The Dangerous Game (17 page)

This doesn’t seem much like a park, she thought. It’s more like the green belt. Her heart almost stopped when, without warning, a screeching pheasant flew out of the bushes right next to her. She started walking even faster. She needed to calm down. She was in no danger.

None at all.

KARIN JACOBSSON HAD
just stepped inside her hotel room when Knutas rang.

‘Bad news. I spoke to the hospital and Markus Sandberg has suffered another cerebral haemorrhage. He’s in a coma.’

‘Oh, no. Don’t tell me that. And here we were just starting to interview him. Damn.’

‘I know. It’s bloody awful,’ Knutas agreed. ‘The doctor said that at the moment they don’t know how things might go. Apparently, it could go either way. If Sandberg does pull through, he’ll need more surgery. No matter what, it will be a while before we can speak to him again.’

‘What terrible luck. We were so close.’ Jacobsson sank down on to the bed.

‘All we can do is try something else,’ said Knutas.

‘Of course.’

‘How are things otherwise?’

‘I already told you everything we’ve done today.’

‘Right. I meant, how are things with you?’

‘Okay. But now we’re back to square one.’

‘I know,’ said Knutas. ‘Take it easy. We’ll talk more tomorrow.’

Jacobsson decided not to join Wittberg and a few other colleagues for dinner. She wanted time to herself. She was extremely disappointed about the news of Markus’s deteriorating condition, but she was also thinking about her daughter, Hanna. She was trying to decide whether to call or not. She hesitated, because she didn’t know if she could stand to hear the response she feared most:
No, I don’t want to see you
.

Listlessly, she stared out of the hotel-room window at the black roofs with their chimneys and garrets. Sleet was falling from the leaden-coloured sky. In a few places the snow was sticking, creating patches of white. Her room was on the top floor of the hotel in Gamla Stan, and she was only a kilometre from her daughter’s flat. She was feeling too restless to stay here. She glanced at her watch. Ten past seven in the evening. She hadn’t had any dinner, but she wasn’t the least bit hungry. Without deciding what exactly she was going to do, she went into the bathroom to pee, then combed her hair and put on some make-up. Next, she put on her boots, her leather jacket, her scarf and gloves, and then left the room.

It was bitterly cold outdoors. As she peered inside the restaurants she passed, everything looked so pleasant and inviting, with glowing candles, warm food on the plates and wine in the glasses. She left Gamla Stan and headed towards Slussen, then continued over Hornsgatan hill, admiring the small galleries lining Mariaberget. When she happened to look into a restaurant with big glass windows facing the street, she stopped short.

At a table towards the back of the room Hanna was sitting with another young woman. They were drinking wine and seemed totally immersed in their conversation. Karin’s eyes filled with tears and her heart lurched. She couldn’t help staring at them. Then the other girl got up and left, probably to go to the loo. Hanna stayed at the table. She took a sip of wine and looked around. Suddenly, their eyes met. Karin froze. She didn’t know what to do. Incapable of moving, she simply stood there, staring at her daughter, this person she had carried inside her body, this person to whom she had given birth. The other girl came back from the loo. Through a fog, Karin saw Hanna put her hand on her friend’s arm and lean forward to say something. The next instant she stood up and came towards the door. Karin felt the ground give way under her feet, and she had to hold on to a lamp post in order not to fall.

She saw Hanna appear in the entrance to the restaurant and then take a step outside, a quizzical look on her face.

THE AFTERNOON PLODS
along. The afternoon snack is over, and there are still several hours until dinner. The days in the clinic are so monotonous, each day exactly like all the others.

Agnes’s father, Rikard, and his girlfriend, Katarina, came to visit in the morning. Or, rather, her father did. Agnes never speaks to Katarina, who had to stay in the day room and wait, as always. Agnes refuses to let her take part in the visits, won’t allow any outsiders into her private hell. Yet Katarina stubbornly insists on accompanying Rikard every time. As if she doesn’t dare let him out of her sight. Rikard seemed a bit stressed and didn’t stay long.

