There was silence.
‘Hello?’ Annika said.
‘Just so you know,’ Patrik said, ‘I’ve got this call on speaker-phone.’
‘Excellent,’ Annika said. ‘In that case, your friends can note that I’m taking next week off as time owing. I’ve been working twenty hours a day for five days in a row. I’ll be in on Monday to put in a claim for expenses.’
‘What do you mean, expenses? Your ticket was bought for you.’
‘Fuck you,’ Annika said, and hung up.
She slumped onto the bed again, picked up the evening papers that she’d thrown on the floor and leaned back against the pillows to read them.
Her piece about the raid was there. It probably hadn’t made it into the earlier regional edition, but Niklas Linde had said that wouldn’t matter.
She studied the pictures. They were certainly dramatic. The two uniformed officers were in the foreground, the reflective strips on their jackets shining like lasers in the flash. The Swede was waving his arms and kicking in protest, and his face was more or less obscured. Linde’s face was turned away and pretty much unidentifiable.
The text was short and to the point: Spanish police had crushed a cocaine-smuggling operation shipping drugs from the Costa del Sol to large parts of northern Europe; she had listed the facts about the raid in La Campana, seven hundred kilos found in a warehouse, melons from Brazil; last night’s arrest was the final one in the series; charges would be laid and the trials prepared.
She let the paper fall to her lap and wondered what she felt about writing an article to order like that. Nothing much, she decided. There was always someone who stood to gain from a piece of journalism. The only difference this time was that she was fully aware of the manipulation, although she would never admit that to her bosses at the paper.
She looked through the rest of the news. A UN helicopter had crashed in Nepal. Sweden’s first bed-and-breakfast for nudists was due to open in Skåne. A singer with silicon breasts had turned down the opportunity to appear in the Swedish heats of the Eurovision Song Contest, which had led to crisis talks at Swedish Television last night.
She dropped the paper onto the floor and picked up its rival. The first thing that struck her when she reached the editorial was her own picture byline from the Evening Post and a portrait of Jimmy Halenius. Between them hovered the picture taken outside the Järnet restaurant. ‘In the hands of power,’ the headline read. The text was a piece of indignant bluster, full of insinuating questions such as ‘How much did they really have to drink?’ and ‘Should those in power and those holding them to account really have an intimate relationship?’, as well as ‘Did Halenius neglect his duties?’
She picked up the phone and called her editor-in-chief. ‘Have you seen the opposition’s editorial?’ she asked, without bothering to say hello.
‘I’ve spoken to their editor-in-chief,’ Anders Schyman replied. ‘If they don’t drop this now, we’re going to lay siege to every bar in the vicinity of their offices, take pictures of all their reporters and reveal all their sources. I’ll be replying in our editorial tomorrow. We will never reveal our sources, we will never surrender our expense receipts, and we will never go into any detail about what the two of you discussed.’
‘Good,’ Annika said.
‘What did you discuss, by the way? And how much did you drink? And who the hell paid?’
She collapsed into a little ball. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘To take them one by one: none of your business, I drank water, and Halenius paid. Not his department.’
‘How do you know him?’
She hesitated. ‘I grew up with his cousin.’
‘I heard you on the speaker-phone a little while ago. You really should watch your language, you know.’ He hung up.
She stayed on the bed for a while, struggling against almost overwhelming self-pity. She did nothing but stand up for that fucking newspaper, and what did she get in return, apart from demands, criticism and public humiliation over her choice of dinner-partner?
She cried for something like thirty seconds, then got up and went out into the hall for her suitcase. The bathroom was equipped with a washing-machine and a tumble-dryer, so she emptied her case straight into the machine and started the quick-wash programme. She took her laptop with her into the kitchen, plugged the modem into the phone socket and prayed to God there was an Internet connection.
There was.
