The Blood Spilt

3

FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 1

Rebecka Martinsson climbed out of the taxi boat and looked up at Lid? country house hotel. The afternoon sun on the pale yellow facade with its white decorative carving. The big garden full of people. Some black-headed gulls from nowhere screeched above her head. Persistent and irritating.
Where do you get the energy, she thought.
She gave the taxi driver a tip that was much too big. Compensation for her monosyllabic answers when he’d attempted to talk.
“Big party,” he said, nodding toward the hotel.
The whole law firm was assembled up there. Almost two hundred people milling around. Talking in groups. Detaching themselves and moving on. Handshakes and air kisses. A line of enormous barbecues had been set out. Members of staff dressed in white were laying out a barbecue buffet on a long table covered with a linen cloth. They scurried between the hotel kitchen and the table like white mice in their ridiculously tall chef’s hats.
“Yes,” replied Rebecka, and hoisted her crocodile skin bag onto her shoulder. “But I’ve got through worse things.”
He laughed and pulled away, the prow lifting out of the water. A black cat slunk silently down from the jetty and disappeared into the tall grass.
Rebecka set off. The island looked tired after the summer. Well trodden, dried out, worn out.
This is where they’ve walked, she thought. All the families with children, carrying their picnic blankets, all the well dressed, tipsy people from the boats.
The grass was short and turning yellow. The trees dusty and thirsty. She could imagine what it would look like in the forest. No doubt there were heaps of bottles, cans, used condoms and human feces under the blueberry bushes and ferns.
The track up to the hotel was as hard as concrete. Like the cracked back of a prehistoric lizard. She was a lizard herself. Just landed in her spaceship. Wearing human clothing on her way into the trial by fire. Trying to imitate human behavior. Look at people around her and do the same. Hope the disguise wouldn’t gape at the neck.
She had almost reached the gardens.
Come on, she said to herself. You can do this.
After she’d killed those men in Kiruna she’d carried on with her job at the law firm of Meijer & Ditzinger as usual. Things had gone well, she thought. In fact they’d gone completely to hell. She hadn’t thought about the blood and the bodies. When she looked back now to the time before she was signed off on sick leave, she couldn’t actually remember thinking at all. She’d thought she was working. But in the end all she was doing was moving paper from one pile to another. True, she was sleeping badly. And wasn’t really there, somehow. It could take an eternity just to get ready in the morning and get to work. The catastrophe came from behind. She didn’t see it before it landed right on top of her. It was just a simple merger and acquisition case. The client had been wondering about the period of notice on a local rental agreement. And she’d given completely the wrong answer. All the files with all the contracts right under her nose, but she hadn’t understood what they said. The client, a French mail order company, had demanded compensation from the firm.
She remembered how M?ns Wenngren, her boss, had looked at her. His face blood red behind the desk. She’d tried to resign, but he wouldn’t agree.
“It would look terrible for the firm,” he’d said. “Everybody would think you’d been pushed out. That we were letting down a colleague with psychological… who isn’t very well.”
She’d staggered out of the office that same afternoon. And when she stood on Birger Jarlsgatan in the autumn darkness with the lights of the expensive cars swishing past and the tastefully decorated shop windows and the pubs down on Stureplan, she was suddenly overcome by a strong feeling that she’d never be able to go back to Meijer & Ditzinger. She’d felt as though she wanted to get as far away from them as possible. But it didn’t turn out like that.
She was signed off on sick leave. For a week at a time, first of all. Then for a month at a time. The doctor had told her to do whatever she enjoyed. If there was anything she liked about her job, she should carry on doing that.
The firm’s criminal caseload had begun to increase significantly after Kiruna. Her name and picture had been kept out of the papers, but the name of the firm had appeared frequently in the media. And it had produced results. People got in touch and wanted to be represented by “that girl who was up in Kiruna.” They got the standard response that the firm could provide a more experienced criminal lawyer, but that girl could sit in and assist. In this way the firm got a foothold in the big trials that were reported in the press. During that time there were two gang rapes, a murder with robbery and a complicated bribery and corruption case.
The partners suggested she should carry on sitting in on the cases while she was on sick leave. It didn’t happen very often. And it was a good way of keeping in touch with the job. And she didn’t need to do any preparation. Just sit in. But only if she wanted to, of course.
She’d agreed because she didn’t think she had any choice. She’d embarrassed the firm, got them involved in a compensation claim and lost a client. It was impossible to say no. She owed them, and she nodded and smiled.
At least she managed to get herself out of bed on the days she was sitting in court. Usually it was the accused who drew the first glances from the jury and the judge, but now she was the main attraction in the circus. She kept her eyes fixed on the desk in front of her and let them look. Criminals, magistrates, prosecutors, jurors. She could almost hear them thinking: “so that’s her…”
She’d arrived at the gardens in front of the hotel. Here the grass was suddenly fresh and green. They must have had the sprinklers going like mad during the dry summer. The scent of the last dog-roses of summer drifted inland on the evening breeze. The air was pleasantly warm. The younger women were wearing sleeveless linen dresses. The slightly older ones covered their upper arms with light cotton cardigans from I Blues and Max Mara. The men had left their ties at home. They trotted back and forth in their Gant trousers with drinks for the ladies. Checked out the charcoal in the barbecue and chatted knowledgeably with the kitchen staff.
She scanned the crowd. No Maria Taube. No M?ns Wenngren.
And one of the partners was heading toward her—Erik Rydén. On with the smile. “Is that her?”
Petra Wilhelmsson watched Rebecka Martinsson coming up the track toward the hotel. Petra had only just started with the firm. She was leaning against the railing outside the entrance. On one side of her stood Johan Grill, also new to the firm, and on the other side stood Krister Ahlberg, a criminal lawyer in his thirties.
“Yes, that’s her,” confirmed Krister Ahlberg. “The firm’s very own little Modesty Blaise.”
He emptied his glass and placed it on the railing with a little bang. Petra shook her head slowly.
“To think she killed somebody,” she said.
“Three people, actually,” said Krister.
“God, it makes my hair stand on end! Look!” said Petra, holding her arm up to show the two gentlemen in her company.
Krister Ahlberg and Johan Grill looked carefully at her arm. It was brown and slender. A few very fine hairs had been bleached almost white by the summer sun.
“I don’t mean because she’s a girl,” Petra went on, “but she just doesn’t look the type to…”
“And she wasn’t. She had a nervous breakdown in the end. And she can’t cope with the job. Sits in on the big name criminal trials sometimes. And I’m the one that does all the work then gets left behind in the office with the cell phone switched on just in case something comes up. But she’s the star.”
“Is she a star?” asked Johan Grill. “They never wrote anything about her, did they?”
“No, but in legal circles everybody knows who she is. Sweden’s legal circle isn’t very big, as you’ll soon find out.”
Krister Ahlberg measured out a centimeter between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. He noticed that Petra’s glass was empty, and wondered if he ought to offer to get her a refill. But that would mean leaving little Petra alone with Johan.
“God,” said Petra, “I wonder what it feels like to kill somebody.”
“I’ll introduce you,” said Krister. “We don’t work in the same department, but we went on a course together on commercial contract law. We’ll just wait until Erik Rydén’s let her out of his clutches.”
* * *

