The blue shirt with white stripes was now a white shirt with blue stripes and the black leather vest had changed to mocha brown. His hair was wet and you could smell the aftershave as soon as the door opened. Ruben looked clean, his eyes less tired. He put down his large travel bag where it had previously stood and asked where he could get something to eat. Grens pointed out into the corridor and Frey took a few steps before he turned around.
“I have
one
more question.”
“I don’t have much time. But ask away and I’ll see if I can answer.”
Ruben Frey put a hand to his wet hair, he straightened his pants and the waistband that had somehow got caught under his large belly.
It was still windy out there, they could both hear it.
“Six years. I’ve thought about him every day, every waking hour. I would dearly love to see him. Could you arrange that?”
Twenty minutes later, Ewert Grens walked beside him down one of the detention center corridors. There were restrictions, but there was also a way around restrictions. Grens accompanied the unauthorized visitor into the cell and then stood in front of the window from where they could be observed, without taking up room. They cried as they embraced each other, not sobbing, but quiet, almost mindful, the tears people cry after many years of loss.
EWERT GRENS DROVE AT GREAT SPEED AND ON AT LEAST TWO OCCASIONS
against the traffic down a one-way street. He was late and had no intention of being even later.
It had been hard to get Ruben Frey to let go of his son.
It hadn’t been easy to have to say that the informal visit was over, that they had to leave, John’s drawn face and Ruben’s round cheeks pressed together as they stood there, close, so close, and talked quietly about something that Grens neither could hear nor wanted to hear. He had arranged for Ruben Frey to be driven to Hotel Continental on Vasagatan and had given him a business card with all his work numbers on it, and his home number scrawled by hand on the back.
He glanced at the clock on the dashboard. Two minutes past eleven. The boat left from Gåshaga dock at seventeen minutes past. He could still make it.
It was only three days since he’d stood beside her at the window and she had raised her hand and waved.
He had seen it.
He was convinced that that was what she’d done when the white boat blew its horn down on the water, on Höggarnsfjärden. And then the staff had explained to him that it was neurologically impossible. What did that mean? A wave was a wave and he had seen what he’d seen. He didn’t care if it was impossible or not.
Three days, no more, and yet it felt like an age ago. He should have thought about her more. Anni had always lain like a film over everything he did, everything he breathed, she had been with him every step he’d taken and he’d come to appreciate it, he was totally dependent on it.
But it was as if he hadn’t had time in the past few days. He had tried several times when he suddenly realized that he’d lost her for a while: he started to think about her face again and her room and that he missed her, but it had been hard—forced thoughts that demanded an energy that for the first time wasn’t there.
Grens crossed Lidingö Bridge, over the speed limit as always, then another three or four miles to the east of the large island, where property prices were so high that all you could do was laugh. He had never understood why it was so fucking fantastic to live there. He had thought at the time it was a good environment for Anni—the peace, the water, plus it was easy for him to visit—but good God, that was twenty-five years ago now, when house prices had been very different.
He looked at the clock again, four minutes left when he parked the car and got out. Some people were waiting, and farther down the dock, a cab closed its doors and drove off. He went down the slope, into the cold wind that rasped against his face.
It was a simple dock, from this distance it basically looked like a large lump of concrete that someone had poured into the water. The ice lay thick and hard around it, as if everything had been welded together; it was hard to tell under the layer of snow where the dock ended and the ice began. A channel of open water led up to the dock, it wasn’t very wide and he wondered that there was enough room for a boat that size.
She was sitting in her wheelchair, a great white hat on her head and a thick coat with a brown fur collar that he’d given her two Christmases ago around her thin body. He got that feeling in his stomach, the same as always. The tenderness when he saw her, for a while he was at peace, didn’t need to hurry anywhere. He said nothing to her when he got there, just stroked her cheek, it was red and chilly, and she leaned in toward his hand.
She had seen it.
In the distance, and slightly late, the white ferry sailing toward Gåshaga.
According to the timetable, it should be alongside the dock at seventeen minutes past eleven, champing at the bit for the time it took for the new passengers to board.
