The bedroom reeked of booze and Martin was snoring so loudly that the walls were vibrating. He had tumbled into bed at around half past five in the morning. Sara had tried to fall back to sleep but after half an hour she had got up to stake her hopes on breakfast instead.
She hoped Martin had had fun, and she thought about Tindra, the assistant, who had probably got to bed just as late, but had to get up again soon and keep working on the second gig. Online there were stories about the ‘Superstar’s night of wild partying’ illustrated with photos from various hip bars’ VIP sections with Uncle Scam and various local celebrities. Martin could be glimpsed in a couple of the photos. It was lucky that the newspapers reported on this, Sara thought. If you couldn’t party with superstars, then at least you could look at photos of other people doing so.
Sara put her used coffee cup and yoghurt bowl in the dishwasher and headed for the shower.
When she emerged into the hall, there were two bangs in quick succession followed by the sound of breaking glass and a big smash.
She looked towards the crash first and saw a framed lithograph had had its glass smashed and had fallen to the floor.
Where the piece had been hanging there were two small holes in the wall.
She quickly looked towards the window. Two matching holes.
Sara didn’t want to understand what this meant, but it ate away at her nonetheless.
Someone had shot into her apartment.
Had tried to hit her.
And had been centimetres away.
Her knees gave way and she fell to the floor.
Was that another shot? No, it was her body hitting the parquet.
She couldn’t think clearly. Had it really happened? She looked up towards the window. Yes, there were two holes. And the same went for the wall.
Panic spread through her body. The trauma from the Bromans’ shed washed over her again, just as powerful now as then. Someone wanted to kill her and one little bullet could tear her body to shreds so that she couldn’t be saved.
She wasn’t even safe at home.
This was what she had been afraid of, but she had tried not to think about it. And now it had happened.
She began breathing heavily. But she still felt that she couldn’t get enough air. She couldn’t move.
It became warm. It felt as though there was a fire again. She couldn’t move her head, could only glance to either side. Was there a fire? No, but it still seemed as if the flames in the shed were licking at her body, stinging her. She had the clear feeling that they were going to take the rest now – what they hadn’t managed to destroy last time.
What was she going to do? Shoot back? Call for help? Call the police? Shout to her family to take cover? Yes, she had to. And it was urgent. But she couldn’t do anything.
Now she wasn’t able to take in any air at all. She lay there desperately gasping for air. She felt tears begin to flow. Was life going to end now? And she couldn’t do anything about it. Couldn’t even move.
‘What’s going on?’
Olle, sleepy-eyed, was staring at his mother.
The sight of her son in the firing line yanked Sara out of her paralysis.
‘Down!’ Sara shouted, tugging Olle to the floor beside her. Good God, what if they had shot again? What if Olle had been hit? Her hands trembled as they rested on her son’s arms.
Olle looked at her, still drunk on sleep and completely uncomprehending.
‘Why?’ he said.
‘It’s from the building site,’ Sara said, thinking she needed to bloody well pull herself together. Get a grip. ‘Flying stones. They’re doing blasting work. Stay away from the windows – you hear me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. Now go back to bed!’
Olle began to stand up, but Sara brusquely pulled him down again.
‘Crawl!’
‘Yes, yes . . .’
Olle obediently crawled back towards his room. Her son and husband would surely sleep for another few hours. That gave Sara some time.
She wriggled forward and drew the curtains across the bullet-holed window, before quickly crawling around and closing the blinds and curtains in all windows facing Slussen. She dressed and retrieved the broken lithograph then put it in a cupboard and fetched a painting from the living room that she hung up in place of the damaged picture, so that the bullet holes weren’t visible. Neither Martin nor Olle would notice the change.
She swept up the shards of glass for the cat’s sake. Then she fetched one of Walter’s cat toys – a long stick with a string attached to it. She pried the curtains open a notch, put one end of the stick to the bullet hole in the wall and the other towards the bullet hole in the window. That gave her a bullet trajectory to enable her to see where the shot had been fired from. And her likely trajectory ended by the Hilton hotel at Slussen, in a small opening between the big buildings there.
For safety’s sake, she wrote a note in case Martin – against all probability - woke before Olle: Stay away from the windows! They’re doing blasting work for the building site and there are flying stones.
And then she ran.
She shoved early-to-rise pedestrians and electric scooter riders out of her way. And after passing the hotel on the way up towards Bastugatan and the Söder heights, she found the spot she had seen from her shot-up window. An open, cobbled area with the rather fancy name of Guldfjärdsterrassen. She had never been here before.
It was completely deserted but afforded incredible views of the railway tracks, the water and the old town.
And Sara’s home.
The shooter must have stood here. And they must have been a good shot, equipped with a telescopic sight in order to see Sara’s figure as she passed the window.
She probably shouldn’t have shouted into the bug, probably shouldn’t have shown that she had found it, and above all she shouldn’t have challenged whoever had planted it. She had put her entire family in danger. But now she could at least be certain that it hadn’t been Breuer who had bugged her. Someone was after her.
The bastards, Sara thought. They might have hit Olle. And that would have been Sara’s fault, completely down to her.
A blend of rampant guilty conscience and a growing hatred of the person who had put her family in mortal danger consumed her. The anger she felt towards herself was in turn directed to the person who had shot at her. He wouldn’t get away with this. Not a chance!
Sara turned around and looked up towards the hotel windows and office buildings around her. No police, no sound of approaching sirens.
No one had reacted.
Had a man with a rifle really passed completely unnoticed?
But all she saw were inanimate façades and further away the portal into the Söder Tunnel. No people – even though she was in the middle of the city. She retraced her steps a short distance and looked down towards the entrance of the hotel. It was empty except for two taxis waiting for fares.
One driver was asleep behind the wheel of his car and said he hadn’t seen anything in the last half hour, while the other, standing outside his car smoking, said a rather odd car had just left. And that he had spoken to the driver.
‘Well, I saw him getting a rifle out from his wheels which got me curious. I didn’t think he was no robber or anything, so I wasn’t scared. Just curious. You’re born that way, aren’t you? A bit nysgerrig as the Danes say. But it said “game warden” on his car and he explained that this is what the city do. They shoot lots of animals in town – rabbits and geese and pigeons – and they do it in the mornings so that there aren’t as many people around.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘What did he look like? Who the hell was thinking about that? Bit older. Accent. Not like some Arab – German or French or something. I was thinking more about the gun than what he looked like. It was one hell of a rifle.’