Erik Rydén took Rebecka in his arms and welcomed her. He was a stocky man, and his duties as host were making him perspire. His body was steaming like a bog in August, surrounded by a miasma of Chanel Pour Monsieur and alcohol. Her right hand patted him several times on the back.
“Glad you could come,” he said with his broadest smile.
He took her bag and gave her a glass of champagne and a room key in return. Rebecka looked at the key ring. It was a piece of wood painted red and white, attached to the key with a clever little knot.
For when the guests get drunk and drop them in the water, she thought.
They exchanged a few remarks. Gorgeous weather. Ordered it especially for you, Rebecka. She laughed, asked how things were going. Bloody great, just last week he’d landed a big client, something in biotechnology. And they were about to start negotiations on a merger with an American company, so it was all go at the moment. She listened and smiled. Then another latecomer arrived, and Erik had to carry on with his duties as host.
A lawyer from the criminal cases department came over to her. He greeted her as if they were old friends. She searched frantically through her mind for his name, but it had vanished into thin air. He had two new employees trailing after him, a girl and a boy. The boy had a tuft of blond hair above the kind of brown face you only get from sailing. He was a bit short, with broad shoulders. Square, jutting chin, two muscular arms protruding from the rolled-up sleeves of his expensive jumper.
Like Popeye the sailorman, styled by experts, she thought.
The girl was blonde as well. Her mane of hair firmly anchored by a pair of expensive sunglasses on top of her head. Dimples in her cheeks. A cardigan that matched her short-sleeved jumper was hanging over Popeye’s arm. They said hello. The girl chirruped like a blackbird. Her name was Petra. Popeye was called Johan, and he had some sort of elegant surname, but Rebecka couldn’t remember it. That’s how things had been for the last year. Before, she’d had compartments in her head where she could file information. Now there were no compartments. Everything just tumbled in, and most of it tumbled straight out again. She smiled and managed a handshake that was just firm enough. Asked who they were working for at the office. How they were settling in. What they’d written their essays about and where they’d done their articles. Nobody asked her about anything.
She moved on between the groups. Everybody was standing there at the ready, a ruler in their pocket. Measuring each other. Comparing everybody else with themselves. Salary. Where they lived. Name. Who you knew. What you’d been doing during the summer. Somebody was building a house in Nacka. Somebody else was looking for a bigger flat now they’d had their second child, preferably on the right side of ?stermalm.
“I’m a complete wreck,” exclaimed the house builder with a cheerful smile.
Somebody who had just become single again turned to Rebecka.
“I was actually up around your home turf back in May,” he said. “Went skiing from Abisko to Kebnekaise, had to get up at three in the morning while the snow was still firm enough. During the day it was so wet you just sank right through it. All you could do was lie in the spring sunshine and make the most of it.”
The atmosphere was suddenly strained. Did he have to mention where she came from? Kiruna forced its way into the circle like a ghost. All at once everyone was gabbling the names of other places they’d been. Italy, Tuscany, parents in J?nk?ping, Legoland, but Kiruna just wouldn’t disappear. Rebecka moved on, and everybody breathed a sigh of relief.
The older associates had been staying in their summer cottages on the west coast, or in Sk?ne, or out in the archipelago. Arne Ekl?f had lost his mother, and told Rebecka quite candidly how he’d spent the summer quarrelling about her estate.
“It’s bloody true,” he said. “When the Lord turns up with death, the devil turns up with the heirs. Can I get you another?”
He nodded toward her glass. She refused. He gave her a look that was almost angry. As if she’d refused further confidences. Presumably that was exactly what she’d done. He stomped off toward the drinks table. Rebecka stayed where she was, gazing after him. It was a strain chatting to people, but it was a nightmare standing there on her own with an empty glass. Like a poor pot plant that can’t even ask for water.
I could go to the bathroom, she thought, glancing at her watch. And I can stay in there for seven minutes if there isn’t a queue. Three if somebody’s waiting outside the door.
She looked around for somewhere to put her glass down. Just at that moment Maria Taube materialized at her side. She held out a little dish of Waldorf salad.
“Eat,” she said. “Looking at you frightens me.”
Rebecka took the salad. The memory of last spring flooded through her when she looked at Maria.
* * *

