Babylon (4 page)

‘Oh . . . hello . . . ’

Axel answered this time; he sounded as if she’d woken him up.

‘Sorry, Axel, it’s Rebecca. I know what time it is, but I’m just so worried about Henrik. He hasn’t come home yet. I’m afraid something might have happened to him.’

‘Er . . . I . . . ’

‘Come on, Axel. There’s no point in lying. You’re too tired to come up with anything good.’

At first she thought he’d hung up in sheer terror. Then he cleared his throat, sounding troubled.

‘Sorry, Rebecca. I don’t know anything.’

She gave up, put her coat on and went out.

Linnégatan was never completely deserted at night. Several bars had just closed and small clusters of people were still chatting in the street as reggae music poured from a restaurant kitchen. Occasionally, a nocturnal dog-walker would wander past.

The entrance Rebecca was looking for was tucked between the bar and a small English-language bookshop. She saw a courtyard that resembled a park. Wrought-iron benches were arranged around a disused fountain, with tall street lamps glowing between them. Along the sides of the courtyard she could make out roses and lilac. Rebecca had walked up and down this street ever since she was a child, and she had never known there was a garden behind the old stone buildings. She almost forgot why she was there. Then it struck her with full force.

She chose a door at random and tugged on it, but wasn’t surprised to find it locked; of course the outside doors would be locked. And it was the middle of the night so there was little chance of following someone in.

She stood absolutely still, allowing her gaze to roam over the buildings’ façades. They really were beautiful, and curiously silent. Were the buildings just as reluctant to let in strangers as the people who
inhabited them?
How the other half live
, she thought uncharitably. Lights were on in a small number of apartments. At one window, she caught sight of a figure behind a curtain. Rebecca allowed the shadows to swallow her up.

That was when she spotted his navy-blue mountain bike. It was almost invisible in a stand among several others. At least, she was sure that it was his at the time, even if it didn’t have any particular distinguishing features. After a moment’s hesitation she picked up a sharp stone and made a scratch along the frame. If she couldn’t catch him red-handed, the scratch would provide proof when he rolled home in a few hours. She realised with growing frustration that she couldn’t do much more. But if there was one thing that amazed Rebecca, it was how God had a tendency to hear the prayers of desperate people. She walked up to Karpov’s door and found that it wasn’t properly closed, or perhaps the lock was broken.

She let herself in, and tiptoed quickly up the stairs.

The turn-of-the-century panelled door was beautiful, but it was also thin; breaking it open would be a piece of cake.

She could hear footsteps from the apartment on the other side of the landing; she pulled up her hood over her red hair and slowly pushed the letterbox inwards. The hallway was dark and silent. She could smell food: curry, cumin and something else, something sweet.

5

Ann-Marie was lying in the bath. He was sure she’d gone in there simply to avoid him, even though their time together was precious. He could hear the sound of rushing water behind the door. Henrik sat on the sofa as the TV flickered silently a few metres away. He leafed through a magazine, but was too agitated to read.

She had turned off the tap; she must just be lying there now. A small green alarm clock, which looked totally out of place, ticked away on the mantelpiece, as if to remind him that every minute was a minute
they would not get back. It was the middle of the night. He had covered himself by mentioning Axel, and telling her it would be a late one, but you never knew with Rebecca. She might suddenly get an idea in her head. He ought to go home.

Henrik had outlined his plans for a shared future to Ann-Marie; in the end he had talked himself into a dead end, and he ought to go home before he made the situation worse. But he didn’t want to leave just yet. This was no note to leave things on.

Henrik really wished Ann-Marie hadn’t gone into the bathroom with such an air of weary resignation. He wished she hadn’t been so distant, as if her mind were not on the two of them, but on something else entirely. What she was going to do at the weekend, when Henrik and Rebecca were visiting mutual friends outside Kungsbacka, eating shrimps and tiramisu.

She seemed distracted, but was she actually afraid?

