Last Will (54 page)

“Goodness,” she said, looking inside the hallway.

It was empty.

“What … ?” she said, stepping inside the house. “Ebba? Hello … ?”

She took a few more steps and looked up the stairs.

The door slammed behind her and she jumped with shock and spun around.

Bernhard Thorell was standing there, pressed against the wall of the hall, holding a long-barreled pistol in his hand and smiling at her.

“Well look who it is, the doctoral student,” he said. “How lovely. Do come in!”

Annika’s heart stopped for a moment. She stared at him without returning his smile.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she said.

“Oh,” he said, tilting his head slightly. “Now I remember. You’re a reporter, aren’t you? One of those people who ask questions and stick their noses in where they don’t belong.”

Annika glanced around.

“We don’t have that expression in Swedish,” she said. “Where’s Ebba?”

“Oh, she’s very much at home,” Bernhard Thorell said. “Do go into the living room!”

He gestured with the gun toward the library and Annika took a few hesitant steps toward the double doors, not wanting to turn her back on the pistol. Bernhard Thorell gave her a hard shove, making her head hit the doorframe.

She clenched her teeth against the pain, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of hearing her cry out. The man walked toward her, and the next shove pushed her into the library. She stumbled into the room and tripped over something, falling headlong onto the floor and landing in front of the fireplace.

She got up onto one elbow to see what she had stumbled over.

It was Francesco, or rather his remains. The dog had been shot through the head, probably fairly recently. Blood and brains were still spilling from his body, soaking into the Persian rug.

Annika said nothing, and got to her feet.

Ebba was curled up in the sofa, in floods of tears. Her knees were pulled up under her chin and she had her arms clasped around her ankles. She didn’t look at Annika, was just staring at the dog’s body on the floor.

Annika stopped, unsure of what to do.

Bernhard Thorell was a full-blooded sadist, and would enjoy every hint of pain and grief. He was probably loving every second of Ebba’s sobbing.

The cat in the contraption, the nail through the eye.

Her knees started to tremble—dear God, was that what lay in store for them? Were they going to be murdered and mutilated?

No fear, she thought. No sorrow, no pain.

She turned toward the pharmaceutical company MD once more.

“I was serious when I asked,” she said. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Bernhard Thorell, who had walked across the room and was now standing at the far wall, nodded appreciatively.

“Can you go and sit next to crybaby? Thank you. I’m actually only here to pick something up,” he said, gesturing with his gun toward the painting of Beatrice Cenci.

Annika walked slowly and carefully across the room, not taking her eyes off the man over by the painting.

“I’ve been looking for this for a long time,” he said. “I missed it at auction in St. Petersburg three years ago, and ever since I’ve been trying to find out where it had gone. You managed to keep it well hidden!”

He nodded to Ebba and smiled.

Annika sank down beside Ebba and took her hands; they were completely cold. The woman didn’t respond. She still wasn’t looking at Annika, just at the dead dog.

“Why do you care about an old painting?” Annika said.

“It’s not the painting, or the frame, that I want,” he said. “It’s Beatrice.”

“She was just a murderer,” Annika said. “Why are you so interested in her?”

A flicker of annoyance crossed his handsome features.

“You don’t know anything about Beatrice,” Bernhard Thorell said, raising the gun toward them. “You know she killed her father, Francesco Cenci, but do you know what she used as the murder weapon?”

Annika didn’t reply.

Bernhard lowered the gun and said in a calmer voice:

“Two nails,” he said. “She drove one through her father’s eye, into his brain, and the other through his throat into his spine.”

Annika felt suddenly sick.

“I thought she poured molten lead in his ear and knocked his teeth out,” Annika said.

Now Bernhard Thorell laughed merrily, his beautiful eyes flashing.

“You’ve been looking too deeply into Nobel’s testament,” he said. “
Nemesis
isn’t a factual description of the events surrounding Beatrice Cenci’s life and death—the play is much more than that. It’s a moral reflection on human retribution and guilt, on the power of the church and the sins of the father.”

Annika stared at the man.
Nobel’s will, the power of the church and the sins of the father.

