Liza Marklund - Red Wolf

Unfaithful , she thought. Sven was always unfaithful .

She had refused to see it for all those years, and the only time she protested he had hit her in the head with a pair of pliers. Without realizing it, she fingered the small scar on her forehead, it was almost invisible now, she hardly ever thought about it.

She was used to men being unfaithful.

She could see him in front of her: her first love, her childhood friend, her fiancé, the sports star. Sven Mattsson who loved her more than anything else in the world, Sven who worshipped her so much that no one else could get close to her but him, couldn’t even talk to her, and she wasn’t allowed to think about anyone else but him, actually, nothing else but him. Anything else would be punished, and he punished her, he punished her and punished her until the day he stood before her by the furnace in the Hälleforsnäs works with his hunting knife in his hand.

She turned away from the image, stood up and shook it off, shrugging it off the same way she shrugged off her nightmares, the familiar nightmares that came back after that night in the tunnel, the men from Studio Six who were discussing what to do with her, Sven with his bloody knife, her cat flying through the air with its guts hanging out.

And now Thomas was unfaithful.

Right now he was probably in bed with blonde Sophia Grenborg, maybe he was entering her right now, maybe they were licking each other or relaxing in each other’s sweat.

She stared at the yellow shadows, planted her feet firmly on the wooden floor, the newly sanded floor that she had varnished three times. She folded her arms over her chest and forced herself to breathe slowly. The apartment responded to her with gentle caution.

How much was she prepared to sacrifice to hold her life together?

She had a choice. It was just a matter of making a decision.

The realization made her shoulders relax, and it was suddenly easier to breathe. She went over to her computer and logged on to the internet. In the darkness she looked up Sophia Grenborg in Stockholm in the census results, getting a load of hits.

The woman she had seen with Thomas outside NK was in her thirties, or slightly younger. Certainly not over thirty-five.

Annika narrowed the search.

As the representative of the Federation of County Councils in a research project looking into threats to politicians, she couldn’t be younger than twenty-five.

She removed anyone born after 1980.

Still too many.

She logged out and went into the Federation’s own website, and looked among the employees.

She spelled her name with ‘ph’. So incredibly bloody anally retentively absurdly sodding pretentious.

Back to the other website and the name search.

Sophia Grenborg. Just the one. Twenty-nine. Lived in Upper Östermalm, born in Engelbrekt parish. Oh how terribly, terribly bloody smart.

She printed out the page through the fax machine and logged out. With the printout in her hand she rang the duty desk of the National Police Board and asked for a copy of the passport belonging to the person with Sophia Grenborg’s personal identity number.

‘Ten minutes,’ the officer said tiredly.

Without making a sound she checked that the children were asleep, then crept out into the Stockholm night.

It had started to snow. Wet flakes materialized against the dirty grey sky, falling onto her face when she looked up. All sounds descended half an octave, striking her eardrums with doubt and deception.

She hurried through the snow, leaving damp tracks behind her on the pavement.

The entrance to the Stockholm Police Headquarters was on Bergsgatan, two hundred metres from her door. She stopped at the big electric gates, pressed the pedestrian intercom and was let into the oblong cage that led to the door itself.

The copy hadn’t arrived yet, so she was told to take a seat for a few minutes.

She sat down on one of the chairs along the wall, swallowed and refused to feel bad.

All passport photos in Sweden were still public documents and could be requested at any time. There had been discussions about restricting access, but so far no decision had been taken.

I don’t need to explain myself , she thought. I don’t need an excuse .

When she was given the envelope she couldn’t wait to see if she was right, and turned away from the reception desk and pulled out the Polaroid picture.

It was her. No doubt at all.

Sophia Grenborg.

Her husband was walking around Stockholm kissing Sophia Grenborg.

She put the photograph back in the envelope and went back to her children.

Margit Axelsson had believed in the innate power of human beings all her life. She was convinced that every individual had the power to influence events; it was just a matter of will-power and engagement. As a young woman she had believed in global revolution, that the masses would be freed and cast off the yoke of imperialism as the world rang out with hymns of praise.

She stretched her back and looked out over the room.

Today she knew that you could act on a large scale, or on a small scale. She knew that she was making a contribution, day by day, in her work with the children at the nursery, the collective future, everyone’s responsibility, but also in her work here, in the ceramics room of Pitholm’s People’s Hall.

The Workers’ Educational Association had always believed that those who had received the fewest of society’s resources should be compensated through education, cultural activities and opportunities. She regarded it as justice applied in the educational and cultural sphere.

Study groups were a lesson in democracy. They took as their starting point the belief that every individual has the capacity and desire to develop themselves, to exert influence and take responsibility, that every individual is a resource.

And she saw how the members grew, young and old alike. When they learned to handle the clay and the glazes their self-confidence grew, their understanding of the opinions of others, and, with that, their ability to actively influence what went on in the society around them.

She had to remind herself of this as she stood beside her sculpture.

She had had to live with the mistakes of her youth all her life. Not one day had passed without her peace of mind being disrupted by the thought of the consequences of her actions. For long periods the impact was small, superficial, life and work functioned as a plaster on her guilt. But other days she could hardly get out of bed, paralysed with rage at her own inadequacy.

Those days had got fewer over the years. Nonetheless, she knew they took their toll, had always known that the guilt she carried would kill her. She wasn’t just thinking about how overweight she was, how the comfort eating helped her through the bad patches, but about the gnawing away of her own psyche, her inability to fend off anxiety. She was often ill, had an unusually poor immune system.

And now he was back.

All those years she had had nightmares about him, turning round quickly in dark alleyways and imagining him behind her, and now he was really here.

Her reaction hadn’t been as violent as she had imagined.

She didn’t scream, didn’t faint, just noticed her heartbeat quicken, and felt slightly dizzy. She sank onto a chair in the hall with the yellow dragon in her hand, his unpleasant, childish signal that they should meet up at their old meeting place.

She knew he would seek her out. He wanted something more than just a group meeting like they used to have. The yellow dragon was simply a reminder, a way of bringing the Beasts back to life. He had already contacted the Black Panther – she knew that because the Panther had called her for the first time in thirty years to tell her, asking what she thought about the Dragon coming home.