"Would that be Arne Andersson or Petra Andersson?"
"Both," Annika replied quickly and jotted down the numbers on her pad. "Thank you!"
She called the first number. No answer, maybe he'd gone to bed. It was nearly half past ten. Petra was at home, and she sounded somewhat put out.
"I'm so sorry," Annika said, "but I'm visiting a friend who lives next door to you. I've been buzzing, but there's no answer. I know she's there. I'm getting a bit worried…"
"Which neighbor?" Petra asked.
"Helena Starke," Annika said. Petra laughed. It wasn't a friendly laugh.
"So you're visiting Starke at half past ten at night? Good luck, girl!" she said and gave Annika the code.
You hear so many strange things, Annika thought while walking inside. Helena Starke lived on the fourth floor. She rang the doorbell twice, but no one answered the door. She looked around the hallway, trying to figure out which direction Helena Starke's apartment faced and how big it could be. She went down on the street again and started counting. Starke ought to have at least three windows facing the street, and the light was on in two. She was probably at home. Annika returned inside and went back up in the elevator. She pushed the doorbell for a long time, then she opened the letterbox and said:
"Helena Starke? My name is Annika Bengtzon. I'm from
Kvällspressen.
I know you're there. Won't you open the door?"
She waited in silence for a while, then she heard the door-chain rattle on the other side. The door opened slightly and she caught a glimpse of a woman with eyes swollen from weeping.
"What do you want?" Helena Starke said quietly.
"I'm sorry to bother you like this, but we've been trying to get hold of you all day."
"I know. I've had fifteen notes through my letterbox from you and all the others."
"Could I come in for a moment?"
"Why?"
"We'll be writing about Christina Furhage's death in tomorrow's paper, and I was wondering if I could ask you a couple of questions."
"What about?"
Annika sighed.
"I'll be happy to explain, but I'd rather not do it out here."
Starke opened the door and let her in the apartment. It was extremely untidy. The air was heavy, and Annika thought she could smell vomit. They went into the kitchen, where the dishes were piled high, and on one of the burners stood an empty bottle of brandy. Helena Starke herself was dressed only in a T-shirt and panties. Her hair was in disarray and her face was all swollen.
"Christina's death is a terrible loss," she said. "There wouldn't have been any Stockholm Olympics if it weren't for her."
Annika took out a pad and pen and took notes. How come everyone kept saying the same things about Christina Furhage? she wondered.
"What was she like as a person?" Annika asked out loud.
"Extraordinary," Helena Starke said, staring down at the floor. "She was a great role model for the rest of us. Driven, intelligent, tough, funny… everything. She could do anything."
"If I've understood it correctly, you were the last one to see her alive?"
"Except for the murderer, yes. We left the Christmas party together. Christina was tired and I was pretty drunk."
"Where did you go?"
Helena Starke stiffened.
"What do you mean 'go'? We said goodbye by the subway. I went home and Christina took a taxi."
Annika raised her eyebrows. She hadn't heard anything about Christina Furhage getting in a taxi after midnight. Then there would be someone who had seen the woman after Helena Starke. The taxi driver.
"Did Christina have any enemies within the Olympic organization?"
Helena Starke gave a sob.
"Who would that be?"
"That's what I'm asking you. You work at the Secretariat, don't you?"
"I was Christina's PA," the woman said.
"Meaning you were her secretary?"
"No, she had three secretaries. I was her right hand, you could say. I think it's time for you to go now."
Annika collected her stuff in silence. Before she left, she turned around and asked:
"Christina fired a young woman from the Secretariat for having an affair with one of her superiors. How did the rest of the personnel react to that?"
Helena Starke stared at her.
"I think you should go now."
"This is my card. I'll leave it here. Call me if there's anything you want to add or correct," Annika reeled off her usual spiel and put the card on a table in the hall. She saw a note with a telephone number by the phone on the table, and she quickly jotted it down. Helena Starke didn't follow her to the door. Annika quietly closed it behind her.
HUMANITY
I have always liked walking. I love the light and the wind, the stars and the sea. I have walked for so long that my body would eventually start walking by itself, barely touching the ground, dissolving into the elements around me and becoming an invisible, jubilant cheer. At other times, my legs would help me focus on life. Instead of dissolving into the environment, they would contract it into a single darkening point. I have walked along the streets, concentrating on my body, letting the thrust from the heels travel up through my limbs. With every step the question would echo: What am I? Where am I? What makes me be me?
In the days when the question was important to me, I was living in a town where the wind never stopped blowing. Wherever I walked, I had the wind against me. The gusting winds were so strong that I would sometimes be breathless. While the dampness crept into my bones, I would go over my flesh and my blood, bit by bit, trying to determine where my essence was situated. Not in my heels and not in the fingertips, neither in my knees, nor in my womb or stomach. My conclusion after these long walks can hardly be considered controversial. My essence of being is somewhere behind my eyes, above the neck but below the top of my head, diagonally above my mouth and ears. That is where the part that is really me sits. That is where I live. That is my home.
My house at the time was cramped and dark, but I remember it as being immense, impossible to fill or conquer. I was so busy trying to understand what I was. In bed at night I would close my eyes and try to feel whether I was a man or a woman. How should I know? My sex throbbed in a way that could not be put down to anything other than lust. Had I not known what it looked like, I couldn't have described it in any other way than as heavy, deep, and pulsating. Man or woman, white or black? My mind could not define me any closer than as human.
