The Golden Cage

by Camilla Lackberg

  “I want ten percent,” Irene said.

  “Five,” Faye said. Her heart was thudding in her chest.

  “Seven.”

  “Deal.”

  She had to make a real effort not to let out a shriek and dance with joy. Instead she got to her feet and Irene did the same. They met in the middle of the room and shook hands.

  Irene fished a card from her handbag.

  “Call me whenever you need anything. This is my direct number. You don’t have to go through my secretary.”

  When Faye emerged onto the street her mobile buzzed. She didn’t want to be disturbed, she wanted to savor this moment, but when she saw it was Chris she answered.

  “She’s on board, Chris! Irene fucking Ahrnell is on board!”

  “Brilliant!” Chris said enthusiastically. “So you’re quite pleased, then?”

  “Pleased?” Faye said as she set off toward Stureplan. “I’m over the moon! Revenge is going to be available in all her stores. And she’s promised to use her international contacts if the Swedish launch is successful. Have you any idea how fantastic that is?”

  “Yes, I have. But we’ll have to celebrate later. Right now I’ve got two people who want to talk to you.”

  “Okay?” Faye said uncertainly.

  “Hang on, I’ll put you on speaker.”

  “Hi, Faye, my name is Paulina Dafman,” a hoarse voice said. “I’m sitting here with my friend Olga Niklasson. Have you got a minute?”

  Faye’s heart skipped a beat. Olga Niklasson and Paulina Dafman were two of the biggest Instagram profiles in Sweden. Between them they had three million followers.

  “Yes, absolutely.”

  “We’re sitting in the Grand Hôtel drinking cava with Chris. And we loooove Chris! And she told us about what had happened to you, about that treacherous bastard, and about your business idea, and we’re very interested. Is there any chance that we could get involved and help you with this?”

  “You want to get involved?”

  “Absolutely!” they said in chorus. “And I’m sure we can bring in a few more girls with good accounts. We know everyone who’s anyone, you know.”

  “They really do,” Chris said. “They know me, for instance…”

  Faye stifled a giggle.

  She was bursting with joy when she hung up. An older woman with a dachshund in her arms looked at her in surprise. Faye smiled broadly at her and the woman hurried on.

  Faye paused to study her reflection in the plate-glass window of Svenskt Tenn, and knew she was looking at a winner.

  PART THREE

  A fan was whirring far too loudly somewhere, detracting from the luxurious impression the law firm was trying to convey.

  Jack had asked to see her while he was in custody. Faye’s lawyer snorted and shook her head when she told her.

  “I can’t understand how he’s got the nerve to ask to see you. How can he possibly imagine that you’d want to, after what he’s done?”

  Faye didn’t answer. She slowly stirred her tea as she sat in the meeting room. She stared almost hypnotized at the ripples in the red-bush tea, the maelstrom in the middle that seemed to swallow everything.

  Her lawyer put a sympathetic hand on her shoulder.

  “The prosecutor is going to press for life. There’s no chance he’ll get anything less, given the evidence. You’ll never have to see him again after the trial.”

  “But is it going to be possible to prove anything? Without her…” Faye’s voice cracked. “Without her body?”

  “There’s enough evidence besides that. And then there’s his abuse of you. Believe me, he won’t be getting out for a very long time.”

  Faye stopped stirring. She put the spoon on a white napkin and cautiously raised the cup to her lips. The tea burned her tongue but she welcomed the pain. These days it was her friend. The pain lived in the murky waters where she kept all her secrets.

  Ingrid Hansson, the reporter from Dagens Industri, was picking at a Caesar salad. Faye was making do with green tea. The digital recorder was between them, its recording light flashing.

  “It really is a remarkable journey that you’ve been on with Revenge,” Ingrid Hansson said. “After your divorce from Jack Adelheim you went from being a housewife to the owner and CEO of a company that’s expected to reach a turnover of one and a half billion kronor this year. What’s the secret?”

  Faye raised the cup to her lips and took a sip.

  “Hard work, I’d say. And knowledgeable and engaged investors.”

  “But it all started with your divorce?”

  Faye nodded.

  “When Jack and I separated I hadn’t a clue what to do with my life. I started a dog-walking business and spent my days doing that. In the evenings I worked on my business plan.”

  “Was it a messy divorce, given the name of your company? Revenge?”

  The question was posed in a neutral way, but she knew it was a land mine. Faye was familiar with the whole media game by now. The worst ones were always the journalists who pretended to be your friend, who tried to play on sympathy. The ones who liked to hang around once they’d put the recorder away to chat “off the record.”

  In the world of the media there was no such thing as “off the record,” nor “you mustn’t use this.” They were merciless. But Faye knew how to exploit them. She crossed her legs and clasped her hands together on her lap. She could afford an expensive wardrobe of her own now, she saw it as a uniform, armor. She used her clothes to signal power and success. Today she had chosen an Isabel Marant jacket and a Chanel skirt. But the blouse was a bargain from Zara. She liked mixing things up, not dressing from head to toe in expensive designer gear.

