Last Will (42 page)

Q groaned loudly.

“Okay. We can talk about Brolin, but not Svensson.”

“How about someone taken in for questioning during the night?”

“Oh, what the hell? Okay.”

“Murder?” Annika asked.

“Absolutely.”

There were a few moments of silence on the line.

“You’re ruling out accidental death?” Annika asked. “Sudden illness? Suicide?”

“Of all the suicides I’ve seen, this would be one of the hardest ones to explain,” Q said, hanging up.

She wrote thirty lines about how yet another chair of the Karolinska Institute’s Nobel Committee had been murdered within the space of six months. How unconfirmed reports suggested that a relative had found him dead and that the police were completely convinced that he had been murdered. A short description of the crime scene and the police work out there; the fact that the lead investigator of the Nobel murders, Linda Brolin, had been allocated this case as well; ending with the fact that the police had already taken someone in for questioning.

She called Jansson as soon as she had emailed him the text, and waited in silence as he read it through.

The night editor was no longer sighing.

“You’re right,” he said. “This is hot. Madeleine’s off the front and into the box at the top of the page.”

“Have you done
Memories of Ernst Ericsson
?”

“I took you at your word, so that’s sorted.”

When they had hung up Annika sat staring out of the office window.

It had stopped raining, and the sun was coming up. She could hear the birds singing in Wilhelm Hopkins’s hedge. If she listened carefully she could hear her family sleeping, Thomas’s rhythmic breathing on the other side of the wall, Ellen whimpering in her sleep—unless she was just imaging things? Was it just her own pulse she could hear?

As soon as she gave in, tiredness overwhelmed her. Her thoughts grew fuzzy, words faded away, her body ached, and her head felt full of lead.

God, she thought, I have to go to bed.

She went out into the bathroom, undressed, brushed her teeth, and crept into bed beside Thomas.

He didn’t wake up.

The water in the bathtub was cloudy and gray. There were long threads swimming about in it, like algae, sticking to the sides and stirring up small waves on the surface.

Annika was standing in the doorway staring at the bath. She didn’t want to be there at all, she wasn’t supposed to see this, she had a feeling she had already gone too far.

“It’s your deadline now,” Anders Schyman said behind her. “If you’re going to keep your job on this paper you’d better hurry up.”

She knew he was right and took a long stride into the bathroom.

There was a woman floating at the bottom of the bathtub. The algae was her hair, drifting out through the water like snakes.

“We need a police van,” Annika said, but at that moment the woman opened her eyes.

They had no irises, were just blank and white.

She tried to scream but no sound came out. She turned to run, but where the door had been was just a plain tiled wall.

The woman sat up in the bath, her blind eyes staring at Annika. She was naked, her skin covered in slime. She was trying to say something, but nothing but a hissing sound came out, and Annika realized that the woman was Caroline von Behring.

Annika pressed back against the wall, trying to catch her breath.

“I don’t understand,” she managed to say. “I don’t know what you want.”

Then something in her chest gave way and she could breathe again, to the point where she felt she could fly.

“Leave me alone!” she shouted. “Let me be! It wasn’t my fault!”

Her shouting echoed around the little room, and she turned to run again, but another woman was standing right behind her. It was Sophia Grenborg, and she was pale blue and ice-cold and wet. When she opened her mouth there was nothing but a black hole, her throat gurgling like a drain.

“I’m the one he loves now,” the gurgling said.

“Annika, what is it?”

Thomas was leaning over her shaking her shoulder.

“Can you hear me, Anki, are you ill?”

Annika turned away from the terrible pale-blue Sophia Grenborg and stared in the other direction, into the tiled wall.

“What?” she said.

“Annika, you have to wake up, I’m going to work now.”

“What about Kalle?” Annika said, screwing her eyes shut.

Thomas sat on the bed beside her and sighed.

“He’ll have to stay at home and rest today.”

She lay still for a few seconds, feeling sleep and the bad dream tugging at her body.

“Today’s my first day back,” she said in a thick voice. “I can’t stay at home today.”

