Babylon (39 page)
‘So how long are you going to be angry with me?’
‘I’m not ang—’
‘But isn’t this some kind of fucking childish protest?’ Höije exclaimed. ‘Bloody hell!’
Höije was so frustrated he almost looked astonished. The sight of him made Tell want to laugh out loud, even though he felt anything but cheerful.
‘I know,’ he said from the doorway. ‘Not much longer.’
Gothenburg
He was perspiring heavily as he made his way up Gråberget; it was hot even though it was still early. Axel passed the road the police had
cordoned off leading to the corner shop: David’s Deli and General Store. David’s Lies and Empty Promises.
The previous day he had seen the policeman out of the corner of his eye, the one who had encroached upon his person and his home; the fat slob with his teasing insinuations. The watery, insouciant, peering eyes; he’d seen eyes like that before, on the pigs at home. Nor had he forgotten how they squealed when they were slaughtered. The policeman had looked up. Axel had bent his head and hurried past.
He took the path over the hill to avoid meeting anyone. Lingered a while in the silence, feeling his concentration improve. Through the trees he could just see the peach façade of Annelie’s apartment block.
He was carrying everything he needed in a plastic bag.
He suspected that she had started locking her door after seeing him in the car park. She rarely went out; she had had a girlfriend staying over. That had simply meant that he had to wait. There was no point in getting agitated.
Axel convinced himself that he was doing what he could to deal with the situation. He could do no more.
Gothenburg
Her neighbour was lying on the grass in front of the building, a vision of summer with her sun-lounger, baby buggy and radio. No doubt she thought it was important to seize the day. The early summer weather was unreliable.
A magazine was propped on her knee, the glossy pages reflecting the sunlight.
Annelie kept on ending up here, ready to hide behind the curtain, staring out at the street. The care home was a colossus; it looked as though it was clinging to the hillside on the twisting, turning road. In the other direction, heading down the hill, at least the aspect was wide and open.
If he came that way she would be ready.
Annelie backed away from the window slowly, then went into the bathroom and emptied her bladder for the fourth time in an hour. She grimaced as the feeble trickle splashed against the toilet bowl. The urinary tract infection, which the previous evening had been a bearable nuisance, had worsened during the night. Now she was pissing acid again. That was one of the burdens she had to bear in life, a tendency to these infections. Even though she avoided sitting on cold surfaces.
Sit on a cushion!
She had heard that at home for as long as she could remember.
When the phone in her hand rang she jumped; the sound was somehow magnified, bouncing off the tiled walls.
‘Hello?’
‘Annelie Swerin?’
‘Yes?’
‘My name is Karin Beckman, I’m with the police. I just wanted to check if everything’s OK?’
Annelie managed to fasten her trousers and went into the hallway.
‘Thanks for ringing. I think I’m OK, I’ve had a friend staying. It just feels a bit funny now she’s gone home, that’s all.’
‘You haven’t seen Axel Donner since you spoke to my colleague? You can’t see him outside your apartment at the moment?’
‘No, no. No . . . It’s just a feeling, really, that he’s going to come back.’
If you want them to help you, you’ll have to be honest
. It was nice to hear a voice in her ear and she wanted to keep this woman on the line as long as possible.
‘I realise you might think this sounds a bit airy-fairy and not that important, but he—’
‘Listen to me, Annelie,’ Beckman broke in. ‘I haven’t got time to talk right now, but I have to tell you that we will be arresting Axel when we find him, and that won’t take long. Just stay where you are. Don’t leave your apartment and don’t let anyone in until we get there. You’ve got my number, haven’t you? Call me immediately if anything happens, anything at all.’
Annelie pushed the stale air out of her lungs with difficulty. She shivered as she closed her eyes: the shock of hearing her thoughts spoken out loud. Above all, she felt a vague relief at being taken seriously. She wasn’t crazy or paranoid. The fear Axel Donner evoked
in her was real, as was the glimmer of insanity that had flashed straight into her eyes when his mask had slipped. Afterwards she had felt compelled to rationalise it away, to laugh off what had happened.
