The Final Word (23 page)

‘Yes, it would be difficult, and I have no mandate to request it,’ Nina said. ‘But it’s extremely important that I get to see any records.’

‘And what can I do about that?’

‘ “Commissioner Axier Elorza” is a very well-known
name throughout the whole of Spain,’ Nina said. ‘The sort of name that can open doors.’

The old man smiled.

Thomas woke up with a pneumatic drill pounding inside his skull. He tried to open his eyes and was met by shiny, polished knives. Dear God, what the hell had happened?

He lay perfectly still in the merciful darkness behind his eyelids and became aware that he was breathing, so at least he wasn’t dead. Somewhere in the distance he could hear traffic. His mouth tasted like a sewer.

Where was he?

He groaned, and made a fresh attempt to look around.

A white room, stuffy, light falling in through a skylight above his head. Oh, no! Sophia’s bedroom, which had once been his too.

He twisted his head to see if anyone else was in the bed, and there she was, her tangled blonde hair on the white pillow. How had he ended up here? What exactly had happened last night? He moved his left arm and was struck by a terrible realization. What had he done with the hook?

Leaning on his elbow, he heaved himself off the mattress. The drill began to thud twice as fast and he groaned again.

Sophia lifted her head and blinked sleepily at him. ‘Good morning,’ she said groggily, smiling.

He thought he was going to be sick. ‘Good morning.’

The words cut through his brain like a laser scalpel.
Sophia reached out a hand and stroked his chest. ‘Oh, it’s so lovely having you here,’ she said.

He held the stump outside the bed so she wouldn’t see it and tried to smile at her. It hurt his facial muscles. How the hell was he going to get out of this? Creeping away without her noticing was out of the question now. Where was the hook? And how was he going to put it on, and his clothes, without her seeing?

‘That was quite some party,’ he said tentatively.

She laughed quietly. ‘Yes, you were certainly in party mode. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you on such a roll.’

On a roll? He’d been
on a roll
?

She leaned over him and he pressed the stump towards the floor, pursing his lips to avoid breathing sewage at her, but she kissed him anyway. She tasted of toothpaste. She must have snuck out to brush her teeth, then crept back into bed and pretended to be asleep: what a phoney. Her eyes were very close to his, so close that he couldn’t see them clearly. He tried to avoid breathing in her minty breath.

‘If you only knew how much I’ve been longing for this,’ she said. ‘I’m so very fond of you.’

He swallowed. ‘And I’m very fond of you,’ he said.

It was almost true, he felt, as he said it, at least in part. He didn’t have anything against her. Sophia was a bit silly and nondescript, but she was loyal and simple-minded.

She ran her hand down his left arm towards the stump. He felt panic growing in his stomach.

‘I think I need to go to the loo,’ he said, and pushed himself up with his right hand. A firework went off inside his head and he groaned again but swung his legs over the side of the bed. His right foot landed on something rubbery. Nausea welled inside him but he forced himself to look down at the floor. He had trodden on the hook, but what the hell had he done with his clothes?

‘Would you like breakfast?’ Sophia asked.

‘In a bit,’ he said, bending down to pick up the prosthesis.

‘It’s so lovely that you wanted to stay,’ Sophia said, behind his back. ‘And I really appreciate the fact that you trust me, that you let me get close to you. I know how hard it’s been for you since the accident.’

Accident?

He had been mutilated by Somali terrorists when he was on official business for the Swedish government. That wasn’t an accident, a random occurrence. Accidents were old people slipping on ice and breaking their hips, like his mum had done last winter, or people getting whiplash in their cars. What had happened to him was an act of terrorism with international consequences!

‘I know you find it difficult, but your hand really does look completely natural,’ she said. ‘No one who didn’t know what you went through would realize that it . . .’

Grabbing the hook with his right hand, he hid the stump in front of his body and stood up. His legs were a bit shaky but he stayed upright. Where was his shirt? He looked round desperately, his mouth dry. There, on the
floor by the door. And his underpants – oh, thank God, they were next to his shirt.

