‘Not really.’
‘Me neither. But I can’t go home, because I don’t feel like being alone tonight, and I don’t even want to see Sofia, if I’m honest. The only person I think I can bear being with at the moment is, actually, you.’
Hurtig looks almost embarrassed. ‘Me?’
‘Yes, you.’
He smiles. ‘I don’t feel like being on my own tonight either. First those films, and now this …’
All of a sudden she feels a new sort of closeness to him. They really have been through the day from hell together.
‘We can sleep at work tonight,’ she finds herself saying. ‘How about it? Get some beers and just relax? Forget about all this, we won’t even mention it. Just forget everything for one single bloody evening?’
He laughs quietly. ‘OK. Why not?’
‘Great. But before we knock off I have to call von Kwist. He’s damn well going to have to drag himself to work, sick or not. We need to upgrade the hunt for Dürer to a national search. Besides, I want to check out this picture.’ She shows Hurtig the photograph she’s just taken down from the wall.
Klippgatan, First Flight of Steps – S?dermalm
WHEN SHE LEAVES the Sunflower Nursing Home, Sofia drives to Norra Hammarbyhamnen. The Sleepwalker will never come here again, and she wants to see the place one last time.
She sits on the quayside for a while. Tries to work out why she has kept coming back here, time after time. A short distance away there’s a police cordon and some forensics officers. She wonders what’s happened. Maybe someone has jumped from the bridge. That sort of thing happens. After ten minutes she walks back to the car and drives home.
Unaware that she’s being followed.
She parks down by the London Viaduct and walks up Folkungagatan, and just as she’s passing Erstagatan she hears a sudden loud noise.
A man is standing beside his car a few metres away from her. He’s just slammed the boot shut, and looks at her in surprise as he locks it.
Calm down, Sofia, she thinks. It’s over now.
But it isn’t. Not really.
Just as she’s about to turn into Klippgatan she hears another noise that seems unnaturally loud to her.
It’s the bell on the door of the little corner shop. The owner emerges in the company of a small, bent old woman.
‘Take care now, Birgitta,’ he says. ‘Those steps up to the church can be slippery.’
The woman has her grey hair in a bun, and mutters something before she turns away, putting a couple of weekly magazines in her bag.
Sofia stares. It isn’t possible, she thinks.
The woman’s face is lowered and shadowed by the lighting of the shop sign, but Sofia recognises her chubby neck and stares at the little dimples in her cheeks.
She remembers putting her finger on them, laughing and asking why they were called dingles.
Victoria’s legs are shaking as the woman turns into Klippgatan and starts walking towards Sofia Church. That familiar rear view, the rounded hips, the tight bun and the rolling gait.
She takes a few steps in the same direction, but her legs can hardly bear her.
The magazines sticking out of the woman’s bag are All Year Round and Saxon’s Weekly, and Victoria knows that they will spend a few days on the coffee table until they’ve been read. Then they’ll be demoted to the toilet, where they’ll stay until the crosswords are finished.
You don’t exist, she thinks. You’re a product of my imagination. Get lost.
She can still feel the heat of the fire on her face, hear the beams crunch and crackle before they finally crash down into the basement. Bengt and Birgitta Bergman are buried in the Woodland Cemetery in a casket of dark red cherrywood. At least they ought to be.
At the bottom of the first flight of steps the woman stops beside a rubbish bin, hunts through the contents and pulls out a beer can, which she triumphantly puts in her bag to reclaim the deposit on. As Victoria gets closer she can see that the woman’s brown wool suit is dirty and worn, and that her shoes are filthy and scuffed.
Then the old woman laboriously begins to climb the steps on Klippgatan, leaning against the handrail. Just like the stairs at home. The ones she cleaned and cleaned, without it ever making any difference.
Victoria follows her. Grabs onto the cold handrail and is transported back in time. ‘We have to talk,’ she says. ‘You can’t just go without explaining what’s going on. You’re dead. Don’t you get it?’
The woman turns round.
It isn’t her. Of course it isn’t.
The woman looks at her warily for a moment, then turns back and continues up the steps to the path through the little park at the top.
Victoria is left there alone, but just a few metres away, at the bottom of the steps, is someone who’s as alone as she is.
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
A PHONE CALL from hell reaches Prosecutor Kenneth von Kwist as he’s standing with a glass of champagne in his hand outside the restaurant of police headquarters talking to the female national police chief about the importance of cutting back your geraniums at exactly the right time.
The prosecutor knows nothing about plants, but over the years he’s learned that the art of conversation is to ask questions first and then transform the information received into general and uncontroversial statements of fact. Some people would call it empty chatter, but von Kwist believes it to be a social gift.
When his phone rings he excuses himself, puts his glass down and moves away. Before he answers he has already decided that when he gets back to the police chief he is going to say that February is a good month to prune your houseplants, but that he’ll say this with a degree of caution.
He sees on the screen that it’s Jeanette Kihlberg, and a lump appears in his stomach. He doesn’t like getting calls from her. Whenever she calls it means trouble.
‘Yes?’ he says, hoping it won’t take long.
‘We need to put out a national alert for Viggo Dürer,’ Jeanette says without any introductory pleasantries, which annoys him. Surely it’s only good manners to say who you are before getting to the point? The prosecutor also realises that his hopes of getting back to the party quickly and picking up the interesting conversation about plants are about to be dashed.
‘We believe that Dürer’s alive, and I want to issue a warrant for his arrest,’ she goes on. ‘Top priority. Airports, ferries, border posts –’
‘Stop, stop, hold your horses,’ he interrupts, playing dumb. ‘Who is this? I don’t recognise the number.’
Damn, he thinks. Viggo Dürer’s alive.
That could explain the attack outside the ice bar. The prosecutor touches his still-aching jaw.
‘It’s me, Kihlberg. I’ve just left Dürer’s house on Djurg?rden, I’m on my way back into the city.’
‘So whose body was found in the boat?’
‘That hasn’t been ascertained yet, but I think it might be Anders Wikstr?m.’