He wouldn’t last much longer.
His toes only just reached the stool.
The noose was cutting into his neck and he had to tilt his head to the side to be able to reach down with his feet.
He couldn’t think of any more songs to sing.
The powerful lights meant he couldn’t see anything more than the contours of his father.
Hear the sound of rats chewing away in the walls.
See the little red light on the video camera. Just like when he had been little. He was back in the hellscape of his childhood, in his parents’ basement, the subterranean domain where Eric was the devil.
‘Sing!’ his father commanded now. ‘And dance! Entertain me. Otherwise I’ll get bored.’
‘What do you want to hear?’
The noose chafed against his skin, and his head had been cocked for so long that he couldn’t talk properly any longer.
‘You’re the artist,’ said Eric.
‘He is my song and my light . . .’
‘Nothing Christian!’ said Eric, a half-eaten apple hitting the stool with such force that it almost tipped over. Martin was only just able to keep it in position with the tips of his toes.
‘Do you think she’s coming?’
Eric looked at the screen. The peepshow in Warehouse 7 in real time. His men standing by next to the table. At the very moment Sara entered, he would see it. He would see her overpowered and then his men would rig two cameras to show her struggle to the death in real time. Martin would also get to see that.
‘Do you think your wife is willing to swap places with you? Is she the type?’
Martin didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what to think. Or hope. He wondered how Olle and Ebba would take it if both their parents disappeared.
‘Dad . . .’
‘Yes?’
There was a sound from above, smashing glass and then a thud, as if someone had landed on the floor.
Eric looked at the screen where he had been expecting to see Sara and then glanced upstairs in the house.
‘Your little pit bull is pretty smart after all.’
‘Sara . . . .!’
Martin apparently wanted to warn his wife, but his voice wouldn’t carry. And Sara probably wouldn’t have allowed herself to be dissuaded, Eric reflected.
He went and stood right by his son, ready to welcome his daughter-in-law with a smile.
‘Congratulations,’ he said when Sara came down the steps to the basement, pistol in hand. ‘Just a small warning. If I fall then I may very well tip over Martin’s stool.’
‘What makes you think that bothers me?’
‘I must say I hadn’t been expecting this. Did you look in the freezer?’
‘So you found the picture of Bielke?’ said Sara. ‘And left it there?’
Eric grinned.
‘It was perfect for my plans.’
‘And it was perfect for your plans to shoot into our home. When Olle was at home. Your own grandchild.’
‘I would never hurt him. I’m not that bad a shot. But come, come, tell me how you realised it was me? And that we were here rather than at Warehouse 7?’
‘Your satnav. And I recognised the stool that Martin was standing on – yellow with green flowers – from the photo that Marie showed me.’
‘Ah, a little luck and a little skill. Well, I suppose that’s what it takes. A real pity that the luck ran out.’
‘Why the peepshow?’
‘I wanted a hobby for when I retire,’ said Eric.
‘And why Stiller, Enberg and Hedin? To avoid discovery?’
‘Naturally. And now you can add Nowak and Titus Jr to that list.’
‘You’re going to make orphans of your grandchildren?’
‘Deep down, Martin has a rather negative perception of me. But with Ebba, I can correct that perception, be remembered as something completely different. As the person I am, the one I have become.’
‘You mean the person you’re trying to convince yourself that you are.’
‘It’s always the same with you, Sara. You always have to stick your nose in. I saw the folder containing my file in your hall last Sunday.’
Hedin’s folder, that Sara had put down in the hall when they had all gathered for Sunday lunch.
‘You’ve no idea how disappointed I was,’ Eric said. ‘My own daughter-in-law pursuing me. But I wanted to give you a chance. Well, actually, you got lots of chances. If you had just listened to my warnings. But I can’t let you get between me and my grandchildren.’
‘You mean my children.’
‘They seem to like their grandfather far better. And they can’t be allowed to develop the wrong impression of me.’
‘Are you that ashamed of what you did? Of Kommando 719? Of Stay-Behind?’
‘Everything that I did, I did for my country. So that you and Martin and everyone else could live in freedom,’ Eric said, looking at her with a fiery gaze.
‘They said you were still in the game.’
‘Well, I suppose you might say that. My little corporate empire has its uses. We build bugs into buildings in other countries, ship sensitive equipment to recipients we’d rather not acknowledge, a weapons system to an Arab state at war to secure our oil shipments. We can act as a front in every part of the world. I continue to do my bit.’
‘Stirner Shipping SA?’ Sara asked.
‘One of my companies.’
‘And you’ve built it all up using the money from Operation Wahasha.’
Eric frowned.
‘What do you know about Wahasha?’
‘That you want to conceal what you didn’t do. It’s not the murders and the attacks. It’s that you didn’t build up your company by yourself using your own means.’
‘You think that’s worse?’
‘Yes, for you,’ Sara said, taking a couple of steps closer. ‘When you finally won your father’s respect, it was because you had deceived him. And that realisation torments you. Like all tragic men obsessed with their fathers, your father’s recognition is what has governed your life. So you carry on deceiving him and yourself – twenty-five years after he died.’
‘Well, well, you’re quite the armchair psychologist.’
‘But it’s true,’ Sara added. ‘Even though Martin is here with a noose around his neck, it’s you who failed in that regard. He actually managed to build something by himself. You never did that.’
‘Shut up!’
Sara raised her pistol. She took aim at Eric’s forehead. Otto Rau. Faust.
‘Cut Martin down.’
Eric smiled and nudged the stool his son was standing on with the tip of his shoe. The stool wobbled back and forth and Martin struggled not to lose his balance, gurgling as the noose cut even more deeply into his neck.
‘Take it easy with that gun,’ said Eric.