He fled into the bathroom, dropped his clothes on the slate floor, put the hook in the washbasin and locked the door behind him. Exhausted, he slumped on to the toilet, the seat ice-cold against his naked buttocks. His heartbeat was thudding in his head in time with the drill. He found himself staring at his cock. Did they have sex last night? He had no memory of it, but one of his talents was the ability always to get it up. It was almost always an advantage, but there were exceptions. Last night was one of them. He leaned over and sniffed. They’d had sex. Bloody hell.

He sighed. Out in the hall he could hear Sophia humming, the way she did when she was in a really good mood. She was on her way to the kitchen to make breakfast. The very idea made him feel ill. He swallowed hard and closed his eyes.

Oh, well, he had the hook and his clothes with him, so if he could just put them on he’d probably be able to get out of there. He stood up and turned on the cold tap, filled her pink tooth-mug and drank. (When he’d lived there he’d had a pale blue one.) He met his own gaze in the mirror, red-rimmed and hollow-eyed. He looked down at the hook.

A cosmetic hand, it was called. It was supposed to look as much like a natural hand as possible, but the problem was that you could barely move it. You could use it as a brace, or hang things from it. Its outer layer
consisted of a PVC glove that could be replaced, and had been chosen to match his natural skin tone. He hated it, but not as much as he hated the other hand, the one he called the Terminator. That was at home, buried at the bottom of a drawer. The Terminator consisted of metal fingers attached to straps round his back and shoulders, and it was considerably more manoeuvrable. He was supposed to use it when he was ‘pottering about at home’ (as the doctor had put it).

Back at the start he had tested a myoelectric prosthesis as well, an advanced contraption that could be controlled by electrical impulses from the stump. It ran on batteries that needed charging, it was heavy, and whirred when he moved the fingers. There wasn’t space for it in the drawer so he had handed it back.

The thought of the whirring hand made his stomach churn, and he fumbled with the toilet seat, only just managing to lift it at the last minute before the evidence of last night’s drinking came back up.

Afterwards his whole body felt sweaty. He flushed but stayed on all fours, panting.

‘Are you okay?’ Sophia asked, from outside the door.

Christ, he couldn’t even throw up in peace. ‘Fine,’ he said, amazed at how normal he sounded. ‘I’ll be out soon.’

‘Would you like scrambled egg?’

He stood up cautiously. ‘Just some coffee,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to get to work.’

She didn’t answer. He could feel her silent disappointment through the bathroom door.

‘Okay,’ she said eventually, and went back to the kitchen. No humming this time.

He rinsed his mouth: he wouldn’t be able to escape a farewell kiss. He pulled his underpants over his sticky cock and picked up the hook. It wasn’t hard to attach: he could strap it straight on to his arm. The silicon on the inside smelt bad – it got very sweaty when the weather was as hot as it had been. The hook scratched and slipped.

He looked at his reflection. A man in early middle age in his shirt and underpants and hook, cloudy eyes, messy hair and uncertain future prospects. He felt like bursting into tears.

He cleared his throat, unlocked the bathroom door, went back into the bedroom and found the rest of his clothes scattered across the floor. With fumbling fingers he managed to put on his chinos, socks, shoes and jacket. He stuffed his tie into his pocket. Then he went down the hall and into the kitchen.

Sophia was wearing underpants and a T-shirt, and suddenly looked naked in comparison to his formal dress. It made her a bit shy. ‘Coffee’s ready.’

He gazed at the dull wooden top of the island unit, the old-fashioned cupboard doors. ‘How tatty it all looks,’ he said.

Her smile grew unsteady as she handed him a mug of coffee, standing close to him. ‘Are you sure you won’t stay a little longer?’ she whispered against his neck.

He took a dutiful sip of the coffee, then kissed her
gently on the lips. ‘All the plans we made for renovations. You never got any further with them?’

She took a step back from him and lowered her gaze. ‘It didn’t seem as much fun when I was on my own,’ she said.

He made an effort to conceal his derision when he looked at her: how small and pathetic she was. ‘I suppose I could stay a bit longer,’ he said.

The clouds were gathering over the ironworks. The wind tugged and tore at the tops of the birches, making them rustle like rain. Half a dozen cars were parked outside the discount outlet: cut-price clothes weren’t in demand that Thursday morning.

