The Nightmare (57 page)

“You can’t be right all the time,” Joona says with a grin.

Niko happened to be awake when they looked in before they left. He joked that he felt like the hero Vanhala in the book
The Unknown Soldier
.

“Go, Sweden!” he says to them. “And brave little Finland didn’t do so bad, either!”

Niko’s injuries are no longer life-threatening, but he knows he still faces several operations over the next few days. He will grumble about having to be in a wheelchair when he is released to the care of his parents, and he will be unhappier still when he realizes that it will take at least another year before he can play hockey with his sister again.

Raphael Guidi’s bodyguard was arrested and booked into Vanda jail while the judicial wheels began to grind.

Joona Linna and Axel Riessen travel home to Sweden.

*   *   *

The large container ship M/S
Icelus
was never allowed to sail from Gothenburg Harbor. Its cargo of ammunition was unloaded and stored in a customs facility.

Jens Svanehjälm began his proper procedures but, except for the wounded bodyguard, all the people responsible for the crimes were dead.

They never had enough proof to charge anyone else. Only Pontus Salman was found to be mixed up in the illegal export of weapons, and the only suspected criminal in the ISP was its previous general director, Carl Palmcrona.

The government official Jörgen Grünlicht was investigated, but there were never any charges leveled at him. The conclusion was unhappily reached that all the politicians in Sweden and the people working for the Export Control Committee had been in the dark themselves and had just acted in good faith.

Investigations against two Kenyan politicians were handed over to Roland Lidonde, the anticorruption general and the state secretary for Governance and Ethics. It was assumed, however, that he would find that the Kenyans had also acted in good faith.

The supposedly innocent owners of Intersafe Shipping did not know that the ammunition was supposed to go on to Sudan from Mombasa Harbor, and the Kenyan transportation company, Trans Continent, was also unaware that trucks scheduled to travel to Sudan would be loaded with ammunition. Everyone had acted in good faith.

axel riessen

Axel Riessen feels the stitches in his shoulder as he climbs out of the taxi to walk the last steps up Bragevägen. Under the bright sun, the asphalt appears pale, almost white. As he puts his hand to the gate, the outer door of the house opens and Robert comes out. He’d been waiting at the window.

“God, what you’ve been through!” Robert says, shaking his head. “I’ve been on the phone to Joona Linna and he was telling me this crazy story—”

“You know how tough your big brother is,” Axel says, smiling.

They hug and for a moment hold each other tightly. Then they walk together to the house.

“We’ve set the table for lunch in the garden,” Robert says.

“How’s your heart? It hasn’t given you further trouble, has it?” Axel asks as he follows his brother.

“Actually, I was scheduled for surgery next week,” Robert answers gravely.

“I didn’t know that,” Axel whispers.

“I’m getting a pacemaker instead. I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it to you—”

“So, an operation.”

“Well, anyway, it was canceled.”

Axel looks at his brother and he feels a dark twist in his soul. He understands who had booked Robert’s operation and that it was meant never to succeed. The details of the patient in a coma had come from Robert’s medical data. He would have gone into an induced coma on the operating table. Axel would have been given the donation from his own brother.

Axel has to sit abruptly on a hall chair. He feels the flush of guilt. Tears come to his eyes.

“Aren’t you coming?” Robert says easily.

“Yes, of course.”

Axel takes a deep breath, stands up, and follows his younger brother through the house and into the garden. Underneath the shade of the big tree in the center of the garden, a table set with their finest tableware is waiting on the marble paving.

Axel starts toward Robert’s wife, Anette, to greet her, but Robert takes his arm to steer him away.

“Remember when we were kids? We had fun together,” he says quietly, looking serious. “Why did we grow apart and stop talking? What happened?”

Axel looks at his brother in surprise. He notices the wrinkles in Robert’s face and the stubbly hair around a large bald spot.

“Life happens—”

“No, there’s something else,” Robert says. “We must talk about something I could not discuss over the phone.”

“What could that be?”

