‘Right,’ she said with a strained smile. Of course it never occurred to him that Claes should clean up the mess he’d made.
‘And could you bring us some more gravy?’ said Rune as she headed for the kitchen.
She turned around. ‘That’s all there is.’
‘Carla always had a little extra in the kitchen, in case we ran out.’
‘But I don’t. I put all of it in the gravy bowl.’
After she’d wiped up the mess, getting down on all fours next to Claes’s chair, she went back to her seat at the table. Her food had gone cold, but it didn’t matter. She no longer had any appetite.
‘That was really good, Inez,’ said Johan, holding out his plate for another helping. ‘You’re a great cook.’
His eyes were so blue, so innocent, that she almost cried. As she put more food on his plate, he fed Ebba, using her little silver spoon.
‘Here come some good potatoes. Mmm, they’re really yummy,’ he said, and his face lit up when Ebba opened her mouth and swallowed a bite.
Claes laughed sarcastically. ‘What a bloody wimp!’
‘Don’t talk like that to your brother,’ snapped Rune. ‘He gets the highest marks in all his classes, and he’s smarter than the two of you put together. You haven’t exactly been a model student, so I think you should speak politely to your brother until you show that you’ve got some brains in your head. Mamma would have laughed if she saw your marks and how incompetent you’ve turned out to be.’
Claes flinched, and Inez saw the tiny veins in his temples begin to throb. His eyes were as dark as could be.
For a moment no one spoke at the table. Even Ebba didn’t make the faintest sound. Claes was staring at Rune, and Inez clenched her fists in her lap. She was witnessing a power struggle, and she wasn’t sure that she wanted to see how it would end.
For several minutes father and son simply stared at each other. Then Claes looked away.
‘Sorry, Johan,’ he said.
Inez shivered. His voice was filled with hatred, and she knew that she ought to obey her instincts. There was still time for her to get up and flee. She should seize the opportunity, no matter what the consequences might be.
‘Excuse me for disturbing you in the middle of lunch. But I need to have a few words with you, Rune. It’s urgent.’ Leon was standing in the doorway with his head bowed politely.
‘Can’t it wait? We’re still eating,’ said Rune with a frown. Having his meals interrupted was something he wouldn’t tolerate, even under normal circumstances.
‘I realize that, and I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.’
‘What’s this all about?’ said Rune, wiping his mouth on his napkin.
Leon hesitated. Inez glanced at Annelie. She couldn’t take her eyes off the boy.
‘There’s an emergency at home. Pappa asked me to speak to you.’
‘Oh, your father? Why didn’t you say so.’
Rune got up from the table. He always had time for the wealthy parents of his students.
‘Keep on eating. This won’t take long,’ he said, moving towards the doorway where Leon was standing.
Inez’s eyes were fixed on Rune. She felt her stomach churn. Everything that she’d been through over the past few months settled into a hard knot. Something was about to happen.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
He gazed out at the passing landscape. In the front seat that irritating fool Mellberg was having a heated discussion on the phone. It sounded as if he was refusing to turn him over to the police in Fjällbacka and instead insisted on driving the whole way to Göteborg. It didn’t make any difference, one way or the other.
John wondered how Liv was going to handle this. Like him, she had staked everything on the plan. Maybe they should have been satisfied with what they’d already achieved, but the temptation had been too great to change everything in one fell swoop and accomplish what no other nationalist party had ever done before in Sweden: attain a dominant political position. In Denmark the Danish People’s Party had carried out many of the things that the Friends of Sweden dreamed of doing. Had it been so wrong to try to speed up the process?
Project Gimle had been intended to unite all Swedes so that together they could finally restore the country. It was a simple plan, and for all that he’d occasionally worried about it, he had been convinced that it would succeed. Now everything was ruined. Everything they’d built would be torn down and forgotten in the after-shocks of Gimle. No one would understand that they had tried to create a new future for Sweden.
It had all started with a suggestion that was put forward in jest within the inner circle. Liv had immediately seen the potential. She had explained to John and the others that it might be possible to bring about a change swiftly, a change that would otherwise take more than a generation to occur. In the course of one night, they would start a revolution, mobilizing Swedes in a battle against the enemies who had wormed their way into the country and were in the process of breaking down society. She had presented a logical argument, and the price had been deemed reasonable.
A single bomb. Placed in the middle of the Sture Gallery during rush hour. Afterwards, all evidence collected by the police would point to Muslim terrorists. They had been working on the plan for more than a year, going over all the details and meticulously ensuring that it would be impossible to draw any other conclusion – everyone would believe that Islamists had carried out an attack in the very heart of Stockholm, in the heart of Sweden. People would be frightened, and their fear would make them angry. Then the Friends of Sweden would step forward, gently take them by the hand and confirm their fears. They would tell the people what they needed to do in order to feel safe again. In order to live as Swedes.
Now the plan would never be realized. John’s worries about what Leon was about to reveal seemed ludicrous and absurd compared to the scandal that would now engulf him. He would be at the very centre of things, but this was not how he’d envisioned it. Instead of being his greatest triumph, Project Gimle was to be his undoing.
Ebba studied the photographs that she’d spread out on the floor. The naked boys stared blankly at the camera.
‘They look so helpless.’ She turned away.
‘This has nothing to do with you,’ said Anna, patting Ebba’s arm.
‘It would have been better if I’d never found out anything about my family. The only picture I’ll have of them now, if we ever get…’
She didn’t finish the sentence, and Anna knew that she didn’t want to say out loud what she was thinking. That they might never get out of this place.
Again Ebba turned to the photos. ‘They must be Pappa’s students. If this is what he subjected them to, then I can understand it if they killed him.’
Anna nodded. The boys wanted to use their hands to hide their shame, but the photographer refused to allow it. Their anguish was so evident on their faces, and she could only imagine the rage that such humiliation must have fostered.
‘What I don’t understand is why all of them had to die,’ said Ebba.
Suddenly they heard footsteps outside. They stood up and stared, wide-eyed, at the door as someone fumbled with the lock.
‘It must be Tobias,’ said Ebba, terrified.