The Final Word

by Liza Marklund

  ‘In all likelihood, yes.’

  She reached for her cup. She felt his eyes on her and looked up.

  ‘If you’re done, perhaps you could switch the camera off?’ he said.

  She stood up and did as he asked.

  ‘You know,’ Kjell Lindström said, as she unscrewed the camera from its tripod. ‘My wife comes from Flen. We’ve lived in this house for thirty-nine years. I used to commute from here to Stockholm, all those years.’

  She felt the weight of the camera on her arm, unsure of where this was going.

  ‘So I’ve paid particular attention to local stories and criminal investigations, and I remember another fatality that occurred during the summer when Josefin was killed in Hälleforsnäs. Not too far from here. Sven Matsson, the hockey player. That was you, wasn’t it?’

  She dropped the tripod, which fell on to the grass with a thud. She bent to pick it up.

  ‘I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable,’ the prosecutor said. ‘But I know you have personal experience and knowledge of issues like this.’

  She stood up, her heart pounding.

  ‘Every experience teaches you something,’ he said.

  She didn’t feel like driving back to work straight away, didn’t want to get back to the disaster that was about to hit the newsroom.

  Outside the car, the countryside flew past, hills crowned with oak trees, meadows full of cows, rolling fields of ripening wheat, stretches of marshland full of nesting birds, houses that had stood there for centuries: rust-red timber cottages with their double chimneys, crooked barns and haylofts. This was her patch, her land, the view from the back of the Volvo when they had gone to get the week’s groceries on a Saturday from the ICA supermarket in Flen, Dad singing along to the radio, Annika arguing with Birgitta about hairgrips and sweets. The wind was making mirrors of the lakes, sending dazzling reflections into her eyes. She wished she’d brought a pair of sunglasses.

  The prosecutor remembered what she had done. There weren’t many people who did, these days. At the paper there had been a degree of gossip for the first few years, she was aware of that, but people gave up, things were forgotten, other things happened. Every so often a new temp would come to find her and ask breathlessly if it was true: had she really killed her boyfriend? She always replied by telling them that they shouldn’t believe gossip and should go straight to the source, and they would slink off, even though they had done exactly what she was encouraging them to do. It was such a long time ago now, so many years had passed.

  The bridge in Mellösa was being repaired and she turned left by the kiosk and headed slowly towards the Harpsund estate. Her grandmother had been the housekeeper at the prime minister’s summer residence for several decades, and had met all the senior Swedish politicians, as well as international figures like Nikita Khrushchev and Georges Pompidou. Annika’s mother and other adults would often ask about the politicians, what sort of food they liked and who drank most, but Grandma never said a word about her guests (which was how she thought of them: they were there to visit her).

  The model farm appeared on the left of the car and Annika slowed. She changed into a lower gear when she came to the manor house, and crawled slowly past the entrance. There was no one from the Security Police at the gate, so the prime minister wasn’t in residence.

  Harpsund Lake spread out down in the valley, and she thought she could just make out the famous rowing-boat, the one in which Swedish prime ministers would row foreign statesmen around.

  The forest grew thicker as she approached Granhed, and the road was narrower. The wind was no longer tugging so hard at the treetops and the sun was blazing. She wound the window down. The scent of moss and freshly cut grass found its way into the car.

  Had it been a mistake to move to Stockholm?

  She could have stayed here, working at Katrineholms-Kuriren. She could have had a garden of her own, joined local societies . . .

  Birgitta had chosen to work as a checkout assistant in a supermarket in Flen, and never bothered to get an education. Blonde, pretty and placid, she had her place among her friends and her workmates in the shop, and Mum loved her just as she was.

  Annika turned right after Granhed. The trunks of the birches shone bright white in the sunlight and the wind made the firs sigh. Some horses looked up as she drove past, an almost new-born foal among them.