“Beverly told me that you blame yourself for Greta’s death,” Robert says.

“I refuse to discuss that.”

“But you must listen,” Robert insists. “I was backstage at the competition. I heard everything. I heard Greta with her father. She was crying the whole time. She’d played a passage incorrectly and her father was furious she’d lost the competition.”

Axel breaks free of Robert’s hold.

“I already know—”

“Let me tell you what I have to tell you,” he says.

“Go ahead, then.”

“Axel … if only you’d just said something. If only I’d known you blamed yourself for Greta’s suicide. I was the one who overheard her father. It was his fault, his fault and only his fault. They had a horrible fight, and he said horrible things to her. He told her he was completely humiliated. He said that she’d shamed him and that he didn’t want her as his daughter any longer. She was to leave his house. He would no longer finance her at the music academy. She was to drop her whole world here and go back to her drug-addicted mother in Mora.”

“How could he ever have said such a thing!”

“I’ll never forget Greta’s voice,” Robert continues bitterly. “How frightened she sounded. She pleaded that she’d done her best. She said that everyone makes mistakes and there’d be other competitions … That this was the only life she knew, the only one she loved.”

“I always told her there would be other competitions,” Axel says slowly.

He looks around, dazed, and doesn’t know what to do. He slowly sits down on the marble patio and holds his face in his hands.

“She was crying and said she’d kill herself if he didn’t let her keep her life in music, let her stay at the academy and continue to play.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Axel whispers.

“You should thank Beverly,” Robert replies.

beverly andersson

It’s drizzling as Beverly stands on the train platform inside Central Station. Her journey south will be in a summer landscape wrapped in gray fog. It’s not until she reaches Hässleholm that the sky will clear again. She changes trains in Lund. Then from Landskrona, she takes the bus to Svalöv.

It’s been a long time since she was last home.

She remembers that Dr. Saxéus assured her that things would go well.

I’ve had a long talk with your father
, the doctor had said.
He really wants you to come home.

Beverly is now walking across a dusty square. She pictures herself as she was two years ago: vomiting on the square because some boys had forced her to drink illegal booze. They’d taken shameful pictures of her and then dropped her off on the square. Her pappa did not want her at home after that incident.

She keeps walking. Her stomach ties in knots when she sees the country road open before her. The road leads to her farm three kilometers away. Cars used to pick her up on this road. Now she doesn’t remember why she would agree to go with them. She’d imagined she had seen something in their eyes: a special shine.

Beverly shifts her heavy suitcase to her other hand.

Down the road, dust flies up from an approaching car.

She thinks,
I know that car.

She smiles and waves.

Pappa is coming! Pappa is coming!

penelope fernandez

Roslags-Kulla is a small church made of reddish wood. But it has a tall, beautiful clock tower. The church is in the quiet countryside near the Vira factory, just a bit farther away than the heavily trafficked roads in the Österåker district. The sky is clear and blue and the air is clean. The wind blows the scent of wildflowers over the peaceful cemetery by the church.

Yesterday Björn Almskog was buried at Norra Cemetery, and today four men in black suits are carrying Viola Maria Liselott Fernandez’s coffin to her final resting place. Following the pallbearers, two uncles and two cousins from El Salvador, Penelope Fernandez and her mother, Claudia, walk with the priest.

They gather around the open grave. One of the cousin’s children, a girl of about nine, looks at her father questioningly. When he nods to her, she lifts up her recorder and begins to play Hymn 97 while the coffin is lowered into the ground.

Penelope Fernandez holds her mother’s hand while the priest reads a passage from the book of Revelation.

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death.

Claudia looks at Penelope and straightens her collar. She pats her cheek as if Penelope were still a small child.

As they return to their cars, Penelope’s phone buzzes. It’s Joona Linna. Penelope disengages her hand from her mother’s and walks to the shade underneath the large trees to talk in private.

“Hello, Penelope,” Joona says in his characteristic voice, singsong but serious.

“Hello, Joona,” Penelope replies.

