Babylon (8 page)
‘As I said, you’re embarrassing me.’
‘Really? Brilliant.’
Seja contemplated Christian’s friend in profile as he got out his wallet. Yes. It was probably best if the evening came to an end at this point. She was invited to her neighbours for dinner the following day, and she had no wish to turn up with a hangover. Besides, she needed some time to go over what had been said this evening. Had she heard genuine insight or simply drunken ramblings?
She stood up.
It was illogical, but she was suddenly desperate to see Christian. Only a few hours earlier she had been upset and disappointed. She considered going round to his apartment. Actually, she didn’t have a choice. The last bus to Stenared had already gone.
She saw Hanna leaving the bar with her ex, just as her mobile beeped. She had a good idea what the message was about.
Tell had been driving with the window wound down and his elbow resting on the door, a position that encapsulated freedom precisely because it was such a cliché. He wasn’t the kind of person whose day was dictated by the weather. If anything, he was inspired to achieve as much as possible on warm, sticky summer days, when you shouldn’t really be indoors working. Conversely, days that were heavy with rain sometimes felt positively liberating: a slight feeling of depression meant you were normal after all. Nevertheless, when the first warm days of the year cooled off towards dusk, even Tell was filled with a quiet sense of solemnity. He felt as if the world around him were softening, its scents and smells fading. Heat lingered in the fabric of buildings. As he got out of the car on Mariagatan, the cold night air came rolling in and bumped against the hot walls around him; perhaps it was this contrast that perked him up.
He was struck by how quiet this part of the city was compared with where he lived. He could just about make out the noise of a party from an open window further down the street, and the sound of the odd car or siren broke the relative quiet. But then all was silent once more.
The entrance to Axel’s block wasn’t locked. Tell did his best not to thunder up the lino-covered stairs to the first floor; he raised his hand to knock on the door and thought of Seja, as had happened so often lately when his mind should have been on the job. Sometimes the feel of her skin was like a memory on his hands. A fleeting reminder that she existed. Usually this made him feel warm and happy; occasionally he felt guilty, as he did now, but then he was annoyed at the very idea of feeling guilty.
The man’s face was pale beneath his stubble and he plucked constantly at his shirt.
He was in shock.
‘I can’t get my head round this,’ Axel Donner repeated.
‘First of all, I’d like to thank you for agreeing to see me at this late hour,’ said Tell.
It really was an ungodly hour. Tell had been heading in the direction of home when a feeling of restlessness had made him choose between letting off steam with a couple of drinks and trying to work for a couple more hours. He hadn’t called Seja since he’d left that cowardly message asking her to cancel the booking. She hadn’t called back, which didn’t bode well. And now she was probably asleep.
According to Rebecca Nykvist, Donner was an eccentric bachelor, a slapdash character who seemed all over the place, and Tell was banking on the fact that this lack of structure applied to his sleeping habits. His visit wasn’t ideal from a security point of view – current guidelines warned against conducting even preliminary interviews alone. But here he was. Alone.
And Axel Donner was indeed still up. The paused image on the TV screen indicated that he’d been watching a DVD.
‘I won’t take up very much of your time,’ Tell repeated, but Donner didn’t seem to hear him.
Slapdash wasn’t the first word that occurred to Tell when he stepped inside the tiny one-room apartment. Two simple bookshelves were well filled, and apart from that there were just four pieces of furniture. Sparse would be a more appropriate word under the circumstances.
‘I don’t understand . . . she rang me,’ said Donner. ‘Rebecca. Henrik’s girlfriend. She rang me last night, really late. She woke me up and asked about Henrik.’
Tell pricked up his ears. ‘Go on.’
‘It was clear he’d told her – I might as well say it now – he’d told her we were going to revise together. But he wasn’t here, and she—’
‘Got upset?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘You knew about his affair with your tutor?’
Axel Donner nodded. ‘I think a lot of her students knew but then again, maybe they didn’t. The ones who were on the study trip knew, though.’
‘Study trip?’
‘To Istanbul. Last September. That was when they got together – you couldn’t really miss it.’
He leant back against the wall, his head thudding as it made contact.
‘Do you know what time it was when she rang?’
