The Final Word

by Liza Marklund

  She’d walked past where Birgitta lived, on the other side of the main road.

  Branteviksgatan 5 was a block of flats with several different doorways. She walked round the whole building before she found the right one. The door had a coded lock and she waited several minutes until an elderly man came out and she was able to slip in.

  Her sister and brother-in-law lived on the eighth floor. The lift rattled up through the core of the building. The landing contained four doors, and smelt of cleaning fluid. There was a hand-painted wooden sign on theirs, with flowers and butterflies and their surnames.

  She stopped outside it and listened for sounds from inside the flat, but could hear nothing except the air-conditioning in the stairwell. She held her breath and rang the bell. Footsteps approached, a key rattled.

  Steven opened the door. He loomed in front of her, like Hercules, tall and broad-shouldered. He had cut his hair. ‘Annika,’ he said, clearly surprised, taking a step back. ‘What are you doing here?’ He sounded bemused, but not hostile.

  ‘I was in Copenhagen on a job and had a few hours spare,’ she said, stepping into the hall and dropping her bag on the floor. Now he’d have to throw her out if he wanted to get rid of her.

  ‘Diny, look who it is! Auntie Annika!’

  The little girl popped her head out of a room immediately to the left of the door, in a pink dress and pink hairclips. Annika knelt down, feeling Steven’s eyes on the back of her neck. ‘Hello, Destiny, remember me? You came to visit me once. I’ve got two girls, Ellen and Serena.’

  The girl ran to Steven and hid behind his legs. Annika stood up.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting this,’ he said. ‘What do you want?’

  She met his gaze. He was big and heavy, his eyes red-rimmed. What did Birgitta see in him? ‘Have you heard anything?’ she asked.

  He turned away. ‘Diny,’ he said, ‘would you like to get some biscuits out for Auntie Annika?’

  The child ran down the short corridor and disappeared to the left.

  ‘Something must have happened to her,’ Steven said, in a low voice, not loud enough to reach the kitchen. ‘Something awful.’ His hands were shaking.

  ‘We don’t know that,’ she said, thinking about the new job at Hemköp. She had decided not to mention it, because if Steven didn’t know, it was probably because Birgitta wanted to keep it a secret.

  He stood where he was, swaying, leaning forward. ‘Would you like anything?’ he asked, after a few moments. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Coffee would be good,’ she said.

  He all but shuffled towards the kitchen.

  Annika took her shoes off and put them on the pine rack. The building was very quiet – she couldn’t hear a sound from the neighbours. The little girl was talking in the kitchen, but she couldn’t make out what she was saying. Destiny’s room was in front of her, small and sparsely furnished, a bed and a desk. A doll’s house. Toys on a Billy bookcase. Annika took a few silent steps to a door that stood ajar, and pushed it open. A bedroom. The bed was made, with a bedspread from Ikea. Scatter cushions. A couple of wardrobes along one wall, ordinary size, no locks on the doors.

  She stood for a few seconds in the hall, trying to get her heart to slow down. Then she walked into the living room. A few canvases were lined up against one wall, butterflies and flowers, the same style as the sign on the door. She went over to them and tipped a couple forward to see what was behind them. Destiny looked back at her, strikingly realistic, but with bright red lips and long eyelashes. Annika lingered over the portrait, which was lovely but disquieting, a glamour picture of a three-year-old.

  ‘She’s good, isn’t she?’ Steven said from behind her, the pride in his voice unmistakable.

  Annika let go of the painting. ‘Birgitta’s started painting again?’

  ‘She’s been doing an evening course, even though she sometimes works late and can’t always get there.’

  Steven went to the window at the far end of the living room. Outside there was a glassed-in balcony. Annika joined him; she reached his shoulder.

  The view was remarkable. Red rooftops spread out as far as she could see, foliage, towers and housing blocks in the distance.

  ‘What a lovely flat,’ she said.

  ‘It’s my cousin’s,’ Steven said. ‘He’s moved to Kiruna, got a job in the mine. We’re subletting.’ He was still gazing at the view. ‘It feels like you can see the whole world.’

  ‘Why did you move here?’ Annika asked.

