When they finally wrapped up in Ekerö, they returned to the police station in Solna. Sara’s new place of work was in a red brick building situated between Sundbybergsvägen and the commuter train line. During her lunch breaks, she often sat alone in the small empty park behind the Huvudstagrillen fast-food joint, her mobile set to silent. She had been overcome by a strong need to simply sit down and think. And here she was able to do so. She could think about everything she had experienced and the choices that had led her to where she was today. She liked hearing the warning signals from the level crossing and the trains swishing past. The signs of life and movement that the city pulsed with. Sometimes, she heard the sound of chainsaws as tree surgeons in neon vests cut down branches that had grown across the rails. Small, everyday trivialities that made it easier to resurface. She always spent a while standing in front of the small white sculpture known as ‘Pregnant’, if only because it was a rarity that anyone else did. The body that had borne two children had also been pierced by bullets. Ebba and Olle had come close to losing their mother. And Sara had put herself in that danger. How could she weigh up the happiness of her own children against that of all the people whose lives Sara had presumably saved? And if Sara had died, would it have been any comfort to Ebba and Olle that lots of people in another country had been saved? People who would never know how close disaster had come to striking? Sara couldn’t escape the gnawing suspicion that she had done the wrong thing, even though it had all ended well.
Once the team were back in Solna and had gathered in the meeting room, they reviewed what they already knew, which wasn’t much. The gang crime unit had been sent photos of the badly mauled victim, but hadn’t had time to respond yet. Perhaps it was hard to identify a face that badly mangled. Neither Interpol nor the Polish police had been in touch about the photos of the other two deceased persons or the number plates on their car. Sara called those amongst her contacts who were most familiar with the struggle for power in the underworld and asked whether they knew anything about any antagonism between Poles and gangs in the Stockholm suburbs, but she turned up nothing. Of course, the conflict might be brand new. If they could just identify the guy, they would probably be able to uncover the truth.
They followed the usual procedure. They reviewed probable motives and connections, wrote it all up on the whiteboard with question marks appended, distributed assignments and then went home. Now it was a case of waiting for information retrieved from the mobiles of the dead, the identification of any one of them or finding the car on traffic cameras which would allow them to trace it back to a point of departure. There were no doors for door-to-door inquiries in the woods.
So Sara clocked off early, went home, showered and got dressed in her glad rags. For Martin’s sake, she put on a couple of the pricy garments he insisted on buying for her from the luxury boutiques on Birger Jarlsgatan. As far as she was concerned, Sara thought it was absurd to traipse around in a layer of fabric that had cost half a month’s pay. Martin only bought presents for Sara at Schuterman, Prada or Gucci. Or possibly at the NK department store so that he could show off his black NK card. What was the matter with H&M? Well, Sara knew what it was. The conditions for the factory workers. Well, what about something in between then? She lined up the latest gifts, removing a gold-coloured leather top and a pair of beautiful trousers with a blue and yellow flower print from the reckoning. Her eye was caught by a black skirt with white pearls forming a floral pattern, to which she added a black crepe blouse where the sections over the arms and shoulders were made from a fine gauze, or whatever they called it. The ensemble was suitably dressy for an anniversary party.
How could it have been twenty years since Martin had launched his company – Dunder & Brak Scenproduktion AB? He had done it mostly to create opportunities for himself to perform, since so few people wanted to book him – not as a one-man band or as a stand-up rookie. But when Martin had started putting together bespoke packages of artists, he had discovered that he was shit-hot at finding good acts, selling them and managing the whole thing, packaging tours with catchy names and attention-grabbing concepts. And there were plenty of artists and entertainers who needed help with that bit in particular.
After ten years of toil as an aspiring artist, and five years as a tour producer, Martin had been the biggest concert organiser in the country, and shortly thereafter his company had become one of the biggest artist agencies. And then, all of a sudden, he’d been noticed on the global scene. The entertainment giant Go Live had bought Martin’s company for a fortune on the condition that Martin stayed on to lead it for at least another ten years. After that, the pressure on Sara’s husband had increased even more. As part of an international conglomerate, the Swedish branch had gained access to the really big names, and most of Martin’s working hours were spent entertaining and hanging out with artists, bosses and agents. Lunches, dinners and late nights. Constantly surrounded by young girls who wanted to carve out careers and thought it was the norm to attract sexual attention in order to succeed. Sara had occasionally been overcome with jealousy, but was mostly convinced that Martin wasn’t like that. Sure, he wanted attention – a great deal of it – but not like that.