Now Agnes and her room mate Linda are stretched out on separate sofas in the common room. Linda is reading, as usual. Agnes can’t understand how she does it. Personally, she’s too restless to read even one chapter of a book. She just can’t concentrate. The letters seem to leap and dance before her eyes, and the words keep changing places. She can read the same sentence twenty times without comprehending what it says. And that’s scary. She used to be such a good student. Now she understands what it must feel like to be dyslexic. She thinks that she’s probably just tired and lazy; that’s why she can’t read anything. Per doesn’t read either. They talked about that this morning. He says he simply doesn’t feel like it, can’t concentrate properly. Just like her. She finds that consoling. As if the two of them have something in common.

Instead, she absent-mindedly leafs through an old issue of
Sköna Hem
. How absurd to see all these huge mansions and Scanian houses sandwiched in between quaint little cottages and idyllic summer homes. Perfectly set tables in neat and tidy country kitchens. Exquisite flower arrangements, fragrant herb gardens, lilac arbours with hammocks, and drinks made with raspberry juice. As if there were not a problem in the world.

Yet for her, every day is a battle between life and death. A war in which she is always fighting new armies. With a sigh, she lowers her hands and the magazine sinks on to her lap as her thoughts wander.

At the moment the most important thing is to keep the disease inside herself. And not gain any weight. That was exactly the argument she used at the beginning of her brief modelling career. And it had brought her recognition and success, all because she had won the battle against those extra pounds. This spurred her to continue. She would get even thinner, then things would go even better. The skinnier she was, the more successful she would be. Everyone stopped complaining about her weight, and even Markus showed his appreciation and admiration for her increasingly slender figure.

But after a few months all the positive comments began to wane. No one mentioned any more how beautifully thin she was. Agnes came to the only possible conclusion: she needed to lose even more weight. And the transformation had to be so dramatic that no one could avoid seeing the change. Then they would begin to praise her again. That was how she would control her fate and gain control of her life.

Eventually, various people at the agency began to say that she was too thin, that she needed to eat more. Agnes couldn’t for the life of her understand their reasoning. In the end, the agency dropped her because she was anorexic.

The disappointment she felt was overwhelming. No matter what she did, they were never satisfied. Yet she personally believed that she needed to be even thinner.

Then things went downhill fast. She continued to lose weight. In hindsight, her father blamed himself for not noticing how ill she was during that time, how she exercised so much and ate so little. Agnes doesn’t think it’s strange that he didn’t notice.

As a carpenter, he had to start work early in the morning, so he usually left the house at 6 a.m. What he didn’t know was that his daughter would get up the minute the front door closed and go for a two-hour walk before school. She never ate breakfast. At lunchtime in the school cafeteria she would always pile food on to her plate, though she ate only a little salad and threw the rest out. Dinner proved more difficult. It started with her demanding more wholesome food at home: salmon and bulgur wheat instead of savoury crêpes. She became a vegetarian and refused to eat any sort of fast-release carbs. No bread or pasta or potatoes. Increasingly, she would go for a long walk at dinnertime.

Agnes began having trouble concentrating in class because she was always tired. She withdrew from her friends and spent more and more time alone. Sometimes she would get up in the middle of the night and exercise, or leave the house and go running in the pitch dark. She always wore baggy clothes, so her father never saw how thin she had become.

That summer, when term was over, things got much worse. Her father worked extra-long hours, since the Swedes who came to Gotland during the summer months were constantly having their cottages remodelled and there was a lack of skilled workmen. He was always working, except when he went to Stockholm to see Katarina, so Agnes was often left on her own. She lied to him, saying that she was busy doing things with her friends. In reality, she felt isolated and abandoned.

In the autumn she started at secondary school, but after only a few weeks she suddenly collapsed at home. She was taken by ambulance to hospital and then transferred to the mainland and admitted to the anorexia clinic in Stockholm.

She has been here now for three months, and the staff keep complaining that she isn’t gaining weight fast enough. The doctor has threatened to increase the amount of food she needs to eat, which is the worst thing that could happen.

Her stomach is still too big and her hips too wide.

Dusk is falling outside. Agnes stretches out her hand to turn on the lamp on the table next to the sofa. She notices how the fat jiggles under her arm. She hasn’t done a very good job of cheating today. She ate everything that was served. The nurses have been watching her like hawks.

Tomorrow she needs to do better.

