Babylon (24 page)

Tell nodded and tucked a plug of chewing tobacco under his top lip.

‘I wanted to ask if you knew of a friend or associate of Torsen’s; according to one of my colleagues his name is Pedersen. Rick or Rikard. Quite young, it would seem.’

Dragsted shook his head.

‘No . . . I can’t say I recognise the name.’

Tell’s optimism fell like a stone. ‘He and Torsen came to Gothenburg.’

‘Did Torsen die of an overdose, by the way?’

‘Yes. But he was badly beaten just before he died. It looks as if he was involved in something much bigger than breaking and entering.’

‘Like what?’

‘Worst-case scenario, a double murder.’

‘Premeditated murder? Are you sure?’

‘No. But certain factors are pointing in that direction.’

Dragsted let out a low whistle. ‘Bloody hell. It wouldn’t have surprised me if Torsen had killed somebody in the heat of the moment, he’s always been a fiery bugger. But premeditated . . . Then again, why not? After all, he’s lived his whole life in that world, so it’s hardly surprising if he ended up damaged.’

Once again he lapsed into deep thought.

‘Pedersen, you say.’ He scratched his chin. ‘There’s a . . . there’s a woman. A working girl. Her name is Cilla Pedersen, the name doesn’t ring any other bells.’

Tell couldn’t hide his disappointment. ‘I suppose Pedersen is a pretty common name?’

‘Yes. But, then again, this is quite a small world.’

Tell wasn’t sure whether the other man meant the world in general,
or the underworld in particular. He just wanted to go home to bed and sleep.

‘Are you OK?’ Evidently Tell looked as bad as he felt.

‘More or less,’ Tell replied.

They stood up and Tell held out his hand, but his colleague didn’t take it. ‘Just give me two minutes before you go.’

He left the room, and Tell heard him making a phone call. Dragsted had been speaking a form of Danish which made considerable concessions to Swedish, much to Tell’s relief, but now he was talking in the language Tell would never, ever understand.

It took a while. Tell rested his head on the palm of his hand and, having been offered water, swallowed a couple of painkillers. Just when he had decided not to wait any longer – it was getting late – Dragsted returned.

‘Christian, listen. I checked out Cilla Pedersen. She’s got a brother called Enrique Pedersen; he’s younger than her, only twenty-two.’

‘Enrique Pedersen – have you got anything on him?’

‘Not really, just a minor offence before he turned eighteen. But that’s not to say he isn’t in league with the big boys now.’

Tell thought feverishly before nodding to Dragsted. ‘Is there any chance—’

‘That we could help out? I don’t see why not.’ He looked at Tell sympathetically. ‘How do you feel about coming back to Copenhagen with me now? I’m sure we can pick him up in no time.’

Tell simply couldn’t do it, he didn’t have the strength.

‘Could you try to pick Pedersen up tomorrow and give me a call? I can be back in a couple of hours.’

35

Stenared

Seja was struggling up the slope on her bike. Perhaps it would help if she put gravel down. But, no, it would probably just get washed away
in the November rains, turning into a muddy porridge that she would trail into the house.

The word
Solisinn
was inscribed on a white wooden archway above the gate leading to one of the cottages. It had an air of abandonment and neglect. Perhaps the owner had died, and none of the relatives were interested. The white shutters were rotting and a lace curtain covered the glass pane in the front door; the inside was completely shielded from view. The garden was overgrown, although it was obvious that once upon a time someone had looked after it well. There was an overgrown thicket of raspberry canes and something that might once have been a vegetable patch.

If you were in the garden you could easily believe that the forest went on forever, but it merely formed a horseshoe-shape around the plot. Beyond the trees there was a huge clearing, which was just beginning to grow again. Small signs of life, but something was definitely happening: birch and fir saplings among the low-growing blueberry bushes.

The garden at Solisinn was the starting point for the walk to the lake which Seja had marked out when she was relatively new to the area. She had marked it proudly with red paint, because Åke had insisted that the route was blocked for good, thanks to storms and fallen trees. It took an hour of climbing over logs and rocks, but it was worth it. No one ever visited the Stenared side of Älsjön, which was wild and beautiful. She had never seen a soul at the place where she went to swim. But she wasn’t heading for the lake today.

