‘Send someone down there?’ said Chavez. ‘Haven’t they heard of the Internet?’
‘Barely, I should think,’ Hultin replied, picking up the phone.
‘You’re not thinking of sending someone, are you?’
‘Yes,’ Hultin said, dialling an extremely long number. ‘We’ve already got someone on the ground in Europe. Arto can go after the weekend.’
‘But where’s there?’ asked Hjelm. ‘Where’s our nose-man from?’
‘That’s why I’m going along with it without complaining,’ said Jan-Olov Hultin. ‘Shtayf was from Odessa. Ukraine.’
30
IT WAS SATURDAY evening in Tuscany. The Söderstedt family were on their veranda, the sun slowly sinking in the distance. Its blushing rays fell among the rows of vines, painting the hills with stripes of golden light. The scent of seventeen different varieties of basil was drifting in from the garden, and the lingering warmth of the day was making the pine-scented evening air quiver slightly in the dusk. The remaining morsels of Anja’s fantastic special pesto, made from her latest green-fingered triumph, a dark opal basil, were being eaten. It was perfect in combination with a full-bodied Brunello.
Everything – absolutely everything – was just great.
Arto Söderstedt glanced around the table. There was a dark-haired addition to the chalk-white family. The dark hair belonged to Giorgio, the seventeen-year-old son of a winemaker who had taken his eldest daughter’s virginity. Mikaela had brought him home one day and introduced him to the family. Arto Söderstedt had thought that was something momentous; it felt like he was being thanked for managing to convince her that she had nothing to be ashamed of. Hopefully, that insight would follow her through life.
In his opinion, people should feel shame only when they did something bad to another person.
Then and only then.
Giorgio was a shy young man, living in the belief that his lover’s father was, by definition, furious. That it was his duty to be furious. But not even Giorgio’s own father seemed particularly angry. They had invited the winemaker and his wife over one evening. Both had seemed nervous, as though standing trial. These were the people whose daughter their good-for-nothing son had penetrated. And so the Söderstedts had mobilised their combined good natures to convince them that everything was fine, and slowly, slowly, the boy’s parents had relaxed. The evening had ended with each of them attempting to surpass the others in their extolment of love and wine and life.
Someone at this table is pregnant.
Thud – the thought suddenly struck Söderstedt.
There was something in the air. That particularly female, utterly silent telepathy sending thoughts right over the table. He had experienced it before. Five times, to be exact. That made him an expert.
His eyes came to rest on Linda first, his second eldest daughter. She was fourteen. There didn’t seem to be any danger there. She was busy wolfing down pasta and glancing wryly around, just like normal. Incredibly interested in Giorgio, above all else. With a smile, he wondered to himself what she was thinking. Where her thoughts were taking her.
Then came the critical moment. He gathered his courage and turned to Mikaela. She was shining. But it was the light of love, nothing else, he was quite convinced of that.
OK, he thought, taking a breather. So I was wrong. I thought I would never be picking children up from day care again, but that isn’t to be. Within a couple of years, I’ll be picking up yet another baby from day care.
He turned to Anja, sitting there proudly tasting her dark opal pesto. She was glowing.
There was, after all, a difference between shining and glowing. A huge difference.
‘So you’re pregnant, are you?’ he asked, taking another sip of wine.
Anja choked on her pesto. He had to get up, rush round the table and put the good old Heimlich manoeuvre into practice. He grabbed her beneath her breasts and squeezed. A huge lump of pesto flew across the table. Giorgio pulled a face. Mikaela was flame-red with embarrassment. She wasn’t done learning yet.
Anja dried her tears with a napkin, which she then used to wipe the pesto from the table. Her face was completely expressionless. She sat down and stared out at the dusky landscape. Arto sat down too. He watched her, waiting for the telepathic waves to return.
Giorgio was looking sceptically at his half-eaten portion of pesto.
‘You don’t have to eat it,’ Anja said, without moving her eyes.
The telepathic waves were absent when Mikaela and Giorgio snuck away from the table to slander the adult world in intimate tones; they were absent when Linda and Peter ran off to creep around in the deepening darkness, frightening the daylights out of one another; they were absent when Stefan took little Lina’s hand and dragged her away to watch Italian kids’ TV.
But once husband and wife were left alone on the veranda, once darkness had fallen, once the fireflies had appeared, flashing like sparks in the night, the telepathic waves returned. Anja’s distant gaze finally vanished and she met his stubbornly penetrating eyes. She sat there for a few seconds, watching her strange husband. Then she shook her head quickly, smiled and disappeared indoors.
Yes, there would be a new baby; there would always be a baby.
He moved over to his particular corner of the veranda and turned on the computer. It rattled and whirred. He lived in constant fear that it would be struck by an information overload and just die completely. All these CD-ROMs being fed into it, all the information spread across its hard drive – where was the limit of what it could withstand?
Arto Söderstedt opened the sketch of Palazzo Riguardo which Commissioner Marconi had, slightly reluctantly, given to him. In addition to that, the good commissioner had, even more reluctantly, pointed out the critical spots of the thirty-four-room building. After that, he had stood with his hands on his hips and said: ‘I should probably know why you want this, Signor Sadestatt.’
Signor Sadestatt had replied: ‘What’s the best way in?’
Naturally, Signor Marconi’s jaw had dropped. Anything else would have been unthinkable.
Söderstedt had explained: ‘Not for me, for the Erinyes.’
Marconi had looked at him. His jaw moved back to its usual position – and with it, his gaze.
‘They can’t get at him anywhere other than at home,’ Söderstedt had continued. ‘He hasn’t left his palazzo in… what did you say? A year?’
Marconi had nodded, mute but not indifferent.
‘And that means they’ve got to get into Palazzo Riguardo if they want to get to him.’
‘And you’re quite sure that these… Erinyes are out for him?’
‘I’m feeling increasingly certain of that, yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the whole thing with the wolverines was so wonderfully clear. Because there’s some sort of direct link between Leonard Sheinkman in Stockholm and Marco di Spinelli in Milan. Because the combination of wolverine and old man points straight to Palazzo Riguardo. Because di Spinelli is the spider in the middle of the web. All points lead to him, and all points lead from him. He’s weaved the web that’s going to end up snaring him. He’s created the figures who are going to eat him up.’
‘That sounds quite convincing,’ Marconi had said encouragingly before throwing a spanner into Söderstedt’s neatly oiled machine. ‘But is there really a single tenable link between Sheinkman and di Spinelli?’
‘He recognised him.’
‘According to you, yes. But all that’s based on a hunch. And if that’s the case, shouldn’t Sheinkman be the victim and di Spinelli the hangman? Why murder both the victim and the executioner?’
‘Nothing is pointing to di Spinelli as the hangman. They might just be brothers in misfortune.’