The Black Path (27 page)

“‘Not for your silence,’” repeated Anna-Maria. “I want to see the slip.”

“I’ve asked them to scan it and e-mail it to you, so check your messages when you get in,” said Rebecka.

“Leave the prosecutor’s office and come and work downstairs with us instead,” exclaimed Anna-Maria. “Money isn’t everything.”

Rebecka was laughing on the other end of the phone.

“I’ve got to go,” she said. “I’m in court.”

“Again? Weren’t you there on Monday and Tuesday?”

“Mmm…It’s Gudrun Haapalahti in the main office. She’s just completely stopped sending anybody else up here.”

“You ought to complain,” said Anna-Maria, in an attempt to be helpful.

“Actually, I’d rather die.” Rebecka laughed. “See you later.”

Anna-Maria looked at Sven-Erik.

“Don’t start,” she said.

She rang Tommy Rantakyrö.

“Can you check on something for me?” she said, and without waiting for an answer she went on:

“Find out if any of the people Inna Wattrang spoke to on either of her cell phones lives or works anywhere near the SEB branch on Hantverkargatan in Stockholm.”

“How exactly did I end up in this telephone hell?” whined Tommy Rantakyrö. “How far back do you want me to go?”

“Six months?”

There was a groan on the other end of the phone.

“Start with January, then. The payment into her account was made on January 15.”

“Actually, I was just going to ring you,” said Tommy Rantakyrö before Anna-Maria had time to ring off.

“Yes?”

“You asked me to check the phone at Abisko tourist station.”

“Yes?”

“Somebody, and I reckon it has to be her, rang Diddi Wattrang’s house late on Thursday night.”

“He told me he didn’t know where she was,” said Anna-Maria.

“The conversation lasted exactly four minutes and twenty-three seconds. I think he’s lying, don’t you?”

M
auri Kallis was up in his study, looking down at the yard.

His wife, Ebba, was walking across the white gravel. Her riding hat under her arm, her new Arabian stallion held loosely. Her black hairband was shiny with sweat, her head drooping, tired but contented.

Ulrika Wattrang was coming from the opposite direction. She didn’t have the little boy with her. He was probably at home with the nanny.

The question was whether Diddi had come home yet. As far as Mauri was concerned, it didn’t matter. He could manage the meeting with the African Mining Trust just as well without him. Better. You couldn’t count on Diddi these days. Besides, Mauri could easily get a monkey to do Diddi’s job. You didn’t exactly need to exert yourself to find investors for Mauri’s projects. Now people had lost faith in IT shares, and it seemed impossible to calculate China’s appetite for steel, they were queuing up to join him.

He’d get rid of Diddi. It was only a question of time before Diddi and his wife and their little prince were told to pack up and move on.

Ulrika had stopped to talk to Ebba.

Ebba glanced up at his window, and he stepped back behind the curtain. It moved slightly, but you probably wouldn’t notice from outside.

I don’t care about her, he thought spitefully about Ebba.

When she had suggested separate bedrooms, he’d agreed without any discussion. It had no doubt been a final attempt on her part to provoke a row, but he’d felt nothing but relief. It meant he no longer had to lie there pretending not to notice that she was lying there crying with her back to him.

And I don’t care about Diddi, he thought. I can’t actually remember what I used to think was so fantastic about him.

I cared about Inna, he thought.

It’s snowing. It’s two weeks until Christmas Eve. Mauri and Diddi are in their third year at Business School. Mauri is already working part-time for a firm of brokers. He’s started to follow trading in commodities as a little special interest. It will be seventeen years before he ends up on the front cover of
Business Week
.

The area around Stureplan is like an advertising film. Or maybe like one of those toys, a plastic dome filled with water, and when you shake it, there’s a snowstorm inside it.

Beautiful women are drinking espresso and café au lait in the cafés, with shopping bags from the NK department store on the floor beside them, full of packages. Outside, the snow is floating down.

Little boys and girls in cloaks and duffel coats, like miniature adults, hold on to the hands of their well-dressed parents, almost walking backward so they can see all the Christmas displays in the shop windows. Diddi is making fun of the Christmas displays in Östermalm.

