The Shadow Girls (19 page)

‘I never laid a finger on her!’

‘She said you hit her so hard she ended up lying on the floor in the hallway for several hours.’

‘It’s not true. She’s losing her mind.’

‘She always sounds coherent and clear when I talk to her.’

‘She’s senile. She just puts on a good act.’

‘I have to go. But I’m counting on the fact that we’re going to have a serious discussion tonight.’

‘I’ll be there. I miss you.’

Andrea hung up without commenting on the last thing he said. Humlin sighed and wondered if Andrea was plotting to leave him. He also wondered what new dramas his mother had up her sleeve. In order to distract himself from these concerns he called Lundin.

‘Lundin here.’

‘It’s Jesper Humlin. I hope I didn’t wake you up.’

‘I’ve been up since four. Where are you?’

Humlin decided to make something up on the spot.

‘In Helsinki.’

‘What are you doing there?’

‘Preparatory research.’

‘So you’ve decided to go ahead with the crime novel. Excellent. Then we can market your book alongside your mother’s.’

‘There will be no team marketing strategy. And my mother is never going to write a book.’

‘Never say never. I’ve read a draft.’

Humlin felt a stabbing sensation in his stomach.

‘She sent you a manuscript?’

‘One page, to be more precise. Handwritten. She summarised the plot in a few paragraphs, something about cannibals and civil servants I think. I couldn’t read all of it since her handwriting is somewhat difficult but one has to have patience with ninety-year-old first-time authors.’

‘I’m telling you you’ll never see a book from her.’

‘I’ve been worried about you. Are you done with that crazy stuff in Gothenburg?’

‘No. And it’s not crazy.’

‘As long as I get my crime novel you can spend your time however you please. I’d like it to be three hundred and eighty-four pages.’

‘I was thinking of something more like three hundred and eighty-nine.’

‘No can do. We’ve already informed the book binders and ordered the paper. How far along are you? Why is the book set in Helsinki? It’s too easy for it to degenerate into a cold war spy thriller. Brazil is better.’

Humlin was taken aback.

‘Why is it better?’

‘It’s warmer.’

Humlin thought about Lundin’s ice-cold office and wondered if there was a connection.

‘I’m just joking with you,’ Humlin said. ‘I’m not in Helsinki, I’m in Gothenburg. I’m not planning to write a crime novel. I don’t know what I’m going to write next. Maybe a story about a young pickpocket, or a book about a girl who has a monkey on her back.’

‘Are you ill, Humlin?’

‘No.’

‘You are talking very strangely.’

‘What was it you wanted to talk to me about when you called yesterday?’

‘I just wanted to reassure myself that the news in the paper wasn’t true. I await your crime novel with pleasure. So do the oil executives.’

‘There’s not going to be a crime novel.’

‘The line’s breaking up. I can’t hear you.’

‘I said, there’s not going to be a crime novel.’

‘I can’t hear anything now. I’m going to hang up. Come up and see me when you get back. We need to talk. And the marketing department want to meet with you to present their ideas for your next book campaign.’

He hung up. Humlin was exhausted. The feeling of having lost his foothold in life returned like a great weight. It was as if someone had blocked all the exits out of a burning house.

*

An hour went by. He had just started to gather up his things, assuming that Tanya was not going to return, when the door to the cafe swung open.

Tanya was back. With Leyla.

WHEN HUMLIN SAT
up in bed he had no idea where he was. He had just had a series of disconnected dreams in which he was strangling his mother. Slowly his memory of the recent past returned. He looked at the time. It was a quarter to eleven. Tanya had left shortly after eight and he had immediately fallen asleep since he was exhausted from his long night at the police station. His head was still throbbing; sleep had not helped that. All of the events since he had arrived by bus in Gothenburg the night before seemed painfully clear. Most of all he wanted to dive back into sleep, back into the unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar apartment in Stensgården, to try to forget. But he knew it wouldn’t work.

