The Final Word (18 page)

Birgitta’s childhood dreams had been very grand: she was going to be a princess, a prima ballerina, Madonna. She liked lace and tulle and pretty colours, was frightened of the dark, rats and spiders, so perhaps this place suited her. She used to paint watercolour landscapes that Mum loved, and portraits of Annika and their mother and grandmother that were stuck to the fridge door with magnets. Annika remembered the conflicted feeling of pride and envy that the pictures aroused, her astonishment that Birgitta could create something so beautiful and real.

Her sister would have enjoyed painting this avenue – it was certainly clichéd and grand enough. The sun filtered through heavy treetops, forming flickering patterns on the path beneath her feet. At the far end there was an ornate church with showy turrets and pinnacles, as ostentatious as a castle in a fairy tale.

Annika quickened her pace, feeling a little giddy from the heat.

At Värnhemstorget, the character of the city changed: it was now concrete slabs, rumbling buses and diesel fumes. A group of down-and-outs were having an argument about a bottle of schnapps, and Annika looked the other way as she passed them.

‘APOLOGIES FOR THE MESS: WE’RE REBUILDING’, said a sign on the revolving door. Annika was
funnelled through with four women in full-length
niqab
s.

The shopping centre was the cheaper sort, a long passageway of plaster walls and low ceilings, brown paper stuck to the inside of shop-windows. The MatExtra supermarket lay some way into the complex, with a lottery booth and letterbox by its entrance. The row of checkouts led directly onto the passageway. Only half of them were open, but the queues were short. This was where Birgitta worked.

Annika stopped in the passageway and studied the cashiers. Four were young women, two middle-aged. They were wearing matching red blouses with the store’s logo on the back, scanning items with expressionless faces, handing back change and tapping instructions for debit cards.

The cashier closest to Annika switched off her conveyor-belt, then got up from her chair and hooked a chain across the gap between her and the next checkout. Annika went up to her. ‘Hello,’ she said, ‘my name’s Annika Bengtzon. My sister works here, Birgitta.’

The woman had her arms full of moneybags. She was young, twenty-five at the most, with glossy dark hair and heavily made-up eyes.

‘I need to get hold of her,’ Annika said. ‘It’s important.’

‘I have to put the money away,’ the young woman said.

Annika saw the tiredness in her eyes, the heaviness in her arms after a long shift, and suddenly it was her
mother standing there, her arms laden with food she had brought home from the shop.
Just peel the potatoes, Annika, don’t be so bloody lazy
.

‘Do you know if Birgitta’s working today?’

‘Birgitta’s left,’ the woman said, taking a step back.

‘When?’

The cashier’s eyes glinted. ‘You’re not a bit alike.’

A flash of irritation.
Of course we are. It’s just that Birgitta is fair and I’m dark
. ‘Do you know where I can get hold of her?’ Annika asked. She forced herself to smile.

The young woman looked at her watch. ‘Come with me to the office,’ she said. She turned on her heel and walked off towards the greengrocery, and Annika hurried after her. The young woman stopped beside an unmarked door fitted with a coded lock. ‘Wait here,’ she said.

Annika was left standing outside next to a wooden crate full of new potatoes from Holland. A minute or so later the cashier returned. The air smelt of soil. ‘Why do you want to get hold of Birgitta?’ she asked, her eyes sparkling with curiosity. ‘Has something happened?’

Her accent was more Västergötland than Skåne.

Annika took a deep breath and forced herself to stand still. ‘I didn’t know she’d stopped working here. When did she leave?’

‘Two weeks ago. It came out of the blue – she just texted Linda. I didn’t even know she’d applied for a new job. She hadn’t mentioned it. Pretty shitty, if you ask
me, you can tell her that from me. She could have called in to say goodbye and all that.’

Annika was rooted to the spot. ‘A new job? Do you know where?’

‘Another supermarket, Hemköp at Triangeln. She could have let us know she’d got a permanent job. People usually get cake for everyone when they leave . . .’

So Birgitta had got a permanent job. Not even their mother knew that. If Barbro had known, she would have phoned Annika at once and crowed about how well Birgitta was doing, how clever and appreciated she was. Or would she? After all, she’d never mentioned that Birgitta and Steven had moved to Malmö. Why had she kept quiet about that?