ONE MODEL AFTER
another appeared on the runway that had been constructed in one of Stockholm’s most exclusive department stores. Each was more striking than the last. The lights flashed, the music was throbbing and sensual. At a fast tempo and evenly spaced, the models glided across the stage. They moved like suggestive dream women, thrusting their pelvises forward so that their legs and the incredibly high heels they were wearing seemed to precede the rest of their bodies. Hips swaying, their long, slender arms hanging at their sides, earrings dangling, with piercing eyes, fluttering fringe. Their lips were gleaming, their knees slim, their collarbones clearly visible. Straight backs and shoulders, swinging necklaces, glittering nails and sparkling sandals. Breasts that were exposed, without embarrassment, beneath transparent garments. Serious expressions and dark eyebrows.

Crowding together at the first turn stood the photographers. There the models paused and set their hands on their hips. A few twirled around; others posed provocatively; some offered a hint of a smile, an amused glint in their eyes. They were enjoying this. They knew how much they were worth.

The audience was thrilled; spontaneous bursts of applause and shouts rose above the music. The journalists clutched notebooks and pens, watching with accustomed intensity and then frantically jotting down notes.

For the past two weeks, Jenny Levin had once again been working full time. In that short period, she’d travelled to five different countries, criss-crossing the world. Stockholm to New York to the Bahamas to Paris to Munich to Milan and back to Stockholm. Occasionally, she would forget where she was in the constant succession of new airports, new hotel rooms, new people. Frequently, she got only three or four hours of sleep at night, so she had to sleep on the planes. She’d returned to Stockholm and the agency-owned flat feeling completely exhausted. Fortunately she was now going to be working closer to home.

Even though she’d been working hard, it had been wonderful to get away for a while. Away from Markus and everything that had happened. And, somehow, it felt as if her absence had done her good. She now saw him in a new light. He was not the same person as before and probably never would be. He was twenty years older than her. His appearance had totally changed, even though she didn’t want to admit to herself that something like that mattered.

And all those rumours about other women. Especially that girlfriend of his named Diana.

Jenny cringed at the thought of meeting her at the agency’s traditional Christmas party, which was being held this evening. She’d heard that Diana was back in Stockholm. On the other hand, Jenny was looking forward to the party itself. Drinking champagne, dancing and having fun. Her career was going brilliantly, and she knew that the agency was glad to have her in its stable.

Seconds before she was to appear on the runway for the last time, the lights were turned off and the music silenced. The anticipation could be felt in the whole room.

She was fully aware that she was radiantly beautiful in the gleaming white dress with the neckline that plunged down to her navel. The next moment, she appeared on stage in a cascade of glitter as the music began pounding. The effect was instantaneous. Loud applause, and one by one the audience members rose from their seats and cheered. Jenny felt everyone’s eyes on her; even the most experienced and blasé of the old fashionistas gazed at her with admiration.

This was her life now, and she planned to devote herself to it with all her heart.

ON FRIDAY AFTERNOON
it was snowing hard, as it had done all morning. The streets and buildings were blanketed in white, which contributed to the holiday mood. Knutas left work early so he could go out and buy Christmas gifts. For once, he hadn’t left it to the very last minute, and this time he wanted to buy something special for Lina. As a token of his love. She had shown him a beautiful pair of earrings at the silversmith’s down on Sankt Hansgatan. That was what he planned to purchase first. But he might get her something else, too, maybe a gift card for a massage. She often complained that her back hurt, and she seldom took the time to pamper herself.

He quickly made his way through Östercentrum and continued on towards Österport. Inside the city walls an entirely different atmosphere reigned. Strung between the buildings were Christmas decorations in the form of glittering garlands with big stars in the middle. Some of the shop owners had frosted their windowpanes with artificial snow and laid pine boughs outside the doors. Several businesses had strings of lights adorning the windows and lanterns with candles inside. At the toy shop ‘White Christmas’ was thundering from the loudspeakers, and in the big front window a whole winter landscape had been created, with a toy train chugging along between snow-capped mountains. Over by Waller Square some schoolkids were selling ginger biscuits and
glögg
, the traditional mulled wine. Knutas stopped for a moment to chat with a few friends. An enormous Christmas tree towered over Stora Torget, and all the marketplace stalls were busy with customers buying sheepskins, peppermint rock, sausages, honey, mistletoe and wreaths. Warm
glögg
was served from a big kettle. He bought two sausages with bread, which he ate as he looked for the best mistletoe, which they always had in their house. It was an essential part of the family’s Christmas celebration.