The Final Word (26 page)

She walked back and sat down on the porch step. Had Birgitta been here last week? Had she looked through the kitchen window and missed the tablecloth, the rag-rug and the angel on the wall?

Why had Steven lied about when she’d disappeared?

She raised her phone again.

Steven answered straight away. ‘Have you heard anything?’ he asked.

‘Yes and no,’ Annika replied, and looked towards the old barn. ‘The police have traced Birgitta’s mobile. She wasn’t in Malmö last week, she was in Hälleforsnäs. Did you know that?’

He was silent, so silent that she thought they had been cut off. ‘Steven?’ she said.

‘What was she doing in Hälleforsnäs? Is she there now?’

‘Steven,’ she said, ‘can’t you tell me what really happened when Birgitta disappeared?’

He coughed. She could hear the theme tune of a children’s programme in the background.

‘Have you seen her?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Annika said. ‘I’m in Hälleforsnäs now, and I’ve looked, but I don’t know where to try next. You have to tell me what really happened or I can’t help.’

She could hear his breathing, and waited in silence for him to answer.

‘She had a relapse,’ Steven said. ‘Nearly three weeks ago, at the weekend.’

Annika looked up at the sky. The clouds were swirling, turning the surface of Hosjön steely grey.

‘She went to a bar after work,’ Steven said. ‘When she came home we had a terrible row. I was terrified she was going to lose it again. She shouted that I was controlling and spying on her.’

‘This was the Saturday night?’

‘She got in touch on Tuesday, said she felt ashamed. She asked me several times to forgive her and said she wanted to be left in peace.’

Annika was forcing herself not to get angry. ‘You’ve spoken to her?’

‘Diny, can you turn it down a bit? I’m on the phone . . . What did you say?’

‘You spoke to her?’

The music got quieter.

‘No, she sent a text.’

That matched the tracking result.

‘Why did you wait two weeks before sounding the alarm?’

He gulped audibly. ‘She asked me not to say anything. Said she wanted to think, and that she needed to get hold of you.’

‘Me? What did she need me for?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Daddy,’ Annika heard the child say at the other end of the line, ‘
Pingu
’s finished.’

‘Can you hold on a moment?’ Steven said.

‘Sure.’

There was a thud in her ear as he put the phone down to help his daughter with the television. Did she watch the same programme all day long?

‘The description you gave me,’ Annika said, when he returned, ‘of the clothes she was wearing. It was all wrong, wasn’t it?’

He coughed again. ‘She went to the bar straight from the shop. She was wearing her work shirt and her brown jacket.’

Annika thought for a moment. ‘Have you spoken to her at all?’

‘I’ve tried calling, but she said I needed to give her some breathing space.’

‘She replied by text? Breathing space?’

‘Daddy!’

‘Just wait a moment, Diny. I’ll be there soon.’

A gust of wind tugged at Annika’s hair. ‘What made you sound the alarm on Monday?’

‘The art society,’ he said. ‘Birgitta’s been painting all spring so she could take part in an exhibition. Two men from the society came round on Sunday to look at her pictures.’

‘What did they say?’

‘It was probably lucky she wasn’t home, really. They talked a load of crap, said the pictures were too superficial, that they lacked depth, they didn’t want them in their exhibition. Birgitta’s been talking about it for ages, that they were going to come and look at her stuff. She wouldn’t have missed that. Something’s seriously wrong.’

‘Have you called her work?’

‘They say they can’t put calls through to the tills.’

‘So you haven’t been down there?’

The little girl said something in the background and Steven put the phone down again.

‘Do you know what she was doing in Hälleforsnäs?’ he asked, when he came back.

‘She was asleep in a car, a Ford or a Nissan, something anonymous, outside the Konsum supermarket in Malmköping last Friday.’

‘Asleep?’

‘She must have been there with someone. Do you have any idea who?’

He said nothing. The silence echoed. She sat there, gazing at the lake and listening to the trees.

Eventually he sighed. ‘I’m coming up,’ he said. ‘I’ll rent a car straight away.’

