The first roundhouse kick missed, but Anna performed a lightning quick spin and planted the second kick onto her temple.
Sara cursed the fact that she had stayed on the spot like a beginner, even if it had only been half a second.
She had allowed herself to be hit.
Instead of backing away and opening herself up to another blow, she stepped forward, cutting off Anna’s room for manoeuvre. She executed a quick, hard blow straight to the solar plexus while Anna was still open after her high kick. She twisted her hip to add extra power.
And she saw how Anna was winded.
Sara exploited this to use her fists to thunder down onto her friend’s head in a furious series of pummels. Anna got up her guard, but she was now on the defensive.
Sara paused to seek out a weak point, which Anna took advantage of immediately. She threw her arms around Sara’s neck, locking her hands while dragging Sara’s head and upper body down. Then she began to apply hard knees to her midriff.
It was extremely painful, but Sara was never one to tap out because of a little pain. She had made up her mind. Something would bloody well have to break before that happened. Instead, she wrapped her arms around Anna’s waist and squeezed for all she was worth. With this grip, she could also have bitten her opponent’s face. If she had spat out her mouthguard first, and if her opponent hadn’t been Anna.
Her friend whimpered in pain.
Sara saw the panic associated with being unable to breathe in growing in her eyes and Anna tapped out.
Three short, rapid taps on the ground or on any part of the opponent that could be reached showed that you were giving up. At which point the other person let go immediately. Just as Sara did now. It was an important reflex for all practitioners of martial arts. Especially important when training in sports with throttling and breaks. Even a delay of a second or two could have lethal consequences.
‘Idiot!’ said Anna, after catching her breath and slapping Sara on the shoulder. Neither of them liked losing.
Both of them lay on the foam training mat panting, sweat pouring off them. It was one of the advantages of having a three hundred square metre apartment – you could have a dedicated training room. Martin, who as always had to take it a bit too far, had kitted out the old dining room with thick training mats on the floor and walls so that Sara could spar in there as much as she liked.
‘Tell me everything,’ said Anna once they were standing under the adjacent showers in the large bathroom.
‘I was born in 1975 at the general maternity hospital . . .’
‘Ha,’ said Anna, her voice dripping with irony. ‘About that priest.’
What Sara had said about her birth was a secret that she hadn’t known about until recently. She had always thought she had been born in Poland and that her father had been a Pole. But she hadn’t told anyone else about her discovery about Uncle Stellan, and now that she had stumbled she was glad that Anna merely took it as a joke.
‘Remember Eva Hedin, the researcher? Well, she claims that it’s a typical old Stasi method to get rid of people and make it look like suicide. But in this case it was almost a bit blatant, with the Bible opened to Judas’ death. And I found a list of code names—’
‘Back up a moment. You were there?’
Sara was quiet for a second, realised that she had just admitted to a serious infraction: she had visited a crime scene where she had nothing to do with the investigation. But good God, this was Anna. What harm could it do?
‘Yes. I went down there. I couldn’t help myself.’
‘Sara!’
‘But it was lucky that I did. I don’t think the police down there would have found the list of names. Above all, they wouldn’t have known what it meant.’
‘What were the names?’
‘Code names. Messer, Axt, Faust and Lorelei.’
‘Aren’t they the seven dwarves?’
Sara smiled. She stepped out of the shower and reached for a towel.
‘No, I think it’s Agnetha, Anni-Frid, Björn and Benny?’
‘Ah yes, you’re quite right,’ said Anna, rummaging in her toiletries bag. ‘My God, double sinks are good.’
That had been Sara’s only demand for the apartment: a double vanity unit with mirrors to match in the big bathroom. And she had been grateful for it almost every day since. All those times when Martin needed to brush his teeth at the same time as she was applying or removing makeup, not to mention when Ebba had become a teenager and refused to use the small bathroom because the light was so much better in Mum and Dad’s. Before blocking one of the sinks for hours at a time.
Sara glanced over at Anna’s weapons of choice as they got ready. Dr Hauschka and Biotherm. Sara used YSL and Helena Rubinstein. That was surely the very point of makeup – to find the brands and products that suited your face and your face alone.
‘You hurting?’ said Anna.
‘Hell yes. You landed some really good blows.’
It was important not to be a bad winner but to remain humble in success. But what Sara wanted to hoot more than anything was: ‘I won! I won!’
‘Fun to train together again,’ said Anna. ‘And that you’re back.’
‘Or whatever you call it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know whether I’m back, or whether I’m actually someone else now.’
Anna appeared to be thinking over what Sara had just said.
‘It’s not like you not to pick up the phone.’
