Kitabı oxu: «MemoRandom»
Copyright
HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
Copyright © Anders de la Motte 2014
Translation copyright © Neil Smith 2014
Lyrics from ‘Odds and Evens’ from The Sleep Tape © The Highwire 2010
Cove layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
Cover photographs © Ingrid Michel / Arcangel Images (man in snow landscape); Shutterstock.com (all other images)
Anders de la Motte asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008101107
Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2015 ISBN: 9780008101114
Version: 2015-10-23
Dedication
For Anette
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue: Saturday, November 23
Friday, October 18
Saturday, November 23
Friday, October 18
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Also by Anders de la Motte
About the Author
About the Publisher
PROLOGUE
Saturday, November 23
Blue lights … that’s his first lucid thought after he opens his eyes.
He can’t have been unconscious for more than a few seconds, a tiny micropause in his head. But the world seems so strange, so unfamiliar. As if he weren’t quite awake yet.
Blue reflections are dancing around him. In the rearview mirror, bouncing off the concrete walls, the roof, the wet road surface, even off the shiny plastic details of the dashboard.
A car. He’s in the driver’s seat of a car, going through a long tunnel.
The pain catches up with him. He has a vague memory of it from before he blacked out. A brilliant, ice-blue welding arc cutting straight through the left-hand side of his skull and turning his thoughts into thick sludge.
He can even identify the way it smells.
Metal, plastic, electricity.
Something’s happening to his body, something serious, threatening his very existence, but weirdly he doesn’t feel particularly frightened. He tightens his grip on the steering wheel, feels the soft leather against the palms of his hands. A pleasant, reassuring sensation. For a moment he almost gives in to it and lets go, tracing those smooth molecules all the way back into unconsciousness.
Instead he squeezes the wheel as hard as he can and tries to get his aching head to explain what is happening to him.
‘David Sarac.’
‘Your name is David Sarac, and …’
And what?
The car is still driving through the tunnel, and one of the many incomprehensible instruments on the dashboard must be telling him that he’s going too fast, way too fast.
He tries to lift his foot from the accelerator pedal but his leg refuses to obey him. In fact he can’t actually feel his legs at all. The pain is growing increasingly intense, yet in an odd way simultaneously more remote. He realizes that his body is in the process of shutting down, abandoning any process that isn’t essential to life support until the meltdown in his head is under control.
‘Your name is David Sarac,’ he mutters to himself.
‘David Sarac.’
Various noises are crackling from the speakers: music, dialing tones, fractured, agitated voices talking over each other.
He looks in the rearview mirror. And for a moment he imagines he can see movement, a dark silhouette. Is there someone sitting in the backseat, someone who could help him?
He tries to open his mouth and sees the silhouette in the mirror do the same. He can see stubble, a tormented but familiar face. He realizes what that means. There’s no one else there, he’s all alone.
The light in the rearview mirror is blinding him, making his eyes water. The voices on the radio are still babbling, louder now – even more agitated.
The shutdown of his body is speeding up. It’s spreading from his legs and up toward his chest.
‘Police!’ one of the radio voices yells. The word forces its way in and soon fills the whole of his consciousness.
Police.
Police.
Police.
He looks away from the rearview mirror and laboriously turns his head a few centimetres. The effort makes him groan with pain.
‘Your name is David Sarac.’
And?
Some distance ahead he can see the rear lights of another car. Alongside them is a large warning sign, an obstruction of some sort, and an exit ramp. The rear lights are suddenly glowing bright red.
He ought to turn the wheel, follow the car ahead of him out of the tunnel. His every instinct tells him that would be the sensible thing to do. But the connection to his arms seems to be on the way to shutting down as well, because all he can manage is a brief, jerky movement.
The obstruction is getting closer, a large concrete barrier dividing the two tubes of the tunnel. The reflective signs are shimmering in the glare of the car’s headlights. He tries to look a few seconds into the future and work out whether he’s in danger of a collision. But his brain is no longer working the way it normally does.
The shutdown reaches his face, making his chin drop.
The distance to the barrier is still shrinking.
‘Police.’
The word is back, even more insistent this time, and suddenly he realises why. He’s the police; the blue lights are coming from his own car.
His name is David Sarac. He’s a police officer. And …?
The pain in his head eases long enough for him to be able to piece together a coherent chain of thought. What is he doing here? Who is he chasing? Or is he the one being chased?
The lights in the rearview mirror are getting closer and closer. Burning into his head.
Fear overwhelms him, sending his pulse racing. The ice-blue pain returns, even stronger this time. His eyelids flutter; all the noise around him fades away into the distance. He tries to remain conscious, fighting the shutdown process. But there’s no longer anything he can do.
A brief jolt shakes the car. But he hardly notices it. The shutdown process is almost complete and he is more or less unconscious again. Free from pain, fear, and confusion. All that remains is a stubborn, scarcely noticeable signal in his tortured brain. An electrical impulse passing between two nerve cells that refuses to let itself be shut down – not until it’s completed its task.
Just before his car crashes into the concrete barrier, the second before the vehicle goes from being an object with clearly defined parametres to a warped heap of scrap metal, the impulse finally reaches its target. In a single, crystal-clear moment he suddenly remembers everything.
Why he is in this car. What it’s all about.
Faces, names, places, amounts.
The reason why all of them, every last one of them, must die.
All because of him. Because of the secret …
An immense feeling of relief courses through his body. Followed by regret.
His name is David Sarac. He is a police officer.
And he’s done something unforgivable.
Friday, October 18
As a child, Jesper Stenberg sometimes got the feeling he could make time stop. It usually involved Christmas or birthdays. Special occasions he’d been particularly looking forward to. In the midst of everything, when things were at their height, it was as if time would slow down. Giving him the chance to suck every little nuance, every euphoric sensation out of the moment he had been looking forward to for so long, in peace and quiet.
He could still recall those occasions of being utterly in the moment, and could describe them in minute detail thirty years later: the colour of his mum’s dress, the smell of his dad’s aftershave, the way the shiny wrapping paper felt beneath his little fingers. It was all fresh in his memory, without the sad patina of pictures in a photograph album.
But the ability suddenly vanished during his early teenage years. For a long time he believed it was because of his parents’ divorce. Unless it was simply because he was growing up and losing his childish perception of time. Whatever the reason, special occasions were never the same after that. Graduation from high school, getting his law degree, his first criminal case, when he proposed to Karolina, even their extravagant wedding. It could all be summarized with just one word: disappointment.
He had worked so hard for those moments. Had longed for them, fantasized about how they would feel, taste, smell. Then, all too quickly, everything was over and all that was left were a few fuzzy memories and a nagging sense of dissatisfaction.
He would persuade himself that it would be different next time. If he could just aim a bit higher and pull the bow a bit tighter, he’d be able to feel more. When the children were born, his job in the Hague, membership in the Bar Association, the day when he was invited to become the youngest-ever partner in the prestigious law firm of Thorning & Partners.
But there was always the same feeling, the same inability to live in the moment. As if there were some sort of thin filter between him and reality.
He started to take photographs. Deluged his computer with scalpel-sharp digital images, devoting hours to putting together short films of holidays in the sun, gingham-cloth picnics and Astrid Lindgren moments with Karolina and the children. But no matter how good the resolution of the camera, or how many pixels on the screen, he still didn’t feel satisfied. It was as if he had missed something essential in those moments, some tiny, invisible nuance that could make all the difference.