‘She’s probably not here any longer,’ Annika said. ‘Her last text was sent from Luleå.’

‘Luleå?’ The surprise in his voice was unmistakable. ‘What’s up there?’

‘I don’t know,’ Annika said.

‘I’ll come anyway,’ Steven said.

‘That might be as well,’ Annika said. ‘It doesn’t sound like she’s in Malmö, anyway.’ She took a deep breath. ‘There was one other thing. I know you hit Birgitta. Why did you lie about that?’

A few seconds’ silence.

‘Let’s talk about that when I get there.’ He hung up.

Annika put the phone back into her pocket.

If you fell asleep in someone’s car, you had to feel comfortable with them. Who had she driven off with?

She looked towards the lake. The birches rustled; the ripples sparkled with shards of silver. She took out her
mobile again, opened the web browser and found the website of an online business directory. She typed in
matextra malmö
. She found the details of the company’s board and MD, Anders Svensson. Then she called Directory Enquiries and asked to be put through to MatExtra in Malmö.

A receptionist answered.

‘I’d like to speak to Linda, the store manager.’

She was on the line almost immediately.

‘My name is Annika Bengtzon, and I’m the sister of Birgitta, who used to work for you,’ Annika said.

‘I see,’ Linda said warily.

‘I’ve been wondering what happened on Saturday, the sixteenth of May.’

‘I don’t understand what—’

‘Something happened,’ Annika said. ‘Birgitta was very upset about something, and I’m wondering what it was.’

Silence.

‘Either you tell me what it was,’ Annika said, ‘or I go straight to Anders Svensson and tell him what a useless manager you are.’

The woman gasped. ‘What are you talking about? Who did you say you were?’

‘Birgitta’s elder sister. I want to know what happened. If you tell me, you’ll never hear from me again.’

There was the sound of a door closing.

‘Well,’ Linda said, ‘it was nothing much. I just told Birgitta that she couldn’t have the permanent job we’d talked about. Other people had been here longer than
her, and I had to think about the morale of the other staff.’

‘So you withdrew the promise of a permanent job?’

‘I wouldn’t call it a promise. We’d certainly talked about it but—’

‘Thank you,’ Annika said, and hung up.

Elin, or one of the other cashiers, had complained to the boss, and Linda had backed down. Birgitta had evidently taken it badly and, instead of going home, had gone to a bar and started drinking.

But why was she staying away? And why had she lied about getting another job?

Annika’s hair blew across her face, and she brushed it aside with her newly polished nails. She found herself looking at the front door of the cottage and her mind stood still. There was a pale patch of wood beside the lock. The strip at the side was slightly crooked.

Someone had broken in. The marks were barely visible, but they were there.

Roland had said there had been a wave of break-ins into summer cottages recently.

She took hold of the handle and the door opened, the hinges squeaking. Her heart was pounding. She took a step into the hall. ‘Birgitta?’ she said.

The place smelt mouldy and stale. The floor was covered with a thin layer of dust that swirled up when Annika moved.

No one had been inside: their footprints would have shown in the dust.

The door slammed and Annika screamed. The wind whistled through the gaps in the wood. She threw herself at the door, which opened instantly, and stumbled outside. It was just as empty and deserted as before. The wind had blown it shut.

She stood there until her heart had slowed down.

Then she closed the door properly.

For the time being she still had a job to go to and work to do. Back to Gustaf Holmerud. She set off towards the car.

He heard the woman long before he saw her.

She moved through the forest like a threshing machine, crushing twigs under her feet, pulling at branches, the fabric of her coarse trousers pushing through the vegetation. She was walking fast, approaching at speed. She was heading in his direction.

Quickly and silently he made his way across the abandoned meadow towards the edge of the forest. He straightened the grass behind him with a small branch. He never left a trail.

He waited behind a pine until he saw her emerge into the clearing and stop.

It was her. He recognized her at once.

She was panting slightly, and stopped to catch her breath as she looked at the house. Perhaps she was in the habit of coming here. That would make things easier.