  A coffee-machine gurgled. Steven turned and disappeared towards the kitchen. Annika followed him slowly. The floor was cold in spite of the warm weather.

  A packet of Ballerina biscuits, with a chocolate filling, lay on the table. Destiny had climbed up into a child’s chair and was munching one. Steven put a glass of milk in front of his daughter, then took out cups for himself and Annika, saucers, spoons, sugar lumps and milk. He sat down heavily. Annika bit into a biscuit.

  Steven poured the coffee. ‘Birgitta’s got problems,’ he said. ‘I . . . We had to do something about it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He cast a quick glance at her, then turned to his daughter. ‘Diny, do you want to watch television? Pingu?’

  She nodded. He lifted her down from her chair and they went into the living room together. Annika heard the theme tune of the children’s programme.

  He came back into the kitchen and slumped on to his chair. ‘Birgitta drinks,’ he said. ‘So do I, sometimes, but I’m not an addict.’

  Annika looked hard at him, scepticism stinging her throat. ‘How do you mean, “drinks”?’

  ‘She was out of control. It just couldn’t go on like that. There were so many excuses, so many reasons to have a drink. It’s Friday, it’s Saturday, it’s been a bad day at work and you need cheering up, it’s been a good day and you want to celebrate.’

  ‘So you’ve got a problem as well. You do admit that?’

  ‘Who the fuck hasn’t got problems?’ he said. ‘Haven’t you?’

  Annika took another bite of the biscuit and the crumbs swelled in her mouth.

  Steven covered his eyes with his hand. ‘I’d been at a building site in Fjällskäfte. The roof was being relaid. When I got home, Birgitta was lying on the sofa. She’d been drinking wine and a whole bottle of Absolut. I couldn’t wake her up. Diny was in the bathroom, she’d done a poo and had managed to pull her pants off . . .’

  Annika washed the biscuit down with coffee.

  Steven fixed his eyes on the wall above her head. ‘Birgitta spent a week in the Kullbergska. She almost didn’t make it.’

  It was the hospital in Katrineholm.

  Annika stared distrustfully at him. ‘Does Barbro know about this?’ she asked.

  Steven drank some coffee. ‘No. She’d have had a fit. I told her we were on holiday in Finland.’ He finished the rest, grimaced and put the cup down on the saucer. ‘Birgitta had to get away from her friends and her mum. Away from all those people who drink to stop life seeming so shit.’

  ‘They just discharged her after she’d spent a week in the Kullbergska? Didn’t she get any aftercare, any rehab?’

  ‘She kept going as an outpatient until we moved.’

  ‘And Birgitta wanted to move to Malmö?’ Annika asked.

  ‘She was really sick of your mother.’

  Annika’s eyes narrowed: isolate, control, manipulate.

  ‘So what happened? Did she stop drinking when you got here?’

  ‘We both did. For me it wasn’t a problem, but Birgitta felt awful to start with.’

  She looked at his cheeks: he’d shaved. His clothes, jeans and T-shirt, were clean and ironed. Did that mean anything? If so, what?

  ‘I was thinking about Birgitta’s appearance,’ Annika said. ‘What was she wearing when she went missing?’

  Steven looked down at the table. Annika thought the colour of his face darkened slightly.

  ‘Her normal clothes. She gets changed at work.�
��

  ‘Mummy,’ Destiny said from the door. ‘Mummy’s at work.’

  She spoke with a Skåne accent. Great. That meant she went to nursery.

  ‘That’s right.’ His voice wobbled. ‘Mummy’s at work. She’ll be home soon.’

  ‘Do you remember which clothes?’

  He stood up and got more coffee. May had been unusually cold throughout the country, with night frosts even in the far south. If Birgitta had disappeared two weeks ago, she ought to have been wearing a jacket, trousers, proper shoes, maybe even a scarf. By Sunday the heatwave had already reached Skåne, so if she’d disappeared then she would have been wearing summer clothes.

  ‘I don’t remember, off the top of my head,’ he said.

  ‘Try to think.’

  He swallowed. ‘I think she was in shorts and a T-shirt. Sandals. Hair in a ponytail.’