Annika drove up past Tattarbacken and forked right towards the Konsum supermarket. She was careful to avoid looking towards the turning to the beach at Tallsjön. She saw some girls sitting at the bus-stop swinging their feet, each of them eating an ice-cream. She had sat there just like that, with ice-cream and the same swing in her legs, but there and then was an utterly different place from here and now, thirty years later. Both she and the little industrial town had changed, but the main difference was in her perspective. Back then the works had been the world, a self-evident and integrated whole. Everything had fitted together and she was part of it. Today she saw the town as separate splinters, individual entities that just happened to have ended up in the same place, buildings and people alike, coming together for a few brief moments.

Where should she start looking?

She stopped outside the supermarket. Her mother didn’t work much, these days. Other people could stand in behind the till whenever someone was ill. Despite all the years she had spent as a temp, Barbro had never had a permanent job in the shop. For some reason that made Annika feel ashamed.

If Birgitta had come here in secret, without telling her mother or her husband, where would she go? What would she have done here? Why was it such a secret?

She drove back towards the works, again avoiding looking at the turning to Tallsjön, and let the car roll past the grey factory buildings towards the discount store. Her family had toiled there for generations, possibly since the works were established in the 1600s. When her father had started there were more than a thousand employees, and when he had died, they were down to a hundred or so. The number had kept shrinking until it sank below ten, and now the ironworks had been shut down for years. Other enterprises had moved into the premises, the Kolhus Theatre and a museum, various artists’ groups, and now the discount store. The manor house, all one thousand square metres of it, had been sold a few years ago for the same price as a three-room flat on Södermalm. She could just see the crenellated façade beyond the theatre.

She parked the car behind an old Volvo, took her bag and went inside the building. The store was called Warehouse 157. It was poorly lit, but the ceilings were high
and the cement floor had been polished. Displays of cut-price clothing stretched as far as she could see.

She took out her mobile and pulled up the photograph of Birgitta sitting on the terrace, her hair fluttering in the wind as she smiled at the camera, and headed towards the checkouts. Only one of the six tills was open. A woman of Annika’s age, her hair in a ponytail, was sitting there reading a magazine.

‘Hello,’ Annika said. ‘Sorry to bother you, but can I ask you something?’

The woman looked up. There was something vaguely familiar about her. Did they know each other? Annika stopped, uncertain.

‘Annika Bengtzon!’

Annika took a deep breath and forced herself to smile. So who was the woman? ‘Hello,’ she said feebly.

‘Are you back?’ the woman asked.

Who was she? No one from her class, maybe the year above, or below. ‘Only for the day,’ Annika said. ‘I need to ask you something.’

‘Hey,’ the woman said, ‘I heard about your husband. God, that was rough.’

The penny dropped. Helene Bjurstrand. That was her name. From the parallel class.

‘I mean, kidnapped by terrorists,’ Helene Bjurstrand said. ‘Awful.’

‘Yes, it was,’ Annika said.

‘You don’t think something like that could happen to anyone you know,’ the woman said.

Oh, so she knew Thomas, did she?

‘Do you remember my sister, Birgitta?’ Annika asked.

She held out her mobile with the Facebook picture, but Helene Bjurstrand didn’t look at it. ‘Of course I do. She moved to Malmö last autumn.’

‘That’s right,’ Annika said. ‘You haven’t seen her recently? In the last week or so?’

The woman took the phone and looked at the picture. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I haven’t seen Birgitta since she moved. How are they getting on down there?’

‘Oh, they’re fine,’ Annika said. ‘Do you know if anyone else has seen her lately?’

‘If anyone has, it would be Sara. Sara Pettersson.’

‘Does she still live on Tallvägen?’

Helene Bjurstrand sighed. ‘The fight over that will’s going to outlive us all. But how are you? I’ve moved back, as you can see. Lived in Huddinge for ten years, but after the divorce I thought I might as well come home. Are you still living in Stockholm or . . .?’

Annika smiled and put her phone in her pocket. ‘It was lovely to see you again,’ she said, and headed towards the café.

The two baristas behind the counter probably hadn’t been born when she’d left Hälleforsnäs, so there was no danger of them recognizing her. Neither of them had seen Birgitta in the past couple of weeks, they said, but they didn’t look at the photograph particularly closely.