  “Messy, no. But it was difficult. Like all divorces.”

  “How would you describe your relationship today?”

  “We have a daughter, and we shared more than ten years of our lives. If Compare does end up going public, I’ll probably buy a few shares.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, I was involved in the early years. Naturally I want to support the company now.”

  Ingrid Hansson wiped her mouth.

  “So the name Revenge has nothing to do with your divorce?” she asked. “I’ve heard a lot of rumors about how you sold the idea to your backers.”

  Faye laughed.

  “Every good product comes with a good story. Stories that take flight and spread across the internet and social media. I can’t exactly claim that that’s been a disadvantage. It’s simply good business to find something that an awful lot of women have in common.”

  Ingrid nodded and changed the subject to performance indicators, the most recent accounts, international expansion, and the prestigious awards Revenge had won for its marketing. Also a fair number of questions about Faye’s private investments, primarily in property, which had made such a significant contribution to her own personal fortune. Faye was happy to share information and advice. She had nothing to hide. Not when it came to her finances, anyway.

  Half an hour later the interview was over. Ingrid Hansson left Faye’s office in a prestigious building on Birger Jarlsgatan. Faye looked on thoughtfully as the reporter left, leaning against the wall in the window alcove as she granted herself a few rare minutes of peace.

  Once the merry-go-round started to spin everything had happened at breakneck speed. The three years that had passed since the divorce had exceeded all expectations. Revenge was a huge success, bigger than she could ever have dreamed of. She had underestimated the impact her marketing campaign and products would have. Women had loved the company’s angle and, after only six months, shops in France and Britain had bought licenses to sell her products. And they had recently signed a contract with one of the biggest retailers in the United States.

  The big breakthrough had come about thanks to I
nstagram. The influence wielded by Paulina Dafman, Olga Niklasson, and their friends over a new, young generation of women turned out to be greater than she had ever dared hope. For hundreds of thousands of women in Sweden, they were the new ideal. The 2010s Sophia Loren, Marilyn Monroe, and Elizabeth Taylor. Whatever they wore, other women wanted to wear. Whatever they bought, other women wanted to buy. As ambassadors for Revenge they had written inspirational posts about female empowerment and had been happy to advertise products that fit in perfectly with the feminist winds that were blowing through Sweden. Revenge couldn’t have been more perfectly timed.

  In her more cynical moments Faye wondered where the feminist message lay in advertisements featuring well-toned women in bikinis turning their pert backsides to the camera to sell Revenge diet tea. But Chris had pointed out rather bluntly that you had to take whatever feminism was on offer, and that the path was never going to be perfectly straight. Besides, the internet was crawling with their male equivalents taking pictures of their bare torsos and advertising protein shakes. And was there any real difference, when it came to it?

  The online store she had opened, with a special forum where women could share stories of how they had gotten their revenge on their husbands, had struggled to cope with demand. The forum was overflowing with stories. More poured in every day, they never seemed to stop. Another vital tool was Facebook. They had been able to target their advertising at the precise audience they were after: well-educated, aware women. Customers who also had money, which meant they could charge a higher price and make more of a margin on each item sold.

  At first all sales were online. When it was time for Irene Ahrnell’s department stores to introduce Revenge’s products, Faye realized that something extra was needed to maintain the hype and mystique that had been built up online. She contacted a dozen female artists, authors, and actors and invited them each to design one piece of packaging, giving them full artistic freedom. Backed up by a huge campaign on social media. And all of it launched under the magical concept of the “limited edition.”

  Young women lined up outside stores to get hold of Revenge products bearing their idols’ imprinted messages about the sisterhood. They suddenly found themselves reaching new target groups. Within their limited forum, they had managed to foster a spirit of revolution.

  Kerstin cleared her throat in the doorway.

  “You’re picking Julienne up at four o’clock today.”

  “Any meetings booked before that?”

  “No, you asked to keep this afternoon free.”

  “Of course, that’s right. Thanks.”

  “See you at home this evening,” Kerstin said, and closed the door.

  She seemed tense today, and Faye wondered why. Then she remembered that Kerstin had been to visit Ragnar at lunchtime. She was always unsettled after seeing him. When Faye asked why she still visited him, Kerstin had replied: “I’m still his wife, in spite of everything. I only go to stop the staff phoning and nagging me. Besides, it gives me a certain satisfaction to see him lying there helpless. But I always fantasize about one day smothering him with a pillow.”

  Faye looked out of the window again. The traffic was rumbling by down below. It would soon be October, when Compare was going to be launched on the stock market, after years of speculation. And that meant that the second part of the plan could begin. After so much hard work, everything depended on whether she was successful in the coming months. She picked up her bag, containing the Dell computer she had bought earlier, and left the office. In Sturegallerian she found a café where most of the clientele were pupils playing truant from the private schools nearby.

  She listened idly to their conversations, about which Gucci bag they’d like for their birthday, someone complaining about having to go on a family holiday to the Maldives because “there’s, like, nothing to do there.” She ordered coffee from an uninterested waitress, sat at one of the corner tables, opened the laptop, and connected to the Wi-Fi. Jack had had the same password since Julienne was born. During all their years together he hadn’t changed it more than a couple of times. And he was a creature of habit.

