The Final Word (28 page)

‘Is that what it’s usually like for you? When the attacks come?’

Annika folded her arms and crossed her legs. ‘I suppose so.’

‘Can you describe the process?’

Why? The psychologist had seen for herself how it happened.

‘What you’re suffering from is called panic syndrome,’ the psychologist said. ‘It’s by no means unusual. You’re not alone.’

As if that was going to make Annika feel better. ‘I don’t understand why I can’t stop them,’ she said. ‘I mean, I can feel them coming, but I can’t do anything about it.’

The woman seemed about to say something, but changed her mind. A moment later she said, ‘Your behaviour is characterized by avoidance. The fact that you fight against and suppress your feelings is part of the problem. You can’t stop a panic attack with willpower. Instead, if you can bear it, you can choose to let yourself
be confronted by your traumas, allow the panic to come, and then pass.’

That was easy for the psychologist to say, Annika thought. Presumably she had her own problems, like everyone else, but considering that you needed top grades to study psychology, it was safe to assume that she’d had a secure, stable childhood. Probably upper middle class, raised in a nice suburb or a big flat in the centre of the city. She had two shiny gold rings on her left finger, so she was married, and the slack skin around her stomach, visible through her tight blouse, suggested at least one child. What could
she
really know about panic syndrome?

‘We were talking about your boyfriend, Sven, when the attack happened, and the way he used to—’

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Annika said.

The psychologist closed her notebook. ‘I can understand that,’ she said. ‘But if you want to get to grips with these attacks, I’m afraid you’re probably going to have to.’

‘I can’t,’ Annika said.

The psychologist smiled. ‘You’re capable of more than you think,’ she said. ‘The feelings that hit you when you talk about it are perfectly normal. Your body’s reaction is being magnified, but it isn’t remotely dangerous. I can help you.’

Annika felt her hands relax. ‘How?’

‘I’ll catch you if you fall.’

A shiver of anticipation (aha! A basic emotion!) ran
down Annika’s spine, and she cleared her throat. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said.

‘Why don’t you start by telling me how you first met Sven?’

The walls grew darker and began to close in on her.

‘What’s happening now?’ the psychologist asked. ‘What are you feeling?’

‘It’s . . . getting darker in here. A bit harder to breathe.’

‘On a scale of one to ten, how difficult does it feel?’

She paused (surprise! Another basic emotion!) and made an effort to consider how she felt. ‘Not too bad,’ she said. ‘Maybe . . . a two.’

‘Do you feel up to going on?’

‘I think so.’ More confident now. She rubbed her sweaty hands on her jeans. ‘He was the handsomest boy in the whole school, all the girls wanted him, and I was the one he chose.’ She felt herself stretching inside. ‘It was like winning the lottery,’ she said, ‘and I hadn’t even bought a ticket. I couldn’t understand what he saw in me, because I was so . . .’ Her throat tightened.

‘What were you?’ the psychologist asked.

‘Worthless,’ Annika said, and felt tears overflow, without any warning.

‘How are you feeling now?’ the psychologist asked. ‘Uncomfortable? Or sad, perhaps?’

Annika nodded, reached for a tissue and wiped her mascara. So here she was, after all, fishing about in the box of tissues.

‘How difficult is it, on the same scale?’

‘Three, maybe.’

The psychologist waited patiently. Annika blew her nose.

‘Now I’m going to ask a question that will activate your defence mechanisms,’ she said. ‘Try to feel what’s happening in your body. Pay attention to any sounds that arise, different physical sensations, if you feel hot or cold. Is that okay?’

Annika nodded again. The psychologist narrowed her eyes slightly and looked at her.

‘You said last time that Sven chased you, that he often threatened and hit you.’

Annika felt the pressure building inside her, as the darkness crackled at the edge of her field of vision.

‘Can you tell me about one occasion when that happened?’

‘There were so many.’

‘Pick one.’

The television on, sound turned down, a warm pizza carton in her hands, the smell of dough and oregano, the blow striking her on the left temple with no warning, the coffee-table hitting her shoulder, melted cheese on her arm, you fucking bitch, I saw you, what the fuck were you talking to Roland about, have you been fucking him?

The room vanished and was replaced by a dark grey gloom where she couldn’t breathe.

