The Long Shadow (12 page)

Annika followed the policeman as softly as she could, with Carita a few steps behind her. A cold draught was blowing through the house – a window was open somewhere. She didn’t want to ask again but couldn’t help wondering if all the gas had really disappeared.

Upstairs, a corridor led off in each direction. The rain clattered against the tiles. The policeman turned left. The sound of their footsteps echoed on the stone floor. There were two doors on each side of the corridor, and an ornate double-door at the end.

The policeman pointed at it. ‘That’s where the children were found,’ he said.

Annika’s throat tightened. The parents’ bedroom, she thought, trying to force herself to think clearly and sensibly.

‘And this was the little girl’s room, but of course you know that,’ he said, opening the door to the first room on the left.

The pink and gold room was fairly small and french windows led out onto a large terrace with a view of the pool. She could just make out the golf course through the rain. In one corner stood a pink desk with a leather top, covered with paints, brushes and paper. There was a glass of dirty water that My had dipped her brush into when she changed colours. The bed in the other corner was unmade, left as it had been when the child had got up, woken by the gas alarm.

Annika coughed, walked into the room and went
over to the bed. At its foot sat a doll with curly brown hair. She picked it up.

‘
Creo que la señora quiere estar sola
,’ Carita said to the policeman, and Annika got the drift: I think the lady would like to be alone.

The policeman closed the door behind her. There was a deathly hush in the room. The rain was still drumming on the marble terrace outside.

She clenched her teeth and got out her mobile. She aimed it at the bed and clicked. Then she went to the picture on the desk. It was of a girl riding a brown horse. The sun was shining and the grass was green. The girl was laughing. Tears welled in Annika’s eyes and she had to bite her cheek. Then she held out her phone and took several shots. She put it back into her bag, glanced at the door, then picked up the painting, rolled it up and put it into her bag. She left the little yellow dog on the pillow, then went back out into the corridor. She closed the door carefully, but a little sign on it, saying, ‘My’s Room’, rattled.

Carita and the policeman had gone into the parents’ bedroom – she could hear them talking quietly. One of the double-doors was ajar, and the grey daylight was illuminating the far end of the passageway.

Annika took out her mobile. Her hand was trembling as she took a picture of the door behind which the mother and children had been found dead.

She walked slowly along the corridor, putting her mobile away again. The next door bore a sign that read, ‘Leo’s Room’. She felt in the bottom of her bag again and found one of Kalle’s broken toy cars. She opened the door and went into the boy’s bedroom.

The room was in chaos. The bed was unmade – she could almost smell the lingering warmth from the sleeping child. On the floor, clothes, cars and toy dinosaurs
were all mixed up. There was a large bookcase full of sports equipment, tennis racquets, golf balls and baseball gloves.

On the desk, which was green, there was a plate with a half-eaten sandwich and a glass of chocolate milk. The edges of the cheese were hard and yellow. There was a skin on the milk. She pulled out her mobile and took several pictures: the bed, the chocolate milk, a teddy-bear on the floor.

‘Señora?’

The policeman was standing in the doorway. Annika spun round. She still held her mobile and Kalle’s car. She gulped. ‘For Leo,’ she said, putting the car on the pillow. Then she went out, turned left and walked straight into the parents’ bedroom without a backward glance.

This room was several times the size of the children’s. A heavy desk dominated the right-hand wall. Her eyes were automatically drawn upwards to the air-vent.

‘Señora, I must ask you to hurry. The detectives are on their way. Do you want to leave anything for the eldest girl as well before you leave?’

The eldest girl?

She turned to the policeman and nodded.

The man gestured for her to leave the room first.

‘Just one moment,’ Annika said, putting a hand to her forehead.

‘Of course, naturally,’ the policeman said, and stepped into the corridor.

The bed was big, with a two-metre-high headboard made of dark wood. The covers with which the father had tried to stop the gas were no longer on the floor. The police had bundled them into a heap in the middle of the bed.

That’s where they spent the last night of their lives,
where they woke up to the howl of the gas detector, where they died, unable to get to their children …

She took a picture of the bed. Then she aimed the mobile at the desk and the air-vent and took a couple more.