A lot of the money Martin had been paid for his company had gone on the huge apartment they lived in, which covered a full storey of their building on the edge of Kornhamnstorg in Stockholm’s old town. Nearly three hundred square metres of creaking parquet, oak panelling, a terrace and their own tower at the top of the building from which they had a view across the rooftops, the water down by Slussen and the German church just around the corner from them.
After all his years of desperately trying to gain his father’s attention by performing on stage, Martin had finally succeeded in the same way Eric had: in business. He had single-handedly built up a respected and profitable company, becoming rich in the process, yet it didn’t seem to be enough for either his father or Martin. But that was surely how it was for everyone who wanted to show they were good enough? They would never be satisfied, merely struggling more and more. Where this need came from Sara had no idea, but she assumed the old cliché was correct: a father married to his job and rarely at home, and a little boy missing his father. Eric had at any rate compensated for his absence from Martin’s childhood with a greater presence in Ebba’s. A bit too much if she were honest about it, Sara thought to herself.
*
‘Beer? Wine? Cocktail?’
‘I’m fine thanks.’
Sara held up her glass by way of proof. The girl smiled and moved on.
‘Beer? Wine? Cocktail?’
Sara spotted another one inbound and held up her glass from a distance.
Everywhere there were young girls. On the bar and at the door, mixing among the guests with trays of glasses, and hostesses wandering around and checking that everything was going well, that empties were being removed and that the schedule was being adhered to. The latter were spotlessly dressed in black suits instead of the waiting staff’s short black skirts and white shirts. But they were all young girls. Employed by Go Live. How many of them had their own dreams of becoming artists, and how many just wanted to have power over other people’s careers?
‘Oi,’ said Sara, firmly elbowing Anna in the side when she saw her friend’s avid gaze taking in the young girls. ‘Can’t you see how practised their smiles are?’
‘You don’t know the code. That look was me being hit on.’
‘I don’t know the code in your world, but I know the code in this world. She probably knows that I’m Martin’s wife, and that you’re with me, so it may be a shortcut to the boss. Don’t be too flattered.’
Sara realised she was a bit downhearted that Anna was with her at the party. Not that she didn’t like Anna, she was her best friend – but because when Martin had asked if Sara wanted to bring anyone to the party, she had realised that she only had one friend to ask. She needed to get more friends – but how did you do that as a grown-up?
‘Cool!’ said Anna, looking around the resplendent garden. ‘What’s this shindig costing, do you reckon?’
Sara followed Anna’s gaze and only now noticed quite how expensive it all was. Flags, pennants, bar tables covered in white cloths, bottles of beer and champagne everywhere, a string quartet on a small podium, and massive, enlarged photos from the company’s history featuring all the big artists they represented or had worked with. Paparazzi were thronging outside the gates to document the celebrity gathering, while the guests basked in the attention.
The party reminded Sara of Stellan’s and Agneta’s many expensive events at which the celebrities of the day had mingled, just as happy to be there as the guests tonight were. Sara had hidden with Lotta and Malin, spending hours spying on the dressed up and madly smiling adults who became increasingly peculiar as the evening progressed. Now she was a guest – indeed, the wife of the host. Just like Agneta had been in her day. Was she becoming Agneta? She couldn’t help smiling at the thought that cropped up momentarily.
Sara felt like she was being watched, but reflected that it was probably normal given all the photographers there craning their necks to see who was in attendance. And who wasn’t there. The guests tonight really did live diametrically opposed lives to the spies that Sara had encountered. The spies did everything to avoid being seen or attracting attention. Some of them even had several layers of false identities behind which to hide, such as Agneta Broman. But the guests here were doing their all to be seen.
‘To be without being seen.’ The motto of the Wallenberg family popped up in her head. Those that held true power, who governed the world, didn’t want to be seen. Regardless of whether they were a spy or an industrialist. That was where the gulf between Martin and Eric was most obvious, Sara thought to herself, looking around for her husband. The son was doing his utmost to be seen and the father was conversely doing all he could to avoid being seen. To run his empire in peace.
‘Have they bought the building?’ said Anna, interrupting Sara’s train of thought.
‘It’s a lease. There was some university department renting it, but they moved out, and then Martin managed to talk his way into getting the lease. But it costs a fair whack each month, and that’s putting it mildly.’
Go Live now had its offices in a huge old mansion on the royal island of Djurgården, just opposite the Nordic Museum. It was a building that Sara had walked past many times when she had been younger, heading for the theme park at Gröna Lund or a picnic further along the island. She remembered how imposing she’d thought the building was, and now her husband’s company was based in it. Odd how things could turn out . . .