Harsh spring sunshine outside Rebecka’s filthy windows. But she has the blinds pulled right down. In the middle of the week, on an ordinary morning, Maria comes to visit. Afterward Rebecka wonders how come she opened the door. She should have stayed under the covers and hidden.
But. She goes to the door. Hardly conscious of the doorbell ringing. Almost absentmindedly she undoes the security lock. Then she turns the catch of the lock with her left hand while her right hand pushes down the door handle. Her head isn’t connected to anything. Just like when you find yourself standing in front of the refrigerator with the door open, wondering what you’re doing in the kitchen anyway.
Afterward she thinks that maybe there’s a sensible little person inside her. A little girl in red Wellingtons and a life jacket. A survivor. And that little girl had recognized those high heels tip-tapping along.
The girl says to Rebecka’s hands and feet: “Ssh, it’s Maria. Don’t tell her. Just get her up and make sure she opens the door.”
Maria and Rebecka are sitting in the kitchen. They are drinking coffee, just on its own. Rebecka doesn’t say much. The pyramid of dirty dishes, the drifts of post and junk mail and newspapers on the hall floor, the crumpled sweaty clothes on her body say everything there is to say.
And in the middle of all this her hands begin to shake. She has to put her coffee cup down on the table. They are flailing about like mad things, like two headless chickens.
“No more coffee for me,” she tries to joke.
She laughs, but it comes out more like a discordant hacking noise.
Maria looks her in the eyes. Rebecka feels as though she knows. How Rebecka sometimes stands out on the balcony looking down at the hard asphalt below. And how she sometimes can’t make herself go out and down to the shops. But has to live on whatever she happens to have in. Drink tea and eat pickled gherkins straight from the jar.
“I’m no shrink,” says Maria, “but I do know things get worse if you don’t eat and sleep. And you have to get dressed in the mornings and go out.”
Rebecka hides her hands under the kitchen table.
“You must think I’ve gone mad.”
“Honey, my family is crawling with women who’ve got Nerves. They faint and swoon, have panic attacks and hypochondria the whole time. And my aunt, have I told you about her? One minute she’s sitting in a psychiatric ward with somebody helping her get dressed, the next she’s starting up a Montessori nursery. I’ve seen it all.”
The following day one of the partners, Torsten Karlsson, offers to let Rebecka stay in his cottage. Maria used to work with Torsten in the business law section before she moved over and started working for M?ns Wenngren with Rebecka.
“You’d be doing me a favor,” says Torsten. “It would save me worrying whether somebody had broken in, and driving up there just to do the watering. I ought to sell the place really. But that’s a load of hassle as well.”
She should have said no, of course. It was so obvious. But the little girl in the red Wellingtons said yes before she’d even opened her mouth.