He tiptoed out into the kitchen and drank some water. Then he walked around the apartment and tried to identify any objects that looked like they belonged to Tanya. She had claimed that she lived here, if only temporarily and in secret. He found no traces of her. In one of the kitchen cabinets that was filled with, to him, unknown spices, he saw a brand of coffee he recognised. He boiled some water, trying not to make any noise that would draw unwanted attention from the neighbours and then sat down on a chair by the window in the living room with his cup of coffee. A wet snow was falling onto the uniform rows of apartment buildings outside. In the horizon he saw an expanse of forest, then some exposed granite bluffs and the sea.

He thought back to the moment when the girls had walked
into the cafe. He had got up and started walking towards them when Tanya motioned for him to stop.

‘I just wanted to say hello,’ Humlin said when Tanya pushed him back down in his chair.

‘You can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Someone who knows her might see you. And that wouldn’t be good.’

‘I was just going to say hello. That was all.’

Humlin watched as Tanya returned to Leyla. The girls sat down at a table in the corner. From time to time they looked over at him but without interrupting their conversation. Leyla was wearing a thick shawl over her head.

Humlin was confused and this irritated him. Finally Tanya returned to his table like a messenger.

‘Why did she come here if I can’t even go over and say hello to her?’

‘Leyla wanted to see with her own eyes that you were here. That you came back.’

‘Törnblom said you had all decided to cancel the whole thing.’

‘What else could we have done when you didn’t turn up? We’re used to disappointments.’

‘I just want to state for the record that the only person to disappear in this context was Tea-Bag. No one else.’

‘She must have had her reasons. It’s always best to be careful in a country like Sweden.’

‘Why Sweden?’

Tanya shook her head impatiently.

‘We want to hold another meeting tonight to make up for the missed one last night.’

Humlin thought about the phone call with Andrea.

‘I can’t.’

Tanya’s eyes flashed with anger.

‘Are you backing out on us again?’

‘I thought we had agreed that there was no backing out on my part.’

‘If you want us to believe in you, you’ll come to the meeting tonight.’

‘I have plans.’

Tanya got up.

‘Leyla won’t be very happy when I tell her what you just said.’

Humlin desperately searched for a way out.

‘Can’t we have the meeting now, before my train leaves?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Leyla has to go to school.’

‘Why isn’t she already in school then?’

‘She’ll be in trouble if anyone finds out she isn’t there.’

‘I’ll be in trouble if I’m not in Stockholm this evening. What about having the meeting this afternoon?’

‘I’ll ask.’

Tanya went back to the other table. Humlin thought of her as a messenger sent back and forth between two warring camps. He then thought that Sweden had turned into a country he really knew very little about.

Tanya returned.

‘Five o’clock,’ she said.

Humlin revised the schedule in his head.

‘We can meet for up to two hours,’ he said. ‘Then I have to go. Where shall we meet?’

‘At my place.’

‘I’d be grateful if Haiman were not invited this time.’

‘He won’t be there.’

‘How can I be sure of that?’

‘No one is going to know about this meeting. Leyla will take care of it.’

Humlin became concerned.

‘How will she do that?’

‘She’ll say she’s over at Fatima’s.’

‘Who is that?’

‘A Jordanian friend of hers. If Leyla’s parents call to check up on her they’ll get the message that Leyla and Fatima have gone to see Sasha. And if they call there they’ll hear they’re all over at my place. And if Leyla’s parents do start calling it’s okay because Fatima’s brother will call us to let us know. That way she’ll have time to go home without being found out.’

Humlin sensed but did not quite understand what Leyla’s life must be like. Leyla left the cafe. She smiled briefly at him, a secret sign that no one else saw. Shortly afterwards Tanya got up and gestured for him to follow her. They took a tram out to Stensgården. When they arrived Tanya escorted him to one of the apartment buildings at the edge of the isolated housing project. They took the lift to the seventh floor. Humlin expected to see ‘Nilsson’ on the front door but he realised the situation was a bit more complicated when she told him to keep his voice down and then proceeded to use one of her skeleton keys to open the front door.

‘Take off your shoes,’ she told him once they were inside. ‘Don’t turn on the TV or the radio.’

‘Isn’t this your apartment?’

