Abeba’s text message to Cesar was occupying Sara’s thoughts as she climbed the stairs to the apartment. Everyday fitness, they called it, and an opportunity to summarise the issues they were grappling with, so that she could let go of work when she got home.
They would soon know the truth about Abeba’s text message. Had she sent it or not? Perhaps she had simply deleted it and then denied sending it so that her parents wouldn’t find out? It might have nothing to do with Cesar’s death at all.
Sara wondered how it felt to live a double life like that. One life for her parents and one of her own, which had to be kept secret.
Two floors to go. Her final questions before she switched off her work brain for the evening.
Alternative theories: might Abeba have consciously lured her boyfriend to an encounter with his enemies? If so, had she known they were his enemies? And why would she have done that? Was it really possible? Her grief had seemed genuine.
Sara stopped. Had they checked whether the mobile they had been given by Abeba was the same as the one Cesar had received the text message from? In a world of constantly changing phones, it wouldn’t have been strange if Abeba had used the same tactic too. But Sara hadn’t thought to check that. Stupid! She wrote a reminder to herself to check in the morning.
Then she was at her destination. She unlocked the front door and went inside. Ebba’s shoes were in the hall and Sara perked up. Perhaps the prodigal daughter was missing her family after all?
‘Ebba?’ Sara called out.
‘She’s in here,’ Jane replied. Sara turned around and checked the hall floor again. Indeed, there were Jane’s shoes too, neatly inserted into the shoe rack rather than abandoned in the middle of the floor like Ebba’s.
Sara entered the living room to greet her mother and daughter, and also spotted her husband and son. All of them with strange expressions on their faces – and that was putting it mildly. Martin looked astonished. Ebba angry. Olle sulky.
‘Hello?’ said Sara.
‘Jane has told us about Stellan,’ said Martin, which made Sara’s stomach do a somersault.
‘What about Stellan?’ she said, looking from her husband to her mother. Jane looked her directly in the eyes.
‘No more secrets,’ she said.
‘Surely you haven’t . . .’ was all Sara managed to say.
‘Yes, I have.’
‘Are you out of your mind?! I said I didn’t want to!’
‘They need to know what their background is.’
‘Why?’
‘Was he my grandfather?’ said Ebba. ‘Uncle Stellan?’
‘Why didn’t you say something?’ said Martin, looking more sympathetic than upset.
‘There’s nothing to say.’
‘Yes there is, that he was your dad,’ said Ebba.
The anger welled up inside Sara. Both in respect of her mother’s betrayal and her father’s very being.
‘He wasn’t my father. I have no father!’ Sara picked up one of the white Series 7 chairs positioned around the dining table and threw it at the wall. Then she swiped at the vase of white roses, so that it fell to the floor and smashed, the roses raining through the air. Martin looked frightened, but Jane and Ebba were the picture of calm. Olle mostly looked sulky. ‘I don’t want to hear another word about it, OK?’ said Sara. ‘And above all else, I don’t want a fucking thing from him!’
The last comment was directed at Jane.
‘OK, I don’t care who my granddad was,’ said Olle. ‘Can I go back to my room?’
‘Yes, go. But you can never tell anyone about this.’
‘No, why would I? “Hello there, have you heard the news? A dude I never met was my granddad”? Big deal.’
Olle snorted. An Uncle Scam song was seeping out from the AirPods in his ears as he strode away.
‘Does that mean we have to go to his funeral?’ said Ebba, her voice worried. ‘I mean, I hate funerals.’
‘No, you’re not going to a funeral. I’m going for Agneta’s sake – if I think I can keep myself from spitting on his coffin.’
‘My God, Mum, what the hell’s wrong with you? Why are you so angry? You were there tonnes when you were little, weren’t you? I’ve heard about all those wonderful summers in Bromma like a thousand times.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it. And I definitely don’t want any of you to talk about it. To anyone.’
‘He was my granddad. Not everything is about you.’
‘Yes, it’s actually the kids’ roots that we’re talking about here,’ said Martin.
‘You’ve got a father and his two parents – your grandfather and grandmother. And you’ve got a mother and her mother – your other grandmother. That’s it. OK?’ snapped Sara.
‘No, it’s not,’ said Ebba. ‘Most importantly, you don’t decide what I feel. Uncle Stellan was my granddad. It’s important to me.’
‘My God, you want me to tell the truth about him?’
‘Or you can just accept the truth about yourself?’
‘Go to hell – all of you!’
Sara turned and headed for the door.
‘Good – that’s what a proper mum says!’ Ebba called after her. Sara couldn’t help turning around again.
‘A proper mum has a family that listens to her!’
‘Sorry . . .’
Sara turned around towards an unfamiliar voice with a heavy accent. A young woman in tracksuits bottoms, a sweatshirt and yellow rubber gloves was standing behind her.
‘I’m done now, but I did find one thing . . .’
‘Who is this?’ said Sara, looking at her husband.
‘I was going to have a bit of an after-party with Scam after the gig, so I wanted everything to be spick and span.’
‘So you brought in a cleaner?!’
‘Well, neither of us has any ti—’
‘Idiot! You know what I think about that!’
‘Yes, but maybe I have some views too.’
‘There’s not going to be any bloody after-party here! And you . . .’ Sara turned to the cleaner. ‘You can go. I’m sorry my pig of a husband tricked you into coming here. We don’t have servants in this household.’
‘Yes, yes, I’m going. I’m done. But I found something.’
‘Martin’s brain?’
‘This. A weird . . . microphone? It was under the coffee table.’
