The Long Shadow (39 page)

Does he fantasize about me? she wondered.

She pulled off her sweater and T-shirt, and her bra caught in the bottom of the sweater. She was wearing the red one, the one she had bought to go with the smart dress she’d chosen not to wear.

He put his hand on her shoulder, stroked her arm, cupped his hands around her breasts. The way he used to. The way he knew she liked.

She undid his shirt, following her fumbling fingers with her eyes, button by button. Then she looked up at him. His eyes, oh, how she loved his eyes.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘I’ve really missed you.’

Me too, she thought. Every time things are silent around me, every time I’m alone, that’s when I miss you.

He undid her bra and put it on the bedside table. Unbuttoned her jeans and stroked her backside. ‘You’ve lost weight,’ he said.

He’s remembering wrong, she thought. Sophia’s just sturdier than me.

She pulled off his shirt and let it fall to the floor. He’d developed a bit of a belly. She put her hand under his navel and left it there for a moment. The way she used to.

Afterwards he fell asleep on his back with his arms stretched out, but Annika lay awake with her head on his shoulder, staring into the darkness.

Annika paid for her and Lotta’s rooms, then headed straight out onto the street with her suitcase. She waited on the pavement for a few minutes. There was still a chill in the air: the sun hadn’t yet risen above the Sierra Blanca.

Her plane left at ten o’clock, and Thomas’s at a quarter to four. He was going to drive her to the airport, then fetch his things from the Parador. It felt as though nothing odd or unpleasant had ever happened between them. The divorce was just a bad dream. Everything was the way it always had been, and now they were going home to the children and the flat on Kungsholmen. There’d be loads of washing to do and they’d have to remember to get some milk. Her parents-in-law would be waiting for them on the island and …

Suddenly she felt short of breath. Her chest was tight and the sounds of traffic faded. She fumbled for her suitcase and sat down on it gingerly, leaning forward so she could breathe better.

His hire car glided up alongside her. ‘What’s up?’ he asked, jumping out. ‘Aren’t you feeling well?’

She waved a hand dismissively.

‘No, no,’ she said. ‘I just felt a bit dizzy. It’s nothing.’

They hadn’t made love that morning. He hadn’t
showered. He hadn’t borrowed her toothbrush – he’d never dream of doing something so unhygienic.

He looked at her with genuine concern in those wonderful eyes, bright blue. She took his hand, allowing herself to be pulled up and led to the passenger seat. He brushed her hair from her face and engaged her seatbelt. Then he put her suitcase into the boot, closed it and made sure it was properly shut. He went round to the driver’s side, got in and smiled. His hair had fallen across his forehead and his shirt was open at the neck.

She made an effort to smile back.

‘I don’t regret it,’ he said.

Not yet, she thought. ‘Me neither,’ she said.

Then he pulled away.

The motorway was almost deserted. Once they reached the toll-road they didn’t see any other vehicles. They sat in silence beside one another. Thomas was concentrating on driving and Annika was staring out to sea. She couldn’t see Africa – it was too misty. At this rate they’d be at the airport in half an hour. She would get out of the car and kiss him rather tentatively, then go inside the Pablo Ruiz Picasso terminal and the sliding doors would close behind her. The illusion would be over.

Their flights would take off, then there’d be baggage reclaim and the taxis with their fixed rates. And she’d be sitting up in her three-room flat on Agnegatan and he’d be taking the last boat out to Vaxholm to his parents’ summer-house in the archipelago, where Sophia and the children would be waiting for him, Kalle and Ellen clingy and expectant, Sophia warm and cooing. This car journey would feel strange and incomprehensible.

She noticed a smell of old socks – they were passing the San Miguel brewery that was right next to the airport.

It was almost over.

Thomas headed up the ramp for
salidas
, departures. The airport was utterly chaotic, no matter what time of day it was. An official in a fluorescent yellow jacket waved them towards an empty space a few metres from the terminal doors.

She took a deep breath.

‘Are you feeling better?’

His expression was open and bright. He wished her well, she was sure of that. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, and brushed his hair from his forehead, the blond fringe that he hardly ever bothered to comb. She leaned over and kissed him lightly.

