Lars Kepler 2-book Bundle (64 page)

The man guides his boat until it bumps against the larger craft. Pulling in his oars and tying up to the swimming platform, he climbs the metal ladder and over the railing. There’s nothing to see on the afterdeck except for a pink recliner. The old man stands still and listens. Hearing nothing, he opens the glass door and steps down into the salon. A grey light shines through the large windows over the varnished teak brightwork and a deep blue cloth canvas sofa. He continues down the steep stairs, which are panelled in more shining wood. Past a dark galley, past a bathroom, into the large cabin. Tiny windows near the ceiling offer barely enough light to reveal an arrow-shaped double berth. Near the headboard a young woman in a jean jacket sits slumped at the edge of the bed. Her thighs are spread; one hand rests on a pink pillow. She looks right into the old man’s eyes with a puzzled, frightened expression.

The old man needs a moment to realise the woman is dead.

Fastened to her long black hair is a clip shaped in the form of a white dove: the dove of peace.

As the old man moves towards her and touches her cheek, her head falls forwards and a thin stream of water dribbles from her lips and on down to her chin.

A cold shiver runs down Penelope Fernandez’s spine. Her heart beats faster and she darts a look over her shoulder. Perhaps she feels a sense of foreboding of what’s to come as her day progresses.

In spite of the television studio’s heat, Penelope’s face feels chilled. Maybe the sensation is left over from her time in makeup when the cold powder puff was pressed to her skin and the peace-dove hair clip was taken out so they could rub in the mousse that would make her hair fall in serpentine locks.

Penelope Fernandez is the spokesperson for the Swedish Peace and Reconciliation Society. Silently, she is being ushered into the newsroom and to her spotlighted seat across from Pontus Salman, CEO of the armaments manufacturer Silencia Defense AB. The news anchor Stefanie von Sydow is narrating a report on all the layoffs resulting from the purchase of the Bofors Corporation by British BAE Systems Limited. Then she turns to Penelope.

“Penelope Fernandez, in several public debates you have been critical of the management of Swedish arms exports. In fact, you recently compared it to the French Angola-gate scandal. There, highly placed politicians and businessmen were prosecuted for bribery and weapons smuggling and given long prison sentences. But here in Sweden? We really haven’t seen this, have we?”

“Well, you can interpret this in two ways,” replies Penelope. “Either our politicians behave differently or our justice system works differently.”

“You know very well,” begins Pontus Salman, “that we have a long tradition of—”

“According to Swedish law,” Penelope says, “all manufacture and export of armaments are illegal.”

“You’re wrong, of course,” says Salman.

“Paragraphs 3 and 6 of the Military Equipment Act,” Penelope points out with precision.

“We at Silencia Defense have already got a positive preliminary decision.” Salman smiles.

“Otherwise this would be a case of major weapons crimes and—”

“But, we
do
have permission.”

“Don’t forget the rationale for armaments—”

“Just a moment, Penelope.” Stefanie von Sydow stops her and nods to Pontus Salman, who’s lifted his hand to signal that he hadn’t finished.

“All business transactions are reviewed in advance,” he explains. “Either directly by the government or by the National Inspectorate of Strategic Products, if you know what that is.”

“France has similar regulations,” says Penelope. “And yet military equipment worth eight million Swedish crowns landed in Angola despite the UN weapons embargo and in spite of a completely binding prohibition—”

“We’re not talking about France, we’re talking about Sweden.”

“I know that people want to keep their jobs, but I still would like to hear how you can explain the export of enormous amounts of ammunition to Kenya? It’s a country that—”

“You have no proof,” he says. “Nothing. Not one shred. Or do you?”

“Unfortunately, I cannot—”

“You have no concrete evidence?” asks Stefanie von Sydow.

“No, but I—”

“Then I think I’m owed an apology,” says Pontus Salman.

Penelope stares him in the eyes, her anger and frustration boiling up, but she forces it down, stays silent. Pontus Salman smiles smugly and begins to talk about Silencia Defense’s factory in Trollhättan. Two hundred new jobs were created when they were given permission to start production, he says. He speaks slowly and in elaborate detail, deftly truncating the time left for his opponent.

