Exposed (11 page)

Anne Snapphane’s little apartment was on the sixth floor, with a balcony and a wonderful view. The cats started to miaow as soon as she put the key in the lock. When she opened the door the pair of them were fighting to look through the gap.

‘Oh, sweethearts, did you wonder where I was?’

She shepherded the cats back inside with her foot, pulled the door shut behind her and sank to the hall floor. The two animals jumped up into her arms and started rubbing their noses against her chin.

‘So we’re doing kissing now, are we?’ Annika laughed.

She played with them for a couple of minutes, then got up and went into the tiny kitchen. The cats’ bowls stood on a bit of spare cork mat by the cooker. The milk had gone off and smelled terrible. And the food and water bowls were empty.

‘Okay, you’ll soon have some more …’

She poured the sour milk away and rinsed the dish under the tap, then found some more milk in the fridge. The little cats were winding round her legs and miaowing like mad.

‘Okay, okay, calm down!’

They were so eager they almost upset the dish before she had time to put it down. While the cats were busy with that she filled the water dish and looked around for cat food. She found three tins of Whiskas in one of the cupboards. She suddenly felt on the verge of tears again. Her own cat back home in Hälleforsnäs was called Whiskas. He was staying with Annika’s grandmother in Lyckebo for the summer.

‘I’m getting way too sentimental,’ she said out loud.

She opened one of the tins, wrinkling her nose at the smell, and emptied the gloop into the third bowl. She looked in the bedroom to check their litter-tray, but that would have to wait until tomorrow.

‘Well, bye for now, little ones,’ she said.

The cats ignored her.

She left the apartment quickly and went back down to Kungsholmstorg. It was almost daylight. All the birds had started up. She felt groggy and her walking was erratic; she was having trouble judging distances.

I can’t go on like this, she thought.

*   *   *

Her apartment was oppressively hot. It was at the top of a building in a courtyard from the 1880s, and had no bathroom and no hot water. But it did have three rooms and a large kitchen. Annika couldn’t believe her luck when she got hold of it.

‘No one wants to live in such primitive conditions these days,’ the woman in the estate agents had said when Annika filled in her form, saying that she was prepared to live without a lift, hot water, a bathroom, and even electricity if need be.

Annika had held her ground.

‘All right. No one wants this one,’ the woman had said, giving her a printout. Hantverkargatan 32, the fourth floor out in the courtyard.

Annika took it without even going to see it. She had thanked her lucky stars every day since then, but she knew her happiness could end up being short-lived. She had agreed to being evicted with just one week’s notice if the owner got the money he needed to renovate the building.

She dropped her bag on the floor and went into the bedroom. She had left the window open while she was at work, but it had blown shut. With a sigh she pushed it open once more and headed towards the living room to try to get a bit of a through-draught.

‘Where’ve you been?’

She was so shocked that she screamed and jumped clean off the floor.

The voice was low, and came from the shadows over by her bed.

‘Bloody hell, you can’t be that much of a scaredy-cat?’

It was Sven, her fiancé.

‘When did you get here?’ she said, her heart still pounding in her chest.

‘Yesterday evening. I was going to take you to the cinema. Where’ve you been?’

‘At work,’ she said, going into the living room.

He got out of bed and followed her.

‘No you haven’t,’ he said. ‘I called an hour ago, and they said you’d already left.’

‘I had to feed Anne’s cats,’ she said, opening the living-room window.

‘That’s a fucking useless excuse,’ he said.

Patricia put her hand on the door to Josefin’s room. She hesitated. The bedroom was Josefin’s domain. She wasn’t allowed in there. Josie had been very strict about that.

‘You can live here, but the bedroom is mine.’

The handle was loose. Patricia had wanted to tighten it, but they had no screwdriver. She carefully pushed down on it. The door creaked. A smell of dust hit her; the heat was stagnant and dense. Josie insisted on cleaning her room herself, which meant that it never got done. The police had stirred up two months’ worth of dirt and dust when they searched the room last night.

The room was bathed in harsh sunlight. The police had opened the curtains. It struck Patricia that she had never actually seen the room like that before. The daylight showed up the dust and how dirty the wallpaper was. Patricia felt suddenly ashamed when she thought of the police being in there. They must have thought she and Josie lived like pigs.

Slowly she walked over and sat down on the bed. It was actually just a mattress from IKEA that they’d put straight on the floor, but, unlike Patricia’s own foam mattress, at least this one had a bit of height to it.

Patricia was tired. She had slept badly because of
the heat, waking up, sweating and crying. She slowly lay down on top of the duvet. When she got home this morning she had been struck by how lonely she felt the moment she walked into the silent apartment. They really had turned the whole place upside down, but they hadn’t taken very much.

She was on the verge of falling asleep among the pillows, feeling her limbs start to twitch the way they did before she dozed off. She hurriedly sat up again. She mustn’t sleep in Josie’s room.

There was a bundle of magazines beside the bed, and Patricia leaned over and leafed through the top one.
Weekly Review
, Josie’s favourite. Patricia didn’t think much of it, there was too much about diets and make-up and sex. She always felt ugly and clumsy after reading it, like she wasn’t good enough. She realized that that was the whole point. Under the pretence of helping young girls become more confident, it actually made them feel worse.

She picked up the next magazine on the pile. It was much smaller; Patricia had never seen it before. The paper was cheap and the print quality was pretty poor. She opened it in the middle. Two men had their penises inside a woman, one in her anus, the other in her vagina. You could just make out the woman’s face in the background. She looked like she was screaming, as if she were in pain. Patricia felt a physical response to the picture in her groin. She jerked back, disgusted, partly by the picture, and partly by her own reaction. She threw the magazine on the floor, as if it had burned her. Josefin didn’t read that sort of thing. She knew it had to be Joachim’s.