  Just beyond Johanneslund she slowed down once more, looking along the side of the road. There it was, overgrown with grass and almost invisible, the turning to Lyckebo, her grandmother’s country cottage, right on the edge of the Harpsund estate. On the spur of the moment she turned off the road, drove a few metres over hidden roots and lumps of stone, then put the handbrake on and switched off the engine. Silence echoed through the car. She sat where she was for a few seconds, listening to the emptiness. Up ahead, half hidden between the trees, she could make out the forest track leading to the cottage. This was where she’d learned to ride a bike, and she’d learned to swim in the waters of Hosjön. This was where her childhood summers had merged together into an endless, sun-drenched rush of delight.

  She got out of the car, slung her bag over her shoulder and walked towards the gap in the edge of the forest without really thinking about it. The scene was so familiar, yet still alien. She hadn’t been here in more than ten years and, from the state of the track, neither had many others.

  The ground was springy under her feet after the previous day’s rain.

  The barrier across the track was locked so she went round it instead of climbing over.

  A large bird took off just beside her, making her jump. It could have been a grouse, but she didn’t have time to see it properly.

  The trunks of the conifers slid past her, the wind rustling their tops but not reaching all the way down. The ground was covered with bright green moss, like a carpet. She walked into a cobweb, the sticky threads clinging to her eyelashes.

  The feeling of timelessness was almost overwhelming: this was how the world had been before people arrived, and this was how it would be after they had gone, if they hadn’t contrived to kill every other living thing on the planet first.

  She reached the place where the bedrock shot up through the vegetation, hard and naked. This was where Sven had hunted her through the forest. This was where she had run that day. She could make out the lake through the trees, sparkling, and then she reached the clearing.

  The meadow of the old smallholding stretched uncut and overgrown towards the water. The grass around the cottage had grown as tall as her, and the patch of raspberries at the gable end was now an impenetrable thicket of thorns. The white birch trunks creaked. Part of the tree-house in the apple tree had collapsed – she’d helped her father to build it.

  The house was smaller than she remembered. This was where she had found her grandmother on the kitchen floor after her stroke. Her bag was beginning to feel heavy on her shoulder, and she carried it in her hand the last few steps. Out of habit she put her hand on the front door, but it was locked. Cautiously she went over to the kitchen window and looked inside. The rag-rug was gone, and the ugly pine hatch leading to the cellar was visible. The gatefold table was still there, but not its waxed cloth, and someone had removed the picture of the angel watching over children standing at the edge of a cliff. She could make out a dark rectangle on the panelled wall where it had hung. As a child she had been fascinated by it, the children reaching down to pick a flower, and the angel with its wings spread above them. The cottage had been used as a hunting lodge for a short while, but had evidently been abandoned.

  She took a deep breath. How long had Grandma rented this cottage? Forty years, almost? Where had the picture gone? She sat down on the porch steps and looked towards the lake. The whole place really did need sorting out. The wind whistled through the treetops.

  She took her mobile out and tried calling Birgitta’s number again, but the call went straight to voicemail.

  Annika brushed the hair from
her face, then rang the Regional Crime Unit in Stockholm and asked to speak to the duty officer, someone called Cecilia, apparently. She explained that her sister had disappeared, described when, where and how, and gave the woman Birgitta’s name, address and mobile number. She read out the text messages she had received, and when they had been sent.

  ‘Does she usually ask for your help?’ Cecilia asked.

  ‘Very occasionally,’ Annika said.

  ‘With what?’

  ‘Babysitting,’ Annika said. ‘Or somewhere to sleep when she’s missed the last train home.’

  Cecilia let out a sigh. ‘How was Birgitta’s relationship with her husband – what was his name? Steven?’

  ‘I don’t really know,’ Annika said truthfully.

  ‘I don’t think you need to be particularly worried,’ Cecilia said, ‘but I’ll take your details and write up a report so we’ve got it on file. Call your sister again and ask what she wants help with.’

  ‘Okay,’ Annika said. Relieved, she put her phone away, then wondered if there were any mushrooms in the forest yet, or if it was still too early.