But today everything was different. This was Stenberg’s greatest moment to date, the moment he had been waiting for for years, and he didn’t need to look down at the Patek Philippe watch on his wrist. He knew that the second hand of the precision-made Swiss watch had just stopped, and that this moment would be just as stylized and perfect as he had always dreamed it would be. All his hard work, all his sacrifices were finally about to pay off. The years of drudgery in the public prosecutors’ office: the fraudsters, wife beaters, petty criminals, thieves, and all the rest of the rabble. Then his time in the Hague, admittedly with bigger cases, but where a young prosecutor like him mostly got used as an errand boy. Then the move to Thorning & Partners. High-profile cases, excellent for a young, ambitious defense lawyer who wanted to make a name for himself.
But in spite of the money, the prestigious job, and the increasing media interest in him personally, in spite of the fact that John Thorning had chosen him as his protégé, he had hated being a lawyer. During his first six months there, the first thing he’d do when he got home from the office was have a shower. Changing out of the bespoke suits and expensive Italian shoes that made such an impeccable impression on television. Scrubbing his skin until it was bright red.
After that he got used to it and adopted a mask, just as Karolina had suggested. A sort of alter ego he could slip into and out of in a fraction of a second. Someone who looked and sounded like Jesper Stenberg, but with whose words and deeds he would prefer not to be associated.
That way he could go on playing the game and keep up appearances. He patiently bided his time, waiting for his moment. This moment. And that was why he intended to squeeze every last millisecond out of it. Fix it to his cerebral cortex so he could remember every single detail, every nuance, even in forty or fifty years when the expanse of time that had seemed so infinite to him as a child was approaching its end.
His senses were wide open, feeding him with details. The grain of the wood on the heavy, dark furniture around the conference table. The thick, red carpet under his shoes. The light from the chandeliers reflecting off the silver coffeepots in the middle of the table. The wafer-thin porcelain of the cup in front of him. Everything was just as he had imagined it. But the most enduring impression was still the way the room smelled. A heavy, sweet smell that overwhelmed him. Almost making him feel slightly aroused.
The smell of power.
At the top of the table sat the boss, in toadlike majesty. His subordinates, including Stenberg’s own father-in-law, crowded the long sides of the table. Suits, Botoxed foreheads and double chins. Friendly expressions on most of the faces, but naturally not all. After all, he was an outsider, an upstart who hadn’t followed the prescribed path. Someone who could disturb the balance of power.
The men and women around the table were all looking at Stenberg, awaiting his response. He checked his own expression. Humility, with a hint of surprise, he could manage that in his sleep. But an irritating little grin was lurking somewhere, he could feel it tugging at one corner of his mouth. Hardly surprising, really. He had just been asked the Question. His dreams – no, their dreams – were about to come true, and everything would be different from now on.
The moment he opened his mouth and transformed that little grin into his best television smile, he thought he could detect a tiny vibration from his watch. As if a new age had just begun.
Atif opened the cooler, dug about among the cans of soft drinks until he found one that was still more or less cold, and pressed it to the back of his neck. Sweat was running down his back; one of the many power cuts had brought the fan on his desk to a standstill more than an hour ago, and the air in the shabby little room was almost still.
He opened the can, drank greedily, and then went back to his lookout post at the dirty, half-covered window.
Outside, everything was going on pretty much as usual. A dozen parked trucks, all with their rear doors or covers open, between which various goods slowly circulated. Half of the vehicles were military green. Their uniformed drivers were standing by the little café, smoking while the workmen unloaded their trucks. A few scabby stray dogs were wandering about in the shadows between the vehicles. They kept their distance as they occasionally sniffed the air, as if to check whether any of the many crates being unloaded contained anything edible.
By now Atif was very familiar with everything that was going on in this dusty square. What brand of cigarettes the truck drivers preferred, the name of the café owner’s sullen daughter, which of the drivers smuggled hash, which one of the mangy animals was top dog. The one the others feared.
The cell phone in his breast pocket began to vibrate. Atif inserted the hands-free earpiece, then raised the binoculars. He zoomed in on the sentry box beside the only real entrance to the square. The man was leaning against a wall, smoking, his Kalashnikov nonchalantly slung over his shoulder.
His cell phone vibrated again and Atif pressed the Answer button.
‘Hello.’
‘It’s me. How’s it going?’
‘Pretty much the same as usual.’
‘Still no sign?’
‘This is where the trail brought me.’
‘And how long have you been sitting there now, Atif?’
‘Almost three weeks.’
‘Right. You don’t think it’s time to give up yet?’
‘He’ll be here.’
The line was silent for a few seconds. Atif scanned the rest of the square through the binoculars, then went back to the guard. The man was standing up straight now, stubbing his cigarette out on the red earth.
‘A woman called,’ the voice in his ear said. ‘From Sweden. Said she was your sister-in-law, she wanted you to call back as soon as you could. Something to do with your brother …’
‘Half brother,’ Atif muttered, without taking his eyes off the guard.
The man’s body language had suddenly changed. He had taken his gun off and was now holding it in both hands, and all of a sudden seemed to be taking his duties more seriously. The man let out a whistle and the sound brought all activity in the square to a halt.
A dark-coloured car with military registration plates and tinted windows was slowly approaching. The guard raised a hand to his forehead, in a sort of hybrid between a salute and a wave. The atmosphere in the square was transformed in a matter of seconds. The drivers dropped their cigarettes and stubbed them out, and exchanged nervous glances. The workmen quickened their pace.
Even the dogs seemed to realize that something was going on. They drew back further into the shadows as they warily followed the dark car with their eyes. It stopped and a man in uniform and dark glasses got out. Atif didn’t need to look through the binoculars; the reaction of the other people in the square was enough to tell him who it was.
The man he had been looking for.
The top dog.
Atif reached out his hand and picked up the pistol from the wobbly little table and tucked it into the back of his trousers. He tugged his shirt looser to make sure the gun couldn’t be seen.
‘I’ve got to go,’ he muttered into his cell.
‘Atif, wait,’ the voice said. ‘It sounded important. Properly important. You should probably call home.’
Saturday, November 23
The inner city seems to be full of blue lights. They bounce between the facades of the buildings, only slightly muted by the falling snow before reflecting off the dark water under the bridges. Some of the emergency vehicles have their sirens on, but most of them race through the night in silence.
The six students walking north along Skeppsbron are already bored of the commotion. They had stood for a while at a good vantage point up at Slussen, watching the circus down on the long highway bridge. Loads of ambulances, fire engines, marked and unmarked police cars, so whatever it was that had happened inside the tunnel had to be something serious.
A couple of the students had held their cell phones over the ice-cold railing in the hope of capturing some of the action. But when several minutes passed without anything much happening, they quickly lost interest. The intense cold and falling snow persuaded the group to carry on toward the city centre.
The snowball fight starts somewhere near halfway along Skeppsbron. One of the boys, it isn’t clear which one, stops and picks up an armful of snow from the windshield of a parked car. He quickly forms an uneven snowball and throws it at the backs of his friends, and then everything kicks off. All six of them are running along the sidewalk, dodging one another’s snowballs and stopping to make new ones.
The young woman in the red woolly hat is the one who makes the discovery.
‘Look, there’s someone sitting in here asleep,’ she cries, pointing at one of the parked cars, from whose windshield she’s just swept an armful of snow.
‘Hello, wake up! He looks like he’s passed out.’ She laughs as her boyfriend catches up with her. Through the black hole in the snow he can make out a large, fair-haired man. The man is sitting in the front passenger seat, with his head resting on the dashboard. It looks as if he’s asleep.