Go Live had invited twelve hundred guests to its twentieth birthday party, and had received more than one thousand acceptances before being overwhelmed with emails and phone calls from people who hadn’t been invited but wanted to try and get in anyway. An open bar, loads of celebrities and in all likelihood a performance by at least one global star. Go Live had plenty of those on its books. A big stage had been built to the rear of the building with a massive lighting rig and sound system that practically screamed superstar rather than cover band.
Sara scrutinised the other guests. Thin, tanned women, either around twenty or over forty years old, standing beside men of around fifty in expensive blazers and big sunglasses, their hair combed back and the shirts that strained over their bellies unbuttoned far too far down. Loud laughter and lots of kissing of cheeks. Every artist ever to have played on a Go Live stage was here. The younger, more impressionable figures naturally became intoxicated immediately. The older ones, chuckling, were all in late middle age, some of them indeed older, and now making their livings from best-of tours for their equally aged fans.
The queues for the buffets were enormous, and guests were loading as much as they could onto their plates. Free is the best flavour, Sara thought to herself, explaining to Anna that they should wait until the queues got shorter.
‘Uncle Scam,’ Anna said, nodding to a poster emblazoned with the artist’s name against a background of countless green dollar bills. ‘He’s playing here this week.’
‘I know. Martin’s so proud he could burst. I barely know who he is.’
‘Only the biggest artist in the world right now. Do you think he’s going to play here tonight? Isn’t there supposed to be some secret headliner? A superstar or something?’
‘Yes, there’s going to be a performance, but I don’t know who by.’
‘Hoping it’s Uncle Scam. Do you think we’ll get to meet him?’
‘You like hip-hop?’
‘I like everything. But my sister’s kids would be really fucking impressed. They think I’m a rat for being a cop.’
‘If he’s here I’m sure we can arrange it.’
‘Yay!’
‘Aren’t you going to have something to eat?’
Martin’s mother, Marie, appeared at their sides clutching a plate of grilled asparagus and a glass of wine in a holder attached to the plate.
‘The queues are too long,’ Sara said, but Marie merely smiled.
‘Martin sent off a girl to get some for us.’
Of course. Eric Titus and his wife were hardly ones to stand in a queue. Sara looked around for the great man himself. He had been caught by some gentlemen whose faces were familiar to Sara from the business pages: two men approaching seventy with self-assured smiles and permanent sun tans, one with a wife the same age and the other with a wife half his age. A fairly representative selection of Eric’s circle, in other words. There were a lot of executives who liked to rub shoulders with celebrities, and Sara knew that Martin liked to help Eric out by inviting his business associates to big parties and by providing VIP tickets to various concerts. Eric smiled professionally, nodding to the two couples before rejoining his wife.
‘How lovely that you could come,’ said Sara. ‘I’m sure Martin will be thrilled. You’ve met Anna, haven’t you?’
‘I would remember if I had,’ Eric said with a smile. ‘I remember every beautiful woman that I meet.’ However, being a gentleman, he allowed Marie to shake her hand first.
‘We were at the academy together and now we’re colleagues.’
‘Hope things have calmed down for you,’ Eric said, nodding at Anna in admonition, as if urging her to ensure that Sara didn’t place herself in the same danger she had done at the beginning of the summer.
‘We take on nothing but the safest cases,’ said Anna with a small laugh. ‘Lost property, missing cats, stolen bicycles.’
‘That sounds good.’
‘This asparagus is delicious,’ Marie said enthusiastically.
The sounds of a chord being played on a guitar hooked up to a few hundred kilograms of amplifiers made everyone rush to the stage at the rear of the building. No one wanted to miss whichever global superstar was going to play unannounced. The secrecy was a big part of the bragging that would follow.
Anna ran with the others, while Sara sauntered along after her. She realised that her lack of interest was in part feigned – a somewhat pubescent desire not to be visibly impressed, to demonstrate her lack of interest in celebrities and stars.
‘Don’t worry,’ she heard Martin’s voice say over the sound system, ‘there’s some proper entertainment coming soon. But first you’re going to have to put up with us for half an hour.’
Martin’s employees hooted, probably hoping someone in senior management would notice their loyalty. The rest of the audience smiled politely. They understood this was the price they paid. But they would rather not have bothered.
‘We’re called C.E.O. Speedwagon,’ Martin said on stage, surrounded by his bandmates. ‘And when you’re a bunch of execs, what better way to start than with a song by the Boss himself, Bruce Springsteen?’
Nicky and Stoffe played the intro to ‘Dancing in the Dark’ and immediately received polite applause. Martin leaned forward to the microphone and began to sing.