  Or at least he always used to be.

  The very earliest documents relating to Compare were saved as PDF files in his Gmail account. But she could only access them if he was using the old password: Julienne100730. Faye raised the white coffee cup to her lips and took a sip. Her hand was shaking. Every step she’d taken over the last three years had been leading up to this. It all hinged on the supposition that Jack was too lazy to change his password.

  She tapped in the letters and numbers, then clicked to log in.

  Wrong password.

  She tried again.

  Wrong password.

  She stifled a cry of frustration. The bastard had finally gotten around to changing it. She slammed the laptop shut and left the café.

  What was she going to do now? She had to get into his emails.

  Ten minutes later she was back in the office. As she reached the door the first raindrops had started to fall. Kerstin looked up at her expectantly.

  Faye shook her head.

  “Can you ask Nima to come and see me?” she said, and hurried into her office.

  Nima, a skinny guy with pale skin and hairy arms, was Revenge’s IT expert. Socially inept, but a genius when it came to computers.

  Faye hung her coat up and waited for him behind her desk.

  He appeared in the doorway a couple of minutes later.

  “You needed help?” he said.

  Faye smiled.

  “Come in,” she said, gesturing toward the visitor’s chair.

  He sat down, rubbing his hands anxiously.

  “Is anything wrong?”

  “Not at all,” she said, flashing him a disarming smile. “Quite the contrary. I need your help with something. It’s a bit embarrassing.”

  “Okay?”

  “It’s Julienne, my daughter. She’s been given a computer, and I’m a bit worried she might be looking at unsuitable sites. I’d like to be able to keep an eye on what she’s getting up to. I’m a real worrier, I just can’t help it.”

  Nima nodded.

  “I understand.”

  “Is it possible to do anything?”

  “What sort of information do you want?”

  “Her password for Facebook, that sort of thing. You can’t help worrying these days, children will talk to anyone and they’re so naïve.”

  Nima frowned.

  “That can be sorted. I suggest you install a key logger on her computer. Then you’ll be able to see everything without having to sign in to her social media.”

  “How would a…”

  “Key logger…You just have to activate it on her computer. Then whenever you want you can download everything that’s been typed in, in the form of an ordinary text file. Every keystroke gets registered, it’s as simple as that. You can follow her every move without having to sign in to her Facebook or Snapchat accounts.”

  “And there’s no way she’d know I was doing it?”

  “No, not if it’s hidden among all the other files. It would be buried in the background. And it would record everything without her knowing.”

  “Great. How do I get hold of one of these key loggers?”

  “Give me a minute,” Nima said, and stood up.

  He was soon back, holding a black USB stick.

  Faye pushed her chair back, and he inserted the stick into one of the ports on her computer and showed her how to install the program.

  “I’ve got kids too, so I know what it’s like,” he said.

  Faye looked at him in surprise. She would hardly have believed he had a girlfriend.

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Astrid. Ten years old, and on the internet all the time. You can’t help worrying as a parent
.”

  “You must have been very young when you had her.”

  “Twenty. Planned, though, weirdly enough. I’ve always been old for my age.”

  “And you’re still with…?”

  “Johanna.” He lit up when he said her name. “Oh yes, we’re married.”

  Faye raised her eyebrows. People never ceased to surprise her.

  Money does something to people. Back when Faye was still Mrs. Adelheim the other children’s parents used to call pretty much every weekend to invite Julienne to parties and playdates. They strained so hard that they practically shat themselves trying to pretend that it was their kids who wanted to see Julienne. The truth was that they wanted to cozy up to her and Jack. Or Jack, to be more precise. She was merely an accessory, a way to get at a successful man.

  Julienne was their ticket to being invited to dinner, so they could bask in Jack and Faye’s reflected glory in the hope that some of their success would rub off on them.

  They stopped talking to her after the divorce. The phone stopped ringing. Enskede might as well have been Mogadishu or Baghdad as far as they were concerned. There wasn’t a parent on Lidingö who was prepared to send their child there, not without a bodyguard and a load of vaccinations. They called Jack instead. And he in turn delegated the calls to Ylva, who had to spend a fair chunk of her time coordinating parties and playdates on the weekends they had Julienne. Not that that was ever more than one weekend per month.

  Things couldn’t have been more different after Faye’s success with Revenge.

  Julienne had started at Östermalm School. Jack had wanted her to go to the private school, Carlsson’s, where the royal family’s children went, or Fredrikshov Palace School, because there were rumors that was where the soccer player Zlatan Ibrahimovic´ was planning to send his sons, but Faye had refused. She didn’t want Julienne to grow up into the sort of teenager who complained loudly about having to go on trips to the Maldives.

  Okay, so there weren’t exactly a lot of kids on welfare at Östermalm School, but at least there were a few children who didn’t take it for granted that the summer would be spent in Marbella or New York, Christmas in the Maldives, and half-term in their family’s chalet in Verbier or Chamonix.