Anni had seen it and her eyes didn’t leave it. Ewert Grens kept on stroking her cheek, he was sure she was as happy as she looked.
He said hello to Susann, the medical student who worked extra shifts at the nursing home and whom he’d asked to go with them—he was paying her for the day from his own money. She was about Hermansson’s age, slightly taller, more solid, blond rather than dark, they weren’t at all like each other and yet they were similar, the way they talked, their selfconfidence and authority. He wondered if all young women were like that and he just hadn’t noticed.
An older couple standing over by the edge of the dock, a man in a black leather jacket and sneakers sitting on his own on a bench covered in snow, two girls standing a few feet away, giggling hysterically, glancing over at them when they thought no one would see. They were all waiting, checked their watches now and then, stamped their feet in the snow to keep warm.
The boat was getting closer, a dot that quickly grew bigger as it approached. When it was still some way off, the horn blew twice, Anni jumped and then made her sound, the one that he always heard as laughter, a gurgling, wheezing sound that came from somewhere at the base of her throat.
MS
Söderarm
. The boat she had waved to.
And now she was going to sail with her, she wanted to—she had shown him, after all.
The boat was bigger than he’d thought. One hundred thirty feet, two stories, shining white with a blue and yellow funnel, a long wire tied from stem to stern with colorful flags that fluttered in the gusty wind and every now and then made a loud slapping noise. He pushed her wheelchair in front of him. The small wheels got caught on the gangway and he had to struggle to get her free and then onboard. They went into the lower lounge, which was warm, where there were some empty wooden benches and a strong smell of coffee from the kiosk at the back.
Susann took off Anni’s hat and unbuttoned her winter coat. Her hair was tousled and Ewert looked for his comb, a steel comb with wide gaps between the teeth, and he pulled it through the knots with great care until her hair hung straight again.
“Coffee?”
Ewert looked at Susann, who was straightening up the wheelchair. She pushed it back and forth with vigor until she found a position at the short end of the table that was good.
“No, thanks.”
“I’ll pay.”
“I don’t want one.”
“I insist. It’s important for me that you’re here today.”
She still didn’t look up; she was bending down to lock the wheels.
“If you insist.”
Grens walked down the narrow aisle, countering the boat’s tendency to roll. MS
Söderarm
. He liked the name. One that he’d heard for years mumbled in a monotone on the shipping forecast on Sveriges Radio:
Söderarm
,
southwesterly, twenty-six feet per second, visibility good.
He had also been there a few times, at the far end of the archipelago, when as a boy he sailed there with his father. He couldn’t remember that they’d done much together, but those sailing trips, he remembered them, Tjärven lighthouse that flashed and swooped and the sea and the sky that blended together in the same color blue . . . it had been deserted out there, nature was naked, not much life, barren rocks and endless sea.
“She’s called
Söderarm
, the boat.”
The boy, because he was just a kid, who was standing behind the brown wooden counter pouring three cups of coffee, looked at him in surprise.
“Yes. Would you like anything else?”
“Why’s she called that?”
The spotty face and stressed eyes tried to avoid his odd questions.
“I don’t know. I’m new. Can I get you anything else?”
“Three Danishes, with cheese.”
They drank the coffee and ate the Danishes and looked out of the window as the boat cut through the water that still came in waves, despite the fact that there was only a narrow channel through the ice. The boat journey would take forty minutes. At eleven fifty-seven they would disembark at Vaxholm and have a seafood lunch at Vaxholm Hotel—Ewert had reserved a table for three by the window with a view of the sea.
He wound down. He felt calm. But all the same, fucking Schwarz forced his way in. Despite all the water out there, the ice, the archipelago.
He just needed a few hours of peace! He would have the strength to face this story and get to the bottom of it if he could only have these measly few hours to forget it! Grens closed his eyes and forced himself to think of something other than Schwarz. For a few minutes, maybe a couple, then Ruben Frey was there again, asking how far Ewert would be prepared to go to save his children.
