Babylon (35 page)

They had been drunk, but that didn’t matter, especially now.

Later that night, when he walked home to his empty apartment, along the desolate, echoing quayside, he had felt an immediate sense of loss. As if something he had hardly been aware of was suddenly missing, like an amputated limb. He knew he would do anything to resume the conversation where it had left off.

The four walls of his apartment closed in on him. For a while he felt a physical need to defend himself. Henrik’s betrayal hurt. It reminded him of past betrayals, of his father, but he mustn’t blaspheme. He
mustn’t sink below the surface. Hauling himself out had almost cost him his life.

For the first time in an eternity, he could see clearly. The first part of the journey had been long.

When he was on medication, his thoughts had been like the logs piled up by the stove back home in his village: predictable, uninspiring, or as tough as willow branches. He had noticed an immediate change when he stopped taking the tablets. Ideas crowded his brain, like a gang of schoolchildren with the bell still ringing in their ears, pushing and shoving to escape; the images in his head didn’t always correspond with his inner voice and the words it used. More often than not the sentences were too long; it was impossible to follow them to the end. He noticed that there wasn’t usually an end at all, in fact, apart from the obvious. Death. And that was only proper.

Time was running out now that she had come home. He had watched from a distance, staking out her window. The fact that she had seen him didn’t matter, of course she had seen him. He wanted Annelie to see him, to respond to him just as she had done in Istanbul, only this time he was determined to be better prepared.

He was leaning on the wall with his back and the palms of his hands pressed against the warm bricks when she ran around the corner to the shop. She was glancing nervously around, looking but not seeing, blinded by anxiety. She could have looked at him and everything might have taken a different turn, but no, she was completely self-absorbed as she made her way to David’s shop.

She yanked the door open as if her life depended on it. Her skirt ended halfway up her tanned thighs. He thought about how David must have undressed her with his eyes, unashamed, when she had been his mistress. How she must have begged for it, just as she had begged for attention in Istanbul. Duped him into talking. It was obvious that the trip to India hadn’t brought her any kind of insight, or given her any more self-respect. On the contrary, she was running back to David.

What did she have to say to him?

The disintegration of his thoughts was accelerating. It was threatening the potency he had only just acquired.

All roads led back to Carla. But this time he was going to do the right thing and the circle would be complete.

‘David!’

‘Annelie?’

He walked around the counter and stood in front of her for a couple of seconds before his hand touched her upper arm, warm but hesitant. When he finally moved to hug her, she was the one who backed away. It made her feel stronger. ‘Leila?’

‘She’s not here. How have you been? You’re so brown . . .’

He smiled without parting his lips, a melancholy smile which said all the things he couldn’t bring himself to say:
I’ve missed you and I’m sorry that it has to be this way, that we had to make this choice, that we hurt each other
.

She looked down at her bare legs with their sun-bleached hairs and her feet, striped from the sandals she had worn most of the time in India; she bit her lip to stop tears from coming as she remembered that she had bought them in Istanbul and that Henrik had bought a very similar pair.

‘Fine. I’ve missed you.’

‘Annelie, I—’

‘I know, but you did ask. And I’m not fine at all, actually. Did you read about the murders?’

‘On Linnégatan? Yes.’

‘I knew the man. Henrik, he was on the same course as me. I must have mentioned him, you might even have seen him around. And the woman was a tutor in our department.’

‘Oh my God . . . No, there were no details in the paper, it just said they’d been . . . Well, there’s no point in going into all that now. Do you need someone to talk to?’

This time she couldn’t hold back the tears. ‘You were the first person I thought of.’ She tried to pull herself together. David looked at her searchingly. ‘Is there something else? Sweetheart . . . How are you coping?’

Her fears suddenly seemed contrived, paranoid. She didn’t answer him straight away.

‘I’ll get through it.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘Of course it’s horrible, I liked Henrik. And we used to hang out together, there were a few of us who . . . It’s worse for the others than it is for me. His partner Rebecca. And Axel, his best friend – he was on our course too. He
invested so much in Henrik, it was as if he didn’t have anyone else, it was almost laughable sometimes . . . As if he only existed when Henrik was around. He seems so helpless, you know. I really do understand that he’s completely devastated and confused. I mean, I really do feel sorry for him and . . .’