Why had he started to kill people in the same way as Beatrice Cenci?

Why did he identify so strongly with her?

“Do you know how they got her to confess?” Bernhard Thorell asked. “Do you know what the Vatican’s torturers did to break her?”

Annika looked down at the rug.

“They cut off her hair,” he said, “they stripped her naked and tied her hands behind her back. Then they hoisted her into the air by her arms,
which were tied behind her back. Can you picture it? Can you see her before you? Can you see her hanging there, so naked, so thin, such small breasts? Higher and higher, until she was two meters up, and when they let her fall, almost to the floor, both her arms were dislocated by the jolt. That’s when she lost consciousness.”

Bernhard laughed.

“But even that didn’t make her confess. Only when her brothers came into the torture chamber and gave the game away, only then did she give up. There was no point fighting anymore.”

Annika closed her eyes; a thought was circling on the edge of her mind, something Bernhard Thorell had said—unless it was Berit?

Sun, heat, grass.

I kept the family farm in Roslagen after my parents’ accident …

“Perhaps you’re wondering how I know all this,” he said. “Perhaps you think I’m just making it up. I’m not.”

Annika kept her eyes closed.

The newsroom, Berit with a cup of coffee, crumbs in the corners of her mouth.

Simon Thorell, a venture capitalist, pretty much the first to make a killing from it. He and his wife died in a car crash in the Alps, if I remember rightly. A pretty tragic story …

“Alexandre Dumas,” Bernhard Thorell said. “He went through the records and proceedings from Beatrice’s trial. It’s all described in great detail in
Celebrated Crimes, volume 1, part 2
. The chapter is called
The Cenci
.”

The power of the Church. The sins of the father. All described in Nobel’s spiritual testament.

Annika opened her eyes and looked right at the man.

“You see a connection between you and Beatrice,” she said. “You’re fascinated with her because you did the same as her. You killed your father, just as she killed hers.”

Bernhard Thorell raised his eyebrows and smiled.

“You did something to their car, so that they died in a car crash,” Annika said. “How did you do it?”

“It was
such
a tragic accident,” he said.

“How did you know what to do?” Annika asked. “You were only a child.”

Bernhard Thorell got up and walked over to the painting, removed the protective glass case and stared in fascination at the child-woman’s face.

“Sixteen,” he said, his eyes caressing the picture. “I was sixteen, about the same age as Beatrice.”

Good God, Annika thought. He’s a monster.

“What did you do to the brakes?” she asked, forcing her voice to sound calm.

The man turned toward her and gestured with the gun toward the road.

“Did you see the Jaguar outside? The red one? A ’63 model—I’ve restored every last nut and bolt. I got it from my uncle when I was fourteen. Cutting the brake line on Dad’s car took a matter of seconds.”

Annika felt her heart pounding, and dug her nails into her palms to make herself breathe calmly.

“Why?” Annika said. “Why did you do it?”

Bernhard Thorell looked at her and suddenly she knew. Of course, it was so simple.

“You think Alfred Nobel was writing about you, don’t you?” Annika said. “You think that Nobel’s literary testament is really the story of your life.”

He tilted his head, listening intently.

“You genuinely think that you’re Beatrice,” Annika said. “Your father was rich and powerful, just like Francesco, and he did things to you, didn’t he? He raped you, just like Beatrice’s father did to her.”

Bernhard Thorell raised the pistol toward her, and she could see it was shaking now.

“But you’re wrong,” Annika said, staring hard at him. “You’re not Beatrice Cenci at all, and there’s no way you can be like her. No one will ever write a play about you. You’re never going to be the avenger of wronged innocence and downtrodden justice.”

“Ah,” he said, lowering the gun again, “but you’re wrong there.”

“No,” Annika said. “There is justice, both here and beyond the grave.”

He laughed in amusement, but Annika thought she could detect a note of uncertainty.

“And you’re never going to get the Nobel Prize either,” she said. “You know that, don’t you?”

The smile faded, and he took several steps toward her.

“Caroline made sure you missed out last year,” Annika said, “and Ernst made sure you won’t be getting it this year, and from now on your prison sentence will stop you from getting it in the future.”