As Penelope listens, she forces aside her anger by focusing on other matters. Soon, very soon, she and Björn will board his boat. They’ll make up the arrow-shaped bed in the forecabin and fill the refrigerator and tiny freezer with treats. She conjures up the frosted schnapps glasses, and the platter of marinated herring, mustard herring, soused herring, fresh potatoes, boiled eggs, and hardtack. After they anchor at a tiny island in the archipelago, they’ll set the table on the afterdeck and sit there eating in the evening sun for hours.

Penelope Fernandez walks out of the Swedish Television building and heads towards Valhallavägen. She wasted two hours waiting for a slot in another morning programme before the producer finally told her she’d been bumped by a segment on quick tips for a summer tummy. Far away, on the fields of Gärdet, she can make out the colourful tents of Circus Maximus and the little forms of two elephants, probably very large. One raises his trunk high in the air.

Penelope is only twenty-four years old. She has curly black hair cut to her shoulders, and a tiny crucifix, a confirmation present, glitters from a silver chain around her neck. Her skin is the soft golden colour of virgin olive oil or honey, as a boy in high school said during a project where the students were supposed to describe one another. Her eyes are large and serious. More than once, she’s heard herself described as looking like Sophia Loren.

Penelope pulls out her mobile phone to let Björn know she’s on her way. She’ll be taking the underground from Karlaplan station.

“Penny? Is something wrong?” Björn sounds rushed.

“No, why do you ask?”

“Everything’s set. I left a message on your machine. You’re all that’s missing.”

“No need to stress, then, right?”

As Penelope takes the steep escalator down to the platform, her heart begins to beat uneasily. She closes her eyes. The escalator sinks downward, seeming to shrink as the air becomes cooler and cooler.

Penelope Fernandez comes from La Libertad, one of the largest provinces in El Salvador. She was born in a prison cell, her mother attended by fifteen female prisoners doing their best as midwives. There was a civil war going on, and Claudia Fernandez, a doctor and activist, had ended up in the regime’s infamous prison for encouraging the indigenous population to form unions.

Penelope opens her eyes as she reaches the platform. Her claustrophobic feeling has passed. She thinks about Björn waiting for her at the motorboat club on Långholmen. She loves skinny-dipping from his boat, diving straight into the water, seeing nothing but sea and sky.

She steps onto the train, which rumbles on, gently swaying, until it breaks out into the open as it reaches the station at Gamla Stan and sunlight streams in through the windows.

Like her mother, Penelope is an activist and her passionate opposition to war and violence led her to get her master’s in political science at Uppsala University with a speciality in peace and conflict resolution. She’s worked for the French aid organisation Action Contre la Faim in Darfur, southern Sudan, with Jane Oduya, and her article for
Dagens Nyheter
, on the women of the refugee camp and their struggles to regain normality after every attack, brought broad recognition. Two years ago, she followed Frida Blom as the spokesperson for the Swedish Peace and Reconciliation Society.

Leaving the underground at Hornstull station, Penelope feels uneasy again, extremely uneasy, without knowing why. She runs down the hill to Söder Mälarstrand, then walks quickly over the bridge to Långholmen and follows the road to the small harbour. The dust she kicks up from the gravel creates a haze in the still air.

Björn’s boat is in the shade directly underneath Väster Bridge. The movement of the water dapples the grey girders with a network of light.

Penelope spots Björn on the afterdeck. He’s got on his cowboy hat, and he stands stock-still, shoulders bent, with his arms wrapped closely around him. Sticking two fingers in her mouth, she lets loose a whistle, startling him, and he turns towards her with a face naked with fear. And it’s still there in his eyes when she climbs down the stairs to the dock. “What’s wrong?” she asks.

“Nothing,” he answers, as he straightens his hat and tries to smile.

As they hug, she notices his hands are ice-cold and the back of his shirt is damp.

“You’re covered in sweat.”

Björn avoids her eyes. “It’s been stressful getting ready to go.”

“Bring my bag?”

He nods and gestures towards the cabin. The boat rocks gently under her feet and the air smells of lacquered wood and sun-warmed plastic.

“Hello? Anybody home?” she asks, tapping his head.

