She’s been waiting so long that another hour more or less doesn’t make any difference.
The rain gets heavier, and she clutches her cobalt-blue coat tighter around her and stamps her feet to keep warm.
As she’s going through her plan for the third time, visualising what’s going to happen, she sees a black car slowly approaching. The windows are tinted, but through the windscreen she can make out a man on his own. The car stops a short distance from her and reverses into an empty parking space. Thirty seconds later the car door opens and he gets out.
She recognises Per-Ola Silfverberg at once and goes up to him.
His smile brings back memories. A big house in Copenhagen, a farm on Jutland and a pig slaughterhouse. The stench of ammonia and his firm grip on the large knife when he showed her how to cut. Up and to the right, to get to the heart.
‘It’s been a long time!’ He walks up to her and gives her a warm hug. ‘Is it just a coincidence that you’re here, or have you been talking to Charlotte?’
She wonders if it matters what she says, and decides that it’s completely irrelevant. There’s no way he’ll be able to check the veracity of whatever she says.
‘Well, not entirely a coincidence,’ she says, looking him in the eye. ‘I was in the vicinity and remembered that Charlotte had mentioned that you’d moved here, so I thought I’d look in and see if you were home.’
‘Well, I’m bloody glad you did!’ He laughs, takes her under the arm and starts to cross the street. ‘I’m afraid Charlotte won’t be back for a couple of hours, but come in and have some coffee.’
She knows he’s chairman of the board of a large investment company these days, and a man as used to being obeyed as he is unused to being questioned. There’s no reason not to go inside with him.
‘Well, I’m not in a hurry to get anywhere, so why not?’
His touch and the smell of his aftershave make her feel sick.
She can feel it bubbling inside her, and knows that the first thing she’s going to have to do is ask to go to the toilet.
The apartment is enormous, and as he shows her around she counts seven rooms before he leads her into the living room. It’s tastefully furnished with expensive but discreet furniture, all of it a pale, Scandinavian design.
There are two large windows with a view across the whole of Stockholm, and to the right is a spacious balcony with room for at least fifteen people.
‘I’m so sorry, but I’m afraid I need to use the bathroom,’ she says.
‘No need to apologise. Out in the hall, on the right.’ He points. ‘Coffee? Or would you rather have something else? A glass of wine, perhaps?’
She begins to walk towards the hall. ‘A glass of wine might be nice. But only if you’re having one.’
She goes into the toilet, feeling her pulse pound, and in the mirror above the sink she can see a few beads of sweat on her forehead.
She sits down on the toilet and closes her eyes. Memories come back to her, and she sees Per-Ola Silfverberg’s smiling face, but not the pleasant, business smile he just showed her, but the cold, empty one.
She recalls how he and the other men at the farm used to clean the pigs’ innards before they were ground down into blood pudding, sausages or liver paté. And his emotionless smile as he showed her how a pig’s head became brawn.
Before she goes back into the living room she washes her hands. Hygiene is alpha and omega when it comes to slaughter, and she’s memorising everything she touches. Afterwards she’ll wipe off all trace of fingerprints.
Per-Ola Silfverberg is pouring out the wine, and hands her a glass. ‘Now, you must tell me where you’ve been all these years.’
She raises the glass, lowers her nose to it and takes a deep breath. A Chardonnay, she thinks.
The man she loathes watches her as she takes a small sip of the wine, then looks him deep in the eye. She slurps audibly and lets the liquid mix with the air to bring out the flavours.
‘I presume there’s a reason why you’ve looked us up after such a long time,’ says the man who hurt her.
She thinks that the wine’s character is probably a blend. Spiced fruit, something like melon, peach, apricot and lemon. She detects a hint of oiliness.
Slowly and pleasurably she swallows.
‘Where would you like me to start?’
Up and to the right, she thinks.
Glasbruksgatan – Crime Scene
THE ALARM REACHES police headquarters on Kungsholmen just before ten. A woman is screaming that she’s just got home and found her husband dead.
Jens Hurtig is actually on his way home when the call comes in, but seeing as he has no other plans for the evening he concludes that this would be a good opportunity to build up a bit of time in lieu.
Two weeks in some hot country will sit very nicely, and he’s already decided to take his holiday when the weather is at its worst.
Even if winters in Stockholm are mostly pretty mild, and nothing like his childhood’s snowy hell up in Kvikkjokk, it can be almost unbearable for a few weeks each year.
It’s a neither-nor sort of weather. Not winter, but not really anything else instead.
Five degrees above freezing feels much the same as five below. It’s the damp that does it. All that fucking water.
The only city in the world that might have worse winter weather than Stockholm is possibly St Petersburg, on the other side of the Baltic at the far end of the Gulf of Finland, built on a swamp. The city was first founded by Swedes, before the Russians took over. Just as masochistically inclined as the Swedes.
You’re somehow supposed to enjoy the misery.
As usual, the traffic on the Central Bridge is stationary, and he switches the siren on to get through, but no matter how much people might want to let him through there’s nowhere for them to move.
He zigzags between lanes until he reaches the Stadsg?rden exit, and turns off onto Katarinav?gen. The traffic is thinner here, and he puts his foot down.
By the time he passes La Mano, the memorial to Swedes who died in the Spanish Civil War, he’s going over one hundred and forty kilometres an hour.
He enjoys speed, and sees it as one of the privileges of the job.
He pulls up outside the door, where there are already two police vans parked, blue lights flashing.
In the doorway he meets a colleague on his way out. The man has taken his cap off and is clutching it tight in his hand. Hurtig sees that his face is white as chalk. White verging on green, actually, and Hurtig stands aside so he can get outside before he throws up.
Poor bastard, he thinks. The first time is never much fun. Well, not that it’s ever that much bloody fun. You never get used to it. Maybe you get desensitised, which in no way means that you become a better police officer. But at least it makes it a bit easier to carry out your duties.