Sara woke up at around seven, her head heavy following the two or three bottles of wine she had shared with Anna the evening before. Good grief, there had even been hugs, confessions and ‘I love yous’ while drunk. Downright amateurism at a relatively low level of intoxication. She didn’t know whether to be ashamed of herself or proud.
Martin was already up even though he had got home at two o’clock. She got up, visited the bathroom, did her press-ups and went to find her husband in the kitchen. Her husband, who despite all the stress and expectation ahead of the big star’s visit, had taken the time to make her a cup of tea. She gave him a kiss as thanks. And since the day was technically classified as a hangover day, she skipped her morning porridge and spread soft garlic cheese onto half a baguette instead. Heavenly.
Then Walter wanted feeding by way of thanks for guarding the kitchen against rats overnight. Luckily, he hadn’t caught any. It was always up to Sara to deal with the bodies, since Martin’s rat phobia extended to dead rats. Sara considered a parallel with her job – it was up to her to deal with the rats of society too. But being philosophical didn’t help. Bloodied rat corpses were just as disgusting either way.
Martin vanished carrying his cup of coffee. There were cordons and guest lists and press accreditations to review. Ahead of these particular two concerts, Martin wasn’t trusting anyone else, or so it seemed. When she heard the front door close, she wondered how many coffee cups Martin had taken to work and never returned with. At least a dozen.
She checked the news online. There was nothing about a priest in Östergötland, nothing about a missing former director of a government agency, nothing about former West German terrorists. But there was plenty about Uncle Scam. Lists of his best songs, the biggest scandals, his career highs and lows, competitions to win tickets. On Martin’s preferred radio station, they were wittering away about the gigs – two sold-out nights at the Friends Arena. And it was rumoured that Scam was going to do a top secret club appearance – the only question was where. Sara switched over to P2. The Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G major. She thought about her violin which she had smashed to pieces in a fury. Was that carnage the end of her violin playing days? The thought of it was both sad and liberating at once. Like finishing school.
In the middle of her baguette, Jane called back – bright-eyed as ever at this early hour. Sara got straight to the point. Just like Jane always did.
‘Did you visit Lotta’s family?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘In case they needed anything.’
‘Did you say anything about Stellan?’
‘No.’
‘Or me?’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘Why did you leave your umbrella there?’
‘I forgot it.’
‘You never forget anything. You wanted a reason to go back.’
‘Why not? I’d be happy to visit them again.’
‘Come on, Mum. You’re up to something.’
‘Yes, I’m watching the television.’
She got no further. Jane switched to talking about how dull the morning news programme she watched had become, at which point Sara said she had to go. Her mother was up to something, but Sara couldn’t work out what it was and Jane was apparently not going to confess. The worst thing was that she was certain that her mother was keeping it secret precisely because she knew that Sara wouldn’t like it. Just as Sara would have done herself, she realised.
After a long hot shower she got dressed and stepped outside into Kornhamnstorg. Unfortunately, the ice cream parlour wasn’t open. Bomonti, which was in the same building as her apartment, did the best lemon sorbet in Stockholm – possibly in Sweden. It was the only lemon sorbet Sara had ever eaten that didn’t leave a bitter aftertaste. Lemon sorbet didn’t need to have that – there were more than enough things to deal with in life. But it still did. After the events in Bromma, she had promised herself to get better at enjoying life. Eating lemon sorbet was part of that, but there were also other, more important things. She had around an hour left until she needed to be at work, and she had an idea about what she should do with that hour.
‘Sara,’ said a voice beside her. When she turned around she saw C.M. – Carl Magnus something-or-other, the Bromans’ neighbour.
‘How are you?’ he said with sympathy in his voice. How much did he know about what had happened? Perhaps the police had been obliged to explain what his shotgun had been used for. Although how much did the police really know?
‘I’m fine. How are you?’
‘Oh, I’m well. I was passing and thought I’d take a look at this spectacle,’ he said, gesturing towards the eternal building site immediately outside Sara’s front door. The scandal that was Slussen. ‘I don’t think they’re going to finish before I shuffle off this mortal coil.’