‘What are you feeling now? Can you describe it?’ The psychologist’s voice cut through the depths and opened up a sliver of clarity.

‘I’m falling,’ Annika heard herself say. ‘The greyness is swallowing me.’

‘On a scale, how difficult?’

How bad was the darkness, really?

‘A five, maybe . . .’

‘So you can go on?’

She was breathing with her mouth open, could feel the air hitting her throat. She could breathe. There was oxygen.

Her on top of him, him deep inside her, the punch from out of nowhere, I’m doing this for your sake! Bare feet in the snow, bleeding from the crotch.

‘Seven,’ she said, ‘hardly any air now. Eight.’

‘Do you feel able to go on?’

Darkness. The ironworks closing around her. Rust and ash. She can hear the sound of his breathing echo off the concrete walls, this is the end, she knows that, she won’t get away this time, you can’t leave me like this, what am I going to do without you? Annika, for fuck’s sake, I love you!

‘Ten,’ Annika managed.

‘You’re doing really well,’ the psychologist said, from somewhere beyond the shadows. ‘It’s okay for it to feel this hard. You don’t have to fight it.’

‘I don’t want to,’ she gasped.

‘Where are you? What can you see?’

Whiskas, oh, her sandy-coloured cat, no, no, no!

‘My cat,’ she said, unless she merely thought it.

The knife through the air, the cat’s dying scream,
NO
NO
NO
, the pipe, the flaking rust against her hands. Swinging it through the air, the sky shaking, the world turning red
. . . She was standing there with her dead cat in her arms and let the darkness drain away.

Silence.

The blackness didn’t swallow her.

The room came back. The air was light and soft, meeting her nose and throat with a hint of dust and sunlight. The psychologist’s glasses sparkled.

‘I didn’t have a panic attack,’ Annika said in surprise, sounding almost disappointed.

‘It’s going to take practice, and more exposure, but you’ve every chance of getting rid of them for good now,’ the psychologist said.

Was it really that simple? She could hardly believe it. Annika looked at the window. ‘He killed my cat,’ she said.

The psychologist waited.

‘It wasn’t an accident,’ she said. ‘I wanted him to die. I killed him.’

She nodded.

‘Not for what he’d done to me, but for what he’d done to my cat.’

Anders Schyman had heard thunder rumbling in the distance as he drove in from the coast. Chased by lightning, he had cruised through the traffic. Now he was jogging through the newsroom, the staff milling about him, sacrificial lambs on their way to slaughter, unaware of the
fate that awaited them. The air was so dense that it was almost impossible to inhale, and he was panting as he sat down at the editorial meeting.

Patrik Nilsson was obviously very excited as he handed out printed versions of the preliminary edition to the editors responsible for different sections of the paper, all the colleagues Schyman had fostered and trained, nurtured and drilled.
Take responsibility, stretch the boundaries, see every issue from all sides
. Anders Schyman sat down at the end of the conference table, closed his eyes and waited until the voices around him died away and the meeting came to order.

‘The trial of Ivar Berglund has been halted. The investigation is now being coordinated with the Spanish police,’ Patrik said, bouncing on to his chair. ‘Have we got hold of pictures of that Spanish businessman? Apparently he had five children, so there must be pictures of the kids.’

‘They’re in their fifties,’ the picture editor said, without looking up.

‘VICTIM OF THE TIMBERMAN,’ Patrik said, in his headline voice.

‘He hasn’t actually been found guilty yet,’ someone said – Schyman didn’t catch who it was.

‘We’ll put
Police Suspect
above it,’ Patrik said. ‘And then we need to talk to some frightened tourists in San Sebastián. How upset are they by all this brutality?’

‘He was from Bilbao . . .’

Patrik jotted something down. ‘We’ve already covered
all aspects of the murder in Nacka, his background, the international suspicions. Where do we go next?’

‘Maybe someone could call that police professor and ask him for a comment,’ Carina, the head of entertainment, said.

‘He just makes things up,’ Sjölander said.

‘That doesn’t matter,’ Patrik said. ‘Get Berit to give him a call. What have we got in social news?’

‘There was a new opinion poll this morning, saying the government is on its way out.’