  She went for a walk behind the barn and checked the spot where she used to pick chanterelles, but there was only moss and last year’s leaves. She went on towards the jetty, which turned out to be in a surprisingly reasonable state. She sat down and gazed across the water to the road that led to Johanneslund and Old Gustav’s cottage.

  She wondered if there was any chance of her being able to rent Lyckebo. Maybe Jimmy knew who in the government offices was responsible for the Harpsund estate . . .

  She closed her eyes: what was she thinking? In a few days’ time she might well be unemployed, her workplace shut down. How on earth could she afford to rent a cottage in the country? Getting Thomas released by his kidnappers had emptied her savings account. As a reporter on the shop-floor of the newsroom, she had no financial privileges or bonuses; her salary covered her share of the bills, the rent and the children’s clothes, but that was all. Jimmy was already paying more than her. She wasn’t about to ask him to provide her with a summertime refuge when he had already given her so much – he had given her himself.

  He was so utterly different from Thomas.

  Sometimes she wondered what it was about Thomas that had made her fall for him. He was extremely handsome, with his blond hair and broad shoulders, but mostly she had been very lonely when she met him, and he’d seemed interested and attentive, and had found her exciting and different. She ought to have known then that he was the unfaithful type (after all, he had been married to Eleonor when she’d met him). She should have been prepared when it started to happen, when he began going to ‘tennis practice’ or ‘worked overtime’, then got into the shower the moment he came home.

  When she’d eventually grasped what was going on, she’d handled it badly. She had become cold, distant and stiff. How much fun could it have been to be married to a block of ice?

  She had hated Sophia. She might not have posted any anonymous abuse on the internet, but what she had done was much worse. She had lied and plotted and abused her status as a journalist until she’d managed to get Thomas’s lover fired from her job. Things had turned out okay for Sophia though. She had found another job, and still lived in the penthouse apartment of the building on Östermalm owned by her family.

  She let herself be dazzled by the sparkling waves, then looked at the time and pulled her bag towards her. People are all pretty much the same, even murderers.

  Ignoring her laptop, she got out her pen and notepad. With the water lapping against the jetty, she gave herself free rein to firm up the ideas she had begun to formulate during the drive from Stockholm.

  She needed to push Josefin’s case up the priority list, to persuade the police to start working actively on it again, to get the prosecutor to react. Kjell Lindström had offered her two new angles: first, that the police regarded the murder as solved; and second, that the conviction of self-proclaimed serial killer Gustaf Holmerud was a miscarriage of justice.

  You can’t leave me like this. What am I going to do without you? Annika, for fuck’s sake, I love you!

  This was where Sven had chased her along the shore. She had slipped into the water, then run into the forest, her shoes squelching. All these pathetic men, obsessed with power, unable to take responsibility for anything, cowardly and arrogant. Killing because their women won’t obey them. Imagining that they won’t survive if they admit what they’ve subjected their victims to. That those around them won’t be able to deal with the truth, so they reshape reality to suit themselves. So much denial . . .

  Blinded by the shimmering water, she remembered that this was where she used to sit and write her diary.

  I’m fumbling. The darkness is so immense.

  It was thanks to her diary that she was convicted of causing another person’s death rather than manslaughter. The abuse she had described had gone on for several years, almost the entire duration of their relationship. Her descriptions persuaded the judge to agree with her defence lawyer that she had acted in self-defence.

  She didn’t need a psychologist to understand why she was still so upset by Josefin’s case. It had happened the same summer that Sven died, and now that she was being forced to think about him again, Josefin was there too, with her silent scream, the teenage girl who never got justice.

  Back at the car, she was sweating and a tick was crawling over her lower arm – she flicked it away.

  She wound the window down as she drove into Hälleforsnäs and let the wind pull at her hair. The surface of the road was black, freshly laid, and hissed as it stuck to the tyres.

  At the turning for the beach at Tallsjön she stared straight ahead. This was where her father had fallen asleep in a snowdrift on his way home. The driver of a snowplough had found him at half past four in the morning, frozen to death.

