Last Will (33 page)

The will is deposited at Stockholms Enskilda Bank. It is unevenly written in jagged handwriting, with a number of notes in the margins. It is opened on December 15, 1896, five days after Alfred’s death, and no one has cause to celebrate its contents.

No one, no one at all.

Quite the opposite, in fact: everyone is disappointed. His relatives are deeply dismayed, feeling themselves practically defrauded. He gives his brother’s children a million kronor,
a million kronor,
at that time a dizzying, immense sum, but they want more, much more, and they take their case to law, and in the end they win; they are drowned in money, all the income from the entire estate for one and a half years.

And they leave their uncle’s grave, counting the notes clutched in their fists through clenched teeth.

The future archbishop Nathan Söderblom is disappointed. He spoke beside Alfred’s coffin in San Remo, yet even so he does not get the hospital he had hoped for.

Even the Swedish king, Oscar II, is distantly disappointed, believing that the intention to establish prizes in order to reward not only Swedes but also
foreigners
is unpatriotic.

The future prime minister Hjalmar Branting, editor in chief of the newspaper
The Social Democrat,
calls the donation a
major bungle
.

But Alfred, he has thought and pondered. He wants five prizes to be awarded, five prizes in line with his life’s work and passions: physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and—perhaps most remarkable of all—peace.

His women are there, both of the women who have meant most in his life; they are both mentioned in the will, albeit in completely different ways.

Here she is again, the woman he never captured. He does not mention her by name, but he gives her his largest gift: in future the Norwegian parliament is to be instructed to reward
the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.

Bertha Kinsky, married von Suttner, the beautiful countess from the Grand Hotel in Paris, who has become famous for arranging peace congresses, becomes the second woman ever to be awarded a Nobel Prize (the Peace Prize in 1905; the first is Marie Curie, awarded the Physics Prize in 1903).

Sofie Hess (now Mrs. Kapy von Kapivar) is mentioned by name, and of all the disappointed parties perhaps she is the most gravely overlooked. The will bequeaths her the equivalent of half a million kronor each year for the rest of her life, but Sofie wants more—she wants much,
much
more, and she is holding a trump card. Two hundred eighteen of them, in fact: Alfred’s letters to her over the years. She contacts the executor, Ragnar Sohlman, she fawns, she pleads, she cajoles. She has so many debts, they are such a burden to her, they are pressing her to the ground—could not the estate pay them off?

When this fails she makes threats.

Two hundred eighteen letters. Naturally, she doesn’t want anyone else to read them, an outsider, it would be
shameful
if that were to happen, she certainly doesn’t want that, considering the good name of the late Mr. Nobel …

One million, that’s what she wants, the equivalent of one million kronor.

Cash. Otherwise she will sell the letters, the scandalous letters, to the highest bidder.

And Sohlman pays.

The blackmail has worked.

So ends Sofie Hess’s long connection with Alfred Nobel.

She manages to exploit him even after his death.

SATURDAY, MAY 29

The Kitten stretched in the sun, letting the chlorinated water from the pool run down onto her towel. The kids were running and shrieking around her nonstop, shouting at each other in their uptight private-school British English (she could imagine them heading off to school in shiny Land Rovers driven by their neat, suntanned mothers, all school uniforms and starched white collars).

There were too many permanent residents in this complex now; she’d have to start looking for a new one soon.

She pushed her big, round sunglasses more firmly onto her nose and picked up a copy of
Cosmopolitan
: how to be hotter, thinner, richer.

The beach ball hit her right in the head, dislodging her sunglasses. She let out a cry, sat up, and looked round.

The ball was lying next to her, and two pale, pudgy British brats were standing in front of her, looking scared.

The Kitten smiled.

“Is this your ball?”

They nodded mutely, eyes wide open.

“Here,” she said, tossing it back to them. “But make sure you don’t hit anyone else. Who knows, they might get cross.”

The children nodded again; one of them picked the ball up and wandered off, but the second, smaller one didn’t move.

“Where are you from?” he asked.

The Kitten, who had adjusted her glasses and settled back on her chaise lounge again, sat up once more.

“I’m from America,” she said. “The best country in the world. Much better than Spain or England.”

Then she leaned back and raised her magazine demonstratively.

That usually worked. Arrogant Americans were the worst thing stuck-up Europeans could imagine.

But the little brat didn’t move.

“Why don’t you live there, then?”

She lowered the magazine. He really was incredibly annoying: pale, freckled, red-haired and evidently as stupid as they come.

“You know what?” she said, standing up and picking up the magazine and her towel. “That’s a really good idea, thanks a lot.”

She smiled at the brat and headed for the entrance that was furthest from her own flat. No point letting the whole pool know exactly where she lived.

“What did you do to your leg?” the kid shouted after her, but she pretended she hadn’t heard.

Up in the apartment everything was cool and white. She hung the towel up (white, of course) to dry in the bathroom, and put the magazine front side up in the wicker basket next to the linen-covered sofa. Her bathing suit was wet and cold, chilling her stomach pleasantly in the heat. She never wore a bikini. The large scar on her chest was too noticeable, the sort of detail people tended to remember. Heart surgery, she said on the few occasions when someone had seen it and asked. But she could just as easily have told the truth, because no one tended to live very long after asking. An injury at work: I was shot once a long time ago but that’s all forgotten now, forgotten, and long since buried.