She hurried out into the corridor. The constable made sure the door was closed properly behind her. They went back down the stairs together. Carita was waiting by the terrace door.

‘Just one more,’ the policeman said, turning left through the hall.

They passed the kitchen, a rustic affair with a heavy wooden table in the middle and dark shelves along the walls, covered with painted ceramics.

He stopped outside a door beside the kitchen. A sign hung on it: ‘Suzette’s Room’.

Who’s Suzette? Annika thought, but obviously she couldn’t ask.

‘Where is Suzette?’ she said instead. ‘She wasn’t here when it happened, was she?’

The policeman opened the door. Annika looked in at a tidy teenage bedroom. The bed was made, the bedspread arranged neatly. A laptop like hers was on the desk, but switched off. Beside the door a sun-bleached poster of Britney Spears was pinned to the wall.

The policeman consulted his watch. ‘Señora,’ he said, ‘I must ask you to leave now.’

Annika nodded. ‘Thank you for being so kind,’ she said, and walked back quickly towards the kitchen.

When she got back to the hallway she glanced at the other rooms. She could see a large living room, with dark-brown leather furniture, and a library, with built-in bookcases.

‘
Muchas gracias
,’ Annika said, then she and Carita stepped out onto the terrace again.

The downpour had stopped, leaving the ground steaming, water trickling off the stonework.

They walked slowly back towards the road and the policeman opened the gate for them.

‘Did you get what you wanted?’ Carita asked.

Annika leaned against the car and closed her eyes. ‘Your powers of persuasion are astonishing,’ she said. ‘How did you do it?’

‘I was thinking of invoicing for it under “sundry expenses”. You don’t imagine he let us inside the house just because we were nice and he was kind?’

I really am incredibly naïve, Annika thought.

‘A hundred euros was enough,’ Carita said. ‘After all, you were only a grieving friend. He’d never have let a reporter in, but no one’s ever going to know the difference. The evening papers might be available down here, but their sales are hardly impressive. Where are we going now?’

‘Do you know anything about a Suzette?’ Annika asked.

The interpreter shook her head. ‘Who is she?’

‘There was another child’s room, a teenager’s, next to the kitchen. It said “Suzette’s Room” on the door … Hang on, didn’t someone mention a Suzette yesterday? That woman who was a Swea with Veronica?’

‘Another child?’ Carita had paled.

‘I need to check this out,’ Annika said, opening the car door. ‘How do we get back to the hotel?’

She dropped the umbrella on the floor, tossed her bag onto the bed, her jacket onto the floor, and leaped at her laptop. Fingers trembling, she opened the other evening paper’s website.

Before she had set off they hadn’t managed to post anything about either the gassings or her and Halenius,
but now both stories were there. The gassings were at the top, but she felt obliged to start with herself and the under-secretary of state.

The picture taken outside the Järnet restaurant looked worse than she had imagined. It wasn’t very clear, thanks to the darkness and low resolution of the camera, but you could definitely see it was her in the light from the restaurant windows. Her hair was blowing in the wind, cascading behind her. Halenius seemed to be hugging her, his lips close to her ear. He was either kissing her cheek or whispering.

‘Star reporter and hotshot politician’s big night out!’ the headline shrieked.

At least she was a star reporter. She settled down and read the start of the article:

Schyman: ‘I have complete confidence in her.’

Evening Post
crime reporter Annika Bengtzon spent last night partying with the justice minister’s right-hand man.

‘They were drinking wine and kissing in public,’ a source told us.

She straightened her back, affronted. What was this rubbish?

Beside the bed her mobile started to ring. Should she carry on reading, or answer it?

In the end she pulled her phone out of her bag and checked the screen. ‘Hello?’ she said, and noticed that her voice sounded very high.

‘I’ve seen the picture,’ Thomas said.

‘Er, okay?’ Annika said.

‘Did you do it just to embarrass me?’

Her eyes widened in surprise. ‘Oh, Thomas,’ she said, ‘you’re not jealous?’

‘For fuck’s sake, Halenius is one of my bosses. Can’t
you see what an awkward position you’re putting me in? Can’t you see what people are going to say?’