Sara wondered how C.M. actually felt after having been held prisoner in his own home with the risk of not being found. He had told the police that he and Agneta had had an affair in the past, but that he had never guessed who she really was. Now he was one of very few people who knew the truth about Agneta Broman. Or at least part of the truth. That she had been some kind of secret agent, but not that she had been a Soviet illegal living under a false identity for all those years while monitoring the Stasi’s spy, Geiger, on behalf of the KGB. Sara had also realised that Agneta had forsaken her ideology and done all she could so that her beloved grandchildren would not have to grow up in the shadow of Cold War intrigues and false loyalties. But given what she knew about Agneta’s duplicity, Sara wondered why the old woman had had an affair with C.M. Perhaps it had been nothing more than the ordinary human requirement for closeness? Perhaps spies needed body contact too? And she had presumably had little in the way of married life with Stellan, given his awful secrets. At any rate, Sara would always be grateful that in her childhood she had learned that C.M. had a very expensive shotgun made by Fabbri. It had saved her life – as well as many others in Europe.
She waved goodbye to C.M. and strolled up to Östermalm via the Skeppsbron bridge and Nybroplan.
There, through a large glass door on the corner of Torstenssongatan and Riddargatan, she saw her first-born standing behind a large reception desk in a suit, her hair up, smiling at staff arriving for work.
Friendly and charming, with a cheery word offered to all who passed. Although Sara would have loved to benefit from this side of Ebba, she was glad to see it being expressed in the company of others. Her daughter wasn’t always angry. This Ebba was also the result of predispositions inherited from Sara and Martin, as well as their efforts to raise her.
To be perfectly honest, it hurt a little that Ebba was so happy to work with her grandfather, but that was temporary. A first job on the way to her own career and her own life. And Sara hoped she would play a greater role in that respect than she had done during Ebba’s teenage years. That was what she had always looked forward to, standing by her daughter’s side as she created her own life.
Sara put her hand on the brass door handle and pushed it open. Ebba turned towards the entrance with a smile, but as soon as she spotted her mother her face contorted into a grimace.
‘Mum, I’m working!’ she almost hissed.
Sara looked around. Carpeted floor, Arne Jacobsen Egg armchairs, Noguchi tables and the company’s logo in two metres of brass on the wall. ‘Titus & Partners’. Ebba smiled and greeted passing colleagues, but glowered at her mother in the intervals between them.
‘What do you want?’
‘To see how you’re getting on,’ Sara said to her daughter.
‘I’m great. They’re so incredibly nice to me here.’
‘Yes, of course. When your grandfather owns the company.’
‘God, you’re rotten. That’s not the reason at all.’
No, it had been a stupid thing to say. Sara regretted it. Why couldn’t Ebba be allowed to think that people were pleasant without any ulterior motives? Why shouldn’t she be allowed to think the world was beautiful? She would realise what it was like in due course, but she had to learn it herself. The hard way.
‘Good morning, Ebba.’
The deep voice made Ebba not only smile but also straighten her back and raise her eyebrows.
‘Good morning! I hope you’re well?’
‘Absolutely splendid.’
Sara turned towards the voice and saw a handsome man in his forties in an elegant suit, without a tie but with a handkerchief in his breast pocket, or a pouchette as she knew it was called. Green eyes and thick brown hair combed back and curling into his neck. He looked at Sara and reached out with his hand.
‘I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure. Tom Burén, Executive Vice President. Are you new?’
‘No, I’m Ebba’s mother. Sara.’
‘You’ll forgive the cliché, but how is that possible? You look more like sisters.’
Sara flashed a wry smile at him.
‘With a twenty-five year interval.’
‘Well then, all I can do is thank you,’ said Burén.
‘For . . . ?’
‘Giving the world such a talented daughter. A real asset to the firm.’
Ebba blushed where she stood behind the reception desk. Sara realised that Tom Burén had built a career on his gift of the gab, but she still couldn’t help feeling some maternal pride.