She lay down again, staring up at the ceiling and trying to stop the shameful feeling of horniness. It slowly subsided. She ought to be used to this by now.

She looked round the room. The wardrobe door was open. Josefin’s clothes hung haphazardly from their hangers. Patricia knew the police must have left them like that. Josie was careful with her clothes.

I wonder what’s going to happen to them now, she thought. Maybe I could take some of them.

She got up and went over to the wardrobe, her hand stroking the clothes. Expensive outfits, Joachim had bought most of them. Patricia wouldn’t be able to wear the dresses: they were too big across the bust. But maybe the skirts and a few of the outfits?

The sound of keys in the front door made her heart skip a beat. She quickly shut the wardrobe, her bare feet flying over the wooden floor.

She just managed to close Josefin’s bedroom door behind her when Joachim stepped into the hall.

‘What are you doing?’ he said.

He looked sweaty, and had dark rings under his arms.

Patricia just looked at him, her pulse racing, her mouth completely dry. She tried to smile.

‘Nothing,’ she said nervously.

‘Haven’t we told you to stay the fuck away from Josefin’s room?’

He pulled the front door shut with a bang.

‘It’s the police,’ she said. ‘The pigs have been here snooping. Everything looks a right mess, in there too.’

He walked into the trap.

‘Pigs?’ he said, and Patricia could hear the fear in his voice. ‘Did they take anything?’

He walked towards Patricia and the bedroom door.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Nothing of mine, anyway.’

He pushed the bedroom door open and walked over to the bed, and lifted the duvet.

‘The sheets,’ he said. ‘They’ve taken the sheets.’

Patricia watched cautiously from the doorway. He walked round the room, checking things as he went, but evidently couldn’t see anything else missing. He sat down heavily on the bed with his back to the door and put his head in his hands.

Patricia inhaled the dancing dust, unable to move. She looked at the man’s broad shoulders and muscular arms. The light from the window made his blond hair glow. He really was very good-looking. Josefin had been so happy when they got together. Patricia remembered her crying with joy, and telling her how wonderful he was.

Joachim turned round and looked at her.

‘Who do you think did it?’ he said in a low voice.

Patricia kept her face neutral.

‘Some madman,’ she said, calmly and decisively. ‘Some drunk on his way home from the pub. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

He turned away again.

‘Do you think it could have been one of the clients?’ he said without looking up.

Patricia weighed her answer.

‘One of last night’s crop, you mean? I don’t know, what do you think?’

‘It would ruin the club,’ he said.

She looked down at her hands, fiddling with the bottom of her T-shirt.

‘I miss her,’ she said.

Joachim got up and went over to her, put his hand on her shoulder and gently stroked her arm.

‘Patricia,’ he said quietly, ‘I understand how upset you are. I’m just as upset myself.’

She shivered uncomfortably and had to make a real effort not to pull away.

‘I hope the police catch him,’ she said.

Joachim pulled her to him, a sob racking his muscular frame.

‘Fuck, fuck,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘Fuck. Why’s she dead?’

He started to cry. Patricia put her arms round his back carefully, gently rocking him.

‘My Josie, my angel …’

He went on crying, great snorting sobs. Patricia shut her eyes and forced herself not to pull away.

‘Poor Joachim,’ she whispered. ‘You poor thing …’

He let go of her and went into the bathroom, where he blew his nose, then peed. She waited helplessly in the hall, listening to the splash of urine and then the flush.

‘Have the police spoken to you?’ he asked as he came out.

She gulped. ‘A bit, yesterday. They want to talk more today.’

He looked intently at her.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘They’ve got to catch the bastard who did this. What are you going to say?’

She turned away and went into the kitchen, and poured a glass of water.

‘Depends what they ask. I don’t know anything, anyway,’ she said, then drank.

He had followed her, and was leaning against the door frame.

‘They’ll want to know what Josie was like and all that. What her life was like …’

Patricia put the glass down noisily on the draining board and looked Joachim in the eye.

‘I’d never say anything that showed Josie in a bad light,’ she said firmly.

The man looked content at this.

‘Come here,’ he said, putting an arm round her
shoulders. He guided her through the hall and over to Josie’s wardrobe.

‘Look,’ he said, his free hand running over Josefin’s expensive outfits. ‘Is there anything you’d like? What about this one?’

He pulled out a bright pink, figure-hugging silk and wool dress with big gold buttons. Josefin had loved that one. She thought it made her look like Princess Diana.

Patricia felt her eyes start to water. She swallowed.

‘But, Joachim, I can’t—’

‘Take it. It’s yours.’

She started to cry. He let go of her and held the dress up in front of her.

‘Your tits are too small, but we can probably fix that,’ he said, smiling at her.

Patricia stopped crying, looked down and took the hanger.

‘Thanks,’ she whispered.

‘Wear it for the funeral,’ he said.

She heard him go out into the kitchen, where he took something out of the fridge, then he left the flat.

Patricia stayed where she was, in Josefin’s room, frozen to the spot even though it was so hot.

The other evening paper had spoken to the father. He had nothing interesting to say, just that he couldn’t believe she was gone, but even so … At least they had some quotes.

‘You never know which way the wind’s going to blow,’ Berit said. ‘If they’re unlucky they’ll end up the focus of a big debate about media ethics.’

‘For talking to the relatives?’ Annika wondered, scanning the rest of the article.