He studied her movements as she walked up to the cottage and looked in through the kitchen window. She was wiry, a bit skinny – she could probably move quickly.
She stood at the window a little too long and, for a moment, he worried that she had seen something odd. Perhaps her mind was on other things because suddenly she pulled a phone from her trouser pocket and made a call. She leaned against the wall and looked out across the lake as she talked. He couldn’t hear what she said, but that didn’t matter.

Then she ended the call, went to the steps and sat down, fiddled with her phone, and talked again, read something, talked.

Then something happened. He looked more closely through the branches.

She had noticed that the door had been forced.

Well, perhaps that didn’t matter either. He watched with interest as she inspected the lock, then took hold of the handle. She stepped into the hall and said something, he couldn’t hear what. She might have been calling for someone,
Is anyone here?
or
Hello?
Fortunately he wasn’t as hard of hearing as his brother. His mirror image had been a little too fond of percussive weapons at the start, before they had realized how impractical it was to drag guns around when you could take a toolbox instead. But his hearing had suffered lasting damage. He never complained, accepted the situation and lived with the injury.

He knew his brother was doing his mental exercises in prison. He himself had tried to devote himself to them more actively over the past year, had tried to feel that it bound them together, but hadn’t succeeded.

It had been a terrible year, an
annus horribilis
, as the British queen had once put it. He had lived his shadow life more or less as usual, the way they had when they were both in Sweden and one of them was in the villa in Täby, or when they were both in Spain and one was in the terraced house – the other would rent a flat in a shabbier neighbourhood, under an assumed name, and live as the Shadow, the featureless man who didn’t exist. He was still able to live quite openly: even though his brother’s picture had been in the press countless times, no one reacted when they saw him. It was easiest to get lost in a crowd; they had always lived by that motto. A woman had lain dead in a flat in the stairwell next to his for three years and no one had missed her. No one would miss him.

A gust of wind blew through the forest, and he watched it slam the cottage’s door. The woman screamed and rushed out into the meadow. He had been right: she was quick. She looked at the door, and for a moment she turned in his direction, but didn’t see him, he was sure. She stood like that for a minute or so, then turned back, closed the door and set off towards the path through the forest.

He waited without moving for seven minutes, the length of time he estimated that it would take her to reach Highway 686, then thought he heard a car start.

He waited another half-hour before emerging from his hiding place and getting on with his business.

The arrest warrant from the Spanish Prosecution Authority was presented to Stockholm District Court late in the afternoon. It requested Ivar Berglund’s extradition to Spain, on suspicion of the murder of businessman Ernesto Jaka in San Sebastián eighteen years ago.

Nina was sitting on the terrace of a café by La Concha beach when the news reached her. It appeared on her phone in the form of a text message from Johansson, just minutes after the petition was handed in. She read the short message twice, then put away her phone. She looked out at the Bay of Biscay. If he wasn’t convicted in Sweden, he would be extradited to Spain and found guilty there. The Spaniards weren’t in the habit of letting their murderers out in a hurry. The minimum sentence was twenty years, and the maximum double that.

She beckoned over
el caballero
and asked for the bill, paid and began to walk back towards the police station.

San Sebastián, Donostia in Basque, was a disappointment. Not because there was anything wrong with the city, either the architecture or the setting – on the contrary, the beautiful city centre curled along the famous beaches of the bay – but it wasn’t
Spain
. Not her country, her streets, not her language. The Basque being spoken around her bore no resemblance to
Castellano
. The architecture could be French, or Swiss, with its heavy ornamentation and grey stone façades radiating affluence and solidity. There was no trace of the Moorish inheritance that dominated the landscapes of her
childhood, with their sun-drenched white stucco buildings and terraced olive plantations.

She returned to the police station as a Swedish police observer: Europol had verified her status during the afternoon.

Commissioner Elorza was waiting for her in his little room. ‘I heard that our request for the extradition of Señor
Berglund has been registered with the Swedish authorities,’ he said. ‘That was quick. You have a very efficient administration.’

‘Sweden has many good points,’ Nina said, settling on her chair. ‘Productive bureaucracy is one of them, as is a humanitarian view of criminals.’