‘No,’ said Sara. ‘I don’t know why I . . .’
‘I don’t know whether you want to be left alone, if you don’t want me to call. When it’s about work though, I have to.’
Sara turned and looked Anna straight in the eyes.
‘I’m very happy that you’ve kept calling.’
Anna smiled briefly at Sara, but quickly resumed her serious expression.
‘How did it actually feel?’ she said. ‘To come so close to death?’
Sara was silent for a long time.
‘I’m focusing more on the fact that I survived,’ she said at last.
‘Yes, and thank God for that.’
‘It wasn’t thanks to God. Now let’s change the subject.’
‘OK. Your spies,’ said Anna, producing a mascara brush and leaning closer to the mirror.
‘They weren’t spies. They were terrorists. You know, Baader-Meinhof and all that. There were all sorts of Commands, X, Y, and Z during the seventies that were aiming to crush imperialism and try to release each other from prison. And there were four members of one of those commands that the priest issued birth certificates to, with new identities. And now he seems to have been blackmailing them. Three of them had paid.’
‘But not all of them?’
‘Perhaps it was the fourth one who killed him. Or the murderer is one of the ones who paid, to avoid suspicion in case anyone discovered the racket.’
‘From Baader-Meinhof? So they were Germans?’
‘Three of them. The woman is Swedish. But they all live in Sweden now. Well, the three of them I’ve met, at any rate.’
‘You’ve met them?’
What the hell was wrong with her? Had she let down her guard completely? With a sigh, Sara put her toiletries to one side and met Anna’s suspicious look.
‘I wanted to know why they had paid,’ she said, after a pause.
‘Did they explain?’
‘No. Only that they didn’t want their true identities to be revealed. But I think it’s about what they did back then. They were pretty hardcore.’
‘You’ll be careful, right?’ Anna looked at her anxiously.
‘Oh yes.’
Sara turned her gaze to the mirror and examined her face. She contemplated the scars from the fire. She had thought she was being careful then too.
Made-up and dressed, they went into the kitchen and picked out one of Martin’s eye-wateringly expensive bottles of wine. They selected two wine glasses that were almost certainly intended for another grape and climbed the stairs to the tower room. Before they reached it, they heard the front door open and Martin call out:
‘Darling? Are you at home?’
‘You go up,’ Sara said to Anna, passing her the bottle and glasses before going to meet her husband.
A hasty kiss, as always whenever they met or parted. As if to prove to both the world and themselves that they belonged together. It could be easily forgotten otherwise after more than twenty years together.
‘He might be coming here!’ Martin said in agitation as soon as their lips parted.
‘Who? Our master? I suppose we’ll have to get things in order.’
‘Scam!’
‘Surely not here!’
Sara looked around. It was chaos, as usual. Clothes everywhere. Books and magazines, Martin’s latest gadgets and the boxes they had come in . . .
‘Yes. He’s a bloody Yank – apparently they invite each other round to their homes. He’s expecting it.’
‘But this place is a tip!’
‘Tip’ was obviously relative, but it was perhaps sub-optimal to have heaps of clothes and dustballs all over the place when a senior executive was hosting a megastar.
‘I know,’ said Martin. ‘I’ll find a cleaning company.’
‘Not on my life!’
Her childhood taunts to her own mother still rang in her ears, Malin and Lotta’s cry that she would always regret having chimed in with: ‘Cleaning woman, cleaning woman!’ Poor Jane. No woman should have to take care of another woman’s crap to survive. That was Sara’s absolute understanding, and wrapped up in it was the retroactive shame of having tormented the person who had birthed her.
‘It’s your turn,’ said Sara. ‘You’ll have to clean.’
‘Don’t have time. Things are crazy right now. Do you get how big he is?’
‘No bigger than this fucking flat I bet.’
‘Much bigger.’
‘No cleaners! Apart from that, do what you like. Clean or host him in chaos.’
Sara turned and left. Martin was silent for a couple of seconds, then his mobile rang.
‘Martin.’ His name was followed by intense humming and hawing. ‘I’m on my way!’
Then the front door opened and closed again while Sara climbed the stairs to the tower room.
‘I’ll call back,’ said Anna, ending her call when Sara appeared. ‘A date,’ she explained.
‘OK. Was it Lina?’
‘What?’
‘The waitress.’
‘Er, yeah. It was.’
Anna even blushed, Sara noted. Perhaps this might be going somewhere.
‘Oh yes,’ said Anna. ‘On the subject of Lina. Would you give this to Martin?’
Anna pulled a flash drive out of her pocket and proffered it to Sara.
‘What is it?’
‘Some songs. She’s one hell of a singer. I thought Martin might like to hear them.’