He laughed again, scornfully this time.

“And who’s going to catch me?” he asked. “You?”

A second later the double doors crashed in, and voices and noise invaded the room from the kitchen. Bernhard Thorell looked away from Annika and Ebba on the sofa and aimed his weapon alternately toward the hall doors and the kitchen. Police officers in helmets and riot gear were visible in both doorways, all aiming their automatic weapons at Bernhard Thorell.

“Drop the revolver!” one of them shouted.

Ebba started to cry louder.

Bernhard Thorell looked at the police in horror.

“But,” he said, “what the hell is this?”

“Put the weapon down and take two steps back,” the police officer said again.

“But I haven’t done anything,” he said. “What are you doing?”

The police started to move forward, one step at a time, and Bernhard raised his hands.

“Okay, okay,” he said. “I’m putting it on the table, is that okay?”

He tilted his head again and smiled at the police.

Damn it, Annika thought. He thinks he can charm his way out of this as well.

“It’s all just a misunderstanding,” Bernhard Thorell said. “I’m only here to pick up a painting.”

They handcuffed him and led him out of the room.

In the doorway he stopped and looked sadly at Ebba.

“You should have taught your dog to behave better,” he said. “I have a feeling it’s shat itself.”

Annika stayed in the sofa once the police had taken Bernhard Thorell away, unable to get up. Ebba, on the other hand, staggered over to Francesco, where she slumped down and wrapped her arms around the dead dog.

Several plainclothes police officers came into the room, then walked out again. They were talking to each other on police radios that crackled and bleeped, but Annika couldn’t make out what they were saying. She could only hear Ebba’s heavy sobs, but was unable to offer her any comfort.

Detective Inspector Q came into the room, stopping in the doorway and looking around.

“Are you okay, tough girl?” he asked Annika.

She nodded mutely.

The officer went over to the fireplace and bent over Ebba, saying something to her that Annika couldn’t hear. Then he led Ebba back to the sofa, where she slumped down next to Annika again.

“How did all this come about?” Annika asked, hearing that her voice was hoarse. She still had a sour taste in the back of her mouth from earlier, when she had almost been sick.

“There’s an ambulance on its way,” Q said, looking at Ebba. “Have you been physically hurt?”

Ebba shook her head.

“You’re in shock, so I want you to take a quick trip to Danderyd Hospital so that they take a look at you,” he said, holding her hand. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Ebba nodded.

“How could you have known?” Annika asked, but Q gestured to her to hold off for a while.

“Can you tell me what happened?” he asked Ebba.

The woman cleared her throat and took a deep breath.

“He … he rang the doorbell,” she said in a shaky voice, looking quickly from Annika to Q. “I let him in. He said he wanted to look at the picture, my Guido Reni, the portrait of Beatrice Cenci.”

She shook her head.

“How could he have known I had it?”

Annika looked down at her hands.

“I told him,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

Ebba looked at her for a few seconds.

“I said he couldn’t, of course, I had no intention of giving him the painting, and that’s when he shot Francesco. He said he was going to shoot me too if I didn’t do as he said. Then the doorbell rang again.”

“That was me,” Annika said, staring at Q.

“Your name is Ebba?” Q asked, putting his hand on the woman’s arm. “You know what, I’ll make sure you get off to hospital, and we’ll look after your dog while you’re gone, and then I’d like to talk to you some more about what happened this evening, if that would be all right?”

He turned to Annika.

“How about you, did he hurt you at all?”

She shook her head.

“My children are across the road asleep,” she said. “I’ve got to get back to them.”

“Wait here,” Q said.

“Just one thing,” Annika said, turning to Ebba. “Were you driving a car on Barnhusbron on Monday?”

Ebba looked at her, bewildered.

“What?” she asked.

“I thought I saw you in your car on Barnhusbron on Monday.”

“On Monday?” Ebba said. “But I was at Johan and Tina’s then. I told you, you know that.”

Annika felt ashamed of asking.

“I just thought I saw you,” she said, “but I must have been mistaken.”