His clear blue eyes are childlike and his straw-coloured hair sticks out in tight dreadlocks from under the hat. “I’m here,” he says. But he looks away.

“What are you thinking about? Where’s your mind gone to?”

“Just that we’re finally heading off together,” he answers as he wraps his arms around her waist. “And that we’ll be having sex out in nature.”

He buries his lips in her hair.

“So that’s what you’re dreaming of,” she whispers.

“Yes.”

She laughs at his honesty.

“Most people … women, I mean, think that sex outdoors is a bit overrated,” she says. “Lying on the ground among ants and stones and—”

“No. No. It’s just like swimming naked,” he insists.

“You’ll have to convince me,” she teases.

“I’ll do that, all right.”

“How?” She’s laughing as the phone rings in her cloth bag.

Björn stiffens when he hears the signal. Penelope glances at the display.

“It’s Viola,” she says reassuringly before answering. “
Hola
, Sis.”

A car horn blares over the line as her sister yells in its direction. “
Fucking idiot
.”

“Viola, what’s going on?”

“It’s over. I’ve dumped Sergei.”

“Not again!” Penelope says.

“Yes, again,” says Viola, noticeably depressed.

“Sorry,” Penelope says. “I can tell you’re upset.”

“Well, I’ll be all right I guess. But … Mamma said you were going out on the boat and I thought … maybe I could come, too, if you don’t mind …”

A moment of silence.

“Sure, you can come, too,” Penelope says, although she hears her own lack of enthusiasm. “Björn and I need some time to ourselves, but …”

Penelope stands at the helm. An airy blue sarong is wrapped around her hips and there’s a peace sign on the right breast of her white bikini top. Spring sunlight pours through the windscreen as she carefully rounds Kungshamn lighthouse and manoeuvres the large motorboat into the narrow sound.

Her younger sister, Viola, gets up from the pink recliner on the afterdeck. For the past hour, she’s been lying back in Björn’s cowboy hat and enormous sunglasses, languidly smoking a joint.

Five times she tries to pick up a matchbox from the floor with her toes. Penelope can’t help smiling. Viola walks into the cockpit and offers to take the wheel for a while. “Otherwise, I’ll go downstairs and make myself a margarita,” she says, as she continues down the stairs.

Björn is lying on the foredeck, a paperback copy of Ovid’s
Metamorphoses
put to use as his pillow. Penelope notices that the railing near his feet is rusting. The boat was a present from his father for his twentieth birthday, but Björn hasn’t had the money to maintain it. It was the only gift his father ever gave him, except once when his father paid for a trip. When Björn’s father turned fifty, he invited Björn and Penelope to one of his finest properties, a five-star hotel called Kamaya Resort on the east coast of Kenya. Penelope endured the resort for two days before she took off to join Action Contre la Faim at the refugee camp in Kubbum, Darfur.

Penelope reduces speed from eight to five knots as they reach the bridge at Skuru Sound. They’ve just glided into the shadows when Penelope notices the black rubber boat. Pressed against the concrete foundation, it’s the same kind the military uses for their coastal rangers: an RIB with a fibreglass hull and extremely powerful engines. Penelope has almost passed beneath the bridge when she notices a man hunched in the darkness, his back turned. She doesn’t know why her pulse starts to race at the sight of him; something about his neck and the black clothes he wears bothers her. She feels he’s watching her even though he sits turned away.

Back into sunshine, she starts to shiver; goose bumps cover her arms. She guns the boat to fifteen knots. The two inboard engines drone powerfully, and the wake streams white behind them as the boat takes off over the smooth surface of the water.

Penelope’s phone rings. It’s her mother. For a moment Penelope fantasises that she’s calling to tell Penelope how wonderful she’d been on TV earlier, but she snaps back to reality.

“Hi, Mamma.”

“
Ay
,
ay
.”

“What’s wrong?”

“My back. I’ll have to go to the chiropractor,” Claudia says, loudly filling a glass with tap water. “I just wanted to know if you’ve talked to your sister.”

“She’s on the boat with us,” Penelope replies, listening to her mother gulp the water down.

“She’s with you … how nice. I thought it would be good for her to get out.”

“I’m sure it is,” Penelope says quietly.