The Long Shadow (14 page)

They hung up.

Annika’s chest felt warmer and lighter. She opened the national ID register, logged in and waited while the site loaded.

Investigative journalism had largely stopped being a competitive sport the moment the database had gone online. Subscriptions were expensive but, thanks to the funds they generated, Annika now had access to all the details of every Swedish citizen, their name, age,
ID number, current and previous addresses, taxable income, directorships, the colour of their car, details of any property, their credit rating, and any debts they might have. It also included all the details of every business, organization and official authority in Sweden and fourteen other European countries: their annual accounts, financial state and creditworthiness.

She clicked to get into individual records. A form appeared on the screen. She could search either by name or ID number, so she moved the cursor to name: Söderström, Suzette. Gender: female.

She left the rest blank.

The results came up. There was just one person with that name in Sweden. A Jannike Diana SUZETTE, born sixteen years ago, a resident of 77 Långskeppsgatan, Bromma, in the region covered by Stockholm Council.

So what might her mother be called? The facility that enabled you to search for relatives in the database had been removed after 11 September 2001, so now it was considerably harder to find that information.

Annika clicked to see local registration details, which gave her the postcode of Långskeppsgatan. Then she did a new search of individual records, with slightly different information. She filled in three boxes: gender, the postcode for Långskeppsgatan, and the surname Söderström.

The computer searched to find any woman called Söderström within the same postcode. If Suzette was registered at the same address as her mother, and her mother’s name was Söderström, she ought to show up, unless she was one of the nine thousand or so Swedes whose records had been protected and concealed by the authorities.

Direct hit!

Söderström, LENITA Marike, aged forty-two, and
registered as living at number 77 Långskeppsgatan. She had four bad debts, according to Svensk Handelstidning Justitia, and a current debt outstanding with the national enforcement service for 42,392 kronor. She wasn’t active in any businesses, wasn’t self-employed and wasn’t registered as owning a motor vehicle. The debts consisted of unpaid television licences, outstanding tax and a payment plan with Ikea that had fallen into arrears.

She switched to a free website that listed every phone number openly registered in Sweden, along with a map identifying where the number was located, even including pictures of the buildings in question.

Annika filled in Lenita Söderström’s name and address, but there were no results. Suzette Söderström’s mother had either an ex-directory number or a pay-as-you-go mobile. She removed the name and searched for the address alone; 77 Långskeppsgatan turned out to be between Blackeberg and Råcksta in the west of Stockholm. She clicked to look at a satellite image of the area, and saw that the postcode covered several blocks of flats at the end of a street containing several different types of building. The old asylum, Beckomberga, was just round the corner, she noted, although these days all the nutters had been discharged and rehabilitated to lives they were in no fit state to handle.

She went to the minibar and took out a small Toblerone.

How was she going to get hold of Suzette’s mother, Lenita Söderström? Maybe she was active in some association, listed as a contact person. She went back to the laptop and Googled her.

The list of results was short but categorical.

Lenita Söderström, Facebook.

Annika clicked and opened a Spanish page with a
picture of a blonde woman on the screen. With the help of the flag in the top right corner she switched language and the page appeared in English.
Sign up to Facebook to connect with Lenita. Already a member? Login!

She clicked on a sentence at the right-hand side:
Send a message
.

A page containing a long form appeared. To contact Lenita Söderström, she would have to register on the site. Okay, she’d heard of Facebook – several people at work seemed to spend all day on their Facebook pages. They appeared to compete about how many ‘friends’ they had, and got terribly excited if anyone ‘poked’ them. The sort of thing she had grown out of when she was eight.

What the hell?, she thought, and filled in the form. She typed her name, said she worked for a company, date of birth, email address, then thought up a password. Finally she ticked the box saying she had read the
Terms of Use and Privacy Policy
, which she obviously hadn’t, then clicked
Sign up
.

Well, that all seemed fairly painless.

Confirm your email address.

Oh, so it wasn’t done yet?

She clicked on
Go to hotmail now
.