‘And Linda is?’

‘Our boss. Okay, so Birgitta was only a temp, but you should still hand your notice in properly, I reckon.’

‘Is your boss here?’

The young woman shook her head. ‘She’s opening up tomorrow. So what’s happened?’

‘How long had Birgitta been working here?’ Annika asked.

The young woman tilted her head. ‘She started last autumn, doing odd shifts. Then at the end she was filling in for Fatima, who’s on maternity leave. Are you really her sister?’

Annika shuffled her feet, feeling stifled by the smell of potatoes. ‘Elder sister,’ she said. ‘It’s been a while since we were in touch.’

‘Birgitta never mentioned that she had a sister.’

‘Do you know her well?’

The young woman shrugged. ‘Birgitta was Linda’s favourite. She told her she’d get the next permanent job, even though there were others who’d been here longer.’ The cashier pulled a face that said she was one of them.

‘Elin, come in and close the door. The alarm’s gone off!’ someone called, from the inner reaches of the store.

The young woman glanced over her shoulder.

‘If Birgitta gets in touch,’ Annika said, ‘can you ask her to call me?’

‘What do you want me to say? What is it that’s so important?’

‘Just tell her I got her messages,’ Annika said.

The cashier gave a disappointed shrug and disappeared. The door closed with an electronic click.

Annika remained where she was, relieved. Birgitta was changing her life. She was no longer relying on the favours of workmates but teaming up with her boss and aiming for permanent employment. Leaving her loser of a husband and creating a new life full of responsibility and success. Maybe she was looking for somewhere new to live as well, and as soon as she’d found a decent flat she’d fetch Destiny. She just wanted to get everything sorted out before getting in touch.

Annika left the supermarket and hurried along a grimy passageway as she called Directory Enquiries and asked to be put through to the Triangeln branch of Hemköp in
Malmö. The call was answered by a receptionist with a thick Skåne accent.

‘I’m trying to get hold of one of your employees,’ Annika said. ‘Her name is Birgitta Bengtzon. Is she working today?’

‘Who?’

‘Birgitta Bengtzon, she—’

There was a loud noise in the background.

‘I can’t put you through to any of the cashiers.’

A tiny glimpse of progress.

‘So she is working today?’

‘I don’t know. Has she got a mobile?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘If it’s urgent, you’d better call her on that.’

The call was disconnected. She looked round, trying to get her bearings. She found Triangeln Hemköp on the map on her mobile. It was next to the railway station so she could look in on her way back to Kastrup.

A bus on its way to Bunkeflostrand pulled up with a belch of fumes at the stop in front of her. Two of Malmö’s more unfortunate citizens had fallen asleep on a bench, a scruffy German shepherd sitting next to one, panting. An empty schnapps bottle lay on the ground. The bus set off with a bestial roar.

She dropped her phone into her bag and started walking towards Birgitta’s home in Östra Sorgenfri, trying to make sense of the sequence of events. According to Steven, Birgitta had gone off to work as usual on Sunday, but hadn’t come home. According to her workmate, she
had left her job two weeks ago. She had asked Annika for help first thing on Sunday morning when, according to Steven, she had been at home, and would soon have been setting off to work.

One thing was clear: Steven was lying.

There was a large cemetery ahead of her, neatly maintained graves stretching as far as she could see, granite stones, raked gravel paths.

Just to be on the safe side she tried calling Nina Hoffman, but there was no answer. She sent a quick text:
Hi, I’m on my way to see Steven and wondered if you’ve heard anything I can pass on to him. I’ll call later. Annika.

Now Nina knew where she was.

She walked along beside the cemetery fence and looked across the gravestones. Such a short time we are alive, and such a long time dead.

Birgitta could have gone missing two weeks ago, but for some reason Steven had kept quiet about it until this Monday. He could have sent that text from Birgitta’s mobile, or forced her to send it,

Maybe she hadn’t left home at all. Maybe Steven was holding her captive in the flat. Perhaps she wanted a divorce or to move home to Hälleforsnäs.
The critical moment is when the woman says she’s leaving
.

