Unwanted (7 page)

‘You’re cheating, Pedda, you’re cheating. You’re not listening.’

Peder had to smile. No, he wasn’t listening. Not properly, not the way he normally did when he was talking to his brother.

‘You coming soon, Pedda?’

‘I’m coming soon,’ Peder promised. ‘I’ll see you at the weekend.’

‘Is that long?’

‘No, it’s not long now. Only a few days.’

Then they rounded off the conversation the way they always did: with extravagant promises of kisses and hugs and eating posh cake with marzipan together when they saw each other. Jimmy sounded relatively happy. He would be seeing their parents tomorrow.

‘It could just as easily have been you, Peder,’ Peder’s mum had told him, more times than he could remember.

When he was little, she used to cup his face in her warm hands as she said it.

‘It could just as easily have been you. It could just as easily have been you who fell off the swing that day.’

Peder still had very sharp visual images in his head from the day his brother fell off the big swing their father had hung from one of the birch trees in the garden. He remembered the blood running over the stone Jimmy’s head had landed on, the grass smelling so strong because it was freshly mown, Jimmy lying on the ground, looking as if he was asleep. And he remembered rushing over and trying to cradle his little head that was bleeding so badly.

‘You mustn’t die,’ he had shouted, thinking of the rabbit they had buried so sadly, a month or so earlier. ‘You mustn’t die.’

His plea had been answered, in one sense, for Jimmy stayed with them. But he was never the same again, and although his body grew as fast as Peder’s, he remained a child.

Peder leafed through his notebook again. No, you never knew what surprises life would deal you. Peder certainly thought he knew more about that than most people. Not only in view of what happened to his brother when he was growing up, but also as a result of bitter experience gained later in life. Not to mention just recently. But he’d rather not think about that.

He was roused from his reverie by the sound of Fredrika in the corridor outside.

Alex had told Peder a few weeks earlier, in confidence of course, that Fredrika lacked the tact and sensitivity you needed for this profession. Peder couldn’t have put it better himself. To be frank, Fredrika was your classic anally retentive type. And she didn’t seem to have any kind of proper man to give her a proper seeing to at regular intervals, but Peder decided not to mention that to Alex. Alex was remarkably uninterested in thoughts and comments of that kind; he never wanted to talk about anything except work. Maybe eventually, when they’d been working together for longer, they’d be able to go for a beer together one evening? He felt a tickle of excitement in the pit of his stomach. There were few police officers who could even contemplate that – a beer with Alex Recht.

It really annoyed him that Fredrika couldn’t see, and therefore didn’t acknowledge, Alex’s greatness in the policing world. There she sat in her little jacket – she always wore a jacket – with her dark hair plaited in an improbably long plait that hung like a riding crop down her back, looking so bloody sceptical it made him want to throw up. There was something about the way she held herself, and that cocky laugh she would sometimes let out, that he simply couldn’t stand. No, Fredrika wasn’t a police officer; she was a so-called academic. She thought too much and acted too little. That wasn’t how police officers operated.

Peder cursed the fact that he’d been passed over in favour of Fredrika yet again and not been sent to talk to Sara Sebastiansson. At the same time, he cursed the fact that he hadn’t any extra spare time to give to the job, anyway. His private life was still using up too much of his energy for him to be able to function effectively.

Even so. Hadn’t Alex sounded confident the case of the missing Lilian would soon be solved? Wasn’t it very often the case that a man feeling wronged by his wife would use their child to punish her? So the Lilian case was not to be considered particularly major or important. Seen in that light, it was more understandable that Fredrika was going with Alex to interview Sara at home. It was actually a good thing that she and not Peder had been asked to go, because she was the one who needed to hone her skills, not him.

What Peder hardly dared admit, even to himself, was that for all the criticism he directed at her, he found Fredrika remarkably attractive. She had perfect skin and lovely, big blue eyes. Blue eyes when everything else about her was dark created an effect that was frankly dramatic. Her body looked as though it belonged to someone who had just turned twenty, though her bearing and the look in her eyes were those of a mature woman. She certainly had the breasts of an extremely mature woman. Peder occasionally caught himself thinking really filthy thoughts about Fredrika. He strongly suspected that university student unions and pubs were places that turned many young students into really good sexual partners. He suspected equally strongly that Fredrika was one of them. He avoided catching her eye when she automatically glanced into his room as she passed the door. He wondered what going to bed with her would be like. Probably not bad at all.

I
n a top-floor flat under the eaves in Östermalm, Fredrika Bergman was rounding off her intensive working day in the company of her lover. Fredrika and Spencer Lagergren had been seeing each other for a good number of years. In fact, Fredrika didn’t like to remind herself quite how many years it was, but on the rare occasions she did let herself remember, she always went back to the first time they spent the night together. Fredrika had been twenty-one at the time, and Spencer forty-six.

There wasn’t anything very complicated about their relationship. Over the course of the years, Fredrika had sometimes been single, sometimes involved in another relationship. At the times when she had someone else, she would refrain from seeing Spencer. A lot of men and women seem to be able to see two partners simultaneously. Fredrika couldn’t.

Spencer could, however, and Fredrika was always very much aware of it. Spencer and his wife Eva had got married one sunny day almost thirty-five years before, and he would never leave her for anyone else. Or only for the occasional weekday evening. Fredrika found this an entirely satisfactory arrangement. Spencer was twenty-five years older than her. Common sense told her that such an equation would prove impossible. Cold mathematical calculations also told her that if she really were to give her life to Spencer, if she chose to live with him, it would not be all that many years before she was alone again.