‘Let me help you with your case,’ he said.

‘There’s no need,’ she said, but he’d already opened the door and got out, and was on his way round to the boot.

She followed him, her legs heavy as lead, and took her case, and he kissed her forehead.

‘I’ll call you,’ he said, as though he really meant it, and she smiled, then turned round and headed towards the doors.

When they slid shut behind her she stopped.

It was all gone.

Annika drifted round the shops until it was time for her flight. She bought sweets and toys for the children, wine and spirits for herself, even though she would never drink any of it, and a travel-pack of lipsticks from Dior that she would probably never use.

Lotta was waiting by the gate. She had her rucksack containing her camera, but she must have checked in the rest of her equipment. Annika sat down beside her without saying anything.

Lotta started and moved a few centimetres away from her.

‘Don’t worry,’ Annika said. ‘I only bite when there’s a full moon.’

‘I know I haven’t done very well,’ Lotta said, sounding terrified.

Annika looked at her. Her expression was scared yet defiant. Lotta had spoken to someone. She’d probably called the paper and demanded to speak to Pelle, head of images, or Schyman himself, and the conversation couldn’t have gone well. Now she felt even more unfairly treated, but would have to swallow a whole load of shit if she wanted to keep her job.

‘The articles are all sorted,’ Annika said, picking up a copy of the previous day’s
Daily Mail
. She held it in front of her without reading a word until they boarded.

They were sitting next to each other. Annika took the window seat. Because she hadn’t slept for more than an hour last night, she fell asleep as soon as the plane had got into the air, and didn’t wake until they were on their descent into Arlanda.

The baggage carousel spat out Lotta’s bags, all five, before Annika’s little suitcase appeared. ‘I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention our collaboration to anyone at the paper,’ Lotta said, once she’d piled all her things onto a trolley.

Annika looked at her, trying to work out what she felt about the pale young woman. She couldn’t summon up anything but indifference. ‘What collaboration?’ she said.

Lotta headed off to Customs.

Annika watched her disappear along the corridor, with its vast portraits of famous Swedes welcoming visitors to their home town.

She bought the evening papers in the arrivals hall and read them as she ate a fairly unpleasant salad in a Seven-Eleven.
Then she took the express train into Stockholm and decided to walk from the station.

The sky was steel-grey and there was rain in the air. The wind was damp and cold, and cut to her bones. She struggled across Kungsbron towards Fleminggatan. The small wheels on the suitcase kept catching in the grit on the pavements and in the end she gave up and carried it. By the time she reached her flat her arm was numb.

She put the case on the hall floor and decided to put off unpacking it, just as she always did. Instead she went into her bedroom and found herself transfixed by the framed drawing of the girl and the horse that hung over her bed. Little My, eight years old, who was left to mourn her? What trace had she left on the world?

Annika lay down on the bed. With her eyes open, she listened to the sound of the building breathing. First the big noises, the ones indicating people. Water running through the pipes. Someone flushing a toilet. Voices from a radio. Then she closed her eyes and listened for other sounds. The quiet hum of the central heating, the creaking of the hundred-year-old beams, the soft whistling of wind through windows and air-vents.

Thomas was probably on the plane now. It would just have taken off and Spain would be disappearing below him, the mountains speckled with olive trees, the villages standing out white against the red soil.

Maybe Suzette was still alive. Who else could have send that empty email from Mr Gunnar Larsson?

Suddenly she was struck by a thought that made her sit bolt upright. What if Larsson himself had hacked the account? What if Suzette hadn’t been trying to send a message, but the teacher, bitter at being sacked, had wanted to take revenge on those responsible?

If he had suddenly been sacked because of the emails, his employers must have confronted him with them. He
would have seen the address so he might have gone to hotmail and tried to crack the password. It wasn’t brain surgery. She’d done it herself.

She leaped out of bed, ran into the hall, pulled her laptop from her bag and went into the kitchen, the only place she had an Internet connection.

Her computer booted up and she went straight to her Facebook page.