I don’t have any damn children. We never had damn children. We didn’t get the time. Anni, we didn’t get the time.
But if we had. For example, Hermansson. If we’d had a daughter like Hermansson.
But we don’t. But if we had had, Anni, you know that I would go to any lengths to protect her.
Ewert leaned forward over the table and wiped the crumbs away from her chin with a red Christmas napkin. Then he asked if they wanted to go out. He thought that Anni would maybe like to feel the wind, the sea, the long days cooped up in her room and the hours spent looking out of the window at a world that she couldn’t be part of, she had to take the opportunity, she had waved.
They weren’t going particularly fast. He didn’t know much about speeds at sea, but the pimply boy in the kiosk knew that the maximum speed was twelve knots and that certainly didn’t sound far wrong. He carried Anni up the stairs, held her in his arms and rolled up the stairs as his limp compensated for the sea, Susann a few steps behind him with the wheelchair that she had folded up for the moment to get it through the door onto the deck.
The wind was even stronger out here. It was hard to stand still, and they both helped to hold Anni’s wheelchair. The odd drop of saltwater on their cheeks when the waves were big, but it felt good, like the shiver of a slightly too cold shower in the morning. He looked at Anni, who was sitting by the railing, her chin just reaching over it, so she could be part of something that lived its own life. The happiness that she sometimes gave him washed over him again, simply by showing herself that
she
was happy.
“I know what you’re hoping for. And I think it’s good what you’re doing, what you’re giving her, but I don’t want you to hope for
too much
.”
“Call me Ewert.”
“I mean, because then it could really hurt when it doesn’t happen.”
“She waved.”
The medical student called Susann had one hand on Anni’s shoulder, the other still around the handle of the wheelchair. She didn’t look at him when she said all this, her eyes fixed on Vaxholm, which was expanding on the port side of the boat.
“I know that that’s what you think you saw. I also know that it’s impossible, in neurological terms. A reflex. I think it was a reflex movement. That’s all.”
“I know exactly what the hell I saw.”
She turned toward him.
“I don’t want to upset you. But you will be, you’ll get hurt if you invest too much hope in this. That’s all. I mean, you should take her out like this, I think it’s fantastic for her, and maybe that’s enough, isn’t it? To know that, I mean.”
He didn’t really know what he’d actually thought. That when she saw the boat, she’d wave again? That she’d show the bastards, convince them? They ate in silence, the fish was as good as he’d heard it was, but there wasn’t much more to talk about. Anni had a good appetite, she ate and she dribbled and spilled on herself, and he and Susann raced to be the first to clean her up. He’d arranged for a cab to come at half past one and it arrived on time, and an hour or so later they parted at Gåshaga dock. He kissed Anni on the forehead and promised to come and see her, on Monday at the latest. He managed to get through the city pretty quickly as the rush-hour traffic hadn’t built up yet, so he could concentrate on making a call to Sven Sundkvist from the car to get an update on what had happened in the past few hours, and to Ruben Frey at Hotel Continental—he wanted to talk to the poor man, he wanted to warn him that perhaps he shouldn’t hope for
too much
.
THE PAST TWENTY-FOUR HOURS WERE UNLIKE ANYTHING HE HAD
experienced before. Not even that day eighteen years ago when his only child had been found dying on his own bedroom floor. He had been emotionally more open then, easier to touch. He had really internalized her death, he had felt it and understood that it was real, and on several occasions had been close to taking his own life, as there was nothing left to live for. He had become more closed since then. He had, apart from the time when they desperately tried to have another child, not been able to touch Alice, not at all; he had been as good as the living dead.
Edward Finnigan was sitting in his car driving north along Route 23. He had worked as the governor’s adviser for as long as they could remember, since they met when studying law at Ohio State University two decades before Robert was elected. And then when the long campaign that they had fought together for all those years finally resulted in a governor post, they had simply moved their work to the office on South High Street in Columbus, all their efforts and strategic planning had finally paid off, he was the governor’s closest partner and the one who dealt with everything that officially and unofficially passed through Ohio’s center of power.