He’s quiet for far too long, Jeanette thinks.
?ke puts his elbows on the table, hides his face in his hands, then stares blankly ahead of himself.
‘I think I’m in love with her …’
Here we go, Jeanette thinks with a sigh. ‘Bloody hell, ?ke …’
Without another word she gets up, grabs her bag, walks out into the hall, opens the front door and goes outside. She walks down the drive onto the road, gets in the car, takes out her mobile phone, and calls Sofia Zetterlund.
No answer.
She only gets as far the Nyn?shamn road before ?ke calls to say that he’s taking Johan to stay with his parents for the weekend. That it might be good for them to think things over separately for a few days. That he needs to do some thinking.
Jeanette realises that’s just an excuse.
Silence is a good weapon, she thinks as she pulls out onto the rotary at Gullmarsplan.
A delaying tactic.
The life she took for granted just a few months ago has been pretty much blown away, and most frighteningly, she doesn’t even know if she cares.
She turns on the car radio to distract her from her thoughts.
Already she’s feeling anxious about having to wake up alone in the house.
Hammarby Sj?stad – Petrol Station
ON HER WAY home from Grisslinge Sofia Zetterlund stops at the petrol station in Hammarby Sj?stad and changes clothes. In the toilet she pushes her expensive but now fire-damaged dress into the bin. She giggles to herself at the thought that it had cost over four thousand kronor. She goes out into the shop and buys a big piece of chèvre, a packet of crackers, a jar of black olives and a carton of strawberries.
As she’s paying, her phone vibrates in her pocket again. This time she takes it out to see who’s calling.
It stops ringing when she’s being given her change. Two missed calls, she reads on the screen, as she thanks the cashier. She notes that Jeanette Kihlberg has been trying to contact her, and puts the phone back in her pocket.
Later, she thinks.
On her way out she catches sight of the display of reading glasses. Her eyes fall on a pair identical to the ones she stole on New Year’s Day, seven months ago, and she stops.
She had gone to Central Station and bought a return ticket to Gothenburg. The eight o’clock train had left on time, and she had been sitting in the deserted buffet car with a cup of coffee.
Soon after they left the conductor had appeared to stamp her ticket, and as she was handing it to him she had intentionally upset the cup of hot coffee over the table with her other hand. She yelped, and the conductor rushed off to get something to wipe it up.
She smiles at the memory and takes the glasses off the rack. She puts them on and looks at herself in the little mirror.
The conductor had brought her some napkins, and she had made sure she thrust her breasts out as she leaned forward to ask if the stains on her blouse showed. With a bit of luck, he would remember her if there was any need to check her alibi later.
But she hadn’t even had to show the police the stamped ticket, bought on her credit card. They had swallowed her story without question.
When the train stopped at S?dert?lje Syd she had darted into the toilet, pulled her hair up in a tight bun and put the stolen glasses on.
Before she got off the train she had turned her black coat inside out, so that she was suddenly wearing a pale brown one. She had sat down on a bench, lit a cigarette, and waited for the commuter train back to Stockholm and Lasse.
There was nothing that could be said, she thinks as she puts the glasses back on the rack.
No explanation would be good enough.
He had betrayed her.
Pissed all over her.
Humiliated her.
Quite simply, there was no room for him in her new life. Just leaving him and telling him to go to hell wouldn’t have been satisfying enough. He would still have been out there somewhere.
She walks out of the petrol station shop and over to the car, and only now does she notice that her hair smells of smoke.
As she opens the car door she remembers how she found Lasse passed out on the sofa in the living room. An almost empty bottle of whisky told her he was probably pretty drunk. There was nothing particularly remarkable about a man who had been revealed to have lived a double life for ten years committing suicide while drunk.
It was, more than likely, expected.
She starts the engine. It purrs into life, and she puts the car into first gear and pulls away from the petrol station.
He had been snoring loudly with his mouth open, and she had to steel herself to resist the urge to wake him up and make him face the music.
She had gone silently into the bathroom and removed the belt from Lasse’s burgundy dressing gown. The one he had stolen from the hotel in New York.
She drives into the city.
The 222 road, westbound. The light from the street lamps passes by above the windscreen.
Lasse had been lying on his side with his face towards the cushions, the back of his neck unprotected. It was important that the knot ended up in the right place and only left a small impression. She had tied the belt into a noose and carefully slid it over his head.
When the knot was in exactly the right place and all she had to do was pull, she had hesitated.
She had stopped to evaluate the risks, but hadn’t been able to come up with anything that might implicate her.
When she was finished she would go back to Central Station to await the arrival of the afternoon train from Gothenburg, then go and pick up her car from the car park. The car would have got a ticket, but when the attendants saw her valid ticket they would have to waive the fine. And they would be able to support, if not actually prove, that she had spent the day travelling by train to and from Gothenburg.
She heads down the Hammarby hill, across the old Skanstull Bridge, and into the tunnel under the Clarion Hotel.
Discipline, she thinks. You have to stay alert and not act on impulse, because that’s what can give you away.
The parking attendants, the train ticket and the conductor who had seen her in the buffet car should have been enough to remove any suspicions about her involvement. The phone books on the floor by the chair had been the final detail completing the picture.
She heads along Renstiernas gata, passes Sk?negatan and Bondegatan, and turns right into ?s?gatan.
She had taken a firm grip of the dressing-gown belt and pulled as hard as she could. Lasse had gasped for breath, but the drink dulled his response.
He never woke up again, and she had strung him up from the lamp hook in the ceiling. She had placed a chair beneath him, then, when she realised that his feet didn’t reach it, she had filled the gap with telephone directories that she then shoved onto the floor. A clear case of suicide.
Skanstull – a Neighbourhood