The young man on the sidewalk knocks on the windshield as well, and when there’s no reaction he starts clearing the snow that’s still obscuring the view. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, until at last almost the entire windshield is clear. He clears the side window as well. The man in the car still hasn’t moved.
In the distance they can hear the sound of motors and the pulsing roar of a helicopter approaching. Something makes the others stop their snowball fight and approach the car. Cautiously, as if they’re not really sure they want to see who or what is concealed inside the car. But the girl in the red woolly hat hasn’t noticed the change in mood.
‘Come on, leave it,’ she says, with laughter in her voice. ‘I’m freezing, let him sleep.’
She tugs at her boyfriend’s arm, trying to pull him with her. But the young man doesn’t move. As soon as the snow on the side window is gone he presses his nose to the glass.
‘Shit,’ he mutters.
‘What is it …?’ Suddenly the girl’s voice doesn’t sound so amused. More like scared. The noise of the helicopter’s rotor blades is getting louder.
‘Shit,’ the young man repeats, mostly to himself.
Frost on the inside of the glass is obscuring the view, and the inside of the car is dark. But the sleeping man is no more than an arm’s length away and the young man has no problem seeing enough details. The leather jacket, the embroidered logo on the back, the tribal tattoo curling up from the man’s collar like a snake, across his thick neck.
But it’s the dark patch at the back of the sleeping man’s head that catches the young man’s interest. A little hole, full of black ice crystals, each one just a millimetre across, forming a thin pattern of pearls over the stubble at the back of his neck.
The sound of the rotors is deafening, echoing between the buildings and rising to a howl as the helicopter passes straight over them.
‘Shit …’ the young man says, for the third time, without anyone hearing him. Then he takes a long step backward and starts to fumble for his cell phone.
David Sarac isn’t aware of any of the rescue effort going on around him. Not the agitated voices. Not the firemen drenching the car with foam and struggling intently with their hydraulic tools for almost a quarter of an hour before they manage to free him. Not the paramedics who use a curved piece of apparatus to force an oxygen tube into his throat and stop his lungs from collapsing at the last minute. Where Sarac is, there is no pain, no anxiety, no fear. Instead he feels an immense sense of peace.
His body is nothing more than a number of carefully bonded molecules, a temporary union that – like all other solid matter – is on its way toward its inevitable dissolution.
He can hear sounds around him, machines making warning signals, the focused discussions of the rescue team. An unpleasant gurgling sound that he gradually realizes is his own breathing.
But he isn’t scared. Not the slightest. Because he understands this is the universe’s plan. His time to be transformed. To reconnect with the universal stream.
Not until someone lifts one of his eyelids, calls his name, and shines a light directly into his brain does he get scared. Not because of the bright light or the voice calling out to him. What frightens him is the shadowy figure in the corner of his eye. A dark, threatening silhouette on the edge of his field of vision. Sarac tries to keep track of it, but the silhouette keeps evading him. He manages to see a leather jacket, a pulled-up hood whose shadow transforms the silhouette’s face into a black hole.
‘… need to get out of here now. The helicopter’s just arrived,’ someone says, presumably one of the paramedics.
But the silhouette doesn’t move, it just hovers at the corner of Sarac’s eye. Somewhere a cell phone rings. Once, then again.
The sound only exacerbates his fear. It grips Sarac’s rib cage, making his heart race and setting off a painful fusillade of fireworks in his head. Then the paramedic lets his eyelid fall and he slips back into the merciful darkness.
Friday, October 18
Jesper Stenberg flushed the condom down the toilet, showered carefully, and then dried himself with one of the thick towels in the bathroom. He inspected his appearance briefly in the bathroom mirror, checking as he always did that there were no telltale signs on his body or face. Then he quickly put his clothes back on before returning to the main bedroom.
It was 9:32 p.m.; his parents-in-law were looking after the children and Karolina had gone out to dinner with her girlfriends. She had offered to postpone it, but he had persuaded her to go. They could celebrate properly tomorrow. His father-in-law had already arranged everything. Dinner at his favorite restaurant, champagne, cognac, expensive wine. And of course his father-in-law would foot the bill and would go on about the future, and the possibilities that lay ahead of them, as long as they played their cards right.
She wasn’t lying in bed as he had been expecting. Instead she had poured herself a drink and was sitting on the sofa in the living room. She was still naked, and he couldn’t help admiring her body. Small, firm breasts, long, lithe legs, porcelain-white skin, and a toned stomach that suggested diets and an exercise regime he could barely imagine. He was going to miss her body. And the things she let him do with it …
But times were changing. From now on everything was going to be different.
‘So, Jesper, you’ve been asked the question,’ she said.
He went over to the drinks cabinet and poured himself a stiff whiskey in one of the heavy crystal glasses. He shouldn’t really have any more to drink if he was going to drive. But he needed a drink; he realized that the moment she opened her mouth.
For a moment he got it into his head that she had already realized. That this wasn’t going to be as hard as he imagined. But her tone of voice instantly dashed any hopes of that nature. Obviously he should have realized she wasn’t going to make it easy for him. Sophie Thorning never made things easy for anyone. In that respect she was just like her father.
‘Everyone’s got what they wanted. You’ve got your big chance, John gets to pull the strings, and your ambitious little wife and her power-crazed family have finally got themselves a new launchpad.’ She laughed, a low, mocking laugh that he didn’t like.
‘And now you want to break up with me, don’t you? Minimize the risks, re-establish control?’ She made a slight gesture toward the bedroom with her glass.
He still didn’t answer her, just turned away and looked out the window. Far below he could see the exit from the parking garage. In just a few minutes he would be down there. In the car, on his way home. Ready to put all this behind him.
‘Everyone’s got what they wanted. Everyone except me,’ Sophie went on. ‘I’m just expected to back down and act like the last few years never happened. Is that what you’re thinking, Jeppe?’
He turned around slowly. She knew he hated that nickname.
‘Jeppe on the mountain, like the old story.’ She leered. ‘An idiot who thinks he’s something special. That he’s suddenly someone to be reckoned with. But in actual fact he’s just a marionette, a puppet who jumps whenever anyone pulls his strings. Does that sound familiar?’
He opened his mouth to tell her to shut up, but stopped himself at the last moment. Sophie knew precisely which buttons to press. He mustn’t let himself be provoked.
‘Ooh, did that make you cross?’ She smiled. ‘You know what they say – the truth hurts. But you like pain, don’t you, Jeppe? Just like me. You get a real kick out of forbidden pleasures.’
She twisted around and crossed her long legs, slowly enough for him to get a good view of her hairless genitals.
‘I think we should go back to the bedroom to celebrate your success properly. I’ve got a few ideas that I’m sure you’d enjoy, things Karolina would never agree to.’
Stenberg emptied his glass and put it down slowly on the island unit between the living room and kitchen.
‘No, Sophie,’ he said. ‘This was the last time. I’m leaving now. From now on we’ll only see each other in the office, and any interaction between us will be strictly professional.’
He held up his hand before she had time to say anything.
‘No, no, I know how the game works. This is when you pull out your trump card, and threaten to tell Karolina or your dad. Maybe even both of them?’
She turned her head slightly and her face cracked into a mocking grimace.
‘But you don’t seem to have realized that the game has changed,’ he went on. ‘You’re quite right, other people have helped elevate me. I accepted that a long time ago, and realized it was the only way to get where I wanted to be. And now I’m there.’ He paused for a moment, collecting himself.
