Last Will (40 page)

She stood up, utterly speechless.

At that very moment Wilhelm Hopkins stopped, looked up at the house for a moment, then turned the lawn mower ninety degrees and continued along the length of the flowerbed. Summer flax and marigolds and Busy Lizzies flew through the air as the whirling blades cut them to shreds.

Something snapped inside her head. All those flowers, the children’s flowers, which she had planted and watered and nurtured.

“Right, you bastard,” she said, throwing her napkin on the floor.

She flew over and tore open the terrace door, dashed down the steps and across the grass. She shoved Wilhelm Hopkins with both hands, forcing him to let go of the mower, which spluttered and died.

“Help,” Wilhelm Hopkins cried theatrically, “she’s attacking me, help!”

“Are you completely fucking mad?” Annika yelled, her voice echoing in the sudden silence. “Haven’t you got any manners at all? How the hell can you just drive your mower over my flower bed?”

She was about to give him another shove, but he took a step backward, pulling the mower with him.

“You little worm,” he said, his voice dripping with affronted derision. He stared down at his chest to see if she had left any mark, then took another stumbling step backward.

“You’ll pay for this,” he shouted. “I’m going to call the police. You hear me? The police!”

“Be my guest,” Annika shouted back. “By all means. Half the Justice Department just witnessed what you’ve done …”

Suddenly Thomas’s arms were wrapped round her, picking her up so she lost contact with the ground, swinging her around to face the other way.

“I really must apologize for my wife’s behavior,” Thomas said to the man.

“Like hell you do!” Annika yelled, trying to wriggle free.

Thomas was red in the face with shame and anger. Their guests had gathered round the terrace door and were staring at her with expressions
of shock on their faces. All apart from Jimmy Halenius, who had walked onto the grass and was laughing so hard he was crying.

“And someone’s parked in the road!” the man was shouting. “You’ve gone too far this time!”

“Sorry,” Thomas said to his colleagues, and Annika could see that he was close to tears. “I really am terribly sorry about this. Annika, I don’t understand what’s gotten into you …”

“I can’t go on like this,” she hissed at him, pulling free. “You have to back me up, or we’ll have to move. Why do you think the last people who lived here moved? After all, you worked out that they must have lost at least two and a half million on the sale. Now do you understand why?”

He grabbed hold of her again, but she pulled away and walked quickly toward the front door.

At the corner of the house stood Jimmy Halenius, still unable to stop laughing.

“What’s so funny?” she said as she walked past.

“Sorry,” he said, wiping his eyes. “Sorry, really, but it looked so incredibly funny …”

“I’m glad I was able to entertain you,” she said, going back inside the house.

She was halfway up the stairs when the phone rang.

I’ll let Thomas get it, she thought, realizing all of a sudden that she felt completely drained. Her whole body was shaking and she could hardly get up the stairs.

Is life supposed to be like this? she wondered. Why isn’t anything ever easy?

She leaned on the banister, feeling tears pricking her eyes.

The whole idea was that they would move somewhere peaceful and secure—that’s why they were here. This was supposed to be their safe place, and Thomas would finally be proud of her, but she simply didn’t fit in. No matter how hard she tried, it just kept going wrong.

Oh God, she thought. Why don’t I ever make anything easy for myself?

“Annika,” Thomas said behind her. “Annika, it’s the paper.”

She swallowed hard and closed her eyes, pressing her hand to her forehead.

“I don’t start work again until tomorrow.”

“That’s in two hours’ time, and they say it’s important.”

I can’t do this, she thought. I can’t go on like this.

“What?”

“Someone’s died. Drowned in his own bath, and apparently he lives close to us.”

“Who?”

“They said you knew him—something to do with that whole Nobel thing. His name’s Ernst Ericsson.”

SUBJECT: Nobel’s Will

TO: Andrietta Ahlsell

The person who occupied Alfred Nobel’s thoughts most during the last years of his life had herself been dead almost three hundred years: Beatrice Cenci.

The
Nemesis
project closes the circle of Alfred Nobel’s life.

He was born a poet. If he is certain of anything, it is this.

You say I am a riddle,
he writes as a teenager—a 425-line poem about Paris and love. He writes other poems, a lot of poems,
Thoughts of the night;
he starts a novel,
The Sisters
.

He is seventeen years old when his father Immanuel realizes that Alfred’s ambitions to become a writer—dear Lord!—are completely genuine.

They live in Tsarist Russia, in St. Petersburg, close to the banks of the Neva. Anyone who can’t pay his debts is thrown into prison. His father’s business has gone badly—does Alfred want to see his father in the fortress? Can Alfred shoulder this burden? Is he prepared to take responsibility?

