Last Will (22 page)

“You bitch!” Annika yelled.

Sophia turned around slowly and Annika realized that the pistol in her hand wasn’t a pistol at all but a metal pipe, the metal pipe she had killed Sven with, and she raised the pipe and brought it down so hard she could taste blood in her mouth.

But when the pipe struck the woman on the temple she realized that it wasn’t Sophia Grenborg at all, but Caroline von Behring, and she wasn’t a woman but an angel, with long white wings that almost reached the ground.

She woke up not knowing where she was. The sun was shining right onto her bed; the heat had left the sheets damp with sweat. Some sort of bird was singing like mad outside the window, and she groaned loudly and pulled the pillow over her head to shut out reality.

She was lying in the bedroom of their house out in Djursholm.

Of course.

She sighed and got up from the sweaty sheets. Thomas had already left—she knew that without even looking at his side of the bed. He got to work before seven each morning, the official reason being to avoid rush hour. The real reason was that his love of this wonderful job was greater than his love for his thoroughly ordinary family. At least that was what she thought in her darker moments.

She pulled on her thoroughly ordinary terry-cloth dressing gown and went downstairs into the kitchen to make breakfast for her thoroughly ordinary children. The sun was streaming in, making the parquet floor shine, and the cherry tree outside the window was in full flower. She stood at the window staring at the little tree.

This house isn’t ordinary, she thought. I ought to be happy. After all, I’ve finally found a home.

She swallowed the lump in her throat and put two mugs of milk in the microwave to make hot chocolate. She made some toast and spread it with peanut butter. Then she sliced a banana, cut two oranges into segments, and put it all onto two plates. The microwave bleeped four times when the milk was hot, and Annika yanked the door open, annoyed—everything made so much noise out here. If it wasn’t the birds outside the bedroom window, it was household gadgets. Her microwave in the city only bleeped three times, and that was what she was used to. But four bleeps?

She put the plates and the hot chocolate on the table and went to wake Ellen and Kalle.

Getting the children into their new nursery school had been a nuisance. To begin with, the council had kicked up a fuss and said they couldn’t start until the autumn, but Annika had employed a combination of
research and lobbying and had found a private kindergarten that had both a nursery school and a class for six-year-olds, and which was keen to attract more pupils, so both children had gotten in. The groups were big, much bigger than in the city, but on the other hand they had much more space out here. As far as the other children were concerned, suburban children weren’t much different from inner-city children back home on Kungsholmen. They guarded their territory and weren’t going to let any new kids in just like that. Kalle, in particular, was having problems: none of the other boys wanted to play with him. But generally the most obvious difference was that there weren’t any immigrants.

She drove the children to kindergarten in her new SUV, a slightly smaller version of the monster Thomas had gone for. As usual, the children argued about who was going to sit in the front, which ended up with them both having to sit in the back. Kalle cried quietly all the way, so hard that he was shaking, and Annika felt her anxiety wrenching at her stomach.

“Hey, how are you doing, Kalle-Balle?” she asked, looking at him in the rearview mirror.

“Don’t call me that, you
stupid cow
!”

Annika braked sharply and pulled over to the side of the road. When the vehicle had stopped she turned round and looked sternly at her son.

“What did you call me?”

The boy looked at her wide-eyed, taken aback by the fact that they had stopped so abruptly.

“You were the one who started it,” he said sulkily.

“I’m sorry if I upset you by calling you Kalle-Balle, but I’ve always called you that. But if you want me to stop, then of course I’ll stop.”

“Well, you were the one who started it,” the boy said crossly once more, and swiped at the air in front of her.

She caught his clenched fist.

“Do you know what the difference is? I didn’t mean to hurt you, but you called me a stupid cow just because you wanted to make me angry and upset, didn’t you?”

Kalle looked down and kicked at the seat in front of him.

“Stop kicking and look at me,” Annika said, managing to keep her
voice more or less calm. “We don’t call each other things like that in this family. Now you’re going to say sorry to me, and you’re never going to call me stupid cow ever again—is that clear?”

