Chapter 21

It was cold and draughty at Central Station. Anna-Maria decided to go into the café and sit far away from the small group.

Originally she had only planned to peek in and see who Oswald was meeting there. But now her curiosity was getting the better of her. If he spotted her, she could pretend she was just having coffee on her way to Stockholm. She had a client there, after all. As if Oswald wouldn’t see right through that lie. The persistent thought popped up in her mind again. This was bananas, what she was doing. Sunglasses on such a cloudy day, the collar turned up on her jacket. Like some sort of spy. But it was impossible to stay away. She had paced back and forth in the apartment. Biting her nails to the quick. She hated herself for what she had become – a fucking twit who couldn’t keep her own emotions under control. But the moment she was longing for was so close. She had seen it in his eyes. She could tell the question was on the tip of his tongue. She couldn’t let anything threaten what they had now.

Things had been better between them since she’d given him the videos. Little clips from Bauman’s super-boring nights. Most of the time, she just sat around reading. Once in a while the camera caught her and her boyfriend getting busy on the sofa. They went at it like bunnies. Once she had danced around naked in the living room, all skinny, tiny tits bobbing. If that didn’t disgust Franz, Anna-Maria didn’t know what would.

When she first brought in the videos and told him about the camera, he was furious.

‘What the hell have you done? Are you out of your mind?’

But soon the corners of his mouth were twitching and a sly gleam appeared in his eyes. He eagerly snatched the DVD from her hands. That day, before she left, he hugged her and nipped playfully at her earlobe.

‘You’re naughty, Anna-Maria. I like naughty girls.’

When she turned around to leave, he slapped her ass and she shuddered with delight.

It had seemed obvious that she should join him on his first furlough. When she realized he was planning to go alone, she was absolutely beside herself. But he made it sound so reasonable.

‘There are people I have to meet. You and I already see each other almost every day. We belong together – when will you get that through your head? You’re not going to act all jealous, are you, when I get out? Because I can’t deal with that.’

‘Of course not,’ she assured him as image after image of women flashed through her mind. Beautiful women, hanging out with Oswald on his furlough.

‘Okay then. Read Thesis Two again. The one about how you are your past. And chill out. It’s distasteful when you chew on your lips like that. Jesus Christ, relax.’

So she gave in, as usual, and looked on the bright side: he had said they belonged together. You and me against the whole world. He had told her that more than once.

She slowly turned around and looked at the small group. Everything was dark through the sunglasses, but she recognized the people at the table. Bosse, the bag of bones from ViaTerra who always smelled like sweat. Madeleine, the dumb girl with white eyebrows. And the intermediary loser, although this time he wasn’t wearing flip-flops and jeans but a shirt and tie, of course. The guard was leaning against a wall, a respectable distance from the group. Franz’s voice was thundering through the whole restaurant. He kept the group engaged with his authority and passion, telling them something that made them howl with laughter. Nearby patrons had turned around; they couldn’t help but listen. Some of them must have recognized him, because she saw a pair of girls staring at him and whispering to each other.

She became aware of how tense she had been, but now she could feel herself relax. This was work talk, not a date with another woman. All she had to do was get out of the café without being seen.

After sneaking out the door, she lingered outside. She went stiff as she heard Franz’s voice behind her, and she turned around to see him walking out with the others in tow. She only just had time to turn her face away. He was making a joke about something and the others laughed, a little too shrilly. So it had gone well. She couldn’t resist the temptation to trail behind them at a distance and set her sights on Oswald’s broad back. After giving them a head start, she followed them until they were out of the station. She stood just inside the glass doors and observed them. Oswald stepped into a car with the guard. He was going to do some shopping, he had said. Bosse and Madeleine stood around for a moment, staring after him, unsure of what to do, and then they vanished in the throng of people. The loser raised a hand towards Oswald’s car and then jumped into another, particularly shiny, car. She waited until they were gone.

For some strange reason, her thoughts were drawn to Oswald’s analogy about the spider’s web, and then she understood. Those pathetic individuals were all stuck in his net. Just like Sofia Bauman. He pulled the strings, and they obeyed his every whim. But he and she sat in the centre, together, directing everything. That was why he didn’t need her during his furlough. To think she hadn’t understood this earlier! What was she even doing here, in this ridiculous disguise?

As soon as she got back to her apartment she felt restless. She wanted to see him again, but it would be several days. And there was something else hanging over her, chafing at her. She decided to take her motorcycle for a spin; that always helped clear her thoughts.

She’d purchased the Harley in London. It had cost a fortune, but it was worth it. She’d taken a year off after finishing school to live in London. When she arrived at girls’ nights on her hog, in full leather gear, her girlfriends had called her ‘the bitch lawyer from hell.’ She liked that nickname. There was only one person she knew who had a nicer Harley, and that was Franz. He’d asked her to keep an eye on it at ViaTerra. She’d almost had a heart attack when she saw it gleaming in the garage. A specially-built custom machine, scaled back, with a personal finish: ViaTerra’s logo on either side of the gas tank. She knew he only used it on special occasions. For long trips he had a Honda Shadow 1100, which wasn’t too bad itself. But the Harley was a masterpiece.

He had been delighted when she told him she had one too.

‘Look at that,’ he’d said. ‘I told you we were meant for each other.’

She changed clothes, feeling sexy as soon as she put on her leather jacket and boots. It was a cool, sunny spring day and it hadn’t rained in a while, so the ground was dry and the gravel crunched pleasantly under her hard heels. It took some time to get out of the city, but there was one road where she could get up to almost 130. A tendril of hair had slipped out of her helmet and was whipping at her face, but she didn’t mind. Her mind cleared almost immediately, and all at once she realized what she had missed. She had seen that car before, the one the loser had driven off in. It was Oswald’s Mercedes. The one he’d had since he was twenty – he’d taken such good care of it that it looked brand new. Why on earth would he let someone else drive it? Or was it just being taken in to be serviced?

The clarity in her head was replaced by a dull buzz. She slowed down, and suddenly her ride was no longer quite so much fun. She had a sneaking suspicion that she was missing part of the Franz Oswald puzzle. There was a piece she didn’t have access to.