  His hand was shaking more now.

  ‘Anything else you remember? A bag of any sort?’

  ‘The one she always uses, that pale one, leather.’

  Annika didn’t know it.

  He put his hands on top of each other and the shaking diminished. ‘What am I going to do if she doesn’t come back?’ he said.

  Annika didn’t know what to say. ‘Has she been the same as usual over the past few weeks?’ she asked instead.

  ‘Daddy, Pingu’s finished,’ Destiny called.

  He went out into the hall. When he came back he sat down again.

  ‘Have you got a job?’ Annika asked.

  He shook his head. ‘I might be able to get invalidity benefit,’ he said.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ she asked. She had spoken more sharply than she had intended.

  ‘Parkinson’s,’ he said. ‘It’s got a bit better since they put me on Madopar.’

  ‘Have you had it long?’

  ‘Ages,’ he said. ‘But I was only diagnosed last autumn. I should have got checked out earlier, I’d been feeling shit for so long, but you always think it’ll pass, don’t you?’

  Annika blushed. She had always dismissed him as a useless layabout. Had Birgitta had enough of her sick husband and decided to make a new life for herself? ‘I’ve got a friend at National Crime,’ she said. ‘She’s putting a bit of pressure on them to trace Birgitta’s mobile.’

  Steven hid his face in his hands. ‘Where do you think she could be? You grew up with her. Where could she have gone?’

  Annika felt inadequate. She ought to know. ‘I’ll be in touch as soon as I hear anything,’ she said.

  Destiny was sitting in her room, wearing an enormous pair of headphones and staring at a little iPad as Annika put her shoes on. She decided against disturbing the child. She closed the front door quietly behind her, and took the stairs down.

  The air smelt intoxicatingly fresh when she stepped out of the door. She walked quickly without looking back until she was out of sight of Steven’s balcony. Then she stopped and leaned against a wall. She needed a toilet. She rested her head against the bricks, took some deep breaths, then called Nina Hoffman. No answer. She tried calling the Hemköp supermarket at Triangeln again, but found herself talking to the same receptionist. ‘I’d like to talk to someone in charge,’ she said.

  ‘What’s it concerning?’

  ‘I’ve found a piece of glass in a jar of baby food.’

  The receptionist disappeared, and the line crackled. Then a different woman came on the line.

  ‘Good afternoon, my name’s Annika Bengtzon, I’m trying to reach my sister, Birgitta Bengtzon. I wondered if she was working today.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Birgitta Bengtzon, from Hälleforsnäs. She’s only just got the job. Maybe she hasn’t started work yet.’

  ‘Where did you say she works?’

  ‘On the checkouts.’

  ‘No, that can’t be right.’

  Annika swallowed. ‘Could I talk to the store manager?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s me,’ the woman said. ‘You said you’d found a piece of glass in a jar of baby food?’

  ‘Oh, no, not at all,’ Annika said. ‘There must have been some sort of misunderstanding. Sorry for disturbing you.’

  She disconnected the call.

  Everyone was lying.

  GREGORIUS

  (posted 3 June, 16.53)

  To me, equality means fucking a sexist feminist whore in the vagina with a large knife. The best thing you can do for equality in Sweden is go out with a baseball bat and beat a sexist feminist bitch to death.

  The rockface felt warm and rough beneath Anders Schyman’s hands. If he closed his eyes he could almost have been on his island in the archipelago: the smells and sounds were similar, the movement of the water and the tang of seaweed. The background noise was different, though, people and traffic.

  He didn’t know where he was. But that didn’t bother him: he had satnav in the car.

  He squinted at the surface of the water. The reflections dazzled him in a way he loved – he was overwhelmed with light.

  He had taken off his shirt and put it beside him on the rocks. His pale body had turned pink in the sun, and his shoulders stung. He was somewhere out on Värmdö, he knew that much, on a rockface where the road ended and the sea began. He could see islands.

  He had been stuck in traffic on his way to the newspaper, just like every other morning, when something inside him had snapped. He had put the car into gear and driven along the hard shoulder, overtaking the entire queue on the inside, jolting along the verge at times, but what else was his SUV for?