The boy looked up at her guiltily and nodded. He was on the point of tears again.

“Sorry, Mommy,” he said.

“Oh, darling!” Annika said, undoing his seatbelt. “Come here …”

She pulled the boy between the seats and put him on her lap, rocking and comforting him and blowing gently into his hair.

“There, there,” she whispered, “you’re the best little boy in the world, you know that. I love you more than all the other little boys in the whole world. Do you know how much I love you?”

“Right up to the stars?” the boy said, curling up in her arms.

“Much further than that, right up to the angels! Now you’re going to have a really lovely time today, you hear! Singing and playing soccer and eating lovely food and being nice to the other children, isn’t that right?”

He nodded into her chest.

“Can I sit in the front now?”

“Not a chance. Into the back with you.”

A woman drove past far too close and honked her horn in annoyance. Annika gave her the finger.

“I’m never going to call anyone a stupid moo,” Ellen said.

When she had finally managed to deliver the children in a mature, natural, and relaxed manner to their respective classes, she felt completely drained. She leaned back against the SUV and looked at the nursery school with an indefinable ache in her heart. A low, single-story building with large windows to let in the light, and big, bright-green lawns, colorful jungle gyms, some swings swaying gently in the breeze, a clutter of tricycles near the fence. The sun was shining in that wonderfully hesitant way it did in spring; there was a smell of soil and grass and she felt her anxiety throbbing inside her.

What a terrible responsibility she had assumed the day she brought children into the world. How could she guarantee that they would have decent lives? They were already part of a world to which she would never
have access; they were busy shaping their own fates. Maybe their future traumas had already been created, and her chances of averting them were so slight.

What could she do if someone the same age as them was mean to them? If some insecure bastard decided to grab a bit of power and prestige at their expense? If someone exploited their fantastic faith in life?

Clearly it was going to happen; it had happened to her and probably to most other people as well. Parts of it had been damned awful—she’d worked through thirty-three years of life and still couldn’t see what the point of all this crap was.

Maybe I’m depressed, she suddenly thought, then felt ashamed of herself.

God, I’m so spoiled, she thought.

She’d been able to stay at home all spring on full pay, packing and clearing out their old apartment in peace and quiet; she’d started jogging again, and had joined a gym. How many people had such a luxurious life?

And the reward for finding that money had been paid out a few weeks earlier, on May 1, just as she had been promised. She hadn’t really believed it would happen until she was standing outside the bank with the notification in her hand: 12.8 million kronor had been paid into her account.

Really, it should have been a moment to savor, but she could only think of it with unease. Her conversation with Thomas out on the pavement had gone all wrong.

“We ought to invest the money,” Thomas had said. “I’ve got some old friends who are investment advisers; they can make sure we get the best dividends. I’ll give them a call this afternoon.”

“What do you mean, ‘best dividends’?” Annika had replied. “In what sense? Do you mean weapons exports, or child labor, or …”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Thomas said.

“… unless there’s something even more lucrative? Some really shitty factory where they keep the workers in chains to die if the place catches fire?”

Thomas picked up his briefcase and started walking toward a taxi.
Annika had rushed after him, wanting to hold him in her arms the way she did with Kalle.

“Money doesn’t come from nowhere,” she called after him. “There’s always someone working to make it, any money you get from a good tip-off is the result of someone else’s hard work. Don’t you get it?”

“That’s just sentimental bullshit,” Thomas said, jumping into a taxi, slamming the door and heading off to his damned job.

He wasn’t very happy with the house.

It was better than their apartment in the city, but he missed “the classical style.”

“As if your 1960s’ house out in Vaxholm was so damn classical,” Annika had retorted.

She put her hand over her eyes as she thought about the way they were behaving toward each other.

I’ve got to be happy sometime, she thought. I’ve got to pull myself together.

