Last Will (4 page)

“I’m on my way,” the editor in chief said.

Jansson hung up without replying.

His wife was standing by the counter making a cup of tea; she turned around and kissed him when she felt his hands on her shoulders.

“Who’s been killed?” she asked.

“Don’t know,” he whispered.

“Wake me up when you get home,” she said.

He nodded, his lips touching the back of her neck.

The Kitten changed to a higher gear and accelerated cautiously. The little motorbike growled encouragingly, its headlight playing over the graveled tarmac of the path.

This really was too damn easy.

She knew that any sense of superiority wasn’t good, it increased the risk of carelessness.

But in this case there were no more difficulties. The rest was just a walk in the park.

The job itself had been presented to her as a challenge, and that was what had interested her. After an initial check she had realized how simple it would be, but that wasn’t something she had any intention of revealing to her employer. Negotiations had taken place with the understanding
that the job was extremely dangerous and difficult, which had obviously had a decisive effect on the size of her fee.

Ah well, she thought. You wanted it to be spectacular. Okay, hope you like it.

She swung into a narrow bikeway. A branch struck her helmet; it was black as the grave. Stockholm was usually described as a major city, a metropolis with glittering nightlife and a functioning security service, which was a laughable exaggeration. Everything outside the city center itself seemed to consist of scrappy patches of woodland. There was a chance that the couple with the dog had seen her and her wingman head off in different directions on their bikes, but since then she hadn’t seen a single person.

A major city, she thought scornfully, as she rode past a deserted campsite.

She rolled her shoulders; she was still freezing. Her thick jacket couldn’t really thaw her out, and the boat trip in her evening gown had practically frozen her.

Well, now that wretched silk outfit was at the bottom of the lake together with her bag and eight bricks. The sack was made of netting, so the water would rinse through the material, and any biological evidence would be washed away in a few hours. She still had the gun, as well as the one shoe and the cell phone. She was planning to get rid of those somewhere in the middle of the Baltic.

The thought of the other shoe preyed on her mind.

It had her fingerprints on it, she was sure of that. The shoes had been clean of evidence when she set out on the job, but before that last sprint she had taken it off, held it in her hand.

God knows where she’d dropped it.

There was light ahead of her and she realized she had reached the only inhabited road along the whole of the shore. She forced that damn shoe out of her mind, changed down a gear and turned off the path and up onto the road. Streetlights shone among the tightly packed houses. She let the motorbike roll down the slope, following the shoreline. A few youngsters were hanging about by a jetty; they glanced idly at her, then went on laughing and kicking at the gravel.

She knew that all they saw was a single person of uncertain gender on a small motorbike, wearing dark jeans and a helmet with a visor, no memorable features, nothing to stick in the mind.

The street came to an end and she rolled on into thin forest again, glancing quickly at her watch.

She was slightly behind schedule, only a minute or so, because of the frost. The evening she had timed the journey it had been raining, but the road hadn’t been slippery.

She accelerated gently, and a moment later it happened.

The tires lost their grip on the ground and she felt the bike disappear from beneath her. Her left leg took the first blow and snapped like a matchstick just below the knee. Her shoulder hit next and dislocated instantly, then she felt a thud as her head hit the ground, thinking: I haven’t got time for this.

When she came to again she was lying facedown on the ground.

What the hell had happened?

Pain was pulsing through her whole left side, from her head to her toes. The motorcycle was still growling somewhere behind her, its headlight shining into the trees.

She groaned. Fucking fuck. What was she going to do now?

She pulled off her helmet and lay her cheek against the frozen ground for a few seconds, forcing her brain to clear.

At least the bike was still working: she could feel the vibrations of the engine through the ground. But she was in worse shape. Her leg was broken and her shoulder was buggered. Carefully she flexed the right side of her body.

It seemed okay.

She sat up with her left arm hanging uselessly by her side. The joint was dislocated; she’d seen it happen to other people but had never had it happen to her before. Her leg was excruciatingly painful: she could feel the shaft of the bone pressing against the skin just below her left knee.

She shuffled backward until she felt a narrow tree trunk behind her, and groaned again.

The list of possible options she had to choose from was shrinking pretty damn fast.

Using her right side she dragged herself upright, and with a well-judged motion threw herself forward, letting her shoulder hit the tree trunk.

Holy fucking shit!

The pain as her shoulder popped back in was almost unbearable; she had to cling onto the tree with her healthy arm to stop herself from fainting.

When she had pulled herself together she flexed the fingers of her left hand, gently moved her arm, and realized it was working. But there was nothing she could do about her leg.

She leaned down carefully and caught hold of the helmet. Carefully she hopped over to the motorbike, pulled it upright and, with a great deal of effort, hoisted herself up. She had to bite her lip as she put her left foot on the pedal. The pain brought her out in a sweat as she adjusted her position on the seat.

For a moment she wasn’t sure which direction she should be going in. The forest looked the same; she couldn’t tell where she had come from.

Shit, shit, shit!

She looked at the time, thirteen minutes behind schedule.

Her wingman would wait for half an hour in the boat out at Torö, then she had given him orders to set off for Ventspils.

Fear hit her like a dagger in the chest.

Would this crappy job up at the bloody North Pole turn out to be her last?

She put the helmet on, dropped the visor and put the bike in gear. She turned and rode in what she hoped was a southerly direction, with her left knee jutting out at an indescribably wrong angle.

Annika trudged after the police officer through the winding passageways of the City Hall until they reached a long corridor. In the distance she could make out chandeliers hanging from heavy roof beams, but here there was nothing but gloom, shadows, and silence.

Irritated, she sped up and walked past the police officer.

“How long is this going to take?” she asked, looking at her watch.

