The Long Shadow (24 page)

Now they were sitting at the kitchen table in their pyjamas, eating their toasted sandwiches, as she drank a mug of coffee.

‘Daddy’s going away,’ Kalle said, pushing the empty yoghurt pot aside. ‘He’s going to Málaga and we’re going to stay with Sophia.’

Annika stared at the wall. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I know.’

‘Why can’t we stay with you, Mummy?’ he said. ‘I don’t want to be with her. I want you.’

She stroked his hair, and he pushed her hand away. He was a big boy now. ‘It’s Daddy’s week,’ she said. ‘You know that. And I have to go to work too. I’m going to Málaga as well.’

‘Are you going to work with Daddy?’ Kalle asked in surprise.

‘No, not really. We’re just going to be in the same place.’

‘Why can’t we come?’

‘Daddy and I are both going there to work, but not together. We’ve got different jobs, you know that.’

She stared into her mug of coffee and clenched her jaw. She didn’t want to show how furious she was about Thomas’s decision to leave the children with Sophia while he was away on business.

Then she realized that Ellen was motionless. As Annika watched, the little body started to shake with sobs. ‘Oh, darling, what is it?’ She took her in her arms and rocked her slowly. The little girl didn’t say anything, just curled up into a foetal position and put her thumb into her mouth. Annika felt reality seeping into the kitchen and clutched the child tighter. ‘Daddy’s going to
pick you up today,’ she said. ‘He’ll be at home with you tonight, and if you eat your tea quickly you might have time to watch a film together afterwards.’

‘
Spiderman
!’ Kalle said, lighting up.

‘That might be a bit too rough for Ellen,’ Annika said. ‘But you could take
Desmond and the Swamp Barbarians
with you, if you like.’

‘But we’ve seen that,’ Kalle said.

‘It’s so good, though, that it’s worth watching lots of times,’ Annika said, and blew into Ellen’s hair. ‘You’ll be staying with Sophia on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and on Friday Grandma and Granddad are going to come and take you out to the island – you can play with Zico. And on the day before May Day Daddy will be home, and on Monday I’ll pick you up from school and you’ll be able to tell me all about what you’ve been doing.’

‘She’s horrid,’ Ellen said, wiping her nose on Annika’s T-shirt.

‘No, she isn’t,’ Annika said, feeling the hypocrisy echo through her body. ‘Sophia’s really nice. She’s very pleased that she’s going to be able to look after you.’

‘She only likes Daddy,’ Kalle said.

Annika could feel panic building. She wiped her daughter’s nose with a bit of kitchen roll and stared out at the persistent rain. At certain moments everything she said was a lie. She lied to justify her choices in life, making the children pay the price for her failures, dragging them between one home and the other. She had to bite her lip to stop herself crying. ‘I know it’s hard,’ she said. ‘I miss you too when you’re not with me.’

‘Why can’t we be with you all the time?’ Kalle asked.

‘I want to be with you all the time,’ Ellen said, clinging to Annika’s neck so hard that she had trouble breathing. Gently she loosened the little girl’s arms.

‘All children have a mummy and daddy,’ Annika said, ‘and the best thing for children is to grow up with both of them, but if that isn’t possible people have to find another way.’

Kalle was looking at her obstinately. ‘Why do only the grown-ups decide?’ he said. ‘Why aren’t children allowed to?’

She swallowed her pain and smiled at him. ‘When you get bigger you can make your own decisions.’

‘I’m big now.’

‘You’re eight years old, not that big.’

‘When’s big, then?’

‘Big enough to decide where to live? When you’re twelve, maybe.’

Kalle slumped. ‘That’s four more years.’

‘I don’t want to stay with Sophia,’ Ellen said.

Annika looked at the time, then stood up, still holding her daughter. ‘Okay, leave your sandwiches, I’ll deal with them later. Kalle, off you go and get dressed. Ellen, go and put on the clothes we picked out last night. Your bags are packed, aren’t they? You’ve got everything you’re going to need?’

The children wandered off to their rooms.

Annika stood in her minimalist kitchen and watched them go.

They managed to leave with a quarter of an hour to spare. Annika knew that she was a Fascist when it came to punctuality, a characteristic that had been accentuated during her marriage to Thomas, who was a hopeless optimist when it came to timing.