Anna noted Sara’s sceptical expression and began to defend herself.
‘No, it’s not how you think. That’s not why she . . . It was me who . . . Ack, forget about it.’
‘Thanks.’
Anna put the flash drive away again, then they each took a big gulp of wine and the flash drive was history.
‘Crazy that you don’t have the bedroom up here,’ said Anna, looking out towards Kornhamnstorg and Södermalm. ‘What with this view.’
‘You mean the building site?’
‘It should be done in a few years.’
‘We’ll move up here then. More wine?’
Sara poured generously from the expensive bottle into the almost certainly unsuitable glasses.
‘What did Martin want?’
‘To bring in a cleaning company.’
‘OK.’
‘Not on my life. But he’s completely nuts about that Uncle Scam guy and wants to invite him round when he’s in Sweden.’
‘Here? For real? Oh my God, that’s cool.’
‘Not if it involves cleaners.’
‘Did you see the article in Aftonbladet? About how much he spends at the club? Hundreds of thousands of kronor in a night. Thirty thousand just in tips.’
‘Pay me that tip and I’ll be more than happy to clean,’ Sara said with a shrug.
‘But it’s kind of funny that he’s visiting the home of a police officer. Our dear colleagues will probably have him under surveillance given his reputation – Practically half his songs are about drugs.’
‘So now I’m going to be flagged too, because I’m mixing with a known junkie.’
‘Yes, we’ll have to keep you under surveillance too,’ Anna laughed.
‘Anyway, I’ve told Martin he can’t go near drugs. I’d quite like to ask him to video the whole thing so we have evidence, but that might be pushing it.’
‘And there’s no way of knowing how much of it is image and bragging. What’s his real name again? Cornelius something? Not quite the same cachet as Uncle Scam. But what will you do about Ebba?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘If he’s coming here. Surely you’ve read about it – he’s crazy about young girls . . .’
‘What, Ebba? Give over.’
‘I’m just saying.’
‘She can’t come here. No way.’ Sara shook her head and made a mental note to tell Martin and Olle not to mention anything about the visit to Ebba. At the same time, she knew that if Ebba found out that Sara had tried to stop her from meeting Scam, she would be furious with her mother and do everything in her power to meet the star. Raising children was a high stakes game. A little like poker, it involved bluffing just the right amount, betting the house when you had to and hoping you wouldn’t be seen. Well, perhaps the similarity wasn’t that close, Sara reflected.
‘Doesn’t Martin ever get jealous of all the artists he meets?’ said Anna, taking another sip of wine. ‘I mean, he’s still doing a lot with his own band, isn’t he?’
‘I can’t help wondering whether he still thinks he can get his big break.’ Sara looked across the rooftops of Stockholm’s old town, wondering what that said about her husband.
‘It’s almost cute. I guess there’s a diva in all of us.’
‘Mine is properly locked up in some small cage. Might even be dead. Martin, however, is constantly feeding his. Not to be cruel, but I think it’s more about a desire to be seen rather than to entertain.’
‘Nice tactic,’ Anna said thoughtfully. ‘“Not to be cruel”, before saying something really cruel.’
‘’But I didn’t want to be cruel!’
‘Not to be cruel, but you’re the ugliest person on the planet.’ Anna grinned at her.
‘Look, it’s like this. Martin was really keen on the stage even back at school. And it’s never stopped. He always has to perform at the company’s parties, and his poor employees never dare say no. And just last June he tried to play at Ebba’s graduation party, but she refused.’
Sara smiled, but the smile faded when she thought about the days around Ebba’s party, the days before her showdown with Abu Rasil, the final days before her ‘normal’ life that she had thought she would always live had ended. The life she would never be able to return to.
‘My God, these glasses must have holes in them,’ said Anna. ‘They’re already empty.’
Sara refilled them and Anna raised her glass in a toast. First to Sara, and then a couple of times in mid-air in various directions. Sara looked at her friend sceptically. Anna met her gaze.
‘Surely you feel it too?’ she said.
‘What?’
‘There’s someone here.’ Anna looked around the tower room. ‘Perhaps it’s those Nazis? There’s no harmonious energy in this room.’
Sara had once told her the old rumours that a former owner of the apartment had hidden Nazis on the run from Germany at the end of the war.
‘It’s probably the rats. Cheers.’
At that moment, her mobile beeped. Martin, Sara assumed. But it was from Hedin.
Berlin? Why was she going there?
Sara hoped it wasn’t her fault and that she hadn’t sent Hedin off on some dangerous wild goose chase.
Anna raised her glass again, but suddenly all Sara could think about was a murdered priest.