“I’ll see if this is where he meant,” the officer said, stopping. He took
hold of her upper arm as if she were a suspect, someone who was likely to make a break for it. She pulled free as the officer knocked on a door bearing a sign saying this was the Bråvalla Room.

“If I wanted to get away I’d already have done it,” she said.

Inside sat two officers in plain clothes, along with a reporter Annika recognized from television news. The reporter was crying so much that her shoulders were shaking. One of the officers let out such an angry yell that Annika’s officer almost hit his own nose as he hurried to shut the door.

“Not that room,” he said, the tips of his ears starting to glow.

They carried on walking in an odd silence, passing gray doors in gray walls, then the broad opening to an office where another bout of questioning had just begun with a member of the Swedish Academy. Annika couldn’t hear what was being said, but she saw the police officer making notes and the Academician nervously fingering the leg of his chair.

I have to remember, she thought. I have to be able to describe this afterward.

She noted that the scene was also being observed by Ragnar Östberg, architect of the City Hall, whose bronze bust watched over events with a concerned expression.

Did you have any idea that something like this could ever happen in your building? Annika wondered, then was stopped once more by the police officer’s damp fist.

“Can you wait here a moment?”

“Do I have any choice?” Annika said, turning away.

It was brighter here. She could see the details more clearly: marble busts above the doors, bronze hinges and door handles, ostentatious chandeliers.

“Look, I need time to write up my story,” she said, but the officer had already slid off down the corridor.

A door opened and someone was standing there calling her name. Light flooded out of the doorway, falling over a painting on the other side of the corridor. She went in without saying anything.

“Close the door behind you.”

The voice made her stop.

“I might have guessed you’d be here,” she said.

Detective Inspector Q was unshaven, his features more drawn than usual.

“I asked to be able to take care of you myself,” he said, sitting down at the end of a heavy oak table. “Sit down.”

He gestured for Annika to take a seat on his left, turned on a tape recorder, and poured himself a glass of water.

“Interview with Annika Bengtzon, reporter on the
Evening Post
newspaper, date of birth and full name to be noted later, conducted by Q in the Small Common Room of the Stockholm City Hall, on Thursday, December 10, at …”

He paused for breath and ran his hand through his hair. Annika settled carefully into a black-framed chair with red-leather upholstery, glancing up at the somber gentlemen in oils who were staring down at her from their heavy frames.

“… at 11:21
PM
,” he concluded. “You saw someone acting suspiciously in the Blue Hall at approximately 10:45 this evening, is that correct?”

Annika let go of her bag on the floor and clasped her hands in her lap, listening to the traffic of central Stockholm rumbling somewhere in another world.

“I don’t know that she was acting suspiciously,” Annika said.

“Can you describe what happened,” the detective inspector asked.

“It was nothing special,” Annika said in a voice that was now slightly shrill. “I haven’t got time to sit here making small talk. I didn’t see anything special at all, I was dancing and I just got pushed by a girl. It’s hardly reasonable that I should have to sit here when the whole newsroom is waiting for me and my article …”

The detective inspector leaned forward and turned off the tape recorder with a little click.

“Now listen, you headline-chasing bitch,” he said, leaning toward her, his eyes clouding over. “This isn’t the time to be egocentric. You’re going to tell me what you saw, exactly as you remember it, right here, right now. It was only half an hour ago, and you were one of the people standing closest when it happened.”

She stared back for a moment, then looked away, her gaze sliding over the heavy leather-bound books on the dark oak shelves. Then she nodded.

Did he really just call her a
headline-chasing bitch
?

“We’ll question you more thoroughly later,” Q said quietly, sounding friendlier and more tired now. “Right now we need a description. Take it chronologically, from the moment you saw this person, and leave us to work out what’s important.”

He started the tape recorder again. Annika cleared her throat and tried to relax her shoulders.

“A woman,” she said, “it was a woman who pushed me, with her elbow; then she stood on my foot.”

“What did the woman look like?”

The room was collapsing on top of her, with its heavy oil paintings and dark oak bookcases. She put her hands over her eyes and heaved a sigh.

“I don’t know,” she said.

Her cell phone started to ring; the sound made her pull herself together. They waited in silence for it to stop.

“Okay, let’s try it a different way,” Q said when it had finally fallen silent. “Where were you when she pushed you?”

She summoned up the music, the glamour, the happiness, the darkness, the crush.

“On the dance floor, I was dancing. At one end of the Golden Hall, not the one with the orchestra, the other end.”

“Who were you dancing with?”

Confusion and shame washed over her and she looked down at her lap.

“His name’s Bosse, he’s a reporter for the opposition.”

“Blond guy, quite well built?”

Annika nodded, still staring at her lap, her cheeks hot.

“Can you answer verbally, please.”

“Yes,” she said, slightly too loudly, and straightened her back. “Yes, that’s right.”

“Might he have seen anything?”

“Yes, obviously, although I don’t think she trod on him.”

“And then what happened?”

Then what happened? Nothing else. Nothing at all, that was all she saw.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I turned my back on her and didn’t see anything else.”

“And you didn’t hear anything?”

The hubbub? The music? Her own breathing?

“Only a couple of
pouf
s.”

“
Pouf
s?”

“Muffled noises, sort of, like puffs of air. I turned around and saw a man slump to his knees. He was dancing with a woman and she looked surprised when he just collapsed like that—she looked up and she looked at me and then she looked down at her chest and then I looked as well and saw she was bleeding—it was sort of pumping out and she looked up again and looked at me and then she slumped to the floor and everyone started screaming …”

“When did the second
pouf
come?”

Annika glanced at Q.

“The second?”

“You said ‘a couple of
pouf
s.’”

“Did I? I don’t know. There was a
pouf
and then the woman was looking at me and then there was another
pouf—
yes, two
pouf
s, I think …”