No new messages. And Polly Sandman wasn’t online.

She went into hotmail and typed in the account name Mr-Gunnar-Larsson. She started with the obvious passwords: polly.

Invalid ID or password. Please try again using your full Yahoo! ID.

suzette

Invalid ID or password. Please try again using your full Yahoo! ID.

blackeberg

Invalid ID or password. Please try again using your full Yahoo! ID.

She wondered how many attempts she could make before the site shut her out. Maybe there was no limit.

She gave up and went back to her Facebook page. She wrote to Polly, asking if she thought Gunnar Larsson could have cracked their password.

She hadn’t called Niklas Linde before she’d left. He had asked her to – it had been the last thing he’d said before she’d got out of his car that day. Maybe he’d had something to say to her, something he couldn’t say with Lotta listening.

She clenched her fists, fingernails digging into her palms.

Then she logged into the national ID register and searched for Niklas Linde without specifying any particular geographic area.

Too many results (ca. 170). Please refine the search terms.

She removed the phonetic search option, to remove anyone called Lind or Lindh, and searched again.

Ten hits, eight of them with the surname Linde. Four lived in Skåne, one had been deregistered and had moved to Switzerland, and three were registered in the Stockholm area.

She looked at their dates of birth, and immediately saw her Niklas.

He was thirty-six.

She tried a new search, looking for the surname, Linde, the postcode 245 62, and gender: female.

Bingo. Three results at the same address.

Linde, Anna MARIA, thirty-three.

Linde, Kajsa ELENA, ten.

Linde, Alva NATALIE, three.

His wife, and two daughters. Did he have any sons?

She performed a third search, Linde, male, postcode. Bingo again.

Linde, Bo OSCAR, eight.

She stared at the name in front of her. A boy, like Kalle. Oscar. Presumably he was busy losing his teeth and calling to tell his dad, who was away working on the Costa del Sol in Spain.

Nice work, Niklas. A wife and three kids in Hjärup, wherever the hell that was. Somewhere outside Malmö,
at a guess. A proper little idyll, presumably. Ängslyckevägen – ‘happy meadow way’, indeed.

Her mobile rang in her bag. She got up from the kitchen chair, stubbing her toe on the table, and limped out into the hall.

‘Annika?’

It was Niklas Linde.

She glanced quickly at the computer: was there some way he could have traced her searches? Probably, but that could hardly be why he was calling. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’m back in Stockholm.’

‘Listen,’ he said. He sounded abrupt. ‘Can you talk?’

She went back to the kitchen table and clicked to get rid of the national ID database and the details of Niklas Linde’s family. ‘Sure,’ she said, putting all her weight on one foot with the other in the air. The little toe hurt like hell.

‘It’s about Johan Zarco Martinez, the Swede you met in prison in Málaga on Thursday.’

‘Okay.’

‘Can I ask you what you talked about?’

‘Of course, but I don’t know if I’ll answer. Not because it was anything particularly secret, but you know how it is, confidentiality of sources, integrity and—’

‘He’s dead,’ Niklas Linde said. ‘He was found dead in his cell this morning.’

Annika slid down onto a chair, weak at the knees. ‘Dead? How?’

‘There’s going to be a post-mortem, but the doctor was able to identify a couple of things straight away. His pupils were myotic, extremely small. That’s characteristic of a morphine overdose.’

Annika shook her head as if she were trying to clear her thoughts. ‘Morphine? But how could he get hold of that, stuck in prison?’

‘That’s what I was going to ask you. You were one of the last people to visit him. Did he ask for drugs when you were there?’

Her heart was thudding now, and her palms were clammy. ‘No,’ she said nervously. ‘He did say he wasn’t very fond of cocaine. He said he preferred beer.’ She nodded to herself. ‘Yes, that was it,’ she said. ‘He asked if we had any beer with us. He said it was pretty easy to smuggle it in.’

‘But you didn’t have any beer with you?’

‘Of course not.’

‘What did Carita say during the interview?’

‘Nothing much. She interpreted and got us in, but obviously Jocke could speak Swedish.’