She sat on one of the kitchen chairs and surfed in cyberspace. Apart from the usual disasters, gossip and political squabbling, it didn’t look as if anything much had happened in the world. Then she went onto her Facebook profile. She had eleven new messages: one was from Amanda Andersson, one from Sandra Holgersson, two from Klara Evertsson-Hedberg and seven from Polly Sandman. All of Suzette’s friends had replied to her. Her pulse quickened as she opened the most recent message, the one from Amanda.
‘I think your a gutter reporter who likes wallowing in other people’s mizery,’ she read.
‘Learn to spell first,’ Annika said out loud, and clicked to open the next, from Sandra.
‘Do you really work for a newspaper? Can you get tickets for X Factor?’
For a moment she considered replying, then decided against it.
Klara was financially minded. She offered to give an interview for ten thousand kronor. In her second message she lowered the fee to five hundred.
Annika didn’t answer her either.
Polly was the literary type, as the seven messages suggested. There were poems, reflections and thoughts about Suzette, school, boys and life in general. Annika read through them and composed a reply: ‘Dear Polly, what lovely poems and thoughts. Thanks for letting me read them. If you feel like writing anything longer, I know my newspaper runs a short-story competition for teenagers up to eighteen years old. I understand that you haven’t heard anything from Suzette. If you do, please feel free to contact me again.’ She signed off with both her first and last name, to maintain a professional tone. She was careful not to give her mobile number – she didn’t want anyone shouting at her about her ethics or asking about X Factor tickets.
She was about to shut down the laptop when her mobile rang. The number was withheld.
‘Annika? Hi, this is Nina Hoffman.’
She stood up so quickly she hit her head on the lamp. ‘Hello,’ she said, rubbing the bump.
‘You left a message on my voicemail a few days ago. It sounded urgent. Has something happened?’
With one hand, Annika stopped the lamp swinging and remembered the crackly Telefonica voice on Nina’s mobile. ‘Yes, I’ve tried calling you a few times. Have you been in Spain recently?’
‘Er, yes. I’ve just had a week’s holiday on Tenerife. Why?’
‘I went to see Julia and Alexander,’ Annika said, going out into the hall and towards her bedroom. ‘We were talking about you, and Julia told me something I didn’t know.’
Nina waited. ‘Oh?’ she said eventually.
Annika sat down on the bed. ‘Filip Andersson is your brother,’ she said, and noticed that her heart was beating faster. ‘Why didn’t you say something?’
‘Like what?’
‘And Yvonne Nordin was your sister.’
‘You mean I’m under some kind of obligation to tell you who I happen to be related to?’
Annika tried to focus. She could see Nina in front of her, the police uniform, the brown hair in a ponytail, the straight shoulders and stiff creases, the sense of restrained power, her efficient calm that night when they had stumbled upon the murder scene in Sankt Paulsgatan. Annika, get out of here. 1617 to Control, we have a code twenty-three, possibly twenty-four, and need reinforcements. I can see two, correction, three injured, possibly deceased …
‘But we’ve talked about that night so many times,’ Annika said. ‘I kept going on about Filip Andersson, the murders, that I thought he might be innocent, about whether he knew David Lindholm. You listened to all my theories about Dav
id’s women, Yvonne Nordin among them, you even helped me get hold of a photograph of her, and throughout all that you didn’t say that they were your brother and sister. Don’t you see how odd that looks?’
Nina was silent for a long while. Then she asked, ‘Would you have mentioned it, if they’d been your brother and sister?’
‘Of course!’
‘So if you had any criminals close to you, or if you yourself had committed a crime, you’d have told me all about it straight away?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘You’ve killed someone. Why haven’t you ever mentioned that?’
Now it was Annika’s turn to be silent. ‘That’s hardly relevant,’ she said at last. She hated being reminded of her ex-boyfriend. It felt like another life.
‘Yes, it is, in the same way that it’s relevant that my siblings are criminals.’
‘This changes everything, don’t you see?’ Annika said. ‘It feels like you’ve been deceiving me all along.’
