And ?ke, she thought. Artist, and housewife.
Once her dad had realised she was thinking of following in his footsteps, he had told her plenty of stories intended to put her off. About broken people. Drug addicts and alcoholics. Pointless violence. The idea that people never used to kick someone when they were down was a myth. People had always done that, and would go on doing it.
But there was one particular part of the job that he hated.
Stationed in a suburb south of Stockholm, close to both the metro and the commuter rail lines, at least once a year he would have to force himself to go down onto one of the tracks to pick up the remnants of a person.
A head. An arm. A leg. A torso.
It left him a complete wreck each time it happened.
He didn’t want her to have to see everything he had had to see, and his message to her could be summarised in one sentence: ‘Whatever you do, don’t join the police.’
But nothing he said made her change her mind. On the contrary, his stories only made her feel more motivated.
The first hurdle to being accepted into the police academy had been a problem with the sight in her left eye. The operation had cost all her savings, and she had to work overtime pretty much every weekend for six months to be able to afford it.
The second hurdle was when she found out that she was too short.
A chiropractor provided the solution to that, and after twelve weeks of treatment on her back he had managed to stretch her height by the two missing centimetres.
She had lain flat in the car on the way to the medical evaluation, because she knew that the body could shrink if you sat down for any length of time.
What happens if I lose my motivation? she thought.
That simply mustn’t happen, she thought. You just keep going. She walked through the bus station towards Central Station, down the escalator, and through the crowded passageway between the commuter trains and the metro.
She opened her purse. Two crumpled hundred-kronor bills left, thirty of which would go to her ticket home. She hoped ?ke still had some of the money she had given him for household expenses at the start of the week. Even if ?hlund was able to fix the car, she guessed it was still going to cost a couple of thousand.
Work and money, she thought.
How the hell do you escape from that?
Once Johan had gone to bed, Jeanette and ?ke settled down with cups of tea in the living room. The European Football Championships were about to start, and this pre-game show was providing a detailed analysis of the Swedish national team’s chances. As usual, there was talk of at least the quarter-finals, hopefully a semi-final and maybe even gold.
‘Your dad rang, by the way,’ ?ke said, without looking away from the screen.
‘Did he want anything special?’
‘The usual. He asked how you were, then about Johan and school. Then he asked me if I’d managed to find a job yet.’
Jeanette knew her dad had trouble with ?ke. He had once called him a slacker. On another occasion, a dreamer. Lazy. A couch potato. The list of negative epithets was as varied as it was comprehensive. Occasionally he came out with them in front of ?ke.
Usually when that happened she felt sorry for ?ke and immediately sprang to his defence, but recently she had found herself agreeing more and more with the criticism.
He often said he was happy being her housewife, but in reality she was just as much of a housewife as he was. It would have been OK if he actually did something with his paintings, but to be honest there wasn’t much sign of activity there.
‘?ke …’
He didn’t hear her. He was deeply absorbed in a report about Swedish team captains over the years.
‘Our finances are completely fucked,’ she said. ‘I’m ashamed of having to call Dad again.’
He didn’t respond.
‘?ke?’ she said tentatively. ‘Are you listening?’
He sighed. ‘Yeah, yeah,’ he said, still staring at the screen. ‘But at least you’ve got a good reason to call him.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, Bosse called here earlier.’ ?ke sounded annoyed. ‘He’s probably expecting you to call back, isn’t he?’
Fucking incredible, Jeanette thought.
She wanted to avoid an argument, so she got up from the sofa and went out to the kitchen.
A mountain of washing-up. ?ke and Johan had made pancakes, and the evidence was still there.
No, she wasn’t going to do the washing-up. It could sit there until he dealt with it. She sat down at the kitchen table and dialled her parents’ number.
This is the last time, I swear, she thought.
After the call Jeanette went back into the living room, sat down on the sofa again, and waited patiently for the programme to end. She liked football a lot, probably more than ?ke, but this type of programme didn’t interest her at all. Too much empty talk.
‘I called Dad,’ she said when the credits started to roll. ‘He’s putting five thousand in my account so we can get through the rest of the month.’
?ke nodded distractedly.
‘But it’s not going to happen again,’ she went on. ‘I mean it this time. Do you understand?’
He squirmed. ‘Yeah, yeah. I understand.’
Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
SOFIA AND HER former partner, Lasse, had landed the apartment through a complicated triangular sale, in which Sofia sold her small two-room apartment on Lundagatan and Lasse sold his three-room apartment near Mosebacke and they bought this spacious five-room apartment on ?s?berget, not far from Nytorget and the park at Vita bergen.
She walked into the hall, hung up her coat and went into the living room. She put the bag containing the Indian takeaway on the table and went into the kitchen to get cutlery and a glass of water.
She turned on the television, settled down on the sofa and began to eat.
The body needs fuel, she thought.
Eating dinner alone depressed her, and she ate quickly, surfing through the channels. Children’s programmes, an American sitcom, ads, something educational.
She looked at the time and saw that the evening news was about to start, and put the remote down just as her mobile phone buzzed.
A text from Mikael.
‘How are you? Miss you …?’ he wrote.
She swallowed the last mouthful of food and replied.
‘Bored. I’ll probably spend the evening working at home. Hugs.’
For a while now one particular person had commanded more and more of her interest, and Sofia had got into the habit of pulling out some of her notes each evening. Every time she hoped she was going to see something new, something conclusive.
Sofia got up and went into the kitchen, and scraped the last of the food into the bin. She heard the news start in the living room, and the lead story for the second day in a row was the murder at Thorildsplan.
The anchor said that the police had gone public with a phone call made to the emergency call centre the previous morning.