A little electronic gadget rested in the girl’s gloved hand. Sara bent forward to examine it. It undeniably looked like a microphone. A little home-made unit featuring a mic, transmitter and battery. What was it doing here? Who had put it there? And why?
In her home. With her family.
As if in a trance, she picked up the little microphone and shouted for all she was worth into it:
‘Who the hell has bugged my home?! Go to hell, you fucking moron!’
Then she threw the little microphone against the wall, smashing it to pieces.
‘What was that?’ said Martin, looking at the fragmented remains. ‘A microphone? Who put it there?’
‘Don’t know. Maybe the paparazzi? Your band is going great guns.’
‘No, but seriously. Was it crooks?’
Sara took a deep breath and looked her husband in the eyes.
‘Not now, Martin. Not now.’
*
Sara sat in the tower room for a long time watching darkness fall. She saw the city illuminated and life continuing outside, ordinary people coming home from their ordinary jobs to their ordinary families. Martin and Olle went to the concert and Jane went home to Vällingby. And here she was.
Bugged.
In her own home.
Unless it was some fanatical Uncle Scam fan trying to listen in to the planned after-party. But she didn’t believe that far-fetched explanation.
So what was the explanation? And how long had the bug been there? Might it have been Breuer who put it there when they were searching for the old spy ring? The German spook had been engaged in some sophisticated double-dealing. Perhaps . . . It was the most probable explanation. Or the only possible explanation that wasn’t extremely worrying.
She would have liked to have someone with her now. She just didn’t know who.
Sara stayed up in the tower room until she heard the front door open at half past midnight. She went downstairs to find Olle accompanied by a girl in her twenties.
‘Will you be OK now?’ Sara heard the girl say.
‘Yeah, absolutely,’ said Olle. ‘Thanks, Tindra. You didn’t need to drive me. I could have got the tube.’
‘Hi,’ said Sara. ‘How was the concert?’
‘Totally sick,’ said Olle happily. ‘I was right at the front and got to meet Scam backstage afterwards. Look!’
Olle pulled out his mobile and produced a selfie of him together with a thin white guy in a cap, with loads of tattoos.
‘Who’s that?’
‘Scam,’ said Olle, as if his mother had completely lost her senses.
‘Is he white?’
‘What did you think? That all rappers have to be black? That’s old-school racism. Or whatever it’s called. Inverse racism. That’s what he sings about. “You don’t know where I’ve been, you only see the color of my skin.”’
Olle looked at Tindra, seeking support in the generational war, and perhaps continued contact with the young girl.
‘Yes, yes. I didn’t know,’ said Sara. ‘Good that you had fun anyway. But where’s your father? Weren’t they having an after-party here?’
Sara looked at the lined up bottles of spirits and champagne on the dining table, which had been moved into the living room. Cognac, grappa, calvados, vodka, gin. Dozens of bottles of Cristal.
‘No, you said he wasn’t allowed, so they went to the club.’
‘“Wasn’t allowed”?’ Sara glanced at the young girl and realised that the nonsense you said often only seemed like nonsense if an outsider heard it. ‘But he sent you home on your own?’
‘No, Tindra gave me a lift. But I could have taken the underground. I’m used to it.’
‘You most definitely are not,’ said Sara, oblivious of her son’s desire to impress a good-looking older girl. ‘And who are you then?’ she said to the girl.
‘Tindra. I work at Go Live.’ Tindra proffered the laminated backstage pass that was slung around her neck as if to certify her truth-telling. The pass said ‘GoLive’, ‘Uncle Scam – Scamerican World Tour’ and ‘Backstage pass, access all areas’.
‘How sweet of you to run Olle home. Are you OK to drive home yourself? You’re not too tired?’
‘I’m not going home. I’m going back to work.’
‘Tonight?’
‘All night. And from seven tomorrow.’ Tindra squeezed out a smile. ‘People think the music industry is so flipping glamorous, but it’s actually quite a lot of work.’
Sara didn’t think the music industry was one bit glamorous, and she wished she could have forced Tindra to go home and get some rest, but it would only have caused trouble for the poor girl.
Tindra bade them goodnight and just about managed to contain a huge yawn until the door closed.
‘Bedtime,’ said Sara, speaking on behalf of both her son and herself.
Olle obediently headed towards his room and Sara went to the living room to turn off the lights. She saw the devastation – just as she’d left it.
Well, she had broken the vase – no one else. Nevertheless, it bothered her that no one had taken the time to sweep up the pieces and pick up the roses. It would have felt like the other members of the family had acknowledged her right to be upset if they had cleaned up after her outburst. Now she would have to do it herself, and it felt as if no one had understood her, hadn’t even wanted to understand her. As if it didn’t matter that Sara’s father was the most disgusting human being she had ever encountered and that he had even come close to abusing his own daughter. Did they really not understand that Sara refused to have anything to do with him? She refused to give him even a millimetre of her life.
She swept up the pieces of glass, mopped up the water and then vacuumed and wiped to catch the smallest shards. The roses might have been saved but she simply chucked them onto the dining table. They might as well stay there as a reminder of Sara’s feelings about her father.
When she pressed the button to retract the cord on the vacuum cleaner, her eye was caught by something else on the floor. A small piece of metal. She bent down and picked it up.
The battery from the bug.
What did the planted microphone really mean?
The fact that it had been there meant that someone had been into their home and planted it which meant there was someone listening to her . . . watching her?
But who – and why? And what would happen if Sara did something that the unknown watcher didn’t like?
What would happen if she had already done so?
Somewhere in the shadows dark forces were lurking with plans for Sara, and she had no idea what they might be.
And what you don’t know you can’t guard against.