Alfred, Alfred, they shouldn’t demand this of you! It isn’t fair!

But he burns his poems. He burns them all, every last one. Only two remain, as copies in other hands.
The Sisters
is finished, but it is never published.

And the decades pass. Alfred reads, he writes letters, he collects an enormous library. Of all the loves that remain unrequited in Alfred Nobel’s life, literature is the greatest. Eventually he decides that he must finally—
finally!
—be true to himself.

In a prose drama written for the stage Alfred
the poet
will tell the truth about life and death. As a framing device he chooses the classic tale of the tragic fate of the Cenci family.

And the poet creates a remorseless settling of scores with church and society. In the very first scene he writes:
There is no justice, neither here nor beyond the grave
.

Disguised as the young Beatrice he cries:
I am the avenger of wronged innocence and downtrodden justice.

The settling of scores is extremely violent. Beatrice the rape victim tortures her father, the rapist, to death. She pours molten lead in his ears and knocks his teeth out, all the while enjoying the experience:
Ah, your cries cannot touch me. No music has ever sounded so sweet to my ears
.

Alfred is very happy with his play. He writes to Bertha von Suttner that he has written a play in
poetic prose,
and that its scenic effect was
very good
.

He tries to have it translated into German, into Norwegian, but fails.

Instead he decides to have the work printed as it is, in Swedish, and he employs a young parson’s wife, Anna Söderblom, married to Nathan and living in Paris, to read the proofs.

The printer has his premises at number 19, Rue des Saint-Pères.

The proof copy, to be delivered to the young woman, is stamped:

Expédiée le 10 DECEMBRE 1896.

The play is finished, Alfred! It is ready now, on the day that you die!

The newly printed books, the spiritual testament of Alfred Nobel the poet, lie in piles in Pastor Nathan Söderblom’s office at number 6, Rue de Tour des Dames.

And the pastor reads, his relations read, his colleagues read, and they are agreed.

It is the industrial magnate who must be remembered, not the person.

His money is praised, not his creativity.

No one wants a critical settling of scores with the church, nor a violent drama about incest, nor harsh words about society from the grave.

No one wants to recognize Alfred
the poet
.

So the pastor burns the books.

He burns the entire print run, apart from three copies which remain hidden for a hundred years.

And so you are silenced, Alfred, once and for all.

So you are fooled, one final time.

But that’s all over now.

PART 3

June

TUESDAY, JUNE 1

At midnight it started to rain. Out of nowhere, the skies opened up and a crystal-clear shock of lightning lit up the whole area for a fraction of a second.

Annika rushed back to her car, which she had left on the other side of the fence. At the same time forensics officers poured out of the house, covering the ground around the entire house and driveway with large tarpaulins.

They don’t want any evidence out here to be washed away, Annika thought. They’ve still got a lot to do inside the house, but they know they’re going to have to examine the garden as well.

The men moved quickly and efficiently under the heavy rain, then disappeared into the house again.

Annika bit her lip. This was starting to feel really odd. What could be taking them so long in there?

She pulled out her cell phone and called the duty desk of the police crime unit again, listening to the ringing tone as she stared out through the rain-streaked windows at the house.

Ernst Ericsson’s home was just a kilometer or so from Vinterviksvägen, down toward Djursholms torg. The house was a classic 1920s villa, yellow, two floors. The garden was flat and anonymous, not dissimilar to her own, but it had a large pool at the back.

The house was a hive of activity, lit up like a Christmas tree. The forensic team’s arc lights matched the flashes of lightning outside, showing that they were carefully searching the entire house. She had caught a glimpse of a garish Hawaiian shirt through one of the upstairs windows, so Q was here. Both the regular police and the crime unit had been there
when she arrived, and the forensics team had turned up fifteen minutes later.

She started up at the house, at the shadows moving inside.

It was obvious that the police thought Ernst Ericsson had been murdered, but why?

Drowned in his bath, according to the tip-off to the paper, from one of the guys who spent all day listening to police radio.

It could be right, or it could be completely wrong.

The stereotypical officer who was guarding the cordon at the end of the drive wasn’t the talkative sort. She’d gotten no more than five words out of him—
can you move back please—
so he hadn’t exactly helped with any of the question marks.

There were no other media here, just her and the paper’s photographer, the cretinous Ulf Olsson. He was sitting in his own car, and she was more than happy for him to stay there.

Thank goodness I didn’t drink any more wine, she thought. Then the duty desk answered her call.

“I just wanted to check if a lead investigator had been appointed to the preliminary investigation into the murder of Ernst Ericsson,” she said, then held her breath as she waited for the reply.