‘
You
’re lecturing
me
about putting people in an awkward position?’

Thomas snorted. ‘Don’t you ever think about anyone but yourself?’

She was so angry she had trouble saying anything. ‘You hypocrite! You left me and the kids in a burning house and ran off to your little fuck-buddy. I’ve been homeless for six months, falsely accused of arson, at risk of losing my children because
you’re
trying to take them from me, and now you’re the one who feels all upset. You make me feel sick!’

She was about to end the call, the way she usually did, but changed her mind.

Instead she waited, taking quick, shallow breaths.

‘Annika?’ he said.

She coughed. ‘I’m here,’ she said.

‘How can you say I left you in a burning house?’

‘You did.’

‘You’re being very unfair. I went round to Sophia’s because you and I had a row, and when I came back to talk to you the house was in ruins. How do you think that felt? I didn’t know if you were okay, if the children were still alive—’

‘It’s always about you!’ she said. ‘Poor Thomas!’

He sighed deeply. ‘You always manage to make everything my fault …’

‘You were unfaithful to me,’ Annika said. ‘I saw you together outside NK. You were holding her and kissing her, laughing with her.’

Now it was Thomas’s turn to be silent. ‘When?’ he finally asked.

‘The autumn before last,’ she said. ‘I was on the other side of the road with the children. We’d just bought
Kalle some wellingtons, we were on our way home, and—’ The tears welled up and she couldn’t stop them trickling between her fingers and onto the phone, like a burst dam. She cried for a long while, messily and uncontrollably.

‘Sorry,’ she said, when the sobs subsided.

‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ he asked quietly.

‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘I was probably scared you’d leave me.’

The silence that followed echoed with surprise.

‘But,’ he said, ‘you drove me away. You stopped talking to me, you wouldn’t let me touch you …’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

They were silent for a long while.

‘So now you tell me,’ he said.

She laughed and wiped away the last of her tears. ‘I know,’ she said.

‘The children say you’ve got a new flat,’ he said. ‘Have you bought it?’

She blew her nose on a tissue she found in her bag. ‘I’m renting,’ she said. ‘I got the place through contacts.’

‘Your new friend Halenius, or someone else?’

Defiance bubbled up again, but she swallowed it. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not through him. And that picture in the paper is utterly misleading. We had dinner and he gave me information about something I’m working on. When we said goodbye he kissed me on both cheeks because I was flying to Spain early the next morning. I didn’t drink any wine – I don’t like red, you know that …’

‘God, the things you journalists do,’ he said.

She wiped the mascara from under her eyes on the tissue. ‘Mainly it just seems ridiculous,’ she said. ‘But it’s probably worse for Halenius.’

‘The article says he was on duty that evening.’

‘I haven’t had time to read it,’ Annika said. ‘And if Jimmy Halenius has committed some kind of work-related offence, that’s really not my problem. More like yours, actually.’

They both laughed, with a warmth that surprised Annika.

Then Thomas sighed. ‘God, I’ll get some stick on Monday,’ he said.

‘You won’t be the only one,’ Annika said.

They laughed again, then fell silent.

‘Can I come round with the children on Sunday evening? Then I could have a look at the new flat.’

He’d never made that sort of offer before. He had never once visited the office in Gamla stan where she had lived for six months. ‘There’s not much to see yet,’ Annika said. ‘I haven’t even had time to unpack.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Agnegatan 28.’

‘But that’s—’

‘Our old block.’

They were silent again for a few moments.

‘How are the children?’ Annika asked.

‘Good. We’re in the park. They’re chasing each other. Do you want to talk to them?’

She shut her eyes for a few seconds. ‘No,’ she said finally. ‘Let them play.’

‘So, shall I come round at about six o’clock on Sunday?’

They ended the call and Annika was left standing with the phone in her hand. Then she slumped onto the bed and crept under the bedspread. The sharp-edged brick that she had got so used to carrying around in her chest was suddenly less noticeable. It felt smaller, lighter, and
the edges weren’t quite as sharp. Just a little while, just a few minutes, just long enough for her to enjoy …