She went into the bedroom, switched on the computer, fetched a new towel that she folded and laid on the office chair so the seat wouldn’t get wet. Logged into
Happy Housewives
and looked for any sign of her agent.

She had a new message waiting for her.

The shit has hit the fan. Erase your hard drive. Avoid all usual hangouts. Person who identified you: Bengtzon, Annika, Stockholm, Sweden. DO NOT USE THIS CHANNEL AGAIN.

The message had been left at 9:13
AM
, central European time, the same zone as her—in other words twenty minutes ago.

The Kitten read the message through three more times.

Then she turned off the computer, opened her desk drawer and took out a small screwdriver. She unscrewed the base of the computer and
pulled out the hard drive. It was gray, its size and shape reminiscent of a cigarette packet. The RAM memory could stay: any information on there was erased as soon as the power was switched off. Then she left the bedroom, taking the hard drive with her, and headed into the bathroom. She quickly took off her bathing suit and pulled on a pair of dark jeans and a blue T-shirt. She pulled her still-wet hair up into a ponytail and hung her sunglasses in the neck of the T-shirt.

This was what she had always suspected, that her agent was also a clumsy idiot.

Erase your hard drive
, as though that would help! Everything could be reconstructed, and then they’d have emails and websites and chat and IP addresses from here, there, and every-fucking-where.
Erase your hard drive
?
Kiss my fucking ass.

She put the hard drive in her handbag and grabbed the car keys from the hall table. She didn’t bother about fingerprints: that stage was over now.

She pulled the door shut behind her without looking back—never look back. Instead she focused on the future, and on her future markers.

Bengtzon, Annika, Stockholm, Sweden.

Annika woke up with the sun streaming onto her face. It was making her sweat so much that her hair was stuck to her neck and back. Without opening her eyes she lay there for a minute or so listening to the sounds of the house. There was a radio on somewhere, the sound of loud chatter on P1, accompanied by the sound of a newspaper rustling. There were children making a noise somewhere, and she presumed they were hers.

She ought to get up.

She had to pull herself together.

She would have to go and buy a proper roller-blind from IKEA.

With an effort she heaved herself out of bed and over to the bathroom. Thomas was whistling downstairs, the noise cutting into her head.

The weekend, a whole weekend that they were obliged to spend together, unable to hide behind their jobs.

She pulled on a pair of jeans and a hooded top and went down to the kitchen.

“Good morning,” Thomas said without looking up from the paper. “There’s coffee in the pot.”

She went over to the countertop and poured herself a large mug.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do about Wilhelm Hopkins,” she said. “If he doesn’t stop using my garden as his private playground, I’m going to do something silly.”

“So it’s
your
garden now? I thought we lived here together?” Thomas said, leafing through the paper, still without looking up at her. He was wearing a tracksuit and sneakers.

Annika sat down opposite her husband and put her hand over the article he was reading.

“He can’t carry on using
our
garden as a shortcut every time he takes his car out—that has to count as arbitrary conduct under the law.”

Thomas pulled the paper away and held it up instead.

“There’ll be six people coming to dinner on Monday evening,” he said. “Larsson and Althin and their wives, and Cramne and Halenius.”

“And digging holes in the grass because that’s where Midsummer always used to be celebrated is completely insane,” Annika said.

Thomas turned the page.

“We have to show a bit of understanding,” he said. “These are old traditions, and until recently people living in the area had the right to use this piece of land. It’s pretty natural if they’re upset that they’ve lost it. What were you thinking of cooking?”

“Fish soup,” Annika said to the copy of
Svenska Dagbladet
held up in front of Thomas. “But the council sold the land, we live here now, and the neighbors can’t just carry on doing as they like.”

Thomas lowered the paper, folded it up, and finally looked at her.

“You have to be a bit subtle when you live in a villa,” he said, standing up.

At the front door he stopped.

“Mom phoned,” he said. “She’s coming over this afternoon. Wants to see how we’ve settled in.”

“Okay,” Annika said, looking down at her mug.

So she can reassure herself that this isn’t Djursholm
proper,
and point out yet again that there’s no sea view except from upstairs, she thought.

Thomas went out, closing the door behind him. She pushed her mug away and darted over to the window, and watched him jog out of the gate and down Vinterviksvägen with short, easy steps, his shoulders rolling slightly. She saw him vanish into the greenery down toward the shore and the pressure in her chest grew: why was he being so distant?

She went back to the countertop, gathered together the breakfast things, and put them in the dishwasher, wiped the table, then wiped it again.

She had to pull herself together. Had to do something.

She rinsed her face under the kitchen tap, dried herself on a tea towel, and went out to see the children.

They were playing with trucks and spades in the hole that Wilhelm Hopkins had dug.

“Look, Mommy,” Kalle cried when he caught sight of her, “we’ve got a volcano! It spits fire, but Spiderman is going to stop it, vroom …”