‘It was in the middle of the night, I don’t know exactly. Definitely after midnight.’
That would be easy enough to verify. Tell tried another tack. ‘What do you know about Henrik’s relationship with Rebecca?’
‘She was a very jealous person,’ he said without skipping a beat. ‘Henrik used to talk about it – it was a real problem. I don’t know if he’d fallen out of love with her, but I think he was tired of her . . . how shall I put it . . . hysteria. I think he was on the verge of calling the whole thing off. Otherwise he’d never have gone with another woman. Henrik was really . . . ethical. A good bloke, kind of.’
There was a glimmer of sorrow in Donner’s eyes and Tell gave him a few seconds to collect himself.
‘Did you know Henrik well?’
‘Yes.’
‘Rebecca?’
‘No, not at all. She was never with us, she was . . . she wasn’t with us.’
‘And Ann-Marie Karpov?’
‘Did I know her personally, you mean? No, only as a tutor. She and Henrik didn’t really meet openly, or when other people were around. She was quite . . . she had integrity and . . . authority.’
‘Hmm . . . You don’t know if Henrik felt threatened in any way? Or to put it more accurately, was there anything odd about Henrik’s behaviour recently? Anything that seemed strange? Did his behaviour alter . . .? I’m sure you understand what I’m getting at.’
Axel Donner gave the matter some thought. ‘Well . . . after he started seeing Ann-Marie Karpov, he pretended to be cool with everything, but I know he was stressed out by all the lies he had to tell. He was afraid Rebecca would find out. I think he was getting a bit tired of it all.’
‘Did he seem afraid of Rebecca?’
Now I’m putting words in his mouth
.
‘No, not exactly, but . . . maybe he was stressed about other stuff too. I think he might have been thinking of dropping out of uni altogether.
He wasn’t really keeping up, but at the same time he was doing his own research, going beyond the syllabus. It was . . . I don’t know. He didn’t do anything he didn’t want to do, if you know what I mean. He was a free spirit.’
‘So you don’t recall Henrik being worried about anything specific? What was the situation with Karpov’s ex-husband, for example?’
Donner shrugged. ‘What situation? She’d been divorced for years, hadn’t she? I don’t really think I can help you in terms of evidence or anything . . . But if you want my opinion, I think you should concentrate on Ann-Marie Karpov more than Henrik. She was an important figure, a person who commanded respect. Henrik was . . . Henrik was a good friend, but . . . I mean, he was a nobody in the grand scheme of things, just like me.’
Donner took a deep breath. ‘And maybe that’s a good thing. No one bothers to murder a nobody. Unless he falls in with the wrong crowd.’
Half an hour later, Tell was standing in his living room with the lights off, looking down at the deserted street. He suddenly realised how tired he was; he couldn’t even think straight. Even his plan to make himself something to eat – he was definitely in need of food – seemed completely beyond him, so he made do with a few spoonfuls of yoghurt and a slice of crispbread.
Seja was fast asleep, her breathing deep and even. He didn’t know where she’d spent the evening, but if she’d been really angry she would have gone back to the cottage. The thought cheered him up.
He slid in carefully beside her. Close, so he could smell the scent of her hair. The morning would give him the chance to explain what had happened, and she would understand. She usually did, but he really wished he didn’t have to catch a glimpse of that expression, that unspoken disappointment. Let her be angry instead, absolutely furious for ten minutes. Then she would point out what a depressing sight he was, and they would laugh together and everything would be all right.
The following morning he overslept. When Seja stretched like a cat in the tangled sheets, he pushed aside thoughts of work. Instead he devoted his attention to re-establishing his position as a Very
Important Person in Seja Lundberg’s life, a person who deserved her love and care. An hour later, he had almost convinced her. He had even agreed to join her for dinner – her elderly neighbours had invited her round. He promised in a particularly weak moment.