  She refused to look to the right, where he had been found beside the track leading to the lake. She hadn’t swum there since, stopped cycling past with her towel, a swimsuit and a drink.

  She turned left. The reclaimed industrial area ahead shimmered green with plants and trees. The old ironworks spread out on one side. It had kept the town alive for several centuries, but was now transformed into a discount outlet for discontinued clothing ranges from fancy labels. She could hardly object: it had to be a good thing that the site was being used.

  She slowed down as she drove up the slope behind the blast furnace. The area where she had grown up was known as Tattarbacken, ‘Gypsy Hill’, but perhaps that name was no longer used. She hoped so. Those blocks of flats deserved a better one – she deserved better than to be Annika from Tattarbacken. Didn’t she?

  She couldn’t avoid the peculiar feeling that the streets had shrunk, that they were narrower than they had been when she was a child. The roadsides, on the other hand, felt wider, barer. Ragged tufts of grass stuck up from the grit.

  She didn’t turn into Odenvägen, but stopped at the side of the road on the next street, just behind the electricity substation. Just ahead of her was number 112, a rust-red, two-storey house from the 1940s, built to house men employed at the works. There were no children playing in the gardens – probably at nursery or a holiday club – and the afternoon was silent and deserted.

  The window at the top left had been her room, the one she’d shared with Birgitta. The curtains were closed. They were new – she hadn’t seen them before. During her periods of sobriety her mother liked changing curtains and doing little things to the house. Next she focused on the kitchen window, one pane open. She thought she could see something moving inside, unless it was just the reflection of the neighbouring pine. The living room and her parents’ bedroom were on the north-facing side of the building.

  Without taking her eyes off the kitchen window, she rang the home number. Barbro answered gruffly.

  ‘Hi, Mum, it’s Annika.’

  ‘Have you heard from Birgitta?’

  She had been drinkin
g.

  ‘I’ve had two text messages sent to my old phone.’

  Her mother’s voice rose: ‘What does she say?’

  ‘She wanted me to help her with something, but I don’t know what.’

  ‘Help her? Is she in danger? Why aren’t you doing anything?’

  It was stuffy inside the car and Annika was finding it hard to breathe. ‘I’ve spoken to the police, and a prosecutor, and neither of them thinks there’s anything to worry about,’ she said.

  ‘How can they know?’ Barbro sounded beside herself.

  ‘I’ve filed a formal report about her disappearance and—’

  ‘Steven reported her missing, and you wouldn’t believe how offhand they were!’

  The kitchen window opened wider. Annika ducked instinctively. ‘Did he do that in Malmö?’ she asked.

  ‘They barely even bothered to write down his details! And they didn’t ask for a description.’

  ‘Mum,’ Annika said, ‘perhaps Birgitta doesn’t want to be found. Maybe she’s gone off of her own free will. Are you sure Steven’s telling the truth? That he’s never been violent towards her?’

  Her mother started crying. The window blew shut.

  ‘Birgitta would have told me – she tells me everything. Why doesn’t she get in touch?’

  Annika’s palm was so sweaty that she had to move the phone to her other hand. She was on the brink of hyperventilating, and forced herself to breathe calmly and slowly. ‘Mum,’ she said, ‘I’ll be in touch as soon as I hear anything, okay? Mum?’

  But Barbro had hung up.

  He liked travelling by train. His brother did too. Even if the carriages no longer rumbled along the tracks as they had when they were children and travelled between Korsträsk and Storblåliden, he felt comfortable in a way that he never was in cars or planes. The speed lulled him, and he enjoyed the irregular squeal of the rails, the smell of cleaning fluid.

  He had placed his case in the rack above his seat. He left it there, out of sight, and didn’t worry about it when he went to the restaurant car for coffee. The canvas was old and stained – years ago they had used it as a table and eaten soft-boiled eggs off it. He remembered the episode as if it was yesterday. They had just been to the dump and were on their way back when they stopped at a layby outside Moskosel to have their picnic lunch.