When she thought about how he had sat there on a bollard in the car park, his body rigid as he stared up at her window, she wanted to scream. The very thought of what she had suppressed but should have realised at the time: he had murdered Henrik and Ann-Marie!
Were they going to arrest him on suspicion of murder?
She thought back to the police cars she had seen speeding past. She didn’t know what they had meant, but she had a bad feeling. And the silent ambulance earlier on, just down the road . . .
She whimpered. The street door slammed shut; she padded quickly over to the spy-hole and peered out onto the landing. Everything looked as it should: there was no one on the stairs. Her neighbour’s door was closed, the shoe rack full of Wellingtons and trainers.
A second later, everything went dark. It was as if the light had gone out, even though the stairwell had been lit only by daylight. Then there was a scraping noise and the light came back, a fleeting shadow at the bottom of her field of vision, and the picture was intact once more.
She was hurled backwards by her reaction, her heart somersaulting in her chest; she ran back to the window. The sun-lounger was empty; she grabbed the phone.
‘Marie, hello? It’s Annelie, from next door. Please could you check the stairwell for me? See if there’s anyone there? Please?’
‘Er . . . hang on a minute.’
Through the spy-hole Annelie saw the door opposite open, then her neighbour appeared, looking puzzled.
She thinks I’m crazy
.
‘Hello?’
Her neighbour went back inside.
‘No, there’s no one there.’
An optical illusion. Annelie thanked her and swallowed; she had to pull herself together. ‘I don’t suppose you fancy coming round for a coffee?’
They didn’t know each other that well. ‘It’s just . . . I don’t want to be alone.’
Her neighbour hesitated, unsurprisingly. ‘No, I can’t – Eskil’s asleep. But you can always come round here if you like.’
She could hardly call the police because she’d seen a shadow through
the spy-hole; that would be like crying wolf. And when the wolf did come, nobody would dash to her rescue.
She would have to find another solution; she couldn’t stay in the apartment without losing her mind. Whatever was happening outside, she couldn’t stay here alone. Nor could she go out, not even to catch the tram. Not with Axel skulking around.
She caught sight of her pale reflection in the mirror, wiped away tears she didn’t know she’d cried. I’ve got to pull myself together, she thought. For God’s sake, pull yourself together, Annelie.
She was just as frightened when the phone rang again. As her hand hovered over the receiver, she forced her breathing to slow. It was the police, she told herself, nothing to worry about. It was her mother, it was a friend. She needed to hear a human voice, a voice that would talk sense into her, because the state she was in at the moment was beyond all . . .
It wasn’t the police. It was little Sara. As soon as Annelie registered this, she realised it had been quite some time since she had been in touch with everyday reality. It was a palpable relief to experience feelings of guilt at having forgotten her five-year-old niece’s birthday.
Annelie’s voice held. Every word she spoke took her further away from fear as reality hauled her ashore. She slipped back into her life, recognised the sound of her own voice.
‘Oh, Sara, I’m so sorry I didn’t ring you earlier on! I meant to sing to you over the phone, but one or two strange things have been happening lately. Happy birthday for yesterday!’
The present she had bought in Bangalore was wrapped, but it was still lying on the bookcase. How could she have let go of what was important, forgotten Sara’s birthday?
A noise. What was that outside? Annelie peered through the spy-hole again, close to tears and with a lump in her throat, but the stairwell looked the same as it always did.
‘I haven’t sent your present because I was going to ask your mum if we could all meet up at Granny and Granddad’s, maybe later on today.’ A white lie which suddenly became the truth. Could she ask her dad to come and pick her up? Would the police drive her to Varberg, or at least to the central station? Did she dare to take a taxi?
‘Then I can give you your present.’
Annelie’s sister and her family lived in Varberg, not far from their
parents. ‘And I could get to see you as well! But maybe you’re doing something else today?’