‘Sophie,’ he began, adjusting his tone of voice to show a hint of regret. ‘A few months ago you really could have spoiled everything. You could have ruined my life. But your trump card lost all its value the moment I was asked the Question.’
He gestured toward the telephone on the table.
‘Call Karolina if you want. She’d never leave me now, just as my father-in-law would never advise her to.’
Sophie’s smile had stiffened somewhat, but she still didn’t seem to have quite understood.
‘John,’ she said, ‘Daddy would—’
‘Come on, Sophie.’ His tone was perfect now, a cocktail made up of equal parts concern and condescension. ‘Do you seriously believe that John would sacrifice me for your sake? Now that his investment is finally about to pay off?’
He nodded toward the phone.
‘Please, call Daddy and cry on the phone to him. Tell him everything, be my guest.’ He smiled, copying her mocking grimace.
Sophie glanced at the phone. She licked her lips, once, then several more times. Then she looked down. Stenberg breathed out. The match was over, he had won. All of a sudden he felt almost sorry for her.
‘Smart decision, Sophie,’ he said. ‘It would have been a shame if you’d had to spend Christmas in the clinic again.’
He regretted saying it the moment he heard the words leave his mouth. Bloody hell! The glass missed his head by a whisker, hitting the wall behind him and sending a shower of crystal shards across the oak floor.
‘You fucking bastard!’ She took a couple of quick strides toward him, her fingernails reaching toward his face. Her knee missed his crotch by a matter of centimetres.
‘For God’s sake, Sophie.’ Stenberg twisted aside and grabbed hold of her wrists.
She went on trying to kick him, wriggling frantically in an effort to break free. He dumped her on the sofa, but Sophie bounced up instantly and attacked him again. She was growling like a dog, and her eyes were black. Her lips were pulled back, as if she were planning to bite him.
The blow was a purely instinctive reaction. Right-handed, with an open palm, but still hard enough to make her head snap back and her body crumple onto the sofa. Shit, he’d never hit a woman before. Not like that, anyway.
Sophie lay motionless on the sofa. Her arms and legs were hanging limp. Something wet was running down one of Stenberg’s earlobes and he felt his ear without really thinking about it. Not blood, as he suspected, but a golden-brown drop of whiskey that must have flown out of the glass.
‘Sophie,’ he said in a tremulous voice. She still wasn’t moving.
In the oppressive silence he could hear his own pulse thundering on his eardrums. He glanced quickly toward the elevator, then at the inert body. Sophie’s eyelids fluttered a couple of times and Stenberg breathed out.
He turned around and was about to go into the kitchen to get some water. But the floor was covered with broken glass. So he went to the bathroom instead and moistened a towel. On the way back he picked up her white toweling dressing gown from the floor.
She was sitting up when he got back, and he passed her both the towel and the dressing gown.
‘Sophie, I’m—’
‘Get out!’ She snatched the towel and pressed it to her cheek. He stood motionless for a few seconds, unsure of what to do. ‘Didn’t you hear me, get the fuck out of here!’ Sophie hissed, covering herself with the dressing gown.
He backed away a couple of steps and tried to think of something to say.
‘Sophie, I mean—’
Sudden pain interrupted him. A sliver of glass had cut into his left heel and he swore as he hopped on the other leg and tried to pull it out.
Her laughter was shrill and far too loud.
‘God, you’re so fucking pathetic, Jesper, can’t you see it? Pathetic …’
He straightened up, tossing the sliver of glass toward the sink. He gave her one last glance before limping toward the elevator, without saying another word.
‘I’ll do it!’ she screamed after him. ‘I’ll kill myself!’
He pressed the elevator button, resisting the impulse to turn around.
‘I’ll go to the media, do you hear me, little Jeppe!’ She carried on yelling as the elevator doors opened. ‘I’ll tell them everything! Everything, yeah? You’re finished, you’re whole fucking family’s finished! I’m going to—’
Her voice rose to a falsetto as the doors cut her off mid-sentence. He heard running footsteps, then the sound of her fists on the elevator doors. He pressed the button for the garage several times, but it wouldn’t light up. The hammering went on, growing louder and echoing off the metal walls of the elevator.
Boom, boom, boom, boom …
He kept jabbing at the button, until eventually the little light behind it came on. Then he covered his ears with his hands and the elevator slowly nudged its way down toward the basement.
Atif took a deep breath and then looked up. The night sky was so different here compared to Sweden. Higher, clearer somehow. Yet at the same time it also felt strangely closer. But of course that wasn’t true. Obviously the sky and the stars were exactly the same, it was just that he was looking at them from a different place. A distance of three and a half thousand kilometres had simply given him a different perspective on things. And now he was going to have to switch perspective again.
‘Something’s happened, Mum,’ he said, without looking away.
She didn’t answer; she hardly ever did. She just sat still in her wheelchair with a blanket over her thin legs as she looked at the stars. But Atif knew she was listening. She really ought to have gone to bed a long time ago. But on starry nights like this the nurses let her stay up. They knew it made her calmer.
He took a deep breath. Time to spit it out.
‘I have to go back to Sweden. It’s to do with Adnan,’ he went on. He tried to force his mouth to form the words. But to his surprise his mother spoke instead.
‘A-Adnan …’ Her voice was weak, thin, almost like a child’s. ‘Adnan isn’t home from school yet.’
Atif opened his mouth again. Say it, get it over and done with. Tell her what’s happened. But he hesitated a few seconds too long. One of the nurses was heading toward them across the cracked paving.
‘Adnan’s a good boy,’ his mother went on. ‘He’s got a good head for learning, he could be anything he likes. An engineer, or a doctor. You must help him, make sure he doesn’t end up like, like …’ She fell silent and looked up at the night sky. Atif bit his lip.
‘It’s time for bed now, Mum.’ He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. ‘I’ll call you from Sweden. Khalti will come and see you the day after tomorrow. She says she’ll bring some of those dates you like.’
His mother nodded distantly. Her gaze was fixed on the stars again. Atif straightened up and began to walk away. He’d tell her when he got back. That would have to do.
‘You’ve got a good son, to come and see you so often, Dalia,’ she heard the nurse say. ‘You must be very proud of him.’
Atif quickened his pace. And tried to convince himself that it was the distance that meant he couldn’t hear her reply.
Jesper Stenberg limped toward his car, got in, and then sat behind the wheel for a few moments. His hands were shaking, and his left shoe felt warm and wet.
Fucking psycho bitch. Why the hell hadn’t he stuck to the plan, said what he had to say and then left? Fucking her and then dumping her wasn’t a very smart thing to do. Not to mention that stupid remark about the private clinic in Switzerland, a subject he should have avoided at all costs. But, as usual, Sophie had managed to unsettle him. To get beneath the skin of his bespoke self-confident image.
Stenberg took a few deep breaths as he tried to pull himself together. It was only just ten o’clock. Karolina wouldn’t be home before two. Plenty of time to go home, patch himself up, then settle back on the sofa with a whiskey and do his best to forget this sordid little episode. He was pretty good at that. Forgetting, leaving things behind, and setting off toward new goals.
He started the engine and slid the car out of its parking space. The pain in his left foot had turned into a dull throb. At the exit he stopped at the barrier. His pass card was in one of the inside pockets of his wallet, an anonymous white plastic card, obviously not issued in his name. He put the gearshift in neutral and opened the window. The Eco-Drive function instantly shut off the big engine and everything went silent. In the distance he could hear the garage’s ventilation system. A dull, ominous sound that made him feel badly ill at ease. The feeling came out of nowhere, and for a few seconds it took over his whole being and made his hands shake.