Earlier that evening he had been appalled by how much he had upset her. He had been frightened by the fact that he had scared her when he raised his voice and shouted in frustration:
I don’t see what we have to gain by keeping our relationship a secret! I have no intention of doing so any longer!
When she accused him of threatening and blackmailing her, he had thought: I shouldn’t be upsetting and frightening her.

He had apologised.

He had stopped laying out their future. Realised that he had to take a different tack, talk about love. Of course! She was a woman, after all. Like other women, she needed to feel wanted. She needed to know what he had always assumed was understood: that he was choosing her.
He
wanted
her
. He couldn’t offer her much in the way of financial security or social standing, but then she was pretty well off anyway.

He had to be tender now and rational later. Henrik wasn’t a calculating person, but this was what his relationship with Rebecca had done to him.

‘
I want you, Ann-Marie. I’m ready to make a commitment. I’m by no means perfect, but . . . Blah, blah, blah
. . .’

He’d really gone for it tonight, cut straight to the chase. In his mind it had sounded honest. Disarming. Like someone who has learnt what he wants and is ready to fight for it. In Henrik’s mind, his words had sounded really good, almost like a film script.

As the words ‘I’m by no means perfect’ came out, it did indeed sound like a film. A film with a banal, clichéd script, dashed off on a Monday morning. A script written by a spotty intern. He was suddenly painfully aware of how he must have looked in her eyes. The charming, scatty boy was beginning to look pathetic. He was trapped. Trapped in his relationship with Rebecca. Trapped in the person he had gradually become: the person who, compared with the oh-so-capable Rebecca . . .

‘What’s to say you wouldn’t feel the same about me?’ Ann-Marie had broken in, her voice thin, already weak. ‘What’s to say that you wouldn’t start comparing yourself to me and my achievements, and that you’d end up feeling inferior again? What if you didn’t like that either?’

And he had forced himself to laugh, as if to suggest that her comment had been meant as a joke. Said that of course he had no interest whatsoever in measuring achievements within a relationship. It was Rebecca who weighed every success and failure along the way, to his detriment.

‘I’m not afraid of strong women,’ he had said firmly. ‘In fact, I’m clearly drawn to them.’

And this might have been demonstrably true, but it was wrong, and it was doubly wrong to start talking about Rebecca, even if it was Ann-Marie who brought her up.
What’s Rebecca got to do with this?
He’d fallen, head-first, into the trap with his sad clichés.
My partner doesn’t understand me, boohoo, she’s so perfect, she castrates me with her perfection
. . .

He wasn’t pleased with how his declaration had gone. And, on this occasion, Ann-Marie hadn’t really argued with him, in spite of the fact that he was taking her for granted in what he was saying. And he didn’t believe for a moment that it was because she accepted him as he was, warts and all.

No. She was withdrawing from him; when he touched her she flinched.

He thought it had a lot to do with all the gossip, the talk. It didn’t particularly bother him. In some twisted way it made him feel important. And it was something of a turn-on, forbidden fruit and so on. But Ann-Marie worried about what people thought. Whispers and giggles had given way to frowns and moral outrage. He could see that she was
beginning to wonder whether it was worth it. Whether
he
was worth it.

Well, he would just have to make sure that it was worth it for Ann-Marie.

He had to turn the situation around. He needed her, after all.

The bathroom lock clicked – why the hell had she locked it? OK. He stretched his legs out in front of him. It was time to win or to disappear. He would round things off, tidy things up before he went home. Make everything right for their next meeting; he would play his trump card. The only thing his relative youth enabled him to offer that her successful academic contemporaries couldn’t: better sex.

‘I thought you were leaving,’ said Ann-Marie.

She wouldn’t meet his eye. Her body must still have been wet when she pulled on her T-shirt; there were darker patches and her short, straight hair was still dripping. She put on a dressing gown as if she wanted to cover herself up. She rubbed a towel over her hair half-heartedly.

‘Let me help you with that.’

‘No.’

Ann-Marie hesitated, or at least that was how it seemed to him, before squatting down with her back resting against the sofa. Henrik wrapped the towel around her hair and pressed against the fabric with his palms and fingertips, then he removed the towel and continued to stroke her wet head.