Having fifteen minutes in hand gave them time to sing as they walked. To stop and look in shop windows and talk about things they would like. To buy two packets of sweets at the kiosk on Kungsholmstorg and
promise not to open them before the film that evening.

The rain had eased and almost stopped. It was chilly, just a few degrees above freezing, but there was no wind. The clouds were resting thick and heavy on the rooftops and spires.

Annika had the children’s overnight bags over her shoulders, plus her own heavy bag with her papers and laptop. More and more things had to go with the children when they shuttled between homes, and up to now Annika hadn’t made them choose what to leave behind. It was no longer enough just to move new Poppy and new Chicken for the children to feel at home (old Poppy and old Chicken had gone up in flames in Vinterviksvägen): now there were favourite jeans, favourite jackets, best shoes, a few films and books that had to go with them.

Annika dropped Kalle off in the school playground with a quick goodbye hug. ‘See you in a week’s time. I’ll pick you up as usual from after-school club, okay?’

He nodded and ran off.

Then she and Ellen went to the after-school club and left the heavy bag containing Kalle’s things on the shelf marked with his name.

‘Can you carry me?’ Ellen asked, holding her arms up.

‘No,’ Annika said, adjusting Ellen’s hat. ‘You’re too heavy. You’re a big girl now. Here, hold my hand.’

They walked side by side through the underpass that connected the south and north of the island. Ellen was frowning as if she were thinking hard about something.

‘Mummy,’ she said, as they passed the City-Boules club. ‘Will I be a mummy one day?’

‘Maybe,’ Annika said. ‘If you want to.’

The child thought for a few moments. ‘But,’ she said, ‘if I’m a mummy, what will you be?’

‘I’ll still be your mummy, but I’ll be a grandma as well. For your children.’

Ellen nodded thoughtfully. ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘And then I’ll get old, and then you’ll be little again, and then I’ll be your mummy.’

‘Will you?’ Annika said, surprised.

‘Because when I get old, you’ll be dead, and then you’ll come back.’

‘Ah,’ Annika said. She had a child who believed in reincarnation.

They emerged into the grey daylight next to the Hotel Amaranten and walked down Pipersgatan towards the nursery school at the White House, slipping in past the entrance to Radio Stockholm and making their way to the third floor. Annika’s shoulders were aching when she finally put the heavy bag on Ellen’s shelf.

The little girl took off her outdoor clothes, her scarf and boots and snowsuit. Then she put on the slippers that looked like mice and adjusted her skirt.

‘I want you to have a really lovely time until I see you next Monday,’ Annika said, hugging her daughter.

Ellen nodded. Her tears from earlier were forgotten. ‘Mummy?’ she said. ‘Isn’t it funny? God is real but we can’t see him. But Father Christmas, we can see him but he isn’t real.’ Then she ran off to assembly.

The clouds had lifted a little and were now hovering a few metres above the rooftops. Annika felt as though she hadn’t seen blue sky for several weeks.

In February Sweden had been hit by record-breaking high temperatures. Snowdrops and crocuses had bloomed all the way up in Ångermanland, but March had been cold and windy, with several snowstorms. Eight people froze to death in Jämtland when a bus got stranded in the snow outside Trätgärde. On one of the weeks when
Thomas had had the children she had been sent up to Östersund to write about the ‘City of Death’. Otherwise she had been in Stockholm. She had hunkered down, running between home, school and the newsroom, and hadn’t had time for anything but everyday matters.

She went down the hill at the end of Barnhusbron, breathing the exhaust fumes of Fleminggatan into her lungs. She jumped on a number-one bus out towards Stora Essingen and managed to get a seat halfway through the journey.

She reached the main entrance of the newspaper’s offices at twenty past nine. She paused at the bus stop to peer through the gates of the Russian Embassy on the other side of the road. A guard wearing a hat with earmuffs was standing by the gate, stamping his feet and looking frozen. He couldn’t be a day over twenty.

She always used to try to sneak into the newsroom without being noticed, walking with her head down and her shoulders hunched, slipping towards the desk used by the day-shift reporters with her back to everyone. Then she would try to come up with something to fill her schedule, a story to chase up, an old article to reexamine. Now, in this new age, that sort of thing was a waste of effort. Patrik always had a long list of things for her to go through when she arrived. It could be anything from rewrites of articles about British nurses who had systematically murdered their patients to interviews with football stars who had just had their second child. As soon as the head of news spotted her by the caretaker’s desk, he would set off towards her. She usually found herself with a bundle of notes in her hand before she had even had time to take off her jacket.