Hands in the air, clapping in time, a small sea of audience swaying along. Martin was glowing. More than a thousand people, and no one could do anything but show their appreciation. Sara saw her husband’s gaze seeking out his parents time after time. Their free period in sixth form kept coming back to her. At least once a month, Martin would stand on stage in front of the whole school. Singing, joking or doing sketches. He wasn’t much of a leader ordinarily, but his energy on stage meant that despite this he assumed a leadership role in the school. That, together with his appearance, made him the hottest guy there. The one everyone wanted – and the one Sara got. Although that had been a few years later when Sara had been living in Vällingby for some time and when both she and Martin had finished sixth form, so there hadn’t been many people to impress by then. But Sara convinced herself that the most important thing was what she herself felt. And she almost always managed to persuade herself that it felt right.
She reflected on their early days as a couple and what happened when you got together with someone. The way you built your own world together. You acquired shared experiences, defined views, decided who you were together. Sara remembered their pet names for each other. It had been so long since they had used them. The names were a secret that welded them together. Pet names weren’t something to be used in the presence of others – that would mean the names lost their power. And with a secret pet name, you suddenly became a different person – someone better, someone loved. They had applied new labels to themselves and each other and, as if by magic, simply by stating it, they had become the person they had depicted for the benefit of the other. Shazam – Billy Batson was transformed into Captain Marvel. Although more romantic.
Sara could tell that Martin was brimming over in the moment, which was only right. Although she wasn’t at all entertained by parties like this, she was pleased that someone in the family could share his big moment. Olle was too young and was sleeping over at his friend Gabriel’s, while Ebba was throwing her housewarming party at her new apartment.
Did Sara have any counterpart to Martin’s stage horniness? Was there something that drove her? What was the most fun thing she knew? Sparring with her Krav Maga club was the answer that came to her spontaneously. God, what did that say about her? But she couldn’t actually think of anything better. When she thought about it some more, she realised that she was tempted to take her training to a more ambitious level again. The fight at the Bromans’ house had made her realise that life might end at any moment, and that she had to be able to defend herself. It didn’t have to be international terrorists – all it could take was an aggressive pisshead out on the town who unexpectedly pulled a knife and went for it. It vexed her that she had never got Ebba to do self-defence training.
‘Thanks for a lovely evening.’
Marie stopped in front of Sara and Anna and smiled at them. She was heading for the exit, and a little ahead of her was Eric waving goodbye.
Sara gave Marie the hug protocol demanded. Over her mother-in-law’s shoulder, she saw that Martin had noticed his parents were in motion. He gesticulated to the others in the band and they quickly drew their number to a close. There was polite but fairly loud applause. Martin was both an important figure in the entertainment industry and a well-liked boss.
‘Dad, wait!’ Martin shouted into the microphone. Sara watched her parents-in-law and saw Marie stop Eric with a hand on his arm. They turned back towards their middle-aged son far away on the stage. Martin was talking to his bandmates and then he turned back to the microphone.
‘Do you remember this one?’
Nicky began to hammer the keys with the introduction to Abba’s ‘Money, Money, Money’ and Martin smiled expectantly as he began.
Eric smiled politely, offered a thumbs up and then turned around to leave. Marie waved to her son and followed her husband.
Martin was left behind, singing about the importance of money.
It was a bit too much for Sara. She dragged Anna round to the front of the building and the almost deserted bar. A couple of glasses of wine to get over the embarrassment, she told Anna.
They raised their glasses and clinked them while the refrain echoed out across Djurgården. ‘Money, money, money, must be funny, in the rich man’s world.’
*
At around midnight, both Pink and Ed Sheeran had performed and the guests at the party were becoming more than a little sloshed. Sara was due to work the next day, so she told Anna she was going to head home. Martin would be just fine, she knew that. It was Go Live’s evening, and in that context she was no more than a walk-on. Anna, however, wanted to stay a little longer, so they said goodbye and Sara left. She walked all the way home. Along Strandvägen, across the Strömbron bridge and then Skeppsbron, and home to the old town.
On the way to a home without Ebba.
Why did it feel so lonely?
The whole apartment had felt so different after the events of the early summer. As if their secure fortress could no longer protect her and her family, or so she had concluded when she had returned home from the hospital with her face bandaged. As if she had let in evil forces after her battle with the ghosts of the past. When she was at home alone, it felt in some diffuse way as if there were something there, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Anna, who was obsessed with the occult, obviously thought it was the souls of the people who had lived there previously haunting them. Dead people who couldn’t find peace or who had a message for Sara – she just had to let them speak. Sara assumed the disquieting feeling came from within. But she didn’t know what to do about the problem. The solitude that had always been reassuring in the past now felt more melancholy, at least when she was at home. In other locations, the solitude was helpful for her recovery, but at home there was so much that reminded her of everything she had lost and of the life she had lived before, when she had still felt invulnerable.