I’ll find something to do, even if it doesn’t involve me working. I’ll be nice to the neighbors and stop fantasizing about murdering Sophia Grenborg.

She got in the SUV and drove off toward Vinterviksvägen.

The house sat there on its corner plot, shimmering in the morning sun—her lovely house, her very own house.

She parked on the road so she could take a look at it from the outside, the way other people saw it.

In an area like this it was nothing particularly special, but it had been built with the best materials and was well designed. The plot had once been a patch of common land, but the council had sold it off when it needed to bring in some extra money. There were no mature trees around the house, which was a shame, but the previous owners had planted fruit trees and some small oaks, which would look good in a few years.

To the left of the house was a small rock garden. It lay in shadow most of the day, except for early in the morning, and Annika had wondered about trying to get hold of some plants that might thrive there.
But in general the plot didn’t exactly offer any great opportunities to commune with nature. In front of the house was a small flower bed which wasn’t doing much, but the real problem was the grass. It was completely rutted with wheel tracks from when the neighbors had used it as a shortcut while the house was empty, the very thought of which made Annika livid. She had no idea what to do to put it right—maybe some truckloads of topsoil? Some rolls of turf? Cover the whole damn lot with Tarmac?

She switched off the ignition and got out of the SUV. They’d bought their new vehicles when the money had first arrived, and she had to admit that she was very fond of hers already.

“Good morning!”

Annika spun around to see a young woman jogging toward her. She had a dog running alongside her, shadowing her every move without a leash. The woman slowed down and stopped beside Annika. She was wearing a sweatband and a padded jacket, and was sweating profusely.

“So you’ve moved in, then?” she said with a wide smile.

Now Annika recognized her: it was the woman in the house diagonally across from them. The one with the dog whom she had met back in the winter.

“Yes, we’re in,” Annika said, smiling back, remembering her decision to be nice to the neighbors.

“Welcome to the area. How do you like it so far?”

Annika laughed slightly awkwardly.

“I don’t really know yet, we haven’t really done much so far except unpack …”

“I know what you mean,” the woman said. “I moved in five years ago and I’m still finding boxes I haven’t opened yet. Why do we keep hold of so much unnecessary stuff? If I haven’t missed those things for the past five years, why on earth did I buy them in the first place?”

Annika couldn’t help laughing.

“That’s so true,” she said, searching her memory. What was the woman’s name? Eva? Emma?

“Would you like to come over for a cup of tea?” the woman said. “Or coffee? I only live …”

“I know,” Annika said. “I remember. Coffee would be great, thanks.”

Ebba, that was it. Ebba Romanova. So there had to be something foreign in her background. And the dog’s name was something Italian.

Annika bent over and patted him.

“Francesco, isn’t it?” she said.

Ebba Romanova nodded and scratched the dog behind the ear.

“I just need to grab a shower,” she said. “Give me fifteen minutes.”

She jogged off down Vinterviksvägen and stopped at her gate, opened it, then was swallowed up by greenery.

Annika stood where she was, looking around. In winter you could see parts of most of the neighboring houses, but today they were all hidden by hedges and foliage. She could just make out the dark façade of Ebba’s house with its veranda and summerhouse.

So what the hell am I going to do about the grass? she thought as her eyes reached her own little plot.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

She jumped at the angry voice behind her.

A thickset man with a beer belly and a cap was standing behind her, hands on his hips, staring at her arrogantly and antagonistically.

“What?” Annika said, aghast. “What have I done?”

“You’re blocking the traffic! No one can get past if you leave your tank in the middle of the road.”

Annika stared at her car in astonishment, parked as it was off to the far side of the road, and then looked up and down the empty road.

“But there’s no ban on parking here,” she said.

The man took a few steps toward her, his impressive gut forcing him to walk with his legs far apart, feet turned out. His eyes were small and deep set, his face verging on deep red.

“
Move the car!
” he snarled. “It’s no parking here—how much clearer do I have to be:
no parking!
”