David nodded, broke in. ‘Stop, Annelie – you’re in shock. You’ve come home to terrible news. I’d . . . I’d really like to say that I’m here for you, but you know I’d be lying if I made a promise like that. You know how things stand.’

He pulled her towards him anyway, into his arms, stroking her back, smelling just the way he always did. She let the tears come, resting her cheek against his shoulder; all she wanted to do was to stay there, but because she knew that he would push her away at any second, she decided to get there first, in just a few seconds more . . .

He pushed her away gently. His voice was unsteady too. ‘Go and see a friend. Or go back to your parents for a while. Have a rest, let them look after you. And stop worrying about everybody else. You can’t help Henrik’s partner anyway, nor this Axel . . .’

‘He sits outside my apartment.’

It was too late to take it back.

‘What did you say?’

Surprise and a shadow of doubt on David’s face.

She took a deep breath. ‘He sits outside my apartment block looking up at my window. I’ve seen him several times.’

‘But what does he want?’

She shrugged, trying to feign nonchalance. ‘I don’t know, like I said I think he’s really upset about Henrik. I haven’t wanted to go down and speak to him, because . . .’

In the silence that followed, her hands felt like lumps of lead, dragging her down towards the floor. He was waiting for her to carry on, to provide a clarification she wasn’t sure she could give.

‘I don’t know. There was a kind of . . . desperation about him. I first noticed it on the trip to Istanbul, you remember that? A terrible loneliness – he’s very quiet and a bit of an oddball, and . . . I got the feeling that his friendship with Henrik filled an enormous void, do you know what I mean?’

‘And?’ David said impatiently, unsympathetically, and she felt her
face close down, felt herself clamming up because he didn’t understand.

‘And nothing. I’m just trying to work out why it feels peculiar. Now he hasn’t got Henrik, he must be devastated.’

‘Hang on a minute,’ said David. ‘He’s watching you? He sits and stares up at your window, but doesn’t try to talk to you? That doesn’t sound very healthy to me. Why the hell are you putting up with it?’

‘So what do you think I should do?’

‘Go to the police, of course.’

‘Oh, please . . .’

David waved his hand. ‘What? There’s something the matter with this guy, he might be one of those stalkers who’s decided to come after you instead, now Henrik’s gone. If you don’t do something right away you’ll soon have him inside your apartment, and then you’ll never get rid of him. What’s the problem – I mean, you said you thought he was unpleasant?’

She sighed, tipped back her head and gazed up at a crack running across the ceiling. ‘No . . . Well, yes. Maybe a bit. I don’t know what he wants. And there was something about her grip on reality when we were in Istanbul; it wasn’t very stable. I’m sure he feels like shit, but I just can’t carry someone else right now.’

‘And you’re not even going to try, Annelie.’ David took her hands and looked into her eyes. ‘Go home now and call the police. Tell them exactly what’s going on, that there’s a man who won’t leave you alone, that you don’t want to talk to him and that you feel uncomfortable. What he’s doing has to be illegal. The guy needs to have his card marked, if only for his own sake! And you don’t owe him any particular loyalty, do you?’

‘Well . . . only the loyalty we owe our friends.’

‘Friends don’t creep around in the bushes without saying hello. No, the police will pick him up and speak to him. He might even be able to get some help. Trauma counselling, or whatever the hell it’s called. Why do you always have to take the weight of the world on your shoulders?’

Annelie smiled instinctively as David placed his hand on her cheek, but suddenly she wanted neither his embrace nor his good advice.

‘Now go and do what I said.’

The doorbell alerted them to the arrival of a woman, followed by a man in an anorak.

‘A packet of tobacco,’ the woman said hoarsely. ‘Lucky Strike and the evening paper please.’