She sighed heavily, her body trembling. He gently pulled her head backwards. She let it happen, but he could feel that her neck was stiff and reluctant.

‘Listen,’ she said after a while. ‘I . . . ’

He was surprised to hear a sob as her body contracted and convulsed beneath his hands, her shoulders quivering and tense. He didn’t know what to do as the storm of weeping passed, but it only lasted a few seconds.

‘We need to talk,’ she said eventually, as if her tears had given her a sense of resolve. ‘Everything has to come to an end.’

We need to talk
. Words that seldom boded well; frustration was making his jaw muscles clench. He would have liked to be able to see the expression on her face. Suddenly every utterance, every action
seemed horribly crucial. He would have liked more time, but realised that maybe that was just the way things were, and that their time had come.

A second later, the doorbell rang.

The doorbell?

‘Is that my doorbell?’

Henrik shrugged, even though she couldn’t see him. They waited for a moment in silence. Henrik had an unpleasant feeling in his throat. It was rare, perhaps unheard of, for Ann-Marie to have unexpected visitors.

He should have cycled home a long time ago. Every thought he had entertained about Rebecca soured the taste in his mouth.

The doorbell rang again, and Ann-Marie got to her feet. She wiped her eyes with a corner of her dressing gown and quickly cleared her throat. She didn’t look at him.

‘Yes, it’s definitely my door.’

‘Are you expecting anyone?’

‘No, but . . . ’

If she had opened the door between the living room and the hallway, Henrik would have been able to see down the darkened hallway, and he would have been visible to the person standing at the door, silhouetted agains the light pouring in from the stairwell.

Instead she went through the kitchen.

She was already in the hallway.

Henrik felt distinctly uneasy; he began to feel afraid. He wanted to call out as he imagined the safety catch being flicked up, perhaps he tried, but his words didn’t come out. She wouldn’t hear him anyway. Or didn’t he want to make himself heard? Did he want to remain invisible to the unknown for as long as possible, coward that he was? All he really knew was that
something
was about to kick off, and that he was afraid of the consequences.

‘Oh . . . hello?’

The tiny muscles in Henrik’s body, which had been as taut as piano strings for the past two minutes, relaxed slightly as he waited for what came next. Ann-Marie hadn’t sounded panic-stricken. But nor had she sounded completely normal. Surprised, more than anything.

He lowered his eyes, still listening. The door closed with a loud bang.

6

The car was being taken to the garage via Linnéplatsen to have its gearbox looked at; the officer at the wheel had reported that first and second were difficult to engage. But first it was redirected to an apartment block occupied by one Anna-Klara Stenius. The call had come in during the night.

‘Ann-Marie Karpov. Noise reported by a neighbour in the early hours of the morning,’ Granberg explained to Andersson. ‘There was a scream and the sound of something heavy falling on the floor, then loud bangs, and a while later nobody answered when she rang the doorbell although she knew someone was in. A patrol was sent out, but of course it was as silent as the grave when they got there. For goodness sake, it could have been anything!’

‘Karpov, that sounds Russian. Domestic violence?’ said Andersson, turning left up by Sveaplan.

Granberg shrugged irritably. Sometimes it was best to ignore such comments, even if the prejudice behind them still perturbed him. Besides, he’d just got used to the idea of an unexpected break in the garage – he had landed badly during a squash game the night before, and could feel his foot swelling by the hour. He might have to sign himself off for a few days.

‘I don’t understand why we have to go back,’ said Andersson.

‘Because now the old woman’s insisting she’s seen something in her neighbour’s hallway. She’s in a state.’

‘I thought the door was locked?’

‘She’s seen something that looks like blood . . . and something that looks like a person’s foot.’

‘Seriously?’

‘That’s what she said.’

Andersson parked in a loading bay outside the building. ‘It’ll only take a couple of minutes. Stay in the car if you like, give your foot a rest. I’ll be back in no time.’

Granberg tried putting his foot on the ground. He grimaced as the pain shot up his leg.

That decided the matter. Andersson slammed her door. ‘You’re no use at the moment, anyway. You’re a hindrance, in fact.’