When I opened my eyes, they would be hit by the electromagnetic radiation that we call light. They would interpret colors in a way which I could never be certain I shared with other people. What I called red and experienced as warm and pulsating might be seen differently by others. We have learned and agreed on common names, but perhaps our perception is wholly individual.
We can never know.
MONDAY 20 DECEMBER
Thomas left the house before Annika and the children woke up. He had a lot of work to get off his hands before the holiday, and today he was doing the nursery run early. They would take turns doing it during the week, preferably collecting them already by three. Partly because the children were tired and weary but also to get the house ready for Christmas. Annika had hung up an electric Star of Bethlehem made of copper and put out the Christmas candelabra, but that was all. They hadn't started with the Christmas shopping, either for food or presents, nor had they marinated the gravlax, glazed the ham, or chosen a Christmas tree, not to mention cleaning the house— they were six months behind on that. Annika wanted to hire a Polish cleaning woman, the one Anne Snapphane used, but Thomas refused. He couldn't be a manager at the Association of Local Authorities and hire workers off the books. She understood that, but she still didn't clean herself.
He stepped out and braved the slush. The holidays were ill-timed this year: Christmas Eve fell on a Friday and the days up to New Year's Eve were all normal working days. He should be pleased, being on the employers' side. Nonetheless he sighed again, wholly on behalf of himself, as he crossed Hantverkargatan to catch the 48 bus from the stop on the other side of Kungsholm's Square. He felt a dull pain in his lower back as he lengthened his strides; he often did when he'd slept in a funny position. Kalle had still been in their bed this morning, lying diagonally with his feet against Thomas's back. Thomas turned his torso from side to side, like a boxer, to bring some life into his stiff muscles.
The bus took an age to arrive. Thomas was completely soaked and frozen by the time it pulled up in the slush. He hated taking the bus, but the alternatives were even worse. The subway was just around the corner, but it was the blue Hjulsta line, which was halfway down to hell. It took longer getting through the tunnels down to the actual trains than walking all the way to T-Centralen. Then you had to change trains after only one stop. After that, new tunnels, escalators and walkways, and elevators that always reeked of urine. After that, another train to Slussen, steamed-up carriages, and a hundred elbows from Metro-reading commuters. Going by car was out of the question. He had kept his Toyota in the city at first, but when the monthly parking tickets began exceeding the daycare fees, Annika had had a fit and he'd deregistered it. Now the car was rusting away under a tarpaulin at his parents' house in Vaxholm. He wanted to buy a house outside the city, but Annika refused point blank. She loved their exorbitantly expensive rented apartment.
The bus was chock-full of people, and he had to jostle with the strollers and baby buggies by the middle doors. But already by City Hall the bus was emptying out and by the next stop he found a seat, at the back on top of the wheels, but a seat nonetheless. He pulled up his legs and glanced furtively at the government department buildings at Rosenbad as the bus drove past. He couldn't help wondering what it would be like to work there. And why not— his career, rising from accountant with the social services in Vaxholm to middle manager at the Association of Local Authorities, had been positively meteoric for that profession. That he'd been helped along by Annika and her work was something he did not admit even to himself. If things continued at this pace, he might have a job in the parliament or one of the government departments before he turned forty.
The bus rumbled on past Strömsborg and the House of Nobility. He felt impatient and restless but didn't want to admit that it was because of Annika. He had barely exchanged a word with her over the weekend. Last night he had thought she was on her way home when she didn't answer the phone at the paper. He had made toasted sandwiches and tea for her return. It took her several hours. He had finished his toast, the tea had a film on it, and he had read both
Time
magazine and
Newsweek
from cover to cover before he heard her keys in the door. When at last she tumbled through the double doors, she had had the phone earpiece in her ear and was talking to someone at the paper.
"Hello there, you've worked late," he said as he walked toward her.
"I'll call you back on another phone," she said, switched off the phone, and walked past him with a pat on the cheek. She'd walked straight over to her desk, let her coat drop in a heap by her feet, and called the paper again. She had been talking about some taxi journey that had to be checked with the police, and he had felt his irritation grow to the size of a nuclear bomb. When she'd hung up, she'd just stood there, holding on to the desk as if dizzy.
"I'm sorry I'm so late," she'd said quietly, without looking up. "I had to go to South Island for an interview on my way back."
He hadn't replied, had just stood there with his arms hanging down, looking at her back. She had been swaying slightly, looking absolutely done in.
"You'll work yourself to death," he'd said, in a drier tone of voice than he'd intended.
"I know," she'd said, putting her coat on the desk and going to the bathroom. He had gone into the bedroom, pulling the bedspread down while listening to the running water and the brushing of teeth. When she came to bed, he'd pretended to be asleep. She didn't notice. She had kissed him on the neck and stroked his hair, then she'd fallen fast asleep in two seconds. He had lain awake for a long time, listening to the cars in the street and her soft breathing.
He got off the bus at Slussen to walk the few blocks up to his office on Hornsgatan. A damp wind was blowing from the bay, and an early street vendor had already assembled his stall, selling straw Santas in front of the underground station.
"Some glogg for the early bird, sir?" said the hawker, holding out a steaming cup of alcohol-free mulled wine to Thomas as he passed.
"Well, why not?" Thomas said and fished out some money from his pocket. "And give me a gingerbread heart too, the biggest one you have."
* * *
"Can I ride too, Mom?" Kalle said and placed himself at the back of the stroller so it nearly overturned. Annika caught hold of it at the last moment.
"No, I think we'll leave the stroller at home today since it's so slushy outside."