Annelie took the opportunity to back away towards the door. David made a vague gesture, his little finger to his lips and his thumb to his ear, call the police? Or did he mean that she should ring him? That they should keep in touch? As friends?

It was perhaps just as well that question remained unanswered. She realised that her unease had nothing to do with David, but that she had found no solace in him either. She would do better to rely on herself. Or a girlfriend. As soon as she got home, she would ring a friend. Ask her to stay over, cook a meal together and chat.

For the first time since her return from India, she had the feeling that there was water under the bridge between her and David. That in spite of everything, she was well on the way to putting the pain behind her.

She would run the final stretch back home.

Annelie and David had been standing in front of the counter for a long time, deep in a conversation.

He had taken up position a short distance away on the other side of the street. If he moved any closer to the glass wall of the shop they would see him, and he hadn’t thought that far ahead. He screwed up his eyes so that he could make out their expressions; he was standing so close by now that he could see Annelie shaking her head, wiping tears from her eyes and cheeks.

Her body trembled in David Sevic’s arms.

He moved closer, step by step. It had become a game: in the end he was so close to the glass that he felt like moving from the corner right up to the window and breathing on the glass. Writing his name:
Here I am
.

Was he really invisible?

David Sevic had his arms around Annelie, he was stroking her back, over and over again.

Gradually she relaxed.

But David didn’t seem able to accept the hopelessness of his situation, to admit that he could do nothing to change his fate. It wasn’t
long before he pushed Annelie away and adopted an expression which suggested he wanted to find a solution, to take charge of the situation like a man. Was he going to ring the police? The shopkeeper waved his hand in a gesture that spoke more of agitation than resignation; it was just so typical of him! Now he was angry! Anger was his solution.

He suspected that Annelie had noticed him outside her window but was deliberately ignoring him. Did she feel hunted? Was she also thinking back to Istanbul?

When David let her go, Annelie slumped slightly, as if he had been holding her up.

He heard footsteps and the low murmur of conversation behind him. A couple walked past; they tied their dog to the lamp post outside the shop and went inside. David had to remind himself that he was working; he straightened up and moved behind the counter. Annelie backed away towards the door. As she stepped onto the pavement her former lover rang up a packet of tobacco and an evening paper on the till, put his little finger to his lips and his thumb to his ear as though he were on the telephone and nodded: I’ll call you?

He slipped back around the corner and made himself even more invisible. His nails were digging into the palms of his hands.

It was so easy to give in to his impulses; he could already feel vague urges bubbling away inside him. He had done it before. David was suddenly a problem which had to be dealt with. Annelie wasn’t going to disappear; he had no doubt he could make her understand.

She looked over her shoulder but didn’t appear to notice him as she crossed Kabelgatan. She ran the final stretch back home.

He hadn’t planned it in advance.

In the shop he surprised himself by asking David about Annelie. His approach was clumsy, and obviously David reacted. He must have meant for David to react! He
wanted
confirmation that Annelie had told David all about him!

‘I know who you are and what you’re up to,’ David said, his jaw tense. ‘Leave Annelie alone! Understand? I’m calling the police. We’ve just decided to call the police, so you’d better sling your hook. And don’t come back.’

By way of a warning, he placed his hand on a blue telephone next to the till.

We?

David was standing with his arms folded over his broad chest, it was a show of strength; like Father he was a big man, his gaze steady. Only his slightly parted lips and the tiniest twitch of a muscle in his face spoke of his fear.

‘I’m calling the police.’

‘What makes you think you deserve to live?’

He placed his hand very gently on the gun he had stolen from his father a long time ago; it was hidden in a towel in his bag. ‘You’re betraying your son and his mother. The boy is suffering, perhaps the mother takes her own suffering out on the boy. But what would you know? And what about Annelie? She’s naive, she’s not stupid but she is easily led. You have done your best to destroy her. I repeat, what makes you think you deserve to live, or that I will allow you to destroy my life?’

They were interrupted by another customer, a little girl who spent an age choosing sweets before counting out the exact money. Once again David had to pull himself together to serve her. Interrupting the conversation felt strange to both of them.