“What do you mean?” Thomas said. “You were working all night. When did you finally get to bed?”

Annika forced her legs over the edge of the bed and threw the covers aside.

“This is my first day back after six months away,” she said. “I can’t be at home, not today.”

“But you’re supposed to be able to work from home!” Thomas said, standing up. “You’ve got the laptop and everything!”

Tiredness was sending flashes of lightning through her head—
fuck—
she couldn’t
deal with this sort of debate the moment she tried to use her brain for something other than
housework
!

“I can’t do this!” she shouted. “I can’t deal with this sort of crap the moment I have a good reason to leave the house!”

She grabbed a dressing gown and marched out to the bathroom, feeling giddy and sick. As she stepped through the door she realized that this was where she had been until a few minutes ago—Caroline von Behring had been lying dead in her bathtub—and she turned in the doorway and went back into the bedroom.

“You said you were going to be working until you presented the briefing,” she said. “And that was yesterday, and now you’re saying you’re going to carry on with that fucking job. Well, what about me? Who gives a damn about me? When’s it going to be my turn?”

Thomas walked past her and into the office, his jacket flapping.

“Your turn?” he said. “You’ve taken over the whole desk—look at this—all your fucking notes all over my memos.”

“For God’s sake!” Annika yelled, running in and grabbing her notepad. “I’m so sorry! Sorry that I dared to take up the tiniest bit of space, sorry for existing!”

“I’m going now,” Thomas said, heading toward the stairs.

Annika moved to stand in his way, arms outstretched, staring up into his face. Her dressing gown slid down so that she was standing there practically naked.

“Like hell you are!”

His eyes flashed red with anger.

“I’m going, even if I have to move you out of the way by force,” he said.

“I can’t look after this entire household on my own,” Annika told him. “Cleaning and food and washing,
and
all the responsibility for the children,
and
working full time, without leaving some kind of sign of it in the office. Surely even you can see that?”

He was breathing heavily, looking down into her face. His jaw was clenched so tightly his skin was turning white. Then he seemed to relax and took several deep breaths, and it sounded like sobs.

“Oh God,” he said, turning around and going back into the bedroom again with one hand over his eyes.

She watched him, the jacket stretched across his broad shoulders, his dark jeans and shiny shoes.

“Thomas,” she said, going after him and wrapping her arms around his waist. “I’m sorry. Forgive me. I didn’t mean to shout …”

He pulled her to him, kissing her hair and rocking her gently.

“It’s my fault,” he said. “Sorry. Of course I realize that you can’t be at home today of all days.”

He held her away from him and looked at her seriously, and she evaded his gaze.

“But you can hardly have slept at all. You mustn’t burn out the moment you go back to work.”

She slipped her fingers under the waist of his trousers and pulled out his shirt, finding a strip of red-hot skin, and kissed him on the neck.

“I love you, you know,” she whispered, unless she merely thought it, because he didn’t answer.

He slid his fingers through her hair, and for the first time in ages she experienced that feeling again, the one she had felt with Bosse.

“Why are you shouting?”

Ellen was standing in the doorway, clutching Poppy and Ludde.

No, Annika thought, sinking to the floor. Not now.

“Are you cross?”

Thomas let go of Annika and went over to pick up the little girl.

“Not anymore,” he said. “Do you want to go to nursery school today, or would you rather stay at home with me and Kalle?”

“Home with you, Daddy!” Ellen cried, wrapping her arms round his neck.

Annika shut her eyes and leaned against the doorframe, and the whole house spun.

“I’m going to grab another hour’s sleep,” she said, but no one heard her.

The children were sitting at the dining table, drawing. The sun was shining, and the frames of the windows were casting patterned shadows over
the oak parquet floor. The terrace door was ajar, letting in the hum of insects and the smell of grass.

Thomas sank down at the breakfast bar in the kitchen with the morning paper and a cup of coffee and sighed happily. Cramne had been understanding when he had called and explained that his son wasn’t well, and had even managed to sound sympathetic.

“Poor bastard,” he had said, although it was unclear whether he was referring to Thomas or Kalle.