Behind a wooden fence she could hear laughter and children playing. The sun was blazing as she crossed a main road and found herself among three-storey yellow-brick buildings. She could smell freshly cut grass, and
some boys were playing football. She walked quickly along a footpath. Two girls with lollipops in their mouths cycled past her. She ought to be there by now, and she stopped outside a library to check the map. To her surprise, she found that she had wandered into Rosengård, Sweden’s most notorious ghetto, the housing estate that the Danes used to scare their kids.

She’d walked past where Birgitta lived, on the other side of the main road.

Branteviksgatan 5 was a block of flats with several different doorways. She walked round the whole building before she found the right one. The door had a coded lock and she waited several minutes until an elderly man came out and she was able to slip in.

Her sister and brother-in-law lived on the eighth floor. The lift rattled up through the core of the building. The landing contained four doors, and smelt of cleaning fluid. There was a hand-painted wooden sign on theirs, with flowers and butterflies and their surnames.

She stopped outside it and listened for sounds from inside the flat, but could hear nothing except the air-conditioning in the stairwell. She held her breath and rang the bell. Footsteps approached, a key rattled.

Steven opened the door. He loomed in front of her, like Hercules, tall and broad-shouldered. He had cut his hair. ‘Annika,’ he said, clearly surprised, taking a step back. ‘What are you doing here?’ He sounded bemused, but not hostile.

‘I was in Copenhagen on a job and had a few hours spare,’ she said, stepping into the hall and dropping her bag on the floor. Now he’d have to throw her out if he wanted to get rid of her.

‘Diny, look who it is! Auntie Annika!’

The little girl popped her head out of a room immediately to the left of the door, in a pink dress and pink hairclips. Annika knelt down, feeling Steven’s eyes on the back of her neck. ‘Hello, Destiny, remember me? You came to visit me once. I’ve got two girls, Ellen and Serena.’

The girl ran to Steven and hid behind his legs. Annika stood up.

‘I wasn’t expecting this,’ he said. ‘What do you want?’

She met his gaze. He was big and heavy, his eyes red-rimmed. What did Birgitta see in him? ‘Have you heard anything?’ she asked.

He turned away. ‘Diny,’ he said, ‘would you like to get some biscuits out for Auntie Annika?’

The child ran down the short corridor and disappeared to the left.

‘Something must have happened to her,’ Steven said, in a low voice, not loud enough to reach the kitchen. ‘Something awful.’ His hands were shaking.

‘We don’t know that,’ she said, thinking about the new job at Hemköp. She had decided not to mention it, because if Steven didn’t know, it was probably because Birgitta wanted to keep it a secret.

He stood where he was, swaying, leaning forward.
‘Would you like anything?’ he asked, after a few moments. ‘Coffee?’

‘Coffee would be good,’ she said.

He all but shuffled towards the kitchen.

Annika took her shoes off and put them on the pine rack. The building was very quiet – she couldn’t hear a sound from the neighbours. The little girl was talking in the kitchen, but she couldn’t make out what she was saying. Destiny’s room was in front of her, small and sparsely furnished, a bed and a desk. A doll’s house. Toys on a Billy bookcase. Annika took a few silent steps to a door that stood ajar, and pushed it open. A bedroom. The bed was made, with a bedspread from Ikea. Scatter cushions. A couple of wardrobes along one wall, ordinary size, no locks on the doors.

She stood for a few seconds in the hall, trying to get her heart to slow down. Then she walked into the living room. A few canvases were lined up against one wall, butterflies and flowers, the same style as the sign on the door. She went over to them and tipped a couple forward to see what was behind them. Destiny looked back at her, strikingly realistic, but with bright red lips and long eyelashes. Annika lingered over the portrait, which was lovely but disquieting, a glamour picture of a three-year-old.

‘She’s good, isn’t she?’ Steven said from behind her, the pride in his voice unmistakable.

Annika let go of the painting. ‘Birgitta’s started painting again?’

‘She’s been doing an evening course, even though she sometimes works late and can’t always get there.’

Steven went to the window at the far end of the living room. Outside there was a glassed-in balcony. Annika joined him; she reached his shoulder.

The view was remarkable. Red rooftops spread out as far as she could see, foliage, towers and housing blocks in the distance.

‘What a lovely flat,’ she said.

‘It’s my cousin’s,’ Steven said. ‘He’s moved to Kiruna, got a job in the mine. We’re subletting.’ He was still gazing at the view. ‘It feels like you can see the whole world.’