Lars Kepler 2-book Bundle (95 page)

Twilight was starting to fall, but the snow reflected indirect light so that darkness could not engulf the house. Greta was at the bottom step, holding her violin case and duffel bag. Her cheeks were rosy from the cold, her striped scarf was wound close around her neck against it. Her hair was spread over her shoulders and sparkled from the snowflakes. She set her case on the dresser to hang up her coat and scarf. Then she took off her black boots and pulled out indoor shoes from her duffel bag.

Alice Riessen came down to the bottom of the stairs and held out her hands to her. Alice was exhilarated and her cheeks glowed with happiness.

“It’s good that the two of you are helping each other practise,” she said. “You have to be tough on Axel. Otherwise, he’ll just be lazy,” she scolded gently.

“I’ve noticed that.” Greta laughed.

Greta Stiernlood was the daughter of an industrial giant who had great holdings in Saab-Scania and Enskilda Banken. She’d been raised by her father—her parents had divorced when she was a baby, and her father had erected a barrier against her mother ever since. Very early in her life—perhaps even before she was born—her father had decided she would be a violinist.

After the two of them climbed the stairs to Axel’s music room, Greta went to the grand piano. Her shining hair curled to her shoulders. She was casually dressed in a Scottish tartan kilt, white blouse, dark blue cardigan, and striped socks.

She unpacked her violin, fastened the chin rest, wiped the rosin from the strings with a cotton cloth, tightened the bow, applied new rosin to it, set her music on the stand, and carefully tuned the instrument after its journey through the cold night.

Then she started to play. She played as she always did, with her eyes half shut as if concentrating on something inside herself. Her long eyelashes cast shadows over her serious face. Axel knew the piece well: the first movement of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D Major—a serious, searching theme.

He smiled as he listened. He respected Greta’s wonderful sense of music and the honesty in her interpretation.

“Nice,” he said as she finished.

Greta changed the music and stretched her fingers.

“But I still can’t decide … You know, Pappa wants me to play the Tartini Violin Sonata in G Minor. But I’m not so sure …”

She was silent, looking at the music, reading it, counting, and going over her memorisation of the complicated legato.

“Can I hear it?” Axel asked.

“It sounds terrible,” she said, blushing a little.

She played the last movement. Her face was tense, beautiful, and sad, but at the end, she lost the tempo just as the violin’s highest notes were supposed to rise like a catching fire.

“Damn,” she whispered, resting the violin under her arm. “I slowed down. I’ve been working like a beast but I have to give more to the sixteenths and the triplets, which—”

“Though I liked the swing, as if you were bending a large mirror towards—”

“I didn’t play it correctly,” she said, and blushed even deeper. “I’m sorry. I know you’re trying to be nice, but it won’t work. I have to play properly. It’s crazy that on the night before the performance I’m still not able to make up my mind. Should I take the easy way out or put all my effort into the difficult piece?”

“You know both of them well, so—”

“No, I don’t. It would be a big risk,” she said. “Perhaps, though … I’d need a few hours, maybe three hours, and then I might risk the Tartini tomorrow.”

“You shouldn’t do it just because your father thinks—”

“But he’s right.”

“No, he’s not,” Axel said. He began to roll a joint.

“I know the easy piece well,” she said. “But it might not be on a high enough level. It all depends on what you and Shiro Sasaki pick.”

“You shouldn’t think like that.”

“How am I supposed to think? You’ve never let me see you practise even once. What are you planning to play—have you even picked out a piece?”

“The Ravel,” he answered.

“The Ravel? Without even practising?”

She laughed out loud.

“No, seriously, which piece?” she asked.

“Ravel’s
Tzigane
—and that’s the truth.”

“I’m sorry, Axel, but that’s a crazy choice. You know that yourself. It’s too complicated, too quick, too reckless, and—”

“I’m going to play like Perlman, but without being in a hurry … because the piece shouldn’t be rushed.”

“Axel, it’s supposed to be allegro,” she said with a smile.