Seja liked the warm breeze blowing through her hair. She allowed the bike to bounce through the hollows in the gravel track, not bothering to apply the brakes, enjoying the feeling of speed and allowing it to blow away at least some of her pent-up frustration.

Frustration about Christian, and now about Hanna too. Seja suddenly felt as though she had lost the ability to interact with other people.

What’s the matter with me? Do I care too much about what people think?

She couldn’t share the thoughts running through her head with anyone. But they were there, and they were very wearing. Brooding over petty irritations took up time and energy. And it annoyed her
that she always ended up in the conciliatory role she recognised from her childhood, the one she had taken so that she would have someone to play with. She would always smile, tilt her head to one side and understand.

As Hanna had said, ‘It’s so nice to talk to you, Seja, you understand. You let me get everything off my chest.’

Seja had thought Hanna seemed tense earlier in the day; she was smoking more heavily than usual. She immediately started talking about the contact family she had finally applied for through social services.

‘He’s going to spend one whole weekend there every month, they live outside Alingsås. They’re getting on a bit, she’s a lovely woman who used to work in textiles. And the best thing is that they’ll pick him up and bring him back. I said I didn’t have a car or a driving licence and there was just no way I could do it. I mean, if I ended up trailing back and forth on the train it wouldn’t be much of a rest for me, would it?’

Seja didn’t understand. ‘A contact family – what are you talking about?’

‘So Markus and I get some time apart. I mean, I spend all my time with him on my own and I told the social worker that sometimes I could just scream:
I want some me time!
She understood, she was fantastic.’

‘Well, of course it’s hard being a single mum,’ Seja said evasively, and it was somewhere around that point that she slowly began to slip into the role she despised more than anything.

Was it because she really wanted to remind Hanna about Markus’ biological father? He was desperate to get to know his son, but Hanna had shown him the door. Or did she want to point out that Hanna did have time to herself, every day when Markus was at nursery, since she was still signed off sick for spurious reasons?

Seja’s fear of conflict manifested itself in strange ways. In certain situations she came across as strong and hard-nosed, dominant even. In others she was terrified of rocking the boat. Do you think I bloody well enjoy changing old folk’s nappies? she wanted to burst out. Don’t you think I suffer from stress and the early mornings? All those thousands of single mums who actually work full-time as cleaners, don’t you think they suffer? They suffer, but they don’t go
to some half-soaked doctor whining about how difficult it all is. They don’t get used to living in the half-light, trudging off to nursery in tracksuit bottoms then going back home to bed, sleeping until noon then spending the rest of the day surfing the net or sitting around drinking coffee with the other mums who are signed off sick, moaning about their hard lives: how misunderstood they are, how exhausting it is to . . .

You’ve got to stop thinking that way
.

Seja slowed down after being forced to brake for a car which appeared incredibly quietly beyond the lilacs where the cycle track crossed a side road; she took a couple of deep breaths and tried to think things through.

I sometimes find life oppressive, she thought. I sometimes find it difficult to make ends meet. I’m anxious about my professional future. I’m worried that I might not make it as a journalist, that I might not get enough work to keep my head above water. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t so isolated, I wish I could hand over the responsibility for my life to someone else. And I’m sure that’s why I get so bloody furious – yes, furious – with Hanna. Because she’s just given up. And it doesn’t even seem to bother her.

I’m displacing my unhappiness with my own fear of failure by transferring it to Hanna.

After Hanna had finally gone home, Seja had become hot with indignation. She was very fond of Hanna, but she found it difficult to listen to her friend going on about her life. She had suppressed her irritation, smiling and nodding even as a stale taste filled her mouth.

The conversation had taken a new turn. They had walked through the forest to the lake and gone for a swim, screaming in the cold water. Hanna had insisted she’d seen a water snake and panicked, which meant their spring dip had come to an abrupt end. They dried out on the flat rock, perfectly shaped for two resting bodies.