The children’s calm, which came from their inability to feel stressed, was still somewhere within her as she
stepped into the newsroom and saw Patrik slam the phone down and come racing towards her.

‘Hello, Berit,’ she said, as she headed for the chair opposite her colleague.

‘The Costa Cocaine,’ Patrik yelled. ‘We need to sketch the outline of the series.’

She brushed the hair from her face and took a deep breath.

‘Looks like you’re off travelling again,’ Berit said, glancing up over her reading-glasses before she went back to her morning paper.

Annika put down her bag, took off her jacket and pulled out her chair.

‘This is what we’re going to do,’ Patrik said, sitting on her desk with a handwritten sheet of paper in his hand. ‘Four human-interest articles and two factual pieces. We’ll start with the human stuff.’ He left a dramatic pause and let his hand outline the imaginary headline in front of him. ‘One: “Costa del Sol, Europe’s money-laundering machine – where dirty money comes out clean”. Gibraltar is apparently a real tax haven. You’ll have to find a Swedish solicitor there who can explain how you turn drug-money into reputable business profits.’

Annika took out her pen and started making notes.

‘Two: “Cocaine parties in Europe’s Beverly Hills – the yachts, luxury cars, jet-set lifestyle”. You’ll need to dig out a young Swedish girl to talk about drug-fuelled parties in Puerto Banús. Ideally she’ll have been arrested in a drug raid and bitterly regret what she’s done. Breast implants would be an advantage.’

Annika looked up. ‘How important are they?’

Patrik lost his train of thought and lowered his hand. ‘What?’

‘On the priority list. How important are the breasts
compared with, say, how much she regrets her jet-set lifestyle?’

He shuffled on the desk in annoyance. ‘You’ll have to make a decision on that when you get there. Three: “My life as a drug-runner”. Contact that Swedish bloke in prison in Málaga and get him to talk about being a drug-runner.’

Jocke Martinez, Annika wrote in her pad. She’d remembered his name.

Niklas Linde had kissed her as he’d said it.

‘Four: “The hero who’s going to put a stop to the money-laundering”. There’s a seminar on international financial crime starting in Málaga tomorrow, Wednesday, and the Swedish government’s going to be represented by some civil servant who’s supposed to bring back everything he’s learned to Stockholm. Dig him out and do some sort of glamorous article about him and how vital his work is.’

Annika put her pen down. ‘That could be tricky,’ she said.

Patrik stared at her. ‘Of all the possible protests I expected to hear, this was way down at the bottom of the list.’

‘Your heroic Swede is my ex-husband,’ Annika said. ‘I know you think incest is good, especially if it’s kept within the family, but this feels a bit much.’

‘There must be someone else, some Swedish policeman down there or something, some liaison person …’

She forced herself to sound neutral. ‘He’s there incognito,’ she said.

‘Someone’ll be there in an official capacity.’

‘He’s Norwegian.’

Patrik stood up, irritated. ‘God, it’s all getting fucking complicated. The factual articles are easy: “This is how the drug trade works”. You’ll need to cover production,
transport, smuggling routes, distribution and sales, but don’t write too much. Keep it short and snappy. And the second: “How money-laundering works”. You describe the tax haven, the methods, the companies. Same thing there, short and sharp. You’ll have Lotta with you, so we’ll get some pictures that are actually publishable.’ He dropped a bundle of printouts in front of her computer.

‘Plane tickets and hotel rooms?’ Annika asked.

‘You’ll get the plane tickets by email today. You’ll have to sort out rooms when you get there. Find somewhere cheap this time.’

‘What about the gas murders?’ Annika asked. ‘Suzette’s still missing. The third killer is still on the loose, and the safe hasn’t been found.’

‘That story’s dead,’ Patrik said.

‘A missing girl?’ Annika said. ‘How can the story be dead?’

‘She was hardly a girl. She was a fucking
emo
. Just drop it.’

Annika gulped. He wasn’t worth arguing with. ‘Who’s Lotta?’ she asked instead.

‘New photographer, a temp,’ Patrik said, walking back to his desk.

The chair of the local journalists’ union, Eva-Britt Qvist, came marching across the newsroom, making straight for Annika.