Seja was resting on his arm. Her breath smelled faintly of the previous evening’s outing, and her dark hair fanned out messily on the pillow. She reached up to the shelf above the bed for her tin of chewing tobacco, which lay on top of his. He felt a rush of warmth, just like when he found a moisturiser in the bathroom cabinet and realised she hadn’t bothered to take it home. Or when she dropped her loose change in his box above the stove, as though they were saving towards a common goal, a holiday, perhaps. These everyday signs of closeness amazed Tell. He didn’t want the sense of amazement to disappear, to be replaced by a familiar feeling of entrapment. For the first time in many years he felt . . . yes, a kind of harmony, but that very feeling brought with it the fear of losing what he had.
It was ironic, he thought;
It’s as if I can’t allow myself to be happy
.
‘Do you know what would make this morning even more perfect?’
She kicked the covers down to the bottom of the bed and turned her back to him. He lifted her thick mane of hair and blew on the nape of her neck, which was slightly damp; she pulled him close, moving the palm of his hand up to her cheek.
‘No, what would make this morning even more perfect?’
‘A strong espresso with hot milk. Freshly squeezed orange juice. Croissants, the ones with chocolate inside . . . No, actually, that would be excessive. Plain croissants, but fresh and dripping with butter.’
He laughed and rolled onto his back. ‘Such pretentions! Well, if a day-old croissant isn’t good enough for you, I don’t know where to shop.’
‘For God’s sake, we’re in the most chi-chi part of Gothenburg, among the most pretentious people in the entire city! You could get a proper French breakfast on every street corner around here. Off you go. It’s the least you can do after yesterday. And besides, do you know how much crawling I had to do over the phone so that we wouldn’t have to pay the full amount at the B&B?’
‘You didn’t have to do that,’ Christian ventured, even though he knew the discussion would get him nowhere. At the moment he couldn’t work out whether there was a serious undertone, or whether
Seja was joking. ‘I would have paid, obviously. And this is blackmail, by the way.’
He went over to the wardrobe. ‘Is it OK if I have a shower before I go?’
‘No, and in any case it would be a waste of time. You’re going to get all sticky with jam and chocolate if we’re to have breakfast in bed.’
‘Chocolate? I thought you said you wanted plain.’
‘Get both.’
Tell pulled on yesterday’s clothes. In the back of his mind he knew perfectly well that he should have been at work hours ago. He glanced at Seja, lying on her back with her arms above her head, her eyes closed and a gentle smile playing on her lips. His decision was made.
‘Hey,’ she said with laughter in her voice just as he was about to leave. ‘I was only joking, you know that, don’t you? Go if you have to. I’ll see you at Åke and Kristina’s tonight, if not before.’
‘I do have to go, but I’ll nip over to the café first and buy breakfast. You deserve it.’
Istanbul, September 2007
Ann-Marie Karpov tipped back her head. The greenery formed a vault over the walkway, the interwoven branches forming walls and a ceiling, overrun by skinny feral cats. One of the cats got its claws caught and let out a loud shriek. The men sitting on stools around a table by the kitchen door laughed quietly as cat pee trickled down through the branches and splashed the paving below. Marie Hjalmarsson quickly backed away. The cat tore itself free and scampered over to the next roof.
Marie, Henrik, Axel, Annelie and Helena, all students at the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Civilisations, were on a study trip with their tutor and guide Ann-Marie Karpov and had almost finished their kebabs, koftas and stews. The owner of the bar pulled up a chair
and told them that he had visited Sweden as a young man. Somewhere near Stockholm, with his football team; two nights in Sweden and two in Norway. He remembered a tunnel, a long, long . . .?
He told them he’d spent eleven years working in Germany,
long time ago
.
‘Building cars. Nine men in a small apartment, no furniture. I sent all my money home.’
No, he didn’t remember what the tunnel was called.
It was more than twenty years ago!
When he came back from Germany he had opened his restaurant.
Henrik Samuelsson thought the whole thing was fantastic. He wanted to go back to the restaurant the following day. Said he’d never eaten such a perfect lamb stew, and tucked the man’s card away in his wallet.
They moved on, heading down towards the harbour. The smell of fried fish hung over the square in Eminönu. In the twilight the ground was covered with blankets displaying the goods on offer – belts, toys, clothes, sandals. Bargaining was done under cover of darkness; the party was left dizzied by the combination of heat and poor street lighting in some areas, which lay in soft, warm darkness as night fell.