He had to get out of there, right away!
Stenberg touched his wallet to the card reader. The machine made a vague clicking sound. But the barrier didn’t move.
Cannot read card.
He swore silently to himself and tried again. ‘Come on, come on …’
He thought he could hear a noise, something that sounded like a distant scream, and glanced quickly in the rearview mirror. Everything seemed okay behind him. The sound must have come from out in the street.
The barrier started to move, slowly and jerkily. Just a few centimetres at a time, as if it didn’t really want to let him go.
Stenberg turned the stereo on and tried to find something to lift his mood. The intro kicked in and the stereo began to count the seconds.
0.01.
0.02.
0.03.
As soon as the gap under the barrier was big enough he set the car rolling. Relief radiated through his body. He slowed down just before the ramp reached street level. His hands were still shaking, making it hard for him to fasten his seat belt.
The music stopped abruptly, making Stenberg raise his head. The timer had stopped but the play symbol was still illuminated. Odd. Something white fluttered at the corner of his eye, hovering in the air just above the hood of the car.
A plastic bag, he found himself thinking. But the object was far too large. The stereo was still silent, the time on the display static. And all of a sudden Stenberg realized what was happening. He realized where the car was, and what the large, white, fluttering object in the air actually was.
He shut his eyes, clutched the steering wheel, and felt an icy chill spread from his stomach and up through his chest. The timer on the stereo suddenly came back to life and the music carried on. It was only drowned out by the sound of Sophie Thorning’s body as it thudded into the hood of the car.
1
Atif leaned back in the uncomfortable chair. In spite of the snow and cold outside, the air in the windowless little room felt stuffy. The smell of burned coffee, various bodily excretions, and general hopelessness was very familiar. You could probably find the same thing in police stations all over the world.
He was hungry, and his neck and shoulders were stiff after the long journey. He hated flying, hated putting his life in other people’s hands.
‘Name?’ the policeman sitting opposite him asked.
‘It says in there.’ Atif nodded toward the red passport on the table between them. The policeman, a fleshy little man in his sixties with thinning hair, who had introduced himself as Bengtsson, didn’t reply. In fact he didn’t even look up, just went on leafing through the folder he had in his lap.
Atif sighed.
‘Atif Mohammed Kassab,’ he said.
‘Age?’
‘I’m forty-six, born June nineteenth. Midsummer’s Eve …’ He wasn’t really sure why he added this last remark. But the policeman looked up at last.
‘What?’
‘June nineteenth,’ Atif said. It had been several years since he had last spoken Swedish. The words felt clumsy, his pronunciation seemed out of synch, like all the dubbed films on television back home. ‘Once every seven years it’s Midsummer’s Eve.’
The policeman stared at him through his small reading glasses. The smell of polyester, sweat, and coffee breath was slowly creeping across the table. Atif sighed again.
‘Okay, Bengtsson, it’s been over an hour since you stopped me at passport control. I flew in from Iraq so you suspect my passport is fake, or that it’s genuine but not mine.’
He paused, thinking how much he’d like a hamburger right now. The look on the policeman’s face remained impassive.
‘I’m tired and hungry, so maybe we could do the quick version?’ Atif went on. His voice felt less out of synch already, the words coming more easily.
‘My name is Atif Kassab, and I was born in Iraq. My dad died when I was little and my mum brought me to Sweden. She got married again, to a relative. When I was twelve he went off to the USA, leaving me, Mum, and my newborn younger brother. But by then at least we were Swedish citizens so we didn’t get thrown out.’
‘So you say.’ The policeman was looking down at his file again. ‘According to the National ID database, Atif Mohammed Kassab has emigrated.’
‘That’s right. About seven years ago,’ Atif said.
‘And since then you’ve been living …?’ Bengtsson raised his eyebrows slightly.
‘In Iraq.’
‘Where in Iraq?’
Atif frowned. ‘How do you mean?’
The policeman slowly raised one hand and took off his glasses.
‘Because the Atif Mohammed Kassab who you claim to be has a pretty impressive criminal record.’ He gestured toward the file with his glasses.
‘And?’ Atif shrugged his shoulders.
‘Well, if you really are Atif Mohammed Kassab, it’s in the interests of the police to find out a bit more about you. Where you’ve been living, what you’ve been doing, whom you’ve spent time with.’
‘I’ve got a Swedish passport, I’m a Swedish citizen. I’m not obliged to say a fu—’ Atif interrupted himself midsentence and pinched the top of his nose. It was almost eleven o’clock in the evening now. Almost ten hours since he last had any proper food.
‘If we suspect that there’s anything funny going on, we can put you on the next plane back to Iraq. There’s a flight first thing tomorrow morning.’
The fat little policeman clasped his hands together behind his neck and slowly stretched. The sweat stains under his arms were clearly visible on his shirt.
‘Or we could lock you in a cell for a few days,’ he went on. ‘While we compare your fingerprints with the database. That sort of thing can take a while, obviously.’ The policeman grinned.
Atif was on the point of saying something but thought better of it. That last threat was probably a bluff. Even if the fat little cop still doubted that his passport was genuine, he must have realized by now that Atif wasn’t trying to sneak into the country illegally. But, on the other hand, he had no wish to end up in a cell. Besides, he had an appointment to keep.
Atif took a deep breath. This whole contest in who could piss farthest was actually pretty pointless. He had nothing to lose by cooperating. Being awkward was mostly just a reflex. But things were different now. He was older, wiser. Besides, he really wanted that hamburger. A supersize meal with loads of fries and a large Coke with ice.
‘Najaf,’ he said. ‘It’s in western Iraq. That’s where my family’s from. Mum got sick and wanted to move back home. I went as well, to help her, and then I stayed on.’ He shrugged slightly and decided to stop at that. The policeman nodded almost imperceptibly and jotted something down in his file.
‘And what has someone like you been doing with his time down there …?’
Atif paused a couple of seconds, thought about lying but changed his mind. Someone like you … He put his hand in the inside pocket of his jacket and waited until the policeman looked up.
‘I’m a police officer,’ he said as he opened the leather wallet containing his ID card and little metal badge and put it on the table.
For once, Detective Inspector Kenneth Bengtsson wasn’t sure what to think. His colleague at the passport desk had sounded one hundred percent certain when he handed the case over. A fake passport, well made, probably a real one with the photograph replaced. The fact that the passport’s original owner turned out to be a real troublemaker seemed to support the theory. A genuine Swedish passport was worth several thousand kronor if you had the right contacts. And all the information they had indicated that Atif Kassab had plenty of the right contacts.
But the man claiming to be Kassab wasn’t a typical illegal immigrant with the usual staccato sentences learned by rote. This man’s Swedish was as good as his. A bit rusty, maybe, as if he hadn’t used it for a while, but still.
The only picture they had of Atif Kassab in their files was more than ten years old and hadn’t been improved by being sent by fax. Kassab’s DNA and fingerprints were obviously on file, but Bengtsson had no great desire to grapple with the ink roller to get prints for a comparison. He often couldn’t help laughing when the cops in a television show did a bit of tapping at a computer and managed to bring up fingerprints, addresses, pictures of friends, shoe sizes, and anything else that might be remotely useful. In Bengtsson’s world, ink, paper, and manual comparisons with a magnifying glass were still the order of the day. Unless you wanted to wait for forensics to get around to it.