Seja had closed her eyes and reached out to pick little blueberry flowers, popping them in her mouth. They had a slightly acidic apple flavour, with just a hint of the sweetness to come. She took pleasure in the warm, silky smoothness of the rock and the friendship that had meant so much, and would mean so much in the future.

It was only when she had re-established contact with Hanna that
Seja realised she had been lonely in the past, even when she was still with Martin. Most of their mutual friends had disappeared off the radar since the split. Martin had been the sociable one, after all, and Seja . . . Seja had just been Martin’s girlfriend. She liked the idea of an affinity with other people, but sometimes it was just that sometimes it felt like such bloody hard work.

But what do we really know about anyone else? Perhaps everybody felt the same from time to time. At least in Christian she had found the same existential loneliness. He had mentioned the experience of being in the middle of a social gathering and still feeling isolated – for a second the world shifted as one of the last gaps between them was bridged.

Seja had believed that the only thing that could fill the emptiness was a relationship with a man. But she had felt a new kind of closeness with Hanna. She had enjoyed the time they spent together, doing simple things. So now that the differences between them had created a sudden distance, she had wanted to be honest and find a way back to the uncomplicated friendship they had had. Instead, she had upset Hanna.

Suddenly she realised that her tongue was as rough as if she had just crossed a desert and her eyes were dry from the warm breeze in her face. She quickly ran into a small shop to grab a drink and buy a phone card. Afterwards, she pushed her bike slowly along the side of the road towards the local community centre at Bergumsgården; her mind was too restless and her legs too weary to cycle straight home.

The gates were open and a poster had been put up just inside:
Try our yoga classes
.

Find your inner peace
.

Yes please, Seja thought. She couldn’t help but smile. She wanted somebody to remind her that she was making a mountain out of a molehill; no relationship worth anything should be so fragile that it couldn’t withstand honesty or a little friction.

Hanna had talked about how difficult it was to find someone to really talk to, unless you had plenty of money to pay for it.

‘I think you’d feel better if you had a job and more structure in your everyday life,’ Seja had said, and when Hanna didn’t seem to understand, she had continued, ‘I mean, mightn’t these doctors who
keep signing you off sick actually be doing you a disservice?’

Hanna had stood up and started drying her hair. The towel hid her expression, but Seja sensed a shift in her friend’s mood.

‘Those doctors who keep signing me off sick? You make them sound like charlatans—’

‘No, that’s not what I mean. I just mean that you’re a clever woman. You could do anything, study anything, work as . . . Oh, I don’t know. Do something fantastic with your life!’

‘And I’m not doing that now? I’m doing nothing now, is that what you’re saying?’

Seja tried to laugh away Hanna’s outburst, but the laughter stuck in her throat.

‘Come on, Hanna, it’s as if you’re deliberately trying to misunderstand me! Be honest, have you never thought about what you want to do with your life? How long are you thinking of being signed off on the sick?’

‘For as long as I need to be. Until I’m ready to go out to work.’

Hanna pulled on her skirt, half-turned away from Seja. It had suddenly turned chilly, as it does in May as soon as the sun disappears.

‘What do you mean, ready?’

‘I am intending . . .’ She spoke slowly, like a schoolteacher, as she angrily brushed needles off her clothes. ‘. . . which is my right – to remain signed off until my doctor sees fit to discharge me.’

‘But you’re not sick!’ Everything Seja had been suppressing broke free, taking a detour around sympathy and good sense. ‘Those doctors are signing you off because you
say
you can’t work! Because you
say
you can’t cope with stress – who the hell can? You’re just scared – but what are you scared of? Are you scared of failing? Because it’s going to get more and more difficult the longer you spend at home. Soon you’ll have completely bought into this idea that you’re . . . incapable. And you’re not!’

‘Why the fuck does it bother you so much? Is that what life’s all about, what you achieve, whether you have a good education or a good job, is that all that matters to you? If it is, then that’s your problem, Seja. I’m doing other things with my life, I have a son and I’m a bloody good mother to him, let me tell you.’