‘It’s all to her credit,’ said Sara. ‘She’s never listened to her parents.’
‘What’s all this then? Just hanging around? You’d think you were working for the council.’
Eric Titus smiled at them from just inside the main door.
‘I’ve just met Ebba’s mother,’ said Tom.
‘Go easy, she’s packing heat,’ said Eric, and his deputy laughed.
‘But I only shoot if you touch my daughter,’ said Sara.
‘Don’t you worry,’ said Tom, showing his ring finger, which bore a large gold band.
‘Have you ever been in before?’ Eric asked, turning to Sara. ‘I don’t think you have?’
Sara realised it was true – she had never visited Eric’s office. Even though she had spent a quarter of a century with his son.
‘Come on in,’ Eric said, pointing to some pictures on the wall by the lifts. ‘Projects in Asia, America, Africa. And Europe, of course.’
‘You construct buildings?’
Eric laughed.
‘You know a little. Yes, we build buildings – or so you might say.’ He tapped in a code and the lift door closed. ‘Construction is one of our pillars, major projects characterised by Swedish quality all over the world. Communications, energy and logistics are our other three pillars. But I don’t want to bore you. Here’s my office.’
The lift let out a discreet ding and Eric led Sara into what was clearly his own part of the building. A pretty young girl was standing by a desk outside a smoked glass partition wall with large doors leading into a corner office with a magnificent desk, a separate meeting table and a group of Swan armchairs.
‘This is Sanna, my assistant,’ said Eric, pointing to the girl by the standing desk. ‘Sanna, this is my daughter-in-law, Sara. Mother to Ebba, down in reception.’
‘Pleasure to meet you,’ said Sanna, smiling kindly.
The fact that Eric had introduced his assistant made an agreeable impression, Sara thought, hoping that it was his natural behaviour rather than something he was only doing because he thought it would be appreciated by Sara. Nevertheless, it was typical that it was a young woman rather than a young man standing there. Or a middle-aged man. With dandruff.
Sara went over to the windows and looked down towards the Nybroviken bay and the island of Skeppsholmen on the other side. The water glittered as a white archipelago ferry cut through the small waves on its way out to sea.
‘Coffee?’ Eric went over to a small, wholly automatic Jura machine on the other side of his big office. ‘Latte? Cappucino? Black?’
‘I’ll try a latte, please. It’s always the best indicator of a machine’s quality.’
Eric pressed a button, handed Sara a latte and then chose an espresso for himself.
‘Take a seat,’ he said.
‘Do you have time for me?’
‘I’ve got all the time in the world. That’s the wonderful thing about growing old. I can do what I like. The company runs by itself. And I’ve ensured that I have only hired competent people, so I would say the company runs better the less I get involved. But it’s still rather pleasant to come here and feel important.’
Eric smiled again. Self-awareness. A good trait.
‘Well, would you like to hear the sales pitch? Turnover, how many countries we’re active in, the new sectors we’ve entered? Or perhaps you’d just like to chat?’
‘Chatting sounds good.’
‘Fifty-six billion kronor, thirty-four countries, telecommunications, superconductors and green energy. Oops, I said it anyway.’
‘Good coffee,’ was Sara’s judgment.
‘Like I said, I surround myself with the best.’
‘Like Ebba?’
‘She really is doing a splendid job. Always on time, remembers everyone’s names, always knows which bookings are coming up and where people are. You’ve got a girl there who’s going to go far.’
The thought struck Sara again. Did other people see things in her daughter that she didn’t herself? Or was Ebba different with her grandfather? Well, she was clearly different with everyone who wasn’t her mother.
‘Go far? Well, I suppose if that’s what’s most important.’
‘You can’t live in your big flat or sit here in my office with that nice cup of coffee and say that there aren’t advantages to success,’ said Eric, raising his eyebrows.
‘Have I succeeded? How does a police officer fit into the formula for success? You definitely don’t get rich doing it.’
‘Social good. That’s the most important purpose of all. I’m incredibly impressed by the important job you do. Which means I think the least your family can do is make an effort to provide you with a tolerable existence, given that society doesn’t reward its most important workers to an adequate extent.’