‘Any statistically supported change from the one the day before yesterday?’

‘Not exactly,’ Sjölander conceded.

‘So what’s our angle?’

‘We could ask the police professor. He might say something scornful about a government minister while he’s at it.’

‘Excellent! Sport?’

‘Zlatan’s spoken out about being a father – it’s a really strong story.’

They all made notes.

‘Entertainment?’

‘Tomorrow’s Sweden’s National Day, and Princess Madeleine still hasn’t got on a plane to cross the Atlantic. We’ve got people at Newark waiting to see if she gets on the SAS flight to Stockholm this afternoon.’

‘Who have we got lined up to be furious if she doesn’t come?’

‘Herman Lindqvist?’ Entertainment Carina suggested.

‘No, we called him last time. Check the list of last year’s
Big Brother
participants – they’ll say anything to drag out their fifteen minutes . . .’

Carina made notes. Schyman folded his hands over his stomach to stop himself punching his head with his fists.

‘What else? Apart from “Fury at Madeleine”?’

‘Rosa’s aiming for the Eurovision Song Contest,’ Carina said. ‘She’s already written a number of songs.’

Suddenly Schyman stood up and everyone turned to look at him. He could see them in the distance, their faces swirling before his eyes, about to be sucked down a gigantic drain. He could feel himself sweating. ‘Carry on,’ he said, ‘I’m just going to . . .’ He made his way out of the meeting room and stumbled over to his secretary. ‘Announce a press conference at eleven o’clock,’ he said. ‘All staff to be present. And call Wennergren. Right away.’

The Costa del Sol quivered in the morning light. The coast of Africa shimmered on the horizon. Nina was already sweating in her long trousers and dark jacket. It would be extremely hot later, but that didn’t bother her. She liked the corrosive light, the smell of warm soil. This was her Spain, the colours and architecture, the high sky and scorched mountains that sang of her childhood.

She walked along the cracked pavement in her hard shoes. The residential district was so anonymous that it was virtually devoid of all interest, narrow streets lined with long terraces of identical white-stuccoed two-storey
houses. Tired hibiscus bushes framed the doorways, fallen bougainvillaea flowers blowing in the breeze. The winter rains had taken their toll on the façades: the whole area could do with repainting. It didn’t look as if it had been constructed in the most recent building boom, or in the one before that.

The house belonging to Arne Berglund was number 137. It was in the middle of a row consisting of thirty-two houses, each one confusingly similar to the next. There were white metal shutters over the windows, both on his house and those around it. The entire terrace looked neglected and abandoned. There were piles of rotting leaves by the doorways.

Police Inspector José Rodríguez from Marbella’s Policía Nacional stopped next to Nina and looked up at the building. ‘So this is supposed to be the hideaway of an international killer?’

And his mirror image, Nina thought.

Inspector Rodríguez nodded to the janitor, who stepped forward with a bunch of keys in his hand. ‘And what’s the main thing we will be able to
observe
inside?’

The Spaniard was sticking to the formalities. He had been careful to emphasize her status as an observer ever since she had walked into the police station in Marbella at eight o’clock that morning, an hour that in Inspector Rodríguez’s world appeared to be as torturous as
Fakala
. She herself had spent the night on two different trains, first the slow one from San Sebastián to Madrid, then an express from Madrid to Málaga on the Mediterranean coast.

The janitor, a young man barely out of his teens, jangled the keys. He found the right one, stuck it into the lock and turned it. The door had swollen and he had to use both hands to force it open. An alarm began to howl. The police inspector sighed. The janitor fumbled anxiously in his trouser pocket, pulled out a crumpled scrap of paper and, with trembling fingers, tapped a code into a panel on the hall wall. The alarm stopped abruptly. The silence that followed was deafening.

‘After you,
Observatora
,’ Inspector Rodríguez said, and politely held the door for Nina. She glanced at him as she fished a pair of latex gloves from her jacket pocket and pulled them on. She had already concluded that the inspector was of the less ambitious type: he wasn’t going to insist on searching the house personally. She hoped his inclination to stick to the rules wasn’t going to prevent her from showing a degree of initiative.

The closed shutters made the interior of the house gloomy. Nina pressed a light switch. Nothing happened.