So Fredrika contented herself with seeing Spencer on a sporadic basis and accepting her role as the second, not the first, woman in his life. By extension of the same principle, she did not let it worry her either that their relationship never grew or developed. So Spencer Lagergren was just what she needed, on the whole. So she told herself.

‘I can’t get this cork out,’ said Spencer, frowning as he struggled with the bottle of wine he had brought.

Fredrika ignored him. He would rather die than let her try to open it. Spencer was always in charge of the wine, Fredrika of the music. They both loved classical music. Spencer had once tried to persuade her to play him something on the violin she still kept. But she refused.

‘I don’t play any more,’ came her firm, abrupt reply.

And no more was said on the subject.

‘Perhaps soaking the neck of the bottle in hot water would ease it a bit,’ Spencer muttered to himself.

His shadow played across the kitchen tiles as he moved to and fro with the bottle. It was a small kitchen; he was perpetually just a couple of steps away from treading on her toes. But she knew he never would. Spencer never trod on a woman’s toes, except perhaps when he was expressing his not entirely modern views in feminist discussions. And even then, he did so in such a brilliant way that he almost always emerged from those discussions on the winning side. In Fredrika’s eyes, and those of many other women, that made him an altogether very attractive man.

Fredrika noted he had finally won his fight with the wine bottle. Artur Rubinstein was playing Chopin in the background. Fredrika crept up behind Spencer and gently put her arms around him. She leant her head wearily on his back, her forehead resting against the body she knew best in the world apart from her own.

‘Are you tired, or shattered?’ Spencer asked quietly, pouring the wine.

Fredrika smiled.

She knew he was smiling, too.

‘Shattered,’ she whispered.

He turned in her embrace, and held out a glass of wine. She rested her forehead on his chest for a split second before she took the glass.

‘Sorry I was so late today.’

Spencer raised his glass in a silent toast, and they enjoyed their first sip.

Fredrika had not been particularly keen on red wine before she met Spencer. Now she found it hard to forgo it for more than a few days at a time. The good professor had indisputably taught her some bad habits.

Spencer ran a gentle hand across her cheek.

‘I was late last time, you know,’ was all he said.

Fredrika gave a little smile.

‘But it’s eleven o’clock, Spencer. You certainly weren’t that late, last time we met.’

For some reason – maybe because she felt guilty, maybe because she was tired – tears came to her eyes.

‘Oh, don’t get upset . . .’ began Spencer, seeing the glint of moisture in her eyes.

‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I . . .’

‘You’re tired,’ said Spencer firmly. ‘You’re tired, and you hate your job with the police. And that, my friend, is a really bad combination.’

Fredrika drank more of her wine.

‘I know,’ she said in a low voice, ‘I know.’

He put a steady arm around her waist.

‘Stay at home tomorrow. We’ll both stay here.’

Fredrika gave an imperceptible sigh.

‘No chance,’ she said. ‘I’m working on a new case now. A little girl’s gone missing. That’s why I was so late: we were interviewing the child’s mother and the mother’s new boyfriend all evening. Such a horrible story you can hardly believe it’s true.’

Spencer pulled her closer. She set down her glass and put both arms around him.

‘I’ve missed you,’ she whispered.

Saying anything like that was admittedly against the unspoken rules they agreed on, but Fredrika was too exhausted to worry about any agreement just then.

‘I’ve missed you, too,’ mumbled Spencer as he kissed the top of her head.

Fredrika stared into his eyes in astonishment.

‘Now there’s a coincidence, eh?’ said Spencer with a crooked smile.

It was after one before Fredrika and Spencer finally decided to try to get some sleep. As usual, Spencer was able to put the decision into practice with little delay. Fredrika found it much harder.

The wide double bed stood along one wall of what was really the only proper room in the flat. Apart from the bed, the flat was sparsely furnished with a couple of battered old English armchairs and a beautiful chess table. Over by the little kitchen there were also a small dining table and two chairs.

The flat had belonged to Spencer’s father, and he had inherited it when his father died, nearly ten years ago now. Since then, Fredrika and her lover had never really met anywhere else. She had still never been to Spencer’s main home, which felt logical. The only times they met somewhere other than the flat were when Fredrika occasionally discreetly accompanied Spencer to some conference abroad. She thought a number of his colleagues must know about their liaison, but quite honestly she couldn’t have cared less. What was more, Spencer’s status among his professorial colleagues was extraordinarily high, so he was never confronted with any direct questions.

Lying there in Spencer’s arms, Fredrika curled up into a little ball. He was breathing deeply behind her and already fast asleep. She stroked a cautious finger over the hairs on his naked arm. She couldn’t imagine a life without him. Such thoughts were indescribably dangerous, she knew that. Yet she could not banish them. And they always came when the night was at its darkest and she was feeling at her loneliest.

She shifted carefully until she was lying on her back.

The visit to Sara Sebastiansson’s had been a strain in every way. Partly because of Sara Sebastiansson herself, of course. The woman was entirely unbalanced. But also because of Peder. He had been mightily pleased when Alex decided Fredrika should not go to see Sara Sebastiansson on her own. Fredrika had seen him straighten up, and his face had broken into a sneering grin.

‘
It’s not that I’m questioning your competence
,’ Alex had said.

Fredrika knew all too well that that was exactly what he was doing. Expectations of her, a young woman with an academic background, were set extremely low. She was assumed to be barely capable of operating the photocopier. She could sense Alex’s irritation whenever she dared put forward or develop a new hypothesis.

His attitude to the woman in Flemingsburg was a case in point.

Fredrika found it hard to exclude her from the investigation. It was frankly grotesque that Sara hadn’t been asked for a description of the woman and that they hadn’t done a photofit. On the way back to the office after they had seen Sara, Fredrika had tried to raise the question again, but a weary Alex had firmly interrupted her.