“They’ve got such a London complex.” He laughs.

They’re on their way to Riche. Pleasantly tipsy, although it’s only quarter past six in the evening. But they’ve decided it’s time for their Christmas celebrations.

On the corner of Birger Jarlsgatan and Grev Turegatan, they bump into Inna.

She’s walking arm in arm with an older man. Much older. He’s bony, in the way that old men are. Death is making its presence felt in his appearance; his skeleton is pressing against his skin from the inside, saying: soon there’ll only be me left. The skin has very little resistance left these days. It’s stretched over his forehead where his cranium bulges outward, without a hint of elasticity. His cheekbones are sticking out above his cheeks, which have collapsed inward. The bones of his wrists are very prominent.

Not until afterwards does it occur to Mauri that Diddi was about to walk past without saying hello, but of course Mauri stops and introductions are necessary.

Inna isn’t bothered in the least. Mauri looks at her and thinks she’s like a Christmas present herself. Her smile and her eyes always look as though there’s a lovely surprise inside.

“This is Ecke,” she says, pressing herself affectionately against him.

All these pet names they have, the upper classes and the nobility. It never ceases to amaze Mauri. There’s Noppe and Bobbo and Guggu. Inna is actually called Honorine. And while a William is never known as Wille, a Walter is always Walle.

The man extends a bony hand covered with brown age spots from out of his expensive, but somewhat shabby, woolen coat. Mauri finds it disgusting. He resists the urge to sniff at his hand afterwards to see if it smells dirty.

“I don’t get it,” he says to Diddi when they’ve said goodbye to Inna and her companion. “Is that Ecke?”

Inna has mentioned him from time to time. She can’t come out with them because she’s off to the country with Ecke, she and Ecke have seen this film or that film. Mauri has pictured an upper-class young man with slicked-back blond hair. Sometimes he’s wondered if he might be married, since they never get to meet him and Inna doesn’t have much to say about him. But then she never says much about her boyfriends. Mauri has also thought that her boyfriends are probably older, and that Inna doesn’t think they’ll have anything in common with her brother and Mauri, little boys who are still at school. But not that much older!

When Diddi doesn’t reply, Mauri goes on:

“But he’s an old man! What does she see in him?”

Then Diddi says, in a casual tone, but Mauri can hear him clinging onto his air of insouciance as it threatens to slip through his fingers, although he’s holding on tightly to it, it’s the only thing he has to hang on to:

“You really are naive.”

They stop there on the pavement outside Riche, inside a Christmas card. Diddi flicks his cigarette away and stares intensely at Mauri.

He’s going to kiss me, thinks Mauri, but doesn’t have time to work out whether that scares him or not before the moment has passed.

Another time. Winter again. Snowing again. And Inna has a good friend, as she calls them. Although this is somebody else. Things have been over between her and Ecke for a long time. She’s going to the Nobel dinner with this man, and Diddi decides that he and Mauri must go round to her apartment on Linnégatan with a bottle of champagne to help her zip up her dress.

She looks absolutely amazing when she opens the door. A long, poppy red dress, moist lips the same color.

“Okay?” she asks.

But Mauri is actually incapable of replying. He learns what the word “breathless” means.

He waves the bottle of champagne and disappears into the pantry to hide his feelings and to fetch glasses.

When he comes back she’s sitting at the little dining table putting on more eye shadow. Diddi is standing behind her. He’s leaning over her, supporting himself with one hand on the table. He has slipped his other hand inside her dress and is caressing her breast.

Both of them look at Mauri, waiting for his reaction. Diddi raises one eyebrow a fraction, but doesn’t move his hand.

Inna is smiling, as if the whole thing were a joke.

Mauri doesn’t move a muscle. He remains completely expressionless for three seconds, has total control over the fine network of muscles in his face. When the three seconds have passed, he raises his eyebrow slightly, assumes an indescribably decadent Oscar Wilde expression, and says:

“My boy, when you have a hand free, I have a glass for you. Cheers!”

They smile. He really is one of them.

And they drink from her antique champagne glasses.

Ebba Kallis and Ulrika Wattrang met in the yard outside Regla. Ebba looked up at Mauri’s window. The curtain was moving.