“I thought you would want to know that Raphael Guidi is dead.”

“And the ammunition to Darfur?”

“We’ve stopped the shipment.”

“That’s good.”

Penelope looks around at her relatives and friends; her mother, who stands where she left her. Her mother, who won’t let her out of her sight.

“Thanks,” she says.

She goes back to her mother who watches her anxiously. She takes her mother’s hand again, smiles, and they walk together to the cars. She stops and turns around. For a second she’d thought she heard her sister’s voice right beside her. She shivers and a shadow passes over the neatly mown grass. Her young cousin with the recorder is standing between the gravestones looking at her. Her headband has slipped free and her hair is loosened in the summer breeze.

saga bauer and anja larsson

These summer days never end: the nights glow like mother-of-pearl until dawn.

The National Police Board is having a party for employees near Drottningholm Palace.

Joona Linna sits with his colleagues at a long table beneath a big tree.

In front of a Falun-red dance platform, a band dressed in white suits is playing the traditional Swedish folk song “Hårgalåten.”

Petter Näslund is dancing the
slängpolska
with Fatima Zanjani from Iraq. He’s saying something and laughter lights up his face. Whatever he’s saying, he seems to be making Fatima very happy.

The song is about a time when the Devil came to play the violin. He played so well that the young people never wanted to stop dancing. Finally they were so exhausted, they started to weep. Their shoes wore out, their feet wore out, and soon only their heads were left hopping to the Devil’s music.

Anja is nearby on a camp chair. She wears a flower-patterned blue dress and stares morosely at the dancing couples. However, when she sees Joona get up from the table, her round face flushes.

“Happy summer, Anja,” he says.

Saga Bauer is dancing over the grass between the trees. She’s chasing soap bubbles with Magdalena Ronander’s twins. Her flowing blond hair with its entwined colored ribbons shines in the sun. Two middle-aged women pause to admire her.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” says the leader of the band after the applause dies down. “We have a special request.”

Carlos Eliasson smiles and looks at someone behind the stage.

The singer smiles. “I have my roots in Oulu, and I am going to sing a special Finnish song for you. It’s a tango called ‘Satumaa.’”

Magdalena Ronander is wearing a wreath of flowers in her hair as she heads toward Joona and tries to catch his eye. Anja stares at her feet. The band starts playing the tango.

Joona has already turned to Anja and he bows slightly. He asks quietly, “May I have the honor?”

Anja’s face, and even her neck, blushes bright red. She looks up at him and nods seriously.

“Yes, yes you may.”

She puts her fingers on Joona’s arm and throws a proud glance at Magdalena. She steps onto the dance platform with her head high.

Anja concentrates on her steps at first, a furrow on her brow, but soon she relaxes and her face is calm and happy. She had fashioned an elaborate arrangement of her hair on the back of her neck, even sprayed it heavily to keep it in place, but now it looks just right. She follows Joona’s lead, and her steps become lighter and lighter.

As the sentimental song nears its end, Joona feels a nip on his shoulder, which doesn’t hurt.

Anja gives him another nip, a bit harder, and he feels forced to ask, “What are you doing?”

Her eyes are shining brightly like glass.

“I just felt like it,” she says honestly. “I wanted to see what would happen. You never know unless you try…”

At that moment, the music ends. Joona releases her and thanks her for the dance. Before he can escort her away, Carlos hurries over and asks Anja for the next dance.

Joona steps to one side and watches his colleagues dance, and others, dressed in summer white, gather on picnic blankets, eating and drinking happily. He decides to head to his car.

Reaching the parking lot, Joona Linna opens the door to his Volvo. In the backseat, there’s a huge bouquet waiting, wrapped in gift paper. Joona climbs into the car and phones Disa. The call goes to voice mail.

disa helenius

Disa sits in front of her computer. She’s in her apartment on Karlaplan. She’s wearing her reading glasses and has a throw draped over her shoulders. Her cell phone is on her desk next to a cup of cold coffee and a partially eaten cinnamon bun.