Sara meditated on this for a while. Did she really buy the reasoning? Eric had never shown any interest in anything other than business and empire building so far as Sara could remember. But perhaps she had been a little too quick to judge him. He might really think that. And it didn’t really matter whether they were values he had always had or ones that he had acquired in order to appreciate Martin’s choice of partner. Why wouldn’t a business executive have sides to him other than the desire to focus on his career? Sara thought to herself. Simply because she didn’t? She smiled slightly at her self-criticism. At least they shared a love of family – that much was definitely true. And it was more important than anything else.
‘It’s really lovely to see that there are grown-ups that Ebba isn’t angry with. Gives me hope that it might spread to us too one fine day.’
Eric looked at Sara for a second and then sat down with his espresso cup.
‘Sara, it’s not my intent to come between you and Ebba. I mean, with all the presents and the driving lessons and so on. I suppose it’s a parent’s duty to practise driving with their child.’
‘I’m just relieved I don’t have to. We would kill each other.’
‘And I recognise that in one way I am buying her devotion with all the expensive presents, but I’m just so incredibly fond of my grandchildren. I want to give them everything in the whole wide world. I’m afraid I’ve never managed to get close to Martin in that way. It feels as if on the one hand he has to prove something to me and on the other he kicks up a fuss and goes his own way. You don’t have to be a psychologist to understand that his need to be on stage is a desperate attempt to get his father’s attention. But even if Martin and I have a bit of a ramshackle relationship, it’s been light years better than the one I had with my own father. You just have to regard it as a gradual development – generation by generation.’
‘So what was your father like?’ Sara asked, thinking that she was pleased that Martin and Olle were on such good terms. They were almost more like friends than father and son, but that was better than having nothing in common.
Eric laughed and shook his head.
‘Old school. Didn’t you meet him?’
‘Oh yes, but only the once. A very impressive man.’
‘Then you know what I mean. I was over forty before I felt that he accepted me, when this company began to grow. Then we enjoyed a good relationship in his final years, which pleases me a lot.’
He sat in silence for a while, looking down at the desk. It was unusually introverted for Eric – a faint smile playing on his lips. Then he looked up at Sara with a slightly scrutinising gaze, as if he were thinking about something.
‘I wanted to be an artist too. I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone that. But my father wouldn’t let me. I was to join the military or business life.’
‘So you didn’t pursue your own path?’
‘It wasn’t even on the map. Society was completely different back then. A different world. And I honestly think he might have killed me if I’d tried. Rather than have a juggler for a son.’
‘So what did you want to do?’
‘Become an actor. I sang and performed for my mother and young siblings, but when I was ten years old my father caught me at it and locked me in the wardrobe and I wasn’t allowed out until I promised to stop my childish behaviour.’
Eric looked rather sad, so Sara reached out and placed a hand on his. Her father-in-law gave her a look of gratitude.
‘So that was why I actually encouraged Martin to become an artist. In those brief spells we had together as he grew up, I wanted to see him perform. All I insisted was that he become the best at whatever he did. Otherwise there wasn’t much point in it.’
‘And he may not have become the best.’ Sara thought about Martin’s beloved part-time band with amusement.
‘No, he was decidedly more talented at organising, so I suppose I indirectly contributed to his success.’ Eric smiled, almost a little surprised. As if he had never considered this angle before. He even nodded to himself before continuing. ‘If I hadn’t encouraged him to perform, he wouldn’t have put so much into it, and he would never have discovered his talent. And you would be living in a one-bed rented flat in Hökarängen.’
‘You’d never let your grandchildren live in such cramped quarters.’
‘You know me far too well.’
‘Perhaps I’m getting to know you.’
A light tap on the glass wall made both Sara and Eric look up. Sanna was standing on the other side with a bundle of papers in one hand and an elegant pen in the other, her eyebrows raised in a quizzical expression. Eric waved dismissively at her with his hand and then turned towards Sara.