‘I live here when it’s unoccupied.’

‘You have no key?’

‘I don’t need keys.’

‘I know. Who lives here?’

‘Some people by the name of Yüksel.’

‘Are they related to you?’

‘I have no relatives.’

‘Then how come you are allowed to live here?’

‘They’re in Istanbul right now.’

‘And they have no idea that you’re living here.’

‘Right.’

‘I thought you said we were going to have this meeting at your place?’

‘This is my place. I find out which apartments are going to be empty and when. People who are away or who have moved. Then I move in for a while. I leave before anyone comes back or the new people move in.’

‘How do you know which apartments are going to be empty?’

‘Leyla knows everything about everyone around here. She lets me know if someone is going away.’

Humlin thought for a moment.

‘You don’t have a place of your own?’

‘How could I if I don’t even exist?’

‘What do you mean “don’t exist”?’

‘You saw the deportation notice. The police are after me. Now that I was forced to show them the ID with Tatyana Nilsson on it it’s only a matter of time before they put two and two together.’

‘So who are you?’

Tanya flinched.

‘You know who I am. I’m not answering any more questions.
Don’t open the door if anyone knocks. Don’t answer the phone. I’ll be back in a few hours.’

‘Wait, I can’t stay in an apartment where the owners could come back at any moment!’

‘They won’t be back until next week. Leyla has a cousin who works at the travel agent where they booked their tickets.’

‘This whole thing makes me very nervous.’

‘How do you think I feel knowing that the police could find me at any time and throw me out of the country?’

Humlin couldn’t think of a good answer.

‘Is there anywhere I can lie down and take a rest?’ he asked.

‘There are beds in every room. It’s a large family.’

Tanya left. Humlin walked around the apartment very carefully and lay down on a bed in a room that – by the looks of the football posters on the wall – belonged to a teenage son. He pulled the blanket up to his chin and thought about the fact that he was in the middle of something he would never have been able to imagine even in his wildest dreams. Then he fell asleep.

*

The coffee cup was empty. He carried it out into the kitchen and returned to the living room. He looked around. There were a number of photographs in gilt frames on one shelf. They depicted children of various ages, a wedding couple, a man in a uniform. Above the shelf there was a flag that he assumed must be Turkish. I am in the middle of a story, he thought. Everything that is now happening to me, everything that the girls tell and don’t tell, what they do and don’t do, I may be able to shape into a narrative that has not been related before. Tea-Bag disappears God knows where; police dogs burst into the room at the boxing club.
I am currently camping out in an apartment that belongs to a Turkish family. The girl who lives here for the moment is a person who doesn’t exist. She hides out in caves, behind borrowed identities. A girl whose real name may or may not be Tanya, and who supports herself by committing burglaries and picking pockets.

He gingerly started opening drawers around the apartment looking for a pen and some paper. So much had happened during the past week that he wanted to make some notes. He found a pad of paper and a pencil, then sat down at the kitchen table. He decided it was probably best to call and reassure Andrea that he was coming home this evening even though he would be quite late. He left a message on her answering machine, this time not even thinking about the fact that he was still using a stolen phone. Before he returned to his notes he called his investment broker.

‘Burén here.’

‘How come you’re suddenly always there when I call nowadays?’

‘Have you changed phone numbers? I thought you were someone else.’

Humlin frowned.

‘You mean you wouldn’t have answered if you saw the call was from me? I thought I was one of your clients!’

‘You are.’

‘It doesn’t seem like it. I’m borrowing the phone of a friend of mine. You don’t need to keep this number. I won’t be using it again.’

‘I save all phone numbers. My computer stores them automatically. What was it you wanted?’

‘I don’t want you to store this number. Is that understood?’

‘I heard you. What was it you wanted?’

‘I want to know how my shares are doing.’

‘If they don’t go down I think we can reasonably expect them to go up.’

‘Please give me an honest answer. Will I ever recoup the money I invested?’

‘In time.’

‘“In time.” How long is that?’

‘Five to ten years. By the way, I’ve just started the middle section of my novel.’