“Yes, for the hare that’s being chased … but for the wolf, it should go a bit more slowly.”

She gave him an exhausted look.

“Where did you read that?”

“Attribution”—he waved the joint—“Paganini.”

“Well, then, I only have to worry about our Japanese competitor,” she said as she tucked the violin back underneath her chin. “Since you never practise, you’ll never be able to play the
Tzigane.
”

“It’s not as hard as people say,” he replied as he lit the joint.

“No, indeed.” She smiled as she started to play again.

After a while, she stopped and looked levelly at Axel.

“You’re really going to play the Ravel?”

“Yep.”

She was serious. “Have you lied to me and been practising all this time? Maybe for four years? And not even telling me? Or what?”

“I decided this minute—the minute you asked.”

She laughed. “How can you be such an idiot?”

“I don’t care if I come in last,” he said as he stretched out on the sofa.

“I care,” she said simply.

“I know, but there’ll be other chances.”

“Not for me.”

She started to play the Tartini. It was better, but she stopped. She repeated the complicated passage again and then once more.

Axel clapped his hands and then he put David Bowie’s
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
on the record player. He put the needle over the LP and as the music started, he lay down, closed his eyes, and began to sing along:

Greta hesitated, put down her violin, walked over to him, and took the joint from his hand. She took a toke, another one, coughed, and handed it back.

“How can anyone be as dumb as you?” she asked as she touched his lips.

She bent over and wanted to kiss him on the lips, but her aim was off and she touched his cheek instead. She whispered “Sorry” and then kissed him again. They kept their lips together, searching and seeking. He drew off her cardigan and her hair sparked from static electricity. He received a little charge when he touched her cheek and snatched his hand back. They smiled nervously at each other and then they kissed again. He unbuttoned her white, stiffly ironed blouse and felt her tiny breasts through her simple bra. She helped him take off his T-shirt. Her long, lustrous hair smelled like the fresh air of snow and winter, but her body was as warm as newly baked bread.

They moved into his bedroom and sank deeply onto his bed. Her hands trembled as she unzipped and pulled off her skirt, and for a moment it seemed she would pull off her panties at the same time, but that’s not what she had intended, and her hands kept them on as Axel pulled down her kneesocks.

“What’s wrong?” he whispered. “Do you want to stop?”

“I don’t know—do you?”

“No,” he said.

“I’m just a little nervous,” she said honestly.

“You’re older than I am.”

“Yes, you’re still just seventeen—I’m robbing the cradle,” she said, smiling.

Axel’s heart pounded as he pulled down her panties. She lay still as he kissed her stomach, her small breasts, her throat, her chin, her lips. She opened her legs and he lay on her and felt how she slowly pressed her thighs against his hips. Her cheeks flushed bright red as he slid inside her. She pulled him close and stroked his back and neck and sighed every time he sank into her.

Once they finished, panting, there was a thin layer of sweat between their nude bodies. They lay wrapped in each other’s arms, eyes closed, as they fell into a sweet sleep.

It was light outside when Axel woke up on the day he would lose everything. He and Greta had not shut the curtains. They’d fallen asleep together in the bed and slept the entire night.

Axel slowly got up and looked down at Greta, who slept with a completely calm face and the thick blanket crumpled about her. He walked to the door and stopped next to the mirror and looked at his naked seventeen-year-old body for a while. Then he continued into the music room. He closed the door to the bedroom softly and walked over to the grand piano. He took his violin out of its case and tuned it. He put it to his chin, went to stand by the window, and looking out at the winter morning and the snow being blown from the roofs in long veils, he began to play Maurice Ravel’s
Tzigane
from memory.

The piece begins with a sorrowful Romany melody, slow and measured, but then the tempo begins to increase. The melody echoes faster and faster in upon itself as a blistering, split-second memory of a summer night.

It’s an extremely fast piece.

Axel was playing because he was happy. He wasn’t thinking. His fingers ran and danced like eddies and ripples in a stream.