‘You know something? You can feel sorry for yourself about what you didn’t get to do, dreams that were never fulfilled. But you learn a lot from not getting to do what you dream of. It might not help you, but it can help you to help others.’
‘I don’t think we’ve ever talked this much,’ said Sara. ‘I like it.’
‘Sara, I . . . I don’t exactly know what happened to you around midsummer, but I gather from Martin that you’ve gone through something traumatic. And I can see it on your face, if I may be so vulgar as to mention your exterior.’
‘You may.’
Sara remembered the first time she had seen her reflection in the mirror at the hospital. The nurse had thought she ought to wait, but Sara had demanded to see it when they had been redressing it. She had decided beforehand that she would be horrified, but wouldn’t panic that her face was ruined. Perhaps that was why she had been completely calm when she had seen the burnt, scarred skin. She had expected it to be worse, she had been promised that it would heal more and above all she had decided to accept life as it came. There was no reason to feel bad about something she couldn’t change. Better to put her energy into changing things that were wrong and that she was capable of influencing.
‘I’m glad you survived,’ said Eric. ‘And it was a reminder that life is fragile. We could all go at any time, and I don’t want to depart this present life without having got to know my daughter-in-law a bit better.’
‘That’s a very beautiful thing to say. I completely agree.’
‘There’s one more thing.’ Eric paused for a longer time, and then he conjured up his winning smile again. ‘I want to offer Ebba a trainee position here. With the long-term aim of her working her way up to the executive team. My dream is for someone in the family to want to take over the business. Martin is neither interested in nor suited to it, but Ebba is just the right kind of person. If she applies to the School of Economics, she can study at the same time as working here, and then work her way through all our subsidiaries and various divisions. She could be ready to take over in ten years’ time.’
‘Take over?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m sure she would be flattered by the offer, but I think she wants to do her own thing.’
‘If I say that I would like her to take over, I think that will be the path she wants to follow.’
Sara didn’t know whether it was protecting her daughter’s free will or whether it was quite simply envy that someone wanted to build a future for Ebba, but the proposal made her recoil instinctively.
‘She has to make her own mind up.’
‘She doesn’t need to take over Martin’s company – it’s already been sold.’
‘But perhaps she wants to do something else entirely.’
Sara had imagined that Ebba might become a human rights lawyer or perhaps travel the world with Médecins Sans Frontières, saving lives. Not become the up-and-coming young woman in her grandfather’s company.
‘Don’t confuse what she wants with why she wants it,’ said Eric. ‘There’s something very satisfying about building up to a goal.’
‘Building up, yes. But you just want her to be the custodian of what you’ve already built.’
‘It’s not finished yet. Not by a long shot. Ebba would be the perfect person to lead an ecommerce venture, for instance.’
Little Ebba ‘Lead an ecommerce venture.’ She’d only just got out of nappies.
‘Eric,’ said Sara. ‘I don’t honestly know how I feel about this.’
‘What is there to feel, except that it’s a fantastic opportunity?’
Sara had no arguments to offer against this, but she still couldn’t accept the idea off the bat. She was infinitely grateful when her mobile rang and interrupted their conversation.
Eva Hedin.
‘I need money.’
‘OK. Do you use Swish? How much do you need?’
‘Ten thousand euros.’
‘Well, I don’t have that in my account. What do you need it for?’
‘To pay a source.’
‘And he needs ten thousand euros? Are you sure he knows anything?’
‘Do you need money?’ Eric asked.
‘Not me. My . . . friend.’
‘Sanna!’ Eric barked into the intercom, and the assistant from the standing desk outside hurried into the office.
‘I need you to transfer ten thousand euros – the person my daughter-in-law is speaking to can provide you with the account details.’
‘OK,’ said Sanna, stretching out her hand towards Sara, who hesitated for a few moments. But eventually she handed her mobile to Eric’s assistant, who quickly left the room.
‘Hello, Sanna speaking. Do you have an account number for me?’
Sanna shut the door behind her and Eric looked at Sara with a satisfied expression.
‘Sometimes it’s good to have plenty of money. Don’t you agree?’