There was a message in the inbox of her hotmail account, containing a link for her to click on. A new message appeared on the screen.
Welcome Annika! Your account has been created.
She clicked on
Search for friends
, typed in Lenita Söderström and found herself on a page where she could send a direct message to Suzette’s mother. She explained who she was and what she wanted, said she wanted to contact both Lenita and Suzette, that it was urgent. She ended the message with her mobile number.

What a ridiculously elaborate way of getting hold of
someone, she thought, irritated, as she was obliged to fill in a
security check
before the message could be sent.

She looked at the time. She had to hurry if she was to eat anything before the golf club got started with its act of remembrance.

‘Here it is,’ Carita Halling Gonzales said.

Annika braked in the middle of a roundabout and pulled in next to several recycling tanks for glass and plastic. The clouds had broken up and a hesitant sun was casting wary shadows. She locked the car. Four flags were flying on tall poles next to the golf-club car park: Spanish, Andalucían, Swedish, and one with a yellow, red and green emblem on a white background.

‘What’s the Gais flag doing here?’ Annika asked.

Carita Halling Gonzales squinted up at the sky, then switched her attention to the little pocket mirror she had in her hand. ‘The what flag?’ she said, taking her lipstick out of its gold case.

Annika pointed. ‘That last one. Is the owner a mackerel?’

The interpreter looked thoroughly confused.

‘Gais is a football club in Gothenburg,’ Annika said. ‘Their supporters are called mackerels.’

‘Percy Svensson’s just sold the club to four Swedes. One of them might be one of those fish. The entrance is over there.’ Carita put her lipstick back in her bag, a silver one this time.

A brick staircase led up to an over-elaborate gateway surrounded by huge orange trees. Annika pushed the
door open and gasped. ‘So this is how the other half lives,’ she said. ‘Talk about an escape from reality!’

White marble terraces stretched out in front of her. Some ducks were swimming on an artificial lake. Bright green lawns rolled towards the horizon, smooth as women’s legs in adverts for razors. Little golf buggies were driving about on dusky pink cement paths. Men with neat haircuts and dark-blue sweaters draped over the shoulders of their white polo-shirts were relaxing at round tables.

‘Is that someone you know?’ Carita pointed at a middle-aged woman and a very young man who were waving in their direction.

The other evening paper’s Madrid correspondent and her toy-boy photographer. ‘I know who they are,’ Annika said, ‘and they must have recognized me.’ From today’s paper, she thought, but didn’t say so. Carita probably didn’t keep up to date with the Swedish media. There was no reason to tell her about that picture.

The door behind them flew open and a crowd filled the marble terraces in just a few moments. They were so different in their dress and behaviour from the other guests that everything stopped.

‘And are these colleagues of yours as well?’

‘The Swedish broadcast media,’ Annika said, in a low voice, as the men began noisily setting up cameras and tripods, then laying out long cables and microphones.

The rumour about the minute’s silence had obviously taken flight.

The guests who had been eating and drinking in the club’s restaurant streamed out among the tables on the terrace, enticed by the cameras and the concentration on the television crew’s faces. As soon as a film crew showed up anywhere, everyone’s attention immediately focused on it.

‘Can you see any sports stars here?’ Annika whispered to Carita, as she made sure that her camera had enough charge.

‘They would probably be your mackerel, I suppose,’ she said, pointing at several bald, overweight men in dark-green blazers with the yellow, green and red emblem on the lapels.

People were still pouring out of the restaurant. Soon the staircase was crowded with them.

‘What’s this circus about?’ a man in a pale-blue polo-shirt asked just behind Annika.

‘A minute’s silence for Sebastian Söderström,’ Annika said, trying to work out if he was an old celebrity.

The man stiffened and adjusted his sunglasses. ‘Really?’ he said. ‘That’ll be pretty gloomy.’

Annika pulled her pen and notepad out of her bag. ‘You think it’ll be a moving act of remembrance?’ she asked politely.

The man laughed. ‘They’ll be mourning all the money they’re never going to get back. Half the people standing here have invested in Sebastian Söderström’s crazy fantasy projects.’

Annika’s pen stopped. ‘How … What do you mean?’ she asked.