Axel started to smile. He was thinking of a painting his grandfather had in the drawing room. His grandfather had said it was the most apt and glowing version of
Näcken
by Ernst Josephson. As a child, Axel had loved the legends surrounding this mystical being whose violin music was so beautiful it lured people to their deaths, beautiful deaths drowning in the pool.

At that moment, Axel felt that he was just like the Näcke, a young man surrounded by water as he played. Except Axel was happy. That was the greatest difference between Axel and the Josephson painting.

His bow leaped over the strings at amazing speed. He didn’t care that some of the bow’s taut hair broke and danced in the air with the music.

This is how Ravel should be played
, he thought.
Not exotically but happily. Ravel is a young composer, a happy composer.

Axel let the final notes resonate in the body of the violin and then seem to whirl away like the light snow on the roof outside. He lowered his bow and was about to bow towards the snow outside when he realised that someone was behind him.

He turned and saw Greta in the doorway. She held the blanket around her body and her eyes were dark and strange as she looked at him.

Axel frowned at her stricken expression.

“What’s wrong?”

She didn’t answer. She swallowed loudly. A pair of large tears began to run down her cheeks.

“Greta, what’s the matter?” he asked, insistently.

“You told me that you hadn’t practised,” she said in a monotone.

“No, I … I …” he stammered. “I told you that I learned new pieces easily.”

“Congratulations.”

“What are you thinking?” he said, aghast. “It’s not what you think!”

She shook her head.

“I can’t believe I could have been so stupid,” she said.

He set down the violin and bow, but she was already closing the bedroom door behind her. Axel snatched up a pair of jeans he’d left hanging on the back of a chair and pulled them on. Then he knocked on the door.

“Greta? May I come in?”

There was no answer, and with that, a black clump of worry settled in his stomach. In a little while, she came out of the bedroom fully dressed. She didn’t even look at him as she put her violin in its case and gathered up her belongings to leave him alone.

The concert hall was full. Greta was the first to play. When she saw him, she looked away. She wore a blue velvet dress and a necklace with a heart pendant.

Axel sat alone in the dressing room and waited with half-closed eyes. It was absolutely silent. Only a small sound could be heard behind a dusty plastic fan guard. His little brother came into the room.

“Aren’t you going to sit with Mamma?” Axel asked.

“No, I’m too nervous. I can’t watch you perform. I’ll just sit here and wait.”

“Has Greta started yet?”

“Yes, it sounds good.”

“Which piece did she choose? Was it Tartini’s violin sonata?”

“No, something by Beethoven.”

“That’s good,” Axel muttered.

They sat together silently and said nothing more. After a while, there was a knock at the door. Axel stood up and opened it. A woman told him that he would be next.

“Good luck,” said Robert.

“Thanks,” Axel said. He picked up his violin with its bow and followed the woman through the hallway.

Great applause sounded from the audience. Axel caught a brief glimpse of Greta and her father as they hurried into Greta’s dressing room.

Axel walked close to the wings and had to wait through an introduction. When he heard his name, he walked into the centre of the spotlight and smiled at the audience. A murmur arose when he announced his selection, the
Tzigane
by Maurice Ravel.

He put his violin to his chin and lifted his bow. He began to play the sorrowful introduction and then sped up the tempo to the impossible speed. The audience seemed to hold its breath. He could hear that he was playing brilliantly, but this time the melody didn’t sparkle. His playing was no longer happy. It was as if he had become the Näcke, with a hectic, feverish sorrow. Three minutes into the piece, the notes were falling like rain in the night, and then he began to purposefully skip a few. He slowed, played off-key, and finally broke off the piece completely.

The concert hall was silent.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and then he walked off the stage.

The audience clapped politely. His mother got up from her seat in the audience and followed him. She stopped him in the walkway.

“Come here, my boy,” she said as she put her hands on his shoulders.

Then she stroked his cheek and her voice was warm as she said, “That was remarkable, the best interpretation I’ve ever heard.”