So he preferred to rely on his own personal judgment when trying to identify people. The information in the database was seldom as exhaustive as it was in this case. He had the printouts in the folder on his lap. He had already ticked off three things.
Age: 46.
Height: 195 cm.
Eye colour: brown.
But next to the information about build and hair colour he had put little question marks. The man in the grainy photograph who was staring arrogantly into the camera had long, slicked-back hair and a little goatee beard that did nothing to hide a serious double chin. He looked just like the troublemaker his police record suggested he was, even down to the thick gold chain around his neck.
But the man sitting opposite Bengtsson had military-style cropped hair, and the little that could be seen was going grey. But the stubble on his cheeks was still dark, so, after some hesitation, Bengtsson changed one of the question marks to another tick.
And this man wasn’t fat, not remotely. He was big, certainly, probably weighed in at around a hundred kilos. But the word stocky didn’t really fit. Bengtsson wrote very fit in the margin, then changed his mind. The words made him think of the gym-pumped look that yobs who’d just finished their national service usually had. Bengtsson wrote in very good shape instead and found himself smiling at the description. The man’s posture was good, the look in his eyes alert, and even if Bengtsson had eventually managed to wind him up, he had been smart enough to calm himself down.
Bengtsson had noticed that the man’s left ear was slightly deformed. A bit of cartilage was missing from the back, and he had a scar stretching from his jaw down to his neck that was almost bare of stubble. The description he had in his lap said nothing about injuries or scars. But, on the other hand, it wasn’t difficult to imagine how they might have come about.
Bengtsson inspected the wallet containing the metal badge from all angles. Looked at the ID card with its picture of the man wearing a uniform.
Sgt. Atif M. Kassab.
6th Army div.
MP. Bat.
It was similar to Bengtsson’s own official ID, but the shiny metal badge in the shape of a shield was clearly modelled on the American version. It seemed genuine, but obviously he couldn’t be sure.
‘Military police, you say …’ Bengtsson said, putting the leather folder down. He couldn’t help smiling to himself. Talk about setting the wolf to watch the sheep.
‘And how did you end up in that job, if you don’t mind my asking? I mean, with your background?’
‘A relative recommended me. The army needed people,’ Atif said.
‘No, no, I get that bit,’ Bengtsson said. ‘What I’m wondering is why you chose to take the job? Change sides?’ The policeman put his file on the table and leaned forward.
Atif shrugged. He could say that it was his mum’s fault. That she refused to let him pay for her little room in the nursing home unless the money had been earned honestly. And what could be more honorable than being a police officer? Besides, he liked his job, he was good at it. But Atif had already revealed more than he had expected to, so this fat little cop would have to go on wondering about his motives.
Silence fell in the room. Atif took a few sips of water from the little plastic cup on the table. Bengtsson went on staring at him for a good while.
‘Okay, I believe you,’ the policeman said, throwing his hands out. ‘Let’s go and get your bag, then I’ll take you through to the arrivals hall. Welcome home to Sweden.’
He made a short note in the file, closed it, and stood up. Atif got quickly to his feet. He was thinking of the hamburger restaurant between the terminals. He hoped it was open all night.
‘Just one last thing,’ Bengtsson said.
‘Sure.’
‘Why have you come back? To Sweden, I mean. Why now?’
Atif paused a few seconds before replying. It would be easiest to lie. His former self would have done just that without blinking. Maybe that was why he chose not to.
‘I’m here to bury my younger brother,’ he said.
‘Sorry to hear that,’ Bengtsson said.
Atif made a slight move toward the door, hoping the policeman would do the same. And not ask the logical follow-up question. But he could see from the man’s eyes that it was already on its way.
‘How did he die?’ Bengtsson said. ‘Your younger brother, I mean. You said you were twelve when he was born, and you’re forty-six now, so your brother can’t have even been thirty-five?’
Atif stopped. He wished he’d followed his instincts and kept his mouth shut. He bowed his head and looked up at the policeman.
‘Adnan was murdered,’ he said.
2
David Sarac is still floating. Sometimes he thinks he’s dead, at times he’s actually completely convinced that he is. It doesn’t bother him. If this is death, then I daresay I can live with it, he thinks. But before he has time to laugh at his little joke, the feeling is gone. Vanished into part of his brain to which he no longer has access.
His body is lying in a bed; he gradually realizes this. But he doesn’t manage to make sense of much more than that. Beyond the fact that his name is David Sarac, that he’s a police officer, and that he’s been in some sort of accident.
Various people come and go in the room, mostly white coats that poke and pull him about, which ought to mean he isn’t dead. Not yet, anyway. But sometimes he notices the presence of other people, faceless figures that keep their distance. White shirts and blue uniforms with gold insignia, interspersed with a few dark suits. Most of them are sombre and seem a bit lost. As if they’re not quite sure what’s expected of them.
But the others feel all the more troubling. Their vigour frightens him, but he still can’t help looking at them more closely. It was from one of them that he heard the name.
‘Do we know anything more about – Janus …?’
Janus.
The name floats in his consciousness, making it impossible for him to rest properly. But no matter how hard he tries to remember, the answer is beyond reach.
‘Need to get this fucking mess cleared up,’ a faceless figure whispered at one point, and, oddly enough, that particular memory hasn’t faded. Maybe the remark was addressed directly at him? Is that why his body doesn’t want to give up, because he hasn’t finished his mission? Because there are still some loose ends?
Things that need to be … cleared up?
Atif woke up to find someone prodding him. It took him a few moments to realize where he was. On the sofa in Adnan’s apartment. Or, to be more accurate, Cassandra and Tindra’s apartment, seeing as Adnan was lying in cold storage at the undertaker’s.
He had gone out like a light the moment his head hit the pillow, which was pretty unusual. Someone prodded Atif again and he rolled over.
‘What’s that?’ Tindra asked, pointing at a large scar on Atif’s right shoulder. A patch of scar tissue the size of a hand, wrinkled and slightly discoloured.
‘An old tattoo,’ Atif said.
‘Like the one Daddy’s got?’ Tindra tilted her little blonde head to one side and looked at him.
‘Something like that,’ he replied. ‘Is your mum up yet?’
Tindra shook her head.
‘Not yet.’
‘But you’re already up, all on your own?’
She shook her head again and looked serious for a moment.
‘We’re both awake, Amu.’ She laughed. She used the Arabic word for uncle, and Atif realized he liked it. He pushed the covers back and sat up.
‘So you know who I am?’ he said.
This time she nodded.
‘Of course I know. Daddy’s got a picture of you in his phone. And me … but lots more of me,’ she added.
‘Of course he has,’ Atif said. ‘A pretty girl like you.’
Tindra looked different in real life, far more animated than in the digital prints with which he had lined his mother’s little room at the nursing home. The girl was wearing a washed-out nightdress with a picture of some cartoon character he didn’t recognize. It looked as if she’d tied her hair up in two untidy ponytails herself. You’ve got your mum’s skin, Atif thought. But your dad’s eyes.
‘Amu, can you make pancakes? Daddy always makes pancakes when he’s home. With jam and sugar.’
Atif got up from the sofa and stroked her cheek. He liked the way she frowned slightly when she asked for something. Adnan had done the same thing when he was little.
‘Of course I can, sweetheart. I taught your dad everything he knows.’ Atif regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth.
Tindra had already eaten three whole pancakes by the time Cassandra appeared at the door of the kitchen.
‘Good morning,’ Atif said.
