Klara takes an even bigger gulp of wine and lifts the envelope.
‘What is this?’ she asks. ‘Why do you have an envelope that’s addressed to me?’
Maria sits down next to her on the sofa again. ‘Gabriella gave it to me last week. She asked me to keep it hidden and only mail it if something happened to her.’
Klara looks up and meets Maria’s eyes. ‘So she thought something might happen to her?’ she asks.
‘Recently she believed she was being followed. When she told me that, I didn’t know what to think. We didn’t know each other that well before, mostly just short chats in the stairwell. I recognized her, of course, from the news. She’s hard to miss with all that fabulous red hair.’
Klara nods.
‘But to believe you’re being followed,’ Maria continues. ‘Alf was…’ She pauses, takes a sip of wine to gather her strength. ‘My husband was manic depressive. Sometimes his manias led to paranoia. When Gabi talked about being followed, I’ll admit I was mostly worried about her mental health.’
‘I understand,’ Klara says. ‘It must have been terribly hard. With your husband, I mean.’
Maria nods slowly, staring out the window at the snow and the water. Then she shakes it off and turns to Klara again. ‘But Gabriella wasn’t paranoid. I quickly understood that, though she didn’t want to tell me what she was involved with.’
‘But why did she tell you she felt she was being followed?’ Klara asks.
Why didn’t Gabriella tell her anything this autumn? After everything they’d been through in the past few years? Didn’t Gabi trust her any more? She can’t make sense of it.
Klara takes another gulp of wine and leans back on the couch with the still-unopened envelope on her knee.
‘She probably wasn’t sure,’ Maria says. ‘And maybe she didn’t want to worry you? But she came up here and rang my door about a week ago. She pulled me to the kitchen window, which looks out onto the street, and pointed to one of the stairwells on the other side. A man stood there, talking on a phone. She asked me to check again the next night. And I did, and sure enough there he was again. And the night after that.
‘Before she left that night, she gave me this envelope and asked me to send it to you if anything happened. I thought it all seemed a bit dramatic. But, well, I’m drawn to such things, too. We have too little excitement in our lives, Klara. Well, not you and Gabriella. But I do. ’
Maria leans back on the sofa, staring thoughtfully down at her glass again. ‘But I didn’t think it would turn out like this. As I said, at first I thought she was a bit paranoid, that what she’d been through with Säpo had left its mark. But now I understand that she knew what was going on. Or what was about to happen.’
‘Gabi is many things,’ Klara says. ‘But paranoid is not one of them.’
‘You’re only paranoid if it never happens,’ Maria says.
‘Did she tell you anything else?’ Klara says. ‘Anything about why she was being followed, or why someone would follow her?’
‘No, she just gave me the envelope. I’m not one to snoop.’
Klara takes a drink and turns the envelope, hoping that the contents will in some way explain what happened to Gabriella this afternoon.
‘I told her she should go to the police if she was worried,’ Maria says, ‘but she didn’t want to.’
Klara nods, and without putting it off any more she slides her finger in under the flap and rips open the envelope. She puts in two fingers and grabs onto a folded piece of paper and pulls it out.
Maria rises from the sofa with the wine glass in her hand and walks over to the window. She stands with her back to Klara, looking out over the darkness and the rain and the lights from Kungsholmen on the other side of the water.
Eagerly, Klara unfolds the paper.
There’s a short handwritten message.
Klara,
I guess if you’re reading this something has happened to me. You know I hate melodrama, but I guess you’ll never see this if I’m wrong. And after everything we’ve seen and gone through, it feels like we can only really trust each other.
Anyway: I’m pretty sure someone is following me. Several different men, who don’t seem like cops – maybe Eastern Europeans. I’ve seen them outside my door and outside work. I don’t know what they want, but I noticed them after I received a few phone calls on 15 November from a Swedish guy calling himself Karl. He’s quite young and seems totally in over his head. He claims he’s come into possession of some important information, and he believes he’s being followed. It’s possible that he has some Snowden complex, but the more we talk, the more I trust him. And he’s very scared.
I set up a meeting with him in Brussels on 24 November at 4 p.m. at the glass elevator outside the Palais de Justice, but he’s incredibly nervous so I’m not quite sure how it will turn out.
As of now, this is all I know. But if something happens to me, it’s good to start there, maybe you could meet Karl if I don’t manage it?
But I hope you never have to read this.
Love, Gabi
PS. I’m leaving you one of my credit cards. Not sure how much cash you have, and I don’t want you to have to abandon your best friend for financial reasons.