The man tucked his shirt neatly into his golf trousers. ‘Söderström was a persuasive bastard. His few seasons in the NHL meant people thought he was capable of shitting gold. The most tragic thing of all is that he believed it too.’ He stopped another man in a polo-shirt, pale green this time, who was on his way down towards the golf course. ‘Sverre, have you heard? They’re having a little memorial for Söderström. We’re supposed to stand for a minute to mourn him in silence.’

Sverre’s face turned red. ‘That bastard,’ he said, turned on his heel and went back inside the restaurant.

Annika watched him go. ‘What sort of fantasy projects?’ she asked.

The man smiled. ‘The introduction of the new global sport of stickball, for instance. You’ve never heard of it? Funny, that. Or the racetrack that was going to be built in the Sierra Nevada, but which turned out to be in the middle of a national park. And then there was that tennis club …’

‘I got the impression that Sebastian Söderström was pretty well off,’ Annika said, noting that several other guests were leaving the terrace.

‘It wasn’t his own money he lost but everyone else’s. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to carry on for as long as he did. And that tennis club was a financial disaster. I mean, giving away millions in prize money just for club tournaments— Sonja!’

The man in the pale-blue polo-shirt hurried down the terrace steps to a woman in a pink cap. Annika watched as they exchanged a few words, and saw the woman get annoyed. She turned on her heel and walked back towards Reception.

‘Excuse me,’ Annika said, standing in the woman’s way. ‘Did you know Sebastian Söderström?’

‘You bet I bloody did,’ the woman said, and attempted to get past her.

Annika blocked her way. ‘Could you tell me what he was like?’ she asked.

The woman took off her sunglasses. Her face bore the traces of numerous surgical interventions, mainly around her eyes. ‘Sebastian Söderström was a fraud,’ she said. ‘He wanted to be a star, he was addicted to applause, but he didn’t want to work for it. He just wanted the rewards.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Annika said.

‘He’d get an idea, trick people out of a load of money, live the high life on other people’s investments until he got bored, then start something new. He’d find new investors, borrow money, polish the façade a bit and pretend to be a big star.’

‘But he really wasn’t?’ Annika said.

‘Listen,’ the woman said, poking her surgically enhanced nose close to Annika. ‘That was all a fuck of a long time ago.’ She shoved Annika aside and left the golf club.

Annika looked out across the lawns. How should she handle this? Pretend she hadn’t heard anything? Or should she write the truth, that people would rather leave their golf club than participate in the minute’s silence for Sebastian Söderström?

Ice-hockey heroes, she thought. That’s why I’m here. She searched the crowd.

‘Can you see any sports stars?’ she asked Carita, then caught sight of one of the NHL’s biggest stars, a lad from Norrland who had just signed a contract with some club in the American Midwest that had landed him a quarter of a billion kronor. ‘I have to get him,’ she said, and forced her way through the crowd.

The ice-hockey star had some friends with him. Two had been in the team that had won bronze in the Football World Cup in 1994, and a third had made several distinctly average Swedish films.

‘I’m from the
Evening Post
,’ Annika said. ‘Can I have a picture?’

The ice-hockey star looked at her. ‘What’s going on? Why are there so many people here?’

‘Minute’s silence for Sebastian Söderström,’ Annika said, raising the camera and taking several shots. Click, click, click.

‘Oh, shit,’ one of the footballers said.

‘Did you know him?’ Annika asked.

‘Course I did,’ the ice-hockey star said. ‘I played in the national team with him one season.’

‘What are your memories of him?’

The ice-hockey player scratched his head.

Click, click, click.

‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘he was a good defender, in his day. I know he had a house down here somewhere, but I don’t know where.’

‘Somewhere called Las Estrellas de Marbella,’ Annika said.

The star shook his head. ‘Don’t know where that is.’

‘What about you?’ she asked the footballers. ‘Did you know Sebastian?’

They both mumbled that they hadn’t.

‘I play at his tennis club,’ the film director said. ‘Sebbe was great. If everyone was like him, the world would look very different.’