‘Mmm …’ She bent over and kissed Tindra on the head. Atif glanced at her. He had known Cassandra before she and Adnan started dating. Back then her name had been Malin, someone’s plain little sister, slaving away in the city’s bars to earn enough money for a pair of silicone breasts and a few other physical enhancements.
Then she had changed her name, appeared in a couple of episodes of some forgotten reality show, and picked up some work as a glamour model. Car shows, VIP events, nightclub appearances, and a bit of associated activity. In those days she had been very attractive, if you liked nightclub blondes. Adnan evidently did. He had been a bouncer at a few fashionable clubs, where he helped fend off drunk blokes who got too keen. He was good-looking, and every so often had plenty of money. And he was funny. He could entertain a whole room when he was in the mood.
Having a girlfriend whom other men would drool over suited Adnan, and when Tindra was born his world must have looked pretty much perfect. But that was several years ago now, and Cassandra’s glitzy glamour had started to fade. Wrinkles at the corners of her mouth from smoking, sallow skin, tired eyes. One of the rectangular false nails on her left hand was missing and the dark roots were clearly visible in her blond hair.
‘Sorry we can’t offer you anything better than the sofa.’
Cassandra came and stood beside him at the stove as she fiddled with a pack of cigarettes.
‘No problem. Like I said, I could always check into a hotel instead,’ Atif replied.
She shook her head, lit a Marlboro, and blew the smoke toward the stove hood.
‘Tindra really wanted to meet her uncle.’
‘How’s she taking it?’ Atif said, nodding toward the table, where the little girl was setting about her fourth pancake.
‘She’s only six.’ Cassandra shrugged. ‘How much do you remember from when you were six?’
More than I’d like to, Atif thought to himself.
‘By the way, I’ve got a job this evening. Don’t suppose you’d be able to babysit for a few hours?’
‘Of course,’ Atif replied. ‘No problem at all,’ he added. ‘Are you managing okay?’
‘Money, you mean? Well, what do you think?’ Cassandra shrugged again. ‘Did Adnan ever tell you about the gym he wanted to open up, over in Gläntan? Or the fact that he was plowing all our savings into it?’
Atif slowly shook his head.
‘It’s been a long time since I spoke to Adnan.’
‘Well, as usual, he managed to make a mess of it,’ Cassandra said. ‘He got impatient that the building work was going so slowly, and borrowed money to speed things up. The gym turned out brilliantly in the end, but by then Adnan had already been bought out. You know what he was like, charming as hell, sociable, but patience was never one of his strong points.’ She pulled a face that looked almost like a smile.
‘Adnan was full of great ideas that never quite happened,’ she went on. ‘Always on his way toward something, without ever really getting anywhere, if you know what I mean?’ Her voice was hard, or at least harder than it needed to be. ‘But I’ve got my own income, and we’ve got friends who can help us, so we’re okay.’
‘I see. Are there many people coming tomorrow?’
‘Of course, that’s what I was going to tell you.’ Cassandra dropped her cigarette in a half-full cup of coffee on the draining board, in which other yellow butts were already floating. ‘We had to push the funeral back a couple of days. To begin with the cops didn’t want to release the body. Then the undertaker had other bookings and it clashed with my work. I did try calling you, I spoke to that bloke Faisal again, your boss. But you’d already left.
‘You’re welcome to stay,’ she went on. ‘But it’s okay if you need to get back. Like I said, we’re managing.’ She pulled out another cigarette and offered him the pack. Atif shook his head.
‘You’ve given up?’ she said.
Atif didn’t answer. He was thinking of his return ticket, the job he’d been forced to leave unfinished, his neat little house, and the starry sky above his small garden.
Tindra was humming a song as she struggled to finish the last of the pancake. Atif looked at Cassandra again, thinking that he didn’t like her tone of voice when she talked about Adnan. The way she said the body. He wondered what sort of friends were helping her.
‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘I can always change my ticket.’
Atif was on his way back to the building when he saw it. A big, dark-coloured Audi, parked a bit farther up the street, but it set his alarm bells ringing straightaway. He hadn’t been out long, ten minutes max. He’d locked the front door securely and hadn’t even bothered to put his jacket on.
He had tucked Tindra up in bed about an hour ago, kissing her forehead gently before switching on the old CD player and pressing Play for her favourite story, just as he had been instructed to do. Then he had settled down in the living room and zapped through a number of television channels, full of commercials, before realizing that the bag of paperbacks was still in the rental car over in the parking garage. He didn’t think it would take more than five minutes to fetch it. Tindra was fast asleep, and Cassandra wouldn’t be home before midnight.
The cold was biting into him, making him hurry even more. But when he saw the dark Audi parked there he slowed down and almost stopped. The car hadn’t been around when he came out, he was quite sure of that. There was no way he would have missed it.
It could be a surveillance car, but both the model and the shiny, outsized wheel trims made him doubt that. This car was too expensive and too ostentatious to be a cop car. But it was still parked in a perfect position for someone to keep watch over the entrance to their building. The engine was switched off but there was someone sitting inside, probably more than one person, to judge by the steamed-up windows.
He really ought to ignore it. Jog back across the street, just as he had planned, lock the door behind him, and settle down with his books. There must be fifty apartments in the block, so it was hardly likely that whoever was in the car was interested in him. Even so, he still couldn’t help going closer.
He stuck to the far edge of the sidewalk, setting one foot down in the snow on the grass to stay out of the cones of lights beneath the streetlamps as best he could.
When he was ten metres away he heard a noise. An electric whirring sound followed by a little click, as one of the windows was opened slightly. He didn’t stop, just looked down at the sidewalk and carried on. He could make out movement inside the car now. The outline of someone sitting in the driver’s seat, then someone else who seemed to be moving between the front seats. Five metres, four, three …
He passed the car and glanced cautiously inside it. He heard someone groan through the gap in the window and realized all of a sudden that this was something quite different from what he had thought at first. He carried on toward the door, almost grinning to himself.
But then he realized that the woman in the car seemed familiar. The jacket, tight leather trousers, the long, platinum-blonde hair that could do with having its dark roots bleached.
Suddenly he wished he hadn’t been so damn curious.
3
Sarac could see the white-coated woman’s mouth moving. He could make out the occasional word and realized that he was nodding in agreement, as if they had been talking for a while. His head felt strange, as if it had been filled with sludge. Heavy heartbeats in his chest. Fear. Who was this woman? Where the hell was he? This last question was easily answered. Grey plastic floor, textured yellow wallpaper, speckled plaster tiles on the ceiling. The distinctive smell of hospital, impossible to disguise, no matter how hard anyone tried.
‘We’ve met several times now, David. Do you remember?’ the woman in the coat said.
Sarac’s head went on moving up and down. He stared at the woman, trying to focus. High forehead, long, greying hair, dark-framed glasses, a tiny scar on her upper lip. Probably about fifty years old. Her appearance looked familiar, but he couldn’t locate a memory to match it against. His thoughts were still sluggish, as if he had been fast asleep and had just opened his eyes.
‘Do you remember my name, David?’ the woman asked.
‘N-no, sorry,’ he said.
The words sounded clumsy, as if he were sounding out each letter instead of joining them together.
‘My name is Jill. Jill Vestman, and I’m a senior consultant in the neurology department here. Do you remember why you’re here?’
‘Er … no.’
His body was still out of reach, but he managed to perform a brief check. His rib cage ached; his left arm was hanging limply in a sling. His chest and stomach felt tight, as if they had been strapped or sewn up. And then there was the headache. A rumbling, pulsing headache, the like of which he had never experienced before. It was making his thoughts fuzzy.
