, on bare feet, Annika and the children crept across the road and into Ebba’s garden.
“Why is our house on fire, Mommy?” Ellen said.
Annika tried to find her voice, tried to moisten her lips.
“I don’t know, darling. Houses catch fire sometimes.”
The girl’s bottom lip started to tremble.
“But where’s Daddy?”
“Daddy’s at work,” Annika said. “Daddy’s working late.”
“You had an argument,” Kalle said.
“Where’s Poppy?” Ellen said. “Mommy—Poppy and Ludde? Mommy, are they in the fire?”
She started to cry helplessly and tried to run back to the house, making Annika grab her again.
I can’t stay here, she thought. I can’t stay here with the children, letting them watch as their home burns down. I can’t let them see that our neighbors have set fire to our home and are now creeping around in the bushes watching to see us get burned alive.
“Poppy,” the girl sobbed, “I want my Poppy …”
Annika still had her cell phone in her pocket.
She pulled it out and checked the display. No one had called. Thomas hadn’t called. No one had sent her a text.
She called Thomas, but his phone was switched off and the messaging service clicked in. What could she say? How should she start?
She clicked to end the call and phoned for a taxi instead.
But she didn’t have any money, and where could she go?
She looked over at the house.
The last windows shattered. The fire was blazing in every room. The sirens were closer now, but the fire brigade wouldn’t be able to do anything. Soon the roof would collapse.
She wanted to cry, but felt paralyzed. She wanted to scream, but felt mute.
The children pressed tightly against her and she knew she shouldn’t be standing there.
The children had been the target. Their rooms had been the ones that were firebombed. There must have been three Molotov cocktails, one at the bottom of the stairs, one in Ellen’s room, and one in Kalle’s.
&nb
sp; Nothing in the master bedroom.
They knew I’d go to the children, they knew I’d try to save them. We wouldn’t have been able to get out. We were supposed to die.
This was personal.
Revenge, for the simple fact that they lived there.
Wilhelm Hopkins left his post behind the hedge and headed toward his porch. He stopped and wiped his shoes carefully before going inside the house.
You’re going to pay for this, Annika thought. If it’s the last thing I do, you’re going to pay for what you’ve done.
There was a taxi in the area and it swung into Ebba’s driveway just a few minutes later.
Annika slumped into the backseat with the children and gave the driver Anne Snapphane’s address.
“Damn,” the taxi driver said, staring wide-eyed at the burning house on the other side of the road. “Has anyone called the fire department?”
At that moment the first fire engine turned into Vinterviksvägen and pulled up in Annika’s drive.
“I’ll need to go up to one of the flats,” Annika said in a hoarse voice. “I haven’t got any money. Can you wait when we get there while I go up and get some money, do you think?”
The taxi driver looked at her in the rearview mirror.
“Not really,” he said.
She closed her eyes and leaned her head back.
“That’s my house on fire,” she said. “Please.”
And he put the car in gear and drove slowly past all the emergency vehicles that were on their way to the fire on Vinterviksvägen. Past the fire engines and trucks, the blue night shredded by the lamps on their roofs.
Tonight will soon be over, Annika thought.
The taxi drove along the shoreline toward the city. To the west the sky was still dark, but behind her it was lit up by something other than the fire. The sun was on its way up over the horizon, or soon would be.
“How did the fire start?” the taxi driver asked.
“I really don’t want to talk,” Annika said.
She sat with the children huddled close to her, one on each side, stroking their hair and pajamas. The swaying of the car soon rocked them to sleep.
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