‘Well, I haven’t,’ Nina said. ‘I’ve never lied to you.’
‘You must have known that David and Filip knew each other, for instance. How long for?’
Nina let out a sigh. ‘They grew up together,’ she said. ‘David and Filip and Yvonne and little Veronica were more like brothers and sisters than anything else. More than they ever were with me.’
Annika screwed her eyes shut and tried to fit the pieces in place.
David Lindholm, the most famous policeman in Sweden, had married the girl from Södermanland, Julia Hensen, who had grown up next door to her friend Nina Hoffman. David himself had grown up alongside Filip Andersson, who had two sisters, the insane killer Yvonne Nordin, and police officer Nina Hoffman, whose best friend Julia he had gone on to marry, even though he was simultaneously having an affair with Yvonne Nordin, and got her pregnant …
‘How long had you known David Lindholm?’ she asked.
‘The first time I met David was when he lectured at Police Academy.’
‘So you didn’t grow up with him?’
‘I suppose I must have bumped into him when I was little, and of course I knew who he was, but I didn’t know him. Mum and I moved to Tenerife when I was three, and by that time Filip and Yvonne were already grown up. I ended up outside Valla when I was nine, and that’s where I got to know Julia.’
‘You once told me,’ Annika said slowly, ‘that David came up to you and Julia after that lecture at the Police Academy. Did he know who you were?’
‘Obviously. I think he was extremely curious to see what had become of me.’
‘But he pretended to be more interested in Julia?’
‘He didn’t have to pretend. I mean, he married her.’
There was a subtext of bitterness, unspoken, but it was there.
Annika rubbed her head. ‘The murders on Sankt Paulsgatan took place nearly five years ago. When did you realize that Filip and Yvonne were involved?’
‘When Filip was arrested. That was the worst moment of my life.’
‘And Yvonne? She was the one who did it, after all. When did you realize that?’
‘When Filip told me, after she was dead. But I hadn’t spoken to Yvonne for years before that. I lost contact with her after the abortion. She withdrew, became a bit peculiar.’
‘The abortion?’ Annika said, putting her hand on her forehead. ‘You mean when she aborted her and David’s child?’
‘The same time that Julia was pregnant with Alexander,’ Nina confirmed. She fell silent for a few moments. ‘It’s not like you think,’ she said finally. ‘I never meant to hide anything, but my family and childhood are a bit of an open wound for me.’
Annika didn’t know what to say.
When Nina went on, her voice was thin and distant. ‘I loved my mum, but she was hardly capable of looking after herself. Filip and Yvonne slipped away from her because she couldn’t take care of them. I was lucky, because I had Julia’s family. It’s always felt like … like an obligation, somehow. As if I have some kind of duty to put everything right.’
Was that why you joined the police? Annika thought, but didn’t say.
‘Somewhere I believe in people’s innate goodness,’ Nina continued, her voice stronger now. ‘I think everyone can change, if we’re just given the chance. Mum tried, and it worked for a while, but she was too damaged for it to last.’
‘Is your mum dead?’ Annika asked cautiously.
‘Nine years ago. She died the day after David and Julia got married. Now all the others are gone too, apart from Filip.’
Annika was making an effort to keep up. ‘You said there were four of them who were like a family?’ she said. ‘David, Filip, Yvonne and … who was the fourth?’
‘Little Veronica. Veronica Paulson. But she’s dead too.’
‘Did you know her as well?’
Nina sighed deeply. ‘Not exactly. She and her mum came to visit us on Tenerife a couple of times, but I haven’t seen her since I moved back to Sweden.’
‘She can’t have been that old. How did she die?’
Nina sounded surprised when she replied. ‘You’ve just been writing loads of articles about that. She was murdered a few days ago.’
Everything around Annika stopped. There was total silence inside her head and time stood still. ‘What do you mean?’ she said, scarcely able to breathe.