Dr Vestman pulled a stool over and sat down beside the bed. She took a small notebook out of one of her top pockets.
‘You suffered a minor stroke almost two weeks ago now, David. A hemorrhage in the left side of your brain. You were driving at the time and lost consciousness. You had a crash, in the Söderleden Tunnel.’
Sarac tried to straighten up but his body refused to obey him. What the hell was she saying? A stroke? No, no. Strokes happened to old men. Christ, he was only … only? His headache got worse, muddying his already hazy thoughts. The doctor seemed to note his reaction.
‘The impact was severe,’ she said. ‘You’d probably have been killed if you hadn’t been wearing a bulletproof vest and weren’t already unconscious.’
‘Drunk driving,’ Sarac said out of nowhere, without really knowing why.
‘What do you mean, David?’
He had to stop for a few seconds to think. He tried to trace the train of thought back from his mouth and up into his foggy brain.
‘Drunk drivers almost always survive,’ he said slowly, tasting each word. His voice still sounded odd. As if it weren’t really his. Dr Vestman nodded.
‘That’s right, relaxed muscles don’t get damaged the same way tense ones do. It’s interesting that you remember that.’ She made a note in her book.
‘H-how?’ Sarac muttered. ‘I mean, when …?’
Things ought to be getting clearer now, but instead everything seemed to be going the wrong way. He was feeling sick, and his headache was getting worse too. And he was starting to feel frightened.
A stroke – a brain haemorrhage.
‘Like I said, it was almost two weeks ago,’ Dr Vestman said, but stopped when Sarac tried to say something. Then she went on when he didn’t actually speak.
‘When you came in you were in a very bad way, David. We kept you sedated for over a week to stabilize your condition. To start with we concentrated on the most acute problems, releasing the blood and easing the pressure inside your head. Then we dealt with your other injuries. You’ve broken your left collarbone and ruptured your spleen. Several of your ribs are cracked and you’ve got severe bruising. But, considering how bad the impact was, you’ve actually been extremely fortunate.’
She paused and looked down at her notebook, as if to give Sarac a few seconds to digest the information.
‘On Monday we performed another operation on your head,’ she went on. ‘We removed the remaining blood clots. You and I had our first conversation the day before yesterday.’ She smiled at him, a gentle, sympathetic smile that she probably learned when she was training and had been refining ever since.
What the hell was she talking about? Awake, for three fucking days! He shook his head, harder this time, as if to shake that irritating smile out of it. His anger came out of nowhere.
‘No way,’ he snarled, and tried to sit up again. A fierce, burning pain made him put his hand to his head instinctively. His pulse was pounding in his temples. His right hand slid about, unwilling to do what he wanted it to. A double layer of gauze bandage, tightly wrapped around his skull. His hair! They’d shaved off all his hair. He must look terrible.
‘The swelling in your brain is slowly subsiding, David,’ the doctor said. ‘But it’s likely to affect your short-term memory for a while. That’s why you don’t remember the last few days. It’s not unusual, and in all likelihood it will improve.’ Dr Vestman fell silent and opened her notebook again, as if to let him take in what she’d just said.
He had questions, so many questions. An infinite number of questions. Like, for instance … Fuck, fuck, fuck! He had to try to calm down and get a grip on his brain before his headache succeeded in crushing it against his skull.
‘I was thinking of asking a few questions, mostly to see where we are in the healing process. Don’t worry if you can’t answer some of them at the moment,’ the doctor went on.
Sarac still couldn’t manage to say anything. He nodded instead, as he tried to slow his pulse down. It seemed to be working, at least partially.
‘Do you know what month it is, David?
‘How about what time of year?’ the doctor added when he didn’t answer.
He was trying but couldn’t find the words. Instead he tried to conjure up images in his head. A calendar, the date on a newspaper, the screen on his cell phone. Snow, he suddenly remembered. Heavy, wet flakes covering the tarmac, settling like a blanket on the car windshield. Headlights reflecting off the snow. Blinding him, sticking into his head like knives.
‘W-winter,’ he said.
‘Well done, David, that’s right.’
Sarac leaned his head back on the pillow. He felt suddenly relieved. At least he wasn’t completely gone. If he could just calm down a bit, if only this bastard headache could let up a bit, everything would become clear.
‘Do you know what year it is, David?’
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘2011.’
Doctor Vestman said nothing, just made a small note. But something in her body language had changed.
‘No, no, sorry! 2012. Obviously, I meant 2012,’ he quickly corrected himself.
She looked up. Smiled again, the same irritating, sympathetic smile as before.
‘It’s December 2013, David.’
‘W-what?’
‘It’s Thursday, December twelfth, 2013.’
‘Impossible. I mean …’ Sarac struggled once more to sit up, trying to push back against the mattress with his feeble right hand and almost losing his balance. He slumped back against the pillow instead. His headache shifted up a gear, then another. He screwed his eyes shut a few times. Then he slowly opened them. The fluorescent lights in the ceiling were flaring.
‘Can you tell me about your last memory, from the time before the crash, David?’
‘Of course,’ he muttered. ‘No problem,’ he added after thinking for a couple of seconds. But it wasn’t true. It didn’t even come close.
The time before the crash … His heart was suddenly galloping in his chest.
A stroke.
Car crash.
The time before …
December 2013.
The time before the crash …
December.
20 … 13!!
Fucking hell!!!
‘It doesn’t matter, David,’ Dr Vestman said, putting a hand on his shoulder. ‘Let’s rewind a bit,’ she went on. ‘That often helps. Try telling me what your name is.’
‘David Georg Sarac,’ he said quickly. The words helped ease his panic slightly.
‘And how old are you, David?’
‘Thirty-five!’ He breathed a short sigh of relief. It worked when he didn’t try to think. If he just let the answers come out automatically.
‘Where do you live?’
‘Birkastan. Rörstrandsgatan, number 26. Third floor.’
‘Family?’
‘Mum and Dad are dead. My twin sister, Elisabeth, lives in Canada.’ He paused.
‘Ontario,’ he added, and suddenly felt much calmer. He wasn’t some fucking vegetable, as he’d begun to suspect. His brain was sluggish, sure, but he wasn’t completely gone. All this would soon be over, and everything would fall back into place.
‘A number of your friends and colleagues have been to see you. A lot of people care about you, David. Could you tell me something about your work?’
‘I’m a police officer,’ he said.
‘What sort of police officer, David?’
‘The Intelligence Unit. I handle informants …’ He suddenly broke off. New feelings were suddenly running through him. It took him a few seconds to identify them. Discomfort, shame. A growing sense of danger.
His headache instantly redoubled its efforts, forcing him to close his eyes. For a few seconds he thought he was going to be sick. The words broke free and bounced around inside his head.
What.
Sort.
Of.
Police.
Officer?
‘And what does that involve?’ the doctor asked. ‘Handling informants, I mean.’ Her voice sounded very distant all of a sudden. What was her name again? Dr …?
You’ve had a stroke, you crashed your car in the Söderleden Tunnel, and you’re in the hospital. Today is Thursday, December 12, and the doctor’s name is … something beginning with V. He suddenly felt incredibly tired, could hardly keep his eyes open.
‘It’s okay, David, there’s no rush. You’ve already made very good progress. Get some rest and we’ll carry on tomorrow.’
He heard the stool scrape as the doctor stood up. He could feel himself slowly slipping into sleep.
‘Secrets,’ he muttered when she was almost at the door. ‘I collect secrets.’
Pulsuz fraqment bitdi.