‘Where is she?’
Sara had just reached out with her hand to tap in the code when a figure emerged from the shadows and lobbed its question at her.
Sara turned towards the voice to be confronted with Malin Broman’s wide eyes. Malin – her childhood friend. The youngest daughter of Uncle Stellan, who had been murdered so unexpectedly and brutally in his home, and who Sara had discovered was a monster in human form. She swept her gaze over the woman before her. Malin’s usually meticulous makeup was smudged around the eyes and her skin looked pale and washed out, as if it were winter.
‘Which one?’
‘Lotta. I know where Mum is. She’s dead.’
‘I don’t know where Lotta is. Hasn’t she been in touch?’
‘She emails.’
‘Well, there you are,’ said Sara.
‘No. It’s not her.’
‘What?’
‘It’s not her writing them. It’s someone else.’
‘What if she’s still in shock? There must be a reason she left. Perhaps she took all that stuff with Stellan and Agneta harder than you thought,’ Sara said after a brief pause.
‘She’d never leave like that without talking to me. Or to Petter. Without saying good bye to the kids.’
‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘And there are people sitting in cars. Out in the street. Outside our house. All night. Who are they?’ Malin stared at her, wide-eyed.
‘Don’t know. Could be anyone. Doesn’t have to be anything to do with you.’
‘They are. They’re watching us. Taking photos when we come and go. They’ve been there for days now.’
‘Probably just photographers from the gossip rags.’
‘What actually happened that night?’ Malin took a few steps closer to Sara and looked imploringly at her. Sara noticed that the younger Broman daughter was trembling, looked to be on the verge of tears.
‘Tell me!’
‘What little I know I’m not allowed to tell you. But I don’t know anything about Lotta. I promise. Where she’s gone, I don’t know.’
‘They said they found Mum, shot by the same burglar as Dad. But where did they find her? And where had she been? I didn’t even get to see her. Why didn’t I get to see her?’ Malin’s voice was becoming increasingly shrill.
Sara didn’t reply. She had no idea what to say. She really didn’t know a thing about what had happened to Lotta – Geiger, going by her code name.
‘Are you absolutely sure that Lotta didn’t write those emails herself?’ she finally asked. ‘Traumatic events can change a person a lot.’
‘I’ve only got her!’ Malin said, her voice filled with desperation. ‘Mum and Dad are gone. I want Lotta!’
Sara reflected that Malin actually had a husband and two kids too, but she didn’t say anything. She looked at her old childhood playmate, remembering all the sisters’ malevolence that had resurfaced in her brain lately, but was still overcome by a strong sense of sympathy for Malin. She was so lost now that her usual protectors weren’t there to take care of her. She wasn’t spoilt Malin, but a little girl who had lost so many of her closest loved ones in one blow and couldn’t understand what had happened. All she sensed was that something was dreadfully wrong. And it really was – that much Sara had discovered. But she couldn’t tell Malin that, since she’d been forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Her childhood friend was oblivious to Sara’s presence and significant involvement in the resolution of the Geiger drama at the Broman family home.
‘There’s one more thing,’ Malin said, as if she didn’t quite know what she was asking. ‘There were a couple of weird cops who came round to the house.’
‘Weird? Aren’t all police weird?’
Malin didn’t even notice the joke.
‘A man and a woman, slightly older. They said they wanted to talk about Dad, but they asked loads of questions about Lotta. Asked whether she’d told me anything about politics and contacts abroad. I mean . . . what’s that got to do with Dad’s murder?’
‘They have to investigate every angle. That means there’s a lot of questions that at first glance seem pointless. Did they say where they were from?’
‘Just the police, and they flashed their badges. Well, she did.’
‘What were they called?’
‘I don’t know about him. But she was called Brundin. She never gave her first name.’
‘Malin . . .’
‘Yes?’
A glimmer of hope was visible in the other woman’s eyes.
‘I promise I don’t know a thing about where Lotta is or what she’s doing. All I’ve heard is that she’s taking some time out. But I’ll see whether I can discover anything.’
Sara was reminded of the glow from the burning shed and how it had illuminated Brundin as she’d dragged Lotta to one of the Security Service’s cars before driving off. Sara had seen Lotta one more time after that. One final time – one she could never talk to anyone else about. And that she hadn’t really understood.
She didn’t know how to interpret what they had done with Lotta.