‘She married that ice-hockey player,’ Nina said. ‘Sebastian Söderström.’
Part 2
AFTER EASTER
The Little Troll-Girl with the Matches
She arrived at Gudagården with no shoes and wearing a tattered dress. The lady from the Child Welfare Commission shoved her out of the car. The gravel on the drive was as sharp as glass beneath her feet.
‘Curtsy to your foster-mother and foster-father,’ the lady said, driving her forward towards the wall of people.
She stared at the ground. The people stared at her.
‘She looks like a troll,’ Foster-mother said.
The lady kicked the back of her knee and forced her head down. Quick as a polecat she spun round and bit the lady’s hand. Then she ran away across the gravel, cutting the soles of her feet.
After night had fallen, Foster-father pulled her down from the haystack. She landed on the stone floor hard on her hip. ‘Let’s see if we can’t whip the Devil out of you,’ he said, raising his riding-crop. And he beat her and beat her and beat her until the skin on her thighs and buttocks was in ribbons. Then he locked the door. She fell asleep in the hay and dreamed that she was lying in an anthill. The insects were eating into her legs and backside, constructing passageways under her skin, a whole society with paths and storerooms and nurseries and everything else ants needed, everything Sigrid had told her about the amazing life of ants.
When she woke up day had already broken. The hay was stuck to the scabs on her legs. She knew she needed to wash.
She found a loose plank at the back of the shed. The hole was narrow, and it was hard to get her head through, but her body slid after it, as if she was a little worm.
She had seen a lake out of the car window. It must be close by.
She took a long detour round the farm. There was nobody in sight.
She found a small beach with white sand under a large oak. She got into the water still wearing her dress and underwear. Her legs stung.
A wall-eyed boy caught sight of her when she was creeping back towards the farm. He called for Foster-father, who came rushing out, his big boots flapping. He was quick and she was weak with hunger and pain.
He tore her dress off and flayed the skin off her back as well.
‘You are never, ever to run away from this farm again,’ Foster-father hissed in her ear. ‘If you do, I’ll kill you.’
But she ran away, and he beat her, and she ran away, and he beat her.
In the end he got tired of beating her, and then she stopped running away.
She was given a room in the loft, with the baby swallows and the
wasps’ nests. From the crack of dawn the swallow parents would start flying in and out, bringing food to their young, gathering it in their beaks and stomachs, then vomiting it for their babies. Sigrid had told her about the amazing life of birds.
Sigrid had told her fairy tales as well. She had told her about other girls who also had a hard life, like the Little Match Girl.
‘So the little girl wandered along with her little feet red and blue with cold. She was carrying a great pile of matches in an old apron and she held one bundle in her hand as she walked. No one had bought any from her all day, no one had given her a halfpenny. Hungry and frozen, she went on her way, so woebegone, poor little thing! The snowflakes fell upon her long fair hair that curled so prettily at the nape of her neck, but she certainly wasn’t thinking about how nice she looked …’
The girl had unruly black hair that the Child Welfare Committee had cut short, so short, to get rid of the lice. She wasn’t a pretty girl, she was a little troll girl. She knew that because Foster-mother had told her. She was the Troll Girl with the Matches, even though she hadn’t sold matches but illicit homebrew, and it had all been going so well until Foster-mother ended up in prison and the Child Welfare Committee came to take her away.
At night she could see out through a crack in the roof, and once she saw a falling star.
The Little Match Girl had also seen a falling star in the fairy tale.
‘Her old granny, the only one who had been kind to her but who was now dead, had said that when a star falls a soul goes up to God …’
She wondered who was going up to heaven this time, and clasped her hands together and prayed to the Lord: O Father, let it be Foster-father next time, and then Wall-eye.
And she thought that one day she herself would be a grandmother, the sort who was kind to troll girls nobody liked.
But as time passed and the darkness came, and the cold, and the harvest was brought in, and she thought her back would break, her prayers changed.
The Long Shadow Page 18