  He had driven without any clear destination, and with even less hesitation. For the first time ever he called his secretary and said he wouldn’t be at work today. She had sounded curious, but didn’t ask why.

  A boat engine started up some distance away, then spluttered and died.

  He ran his hand over the rock, gathering grit and pine needles between his fingers. The sea was his solace, his desire and eternity. When he imagined Paradise, it looked like the Rödlöga archipelago, all grey skerries and hissing sea. Unfortunately his wife’s idea of Paradise was rather different. She liked the theatre and neatly trimmed lawns. As long as they lived together he wouldn’t be able to disappear to his island.

  He wasn’t expecting any reward in the afterlife but his wife was a believer, a characteristic he secretly envied. They had discussed religion at the start of their relationship, but the subject had been dead and buried for decades. For him faith, no matter what the religion, was incomprehensible. How was it possible for educated, intelligent adults to believe in fairy tales? In all seriousness?

  He could understand the cultural, traditional, ethical and moral aspects, that you could be raised as a Catholic or a Jew or a Muslim, in the same way that you were Swedish, a Social Democrat, or a Djurgården fan from birth, but truly believing? Living under the delusion that we had been created by a higher power who, for no discernible reason, also happened to wish us well?

  To him it seemed blindingly obvious that the exact opposite was true.

  When human beings became aware of their own existence, they also realized they would die. And they couldn’t handle that awareness, so they constructed a higher purpose for their pointless life on Earth.

  Man had created God in his own image, someone who protected and looked after him: an all-encompassing power for us to lean on, pray to and rely on.

  To start with, God had been a woman, the good mother who gave life and food. As humans abandoned their lives as hunter-gatherers and settled in fixed abodes, conflict had broken out, the patriarchy had taken control and God had become a man.

  He sighed, sifting the pine needles between his fingers. The boat engine started up again, and this time the sound continued. It merged with that of his mobile phone, and he looked around the rock in some confusion. It had been silent all day. He had told his secretary he wouldn’t be taking any calls, but it was definitely ringing now. His wife, perhaps?

  He fumbled for his shirt. His phone
was in the breast pocket. No, not his wife. It was the paper. He sighed and took the call.

  ‘I’ve got that serial killer on the line,’ his secretary said. ‘Gustaf Holmerud. He’s very persistent and insists on talking to you.’

  These days, religion was rather overlooked. Schyman had read somewhere (probably in his own newspaper) that more Swedes believed in ghosts than in God. That probably wasn’t true, but the fact remained that Sweden was probably the most secular country on the planet. That didn’t mean they were more rational or heedless of guidance than earlier generations, just that they relied on other things instead.

  ‘What does he want?’ Anders Schyman asked.

  God had been the guiding principle: his will had shaped people’s daily lives, established society’s norms and moral boundaries. His word could be read in the Bible; that was the Truth. He had given humanity his stories. People begged him for mercy, confessed to him, and prayed for the forgiveness of their sins. God judged and condemned, crushed and forgave. But not any more.

  ‘He sounds very angry,’ his secretary said.

  The newspapers and television were where people confessed now: celebrities who had been caught speeding, sports stars who had taken performance-enhancing drugs, politicians who had drunk too much, murderers who claimed they were innocent.

  ‘Okay, put him through,’ Schyman said.

  ‘Hello?’ a voice said.

  Yes, hello, this is God.

  ‘This is Anders Schyman,’ he said. ‘What can I do for you?’

  Gustaf Holmerud took a whistling breath. ‘This is harassment!’ he said, sounding strained. ‘Bullying!’

  Schyman moved the phone to his other ear. ‘You sound upset.’

  ‘The tabloids are tormenting me!’ Gustaf Holmerud said, his voice trembling. ‘You just lie and make things up.’

  Then came what sounded like a sniff.

  Schyman wasn’t clear what was going on. ‘You’re welcome to give your own version of any stories we print,’ he replied amiably.

  ‘You said in your paper that I’m a miscarriage of justice! That I didn’t commit the crimes I was found guilty of! How can you print something like that without talking to me first?’