‘No, we’re going to Granny and Granddad’s, me and Mummy and Daddy and Oscar. If you’re going too we’ll see you there. We’re leaving in an hour.’
In the background she could hear Sara’s little brother and the sounds of a children’s TV programme, or a CD.
The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round
. . .
Annelie breathed calmly from her abdomen, feeling the muscles around her eyes relax.
‘That would be fun! See you later, then.’
The thought of sitting in her parents’ living room, far away from Gothenburg and Axel, David and everything else, filled her with relief. They would sing a belated
Happy Birthday
to Sara, whose cheeks would be flushed with excitement. Then she would rip the tissue paper from the handmade drawing book and colouring pencils Aunt Annelie had bought on yet another of her trips.
Annelie would avoid the usual questions about her love life, her course and plans to get a job – anything to do with her life, really. But she would feel normal, safe and good.
She picked up the phone; she would ring her neighbour and say that she had decided to come over for coffee after all, she couldn’t cope with being on her own, but then it occurred to her that normal social convention would simply be to knock on the door, since they had only just spoken. And from there, she could call Karin Beckman. She could ask about Axel’s arrest, find out what they suspected, put forward her own evidence. And she would ring her parents and arrange how to get to Varberg before evening fell.
Just as long as she didn’t have to be on her own any more.
She quickly threw some clothes into a suitcase. Her keys were on a hook in the key cupboard, exactly where they were supposed to be. She didn’t bother turning off the light in the hallway; she just pushed the handle down carefully, opened the door as slowly as she could and lifted her suitcase over the step. The landing was empty and silent.
She was leaving, she was leaving; it was like a mantra.
She would ring the police from her neighbour’s.
And she knew she would be able to stay with her parents for as long as she wanted.
She stood in the doorway, the keys in her hand – she was just checking that her wallet was in her bag – when someone’s body weight thrust her into the door. Because she was leaning forward slightly, the door hit her head and it really was very strange how associations managed to flash through her head as it exploded with pain. When she’d lived in London, her French roommate had taught her to hold her keys between her fingers like a knuckle-duster when she walked alone at night.
Annelie didn’t have time to turn her keys into a knuckle-duster; she dropped them, felt her knees give way and fell over her suitcase. She was shoved back into the hallway and the door closed behind brown shoes and grey trouser legs.
Gothenburg
The pavements of Mariaplan were crowded outside Axel Donner’s building, distracting Tell. His energy levels were flagging and he almost wished he had gone through his plan in more detail before he and Beckman took off. He could have covered his own back by letting Höije determine how to proceed.
For a moment he questioned his judgement, and his attitude to Höije: had he been thrown off-balance by everything that had happened with Seja?
She hadn’t been in touch. He had gone over their last conversation forty times, searching like an imbecile for clues that would lead him in the right direction. He had loathed every second since the door closed behind her. Now he was displacing his frustration by taking action at work, and perhaps he had acted with undue haste.
He and Beckman had crept along the flowerbed right next to the wall so that they couldn’t be seen from the windows of Donner’s apartment. He heard a child’s voice in the stairwell as he pushed the door slightly ajar. There was no leeway if anything went wrong.
Although he no longer believed they would find Axel Donner in his apartment, it was still the first place they had to look.
They let the woman and child go out before they went up to Donner’s door; the stairwell was silent and empty. He could hear Beckman breathing quietly behind him as he knocked, waited and knocked again. Having got this far, Tell had to admit that he had already made a decision of sorts, against his better judgement. If they’d taken a back-up team with them, the door would have been open in no time and everything would have been a whole lot safer.
Beckman signed a question: should she go back to the car and fetch some tools to break open . . .?
Tell shook his head without looking at her.
The door offered little resistance, but Tell was out of practice; he had to put all of his strength behind his right shoulder. One last well-aimed kick and the lock shattered. The door opened, revealing scratched floorboards and very little else.
He suppressed a whimper as he moved his painful shoulder in a reflex action which brought the hand holding his gun up past his face. It smelled of gunpowder, even though it was a long time since it had been fired.