Sara quickly moved towards Eric, raising one hand and striking him on the head with the butt of her gun. At the same time, she was prepared to catch Martin’s body if the stool was kicked aside.
Eric staggered back a couple of steps and then straightened up, but now with a pistol in his hand, aimed right at Sara.
‘Is this how it’s going to end? Seeing who shoots first? Can’t we do something more amusing?’
He moved in a wide circle behind Martin so that his son was between them.
‘Sara . . . Forgive me . . .’ Martin sobbed and cried.
‘What do you say? Why don’t we lay down our arms?’
A rapid step to the side and then Eric shot the pistol out of his daughter-in-law’s hand. Sara let out a shout of pain as the gun flew through the air, landing on the cement floor and sliding off into the darkness.
‘I think that makes us quits?’
Eric went over and turned on the video camera.
Sara didn’t know whether to lunge after the pistol, throw herself at Eric or try and free Martin from the noose.
Eric looked at her.
He came a few steps closer, then he let the pistol fall to the floor.
‘That evens things out a bit,’ he said with a smile.
While Sara followed the gun as it fell to the floor, the first blow landed.
A right hook to her chin, shaking her badly.
She hadn’t been ready for the attack, but she still managed to get her guard up and shield herself from the follow-up blow.
Right after that blocked blow, there was a quick jab at Sara’s face from right in front.
And then a kick from the side to back of her knee, making her collapse to the floor.
Eric was surprisingly agile.
When Sara tried to get back to her feet again, Eric caught her with a kick to the temple. And then a knee to her nose. There was a flash before her eyes and the pain was sharp and intense like a razor blade. She had to think fast.
She lunged at his feet to pull him down, but he danced away and responded with a lash of his foot to her head.
Then he stepped over her back, put his arm around her throat and rolled onto his back with her. He wrapped his legs around her thighs, locked his arm using his other hand and pressed for all he was worth.
Sara noticed that the video camera was aimed right at their fight.
Eric had already made up his mind before attacking where he would kill her. And now he wanted to immortalise her deadly struggle.
Sara tried to scratch Eric’s hands, but her nails were too short.
She tried to reach his eyes behind her neck, but he ducked his head out of reach.
Her eyes began to darken.
She knew she didn’t have many seconds in a stranglehold like this.
First she would faint and if Eric didn’t let go, she would be dead in less than half a minute.
And she knew he wouldn’t let go.
Where had the pistol got to?
She tried to twist her head to see where it was, but his grip only tightened.
She tried to reach his crotch, but he pressed against her. And she was unable to get any grip on his fingers so that she could prise free her hands.
Her temples were pounding and her vision was increasingly blurry.
His voice reached her through a tunnel.
She only vaguely understood that Eric was talking to her, but she couldn’t understand what he was saying.
Her body began to jerk and cramp.
Her consciousness slowly began to die away, and she knew time was running out.
Whether it was pure reflex or a sudden bolt from the blue she didn’t know, but when her body capitulated and became loose-limbed, she tapped Eric’s arm softly three times. As if to indicate she was tapping out. Giving up.
And he reacted instinctively and let go.
The half second it took him to realise what he had done was all Sara needed.
She twisted out of his grip and put her hands in his face to push him away. A finger deep in his eye made him scream.
He put one hand over the eye and with the other he reached for her face.
He got hold of her lower jaw, two fingers inside her mouth.
And then she bit.
As hard as she could.
She felt the fingers moving about inside her mouth and she bit down even harder until the fingers suddenly fell onto her tongue and her mouth was filled with warm, sweet liquid.
Eric shouted – more out of rage than pain.
Sara didn’t wait for his counterattack. She spat out the bitten-off fingers, grabbed his scrotum and twisted. As far as she could.
Now there was more pain in his shouting, and he curled up in his impotence as she lunged desperately for the pistol.
Both her own life and Martin’s depended on her succeeding.
Sara fumbled in the dark for the weapon, struck it but pushed it even further away in her eagerness. She crawled after it as quickly as she could, while at the same time she heard Eric following – back on his feet.
‘You little whore!’
Her fingertips found the hard metal.
She extended her fingers, grabbed the barrel and quickly put her other hand around the butt.
Then she rolled around in the same moment that a spotlight was directed at her and a bullet hit the floor, ricocheting from where she had just been lying.
She fired straight at the contours of Eric on front of the bright light.
He fell to the ground and she carried on shooting. She crawled backwards away from him as she shot. And shot. And shot.
Until her magazine was empty.
When Eric collapsed on the cold basement floor, Martin began to sing hysterically.
‘Money, money, money, must be funny, in the rich man’s world . . .’
He was crying even harder now, until he stumbled and the stool fell over.
The fear in his eyes as the noose tightened around his throat and the last of his air disappeared . . .
Sara leapt up. She grabbed Martin’s body and held it up so that the noose wouldn’t strain at him but she knew she wouldn’t be able to hold him indefinitely. She couldn’t reach the stool, couldn’t even see it in the darkness.
She contemplated the options while panic spread in her body. She had seconds.
At last she made up her mind.
She let go of her husband.
His gaze filled with horror as he thought she would leave him to die. His body writhed with desperation. The anguish. The desolate cry that was reduced by the noose to nothing but a pitiful gurgle.
But she hurried over and retrieved Eric’s pistol, ran back and put the muzzle to the rope before firing.
When the rope snapped, Martin fell to the floor. He must have hurt badly, but he said nothing. Not a sound.
He just lay there, completely still on the floor.
Sara looked from Eric’s dead body to her bleeding, tear-stained husband.
His whole life crushed.
And hers.
Now it was just them.
They had survived.
But it might have been better to die.