“Have you heard from Diddi?” asked Ebba.

Ulrika Wattrang shook her head.

“I’m so worried,” she said. “I can’t sleep. I took a sleeping tablet last night, although I don’t really want to do that when I’m breastfeeding.”

Echnaton pulled impatiently at the reins. He wanted to get into the stable, get the saddle off and be fussed over.

“He’ll be in touch soon,” said Ebba mechanically.

A tear seeped out from beneath Ulrika’s thick eyelashes. She shook her head skeptically.

Lord, I’m so tired of this, thought Ebba. I’m so tired of her crying.

“Don’t forget he’s going through a difficult period at the moment,” she said gently.

Aren’t we all, she thought waspishly.

Several times over the past six months Ulrika had turned up at her house crying. “He just pushes me away, he’s completely out of it, I don’t even know what he’s taken, I try asking if he doesn’t at least care about Philip, but he just…” And she’d hug the baby so hard he’d sometimes wake up and sob inconsolably, and then Ebba would have to carry him around.

Echnaton laid his muzzle against her head and blew, ruffling her hair. Ulrika laughed through her tears.

“He’s in love with you, I’m sure of it,” she said.

Yes, he is, thought Ebba, glancing up at Mauri’s window. The horses love me.

She’d got this particular stallion for next to nothing, when you looked at his pedigree. Simply because he was like the devil himself to ride. She remembered how expectant she’d been as they brought him out of the trailer. Nostrils flaring, eyes rolling in that divine little black head. A back leg you needed to watch out for. It had taken three men to hold him on that occasion.

“Good luck.” They’d laughed when they finally got him into his stall and could be on their way to carry on celebrating Christmas. The stallion had stood there, eyes rolling.

Ebba hadn’t taken him to the paddock with a lunging whip and draw reins. Instead they drove the devil out of his body together. She let him run and jump, far and high. She put on a hard hat and a back protector and let him go, instead of reining him in. They’d been covered in mud when they got back. One of the stable girls who helped Ebba had seen them and laughed. Echnaton had stood there waiting to go into his stable, his legs trembling with tiredness. Ebba had rinsed him down with warm water. He had whinnied with pleasure, and had suddenly leaned his forehead against her.

She had twelve horses at the moment. She bought foals and hopeless cases and broke them in. She intended to start breeding them herself, gradually. Mauri used to laugh and say that she bought more than she sold. And she politely played along with the role of the housewife with two expensive hobbies. Racehorses and stray dogs.

“Regla is yours,” Mauri had said when they got married.

As a compensation for the fact that Kallis Mining belonged to him alone, and to give her financial security.

But he bought and renovated Regla with borrowed money, and never repaid the loans.

If she were to leave Mauri, she would have to leave Regla. The horses, the dogs, the staff, the neighbors, her whole life, was here.

She had made her choice. She smiled and received their guests when he entertained. She kept him informed about their sons’ progress in school, and their hobbies. She organized Inna’s funeral without kicking up a fuss.

I’m like him, thought Ebba, looking at her horse. We’re both slaves, freedom is not an option. If you make sure you’re always exhausted, you can stop yourself from going crazy.

And just as she had finished thinking that very thought, Ester came bounding across the yard.

A
nna-Maria Mella unlocked the door of her house around lunchtime on Thursday and said, Hello, house. Her heart lifted when she saw that everything had been cleared away after breakfast and that the table had been wiped.

She got herself a bowl of cornflakes and a liver pâté sandwich, then rang Lars Pohjanen’s number.

“Well?” she said when he answered, without even saying who she was.

There was a strange sound at the other end of the telephone, like a crow trapped in a chimney. You had to know Lars Pohjanen to realize he was laughing.

“Hätähousu.”

“Give the hätähousu what she wants. What did Örjan Bylund die of? Did he hang himself, or was it something else?”

“What she wants.” Pohjanen’s voice was suddenly creaking with annoyance at the other end of the line. “What’s the matter with your colleagues? You should have sent him to me for an autopsy when you found him. It’s remarkable how bloody useless the police are when it comes to following the rules. It’s only the rest of us who have to do that.”