As if staying home with your own child was some sort of punishment, Thomas thought.

Which it wasn’t. In fact it was really rather nice.

A whole day with the paper and some magazines and a bit of Eurosport in the afternoon. Really not bad.

“Daddy,” Kalle shouted crossly. “She’s taken my pen.”

Thomas looked up from the editorial and glanced over at the dining table.

“What’s all the fuss about?”

“She’s got the brown pen and it’s
mine
.”

“But I’m doing trees,” Ellen said, concentrating hard on her drawing.

The boy leaned over the table and hit his little sister in the head with his fist. The girl dropped the pen and put her hands to her head as she let out a whimper that soon turned into a howl. Kalle snatched up the pen with a triumphant grin.

“Daddy! He hit me!”

Thomas put his paper down and went over to the dining area.

“Listen,” he said, sitting down next to Ellen. “We aren’t going to spend the day fighting, we’re going to have a nice day together, aren’t we?”

“She started it,” Kalle said smugly, drawing long brown lines with the pen.

Ellen was crying, and Thomas stroked her on the back.

“Okay, little one,” he said, picking his daughter up. “Does it still hurt? Do you want me to blow on it?”

“He hit me, Daddy! He hit me
hard
!”

“I know,” Thomas said, blowing on the girl’s hair.

Annika came downstairs, dressed and made up, with her oversized bag on her shoulder.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Thomas said.

Ellen wriggled out of his arms and ran over to Annika.

“Kalle hit me really hard, here.”

She pointed to her head, just above her forehead, and Annika put her bag down to take a closer look.

“Oh, you’ve already got a bump, darling,” she said. “We can’t have that.”

She kissed the girl, got up and went over to Kalle. Taking hold of his chair, she spun him around, forcing the boy to look at her.

“You mustn’t hit your little sister,” she said, looking him right in the eyes.

“But she was the one who …”

“Quiet!” she said in a loud voice. “You are absolutely
not allowed
to hit your little sister. You’re not going to turn into the sort of boy who hits girls, do you hear me?
Do you hear me?
”

“Yes,” Kalle said, looking down.

“Calm down,” Thomas said, but she ignored him.

“Look at me,” she said to the boy instead, and he looked up at her under his bangs. “Kalle, you’ve got to stop telling lies and saying everything is someone else’s fault, and you’ve got to stop fighting. You don’t like it when other children are mean to you, do you? How do you think Ellen feels when you’re mean to her?”

He looked down again.

“Sad,” he said.

She pulled him to her and hugged him for a few seconds.

“I’m going to work now,” she said, and he wrapped his arms tightly around her neck.

“No!” he cried. “Stay at home, Mommy! Stay at home with me today!”

“But Daddy’s at home,” Annika said, and the boy glanced at Thomas, quickly and shyly, before burrowing his face into Annika’s long hair.

“I want you to stay at home, Mommy,” the boy said.

She freed herself from his grasp and looked up at Thomas.

“It’s a good idea to wipe the table before they start drawing,” she said. “They put their pictures all over the house, and we end up with stains everywhere.”

A feeling of exhaustion hit him like a cold, wet washcloth.

“Get off to work now,” he said, standing up and turning away.

She left without another word. He waited until the door had closed behind her before sitting down with his coffee.

She just couldn’t help it, pointing out that the table hadn’t been wiped. If it was that damn filthy she could have done something about it. Larsson and Althin’s wives had cleared the dishes from the dining table and put them in the sink last night. He noted with the a sting of irritation that they were still there; no one had put them in the dishwasher.

What contribution had she made yesterday? She’d picked up some embarrassing ready-made food that she just heated up in the microwave! She made a fool of herself in front of his colleagues and behaved appallingly toward their neighbor. And she’d left him with their guests, and the dishes, and everything.

He started to feel heated as he thought about it, the way she had shouted at their neighbor, and the way the other wives had looked at him, and how the men had started talking about something else. To his surprise, they had all stayed until past one in the morning. Cramne had downed his cognac and asked for another one before Althin had pulled on the brakes and reminded everyone that they all had to work the next day.