It was six o’clock by the time Alex got home. His wife met him at the door. There was a strong aroma of garlic.
‘Italian tonight,’ she smiled as he kissed her. ‘I’ve got out a bottle of wine.’
‘Are we celebrating something?’ Alex asked in surprise.
They seldom had wine in the week.
‘No, I just thought we deserved a little treat,’ Lena replied. ‘And I got home from work a bit early today.’
‘I see. Why was that?’
‘Oh, no special reason, but I had the chance so I thought I’d come home and make something nice for dinner.’
She gave a slightly shrill laugh from the kitchen, where she was making a salad.
Alex went though the day’s post. They had a card from their son in South America.
‘Great postcard,’ he called out.
‘Yes, I saw it,’ Lena responded. ‘It’s so nice to hear from him, isn’t it?’
And she laughed that laugh again.
Alex went out to the kitchen and observed her as she stood with her back turned. She had always been the more open-hearted and attractive of the two of them. She could have had whoever she wanted, but she had chosen Alex. Even though he had grey streaks in his dark hair from an early age and deep lines on his face. For some reason he had always found it a bit unsettling that he was somehow more of a chosen one in the relationship than she was. Over the years he had at times felt incredibly jealous when other men got too close to her or he felt inadequate in some way. This jealousy had been a problem for both of them and a source of shame for him. What was wrong with him, not trusting Lena, who had given him such a fantastic home and two wonderful children?
As time passed he felt more secure. That was partly thanks to his job. His profession helped him develop a good sense of intuition, and that almost always helped him get the better of the demons that taunted him with fancies that his wife was deceiving him behind his back.
His intuition brought him certainty. Certainty when everything was all right, and also when it was not. And this time it was not.
The feeling had been creeping over him for several weeks now. She was talking differently, waving her arms about in a way he could not recall seeing earlier. She would go on at length about subjects that were unfamiliar to both of them. About places she wanted to visit and people she wished she had stayed in touch with. And then there was that laugh, which had changed so rapidly from deep and intense to shrill and superficial.
Watching her from the back, he even thought her posture had changed. She seemed stiffer somehow. And she gave a little shudder when he took hold of her, laughed her new laugh and pulled away. Sometimes her mobile rang and she went into another room to answer it.
‘Can I help with anything?’ he asked her back view.
‘You can open the wine,’ she answered, trying to sound happy and relaxed.
Trying. That was the thing. She was trying to be herself, as if playing some strange theatrical role that had unexpectedly landed in her lap. Alex’s stomach hurt as fear clutched his insides and the demons awoke once more.
We ought to be able to talk about this, he thought. Why aren’t we?
‘Did you have a good day at work?’ she asked him when they had been sitting in silence for a while.
‘Yes,’ Alex said gently. ‘It was fine. Lots on.’
Normally she would have picked up the thread and asked more. But not any more. Now she only seemed to ask things she didn’t really seem to care about.
‘How was yours?’ he asked.
‘That was fine, too,’ she said, opening the oven to check whatever it was she had cooked.
The smell was amazing, but Alex did not feel hungry. He asked her a few more questions about work, as always, and she gave him brief answers, her head turned away.
When they sat down to eat the delicious dinner and drink the good wine, he had to force himself to swallow as he chewed.
‘Skål,’ she said.
‘Skål.’
When he raised his head to catch her eye, he could have sworn it looked as though she was starting to cry.
FRIDAY 29 FEBRUARY 2008
STOCKHOLM
It was morning and the flat was freezing cold. The smell of cigarette smoke was not as overpowering as before because they had mended the fan for him and given him the key to one of the little windows. It was almost lunchtime, but Ali did not feel like getting up. The bag stood on the floor at the foot of the bed, a grim and blatant reminder of his new reality.
He still did not know who to curse for his misfortune. Perhaps his parents for bringing him into the world in a country like Iraq. Perhaps the American president who everybody loved to hate and who had toppled the great leader Saddam and then abandoned the people when the country collapsed. Or perhaps Europe, which refused to let him in on any terms other than those with which he was now faced.
Whichever way he looked at it, he could not see that it was his fault. He had neither started the damn war nor made himself unemployed and defenceless. All he had done was shoulder his responsibility like a decent husband and father.
His wife must be wondering where he was. And his friend, who had still not heard from him, must be wondering too. He turned his eyes towards the cold window. His friend must be out there somewhere. In a city he did not know, in a land where he was a complete stranger. They would make a new start there, he and his family. It was for their sakes he was going to carry out his task on Sunday. He would never do anything like that ever again. For as long as he lived.
‘There are some basic rules, my lad,’ his father had said when he was a child. ‘You don’t fight and you don’t steal. Simple, eh?’
His father had died by the time Iraq collapsed as a state and a nation, and everyday life turned to chaos. Perhaps even he would have understood that it had now become impossible to stick to the rules. Not because things were better before, but because things had been calmer and ostensibly safer. But only ostensibly. Many people knew how it felt to hear the cars pull up in front of your house early in the morning and have your private home violated and invaded by unknown armed men sent by the government to bring in a citizen for interrogation. Some of them were never heard of again. Others were returned to their families in a state that bore witness to such appalling atrocities that even their closest family had no words for them.
Iraq was different now. The unforeseen violence came from another direction and created even greater insecurity. Money had grown important in a way it had not been before, and suddenly kidnapping was part of daily life, along with theft and arson and armed robbery.
Was that the sort of person he had turned into, as well? With a bag containing a gun and a balaclava beside his bed, there was every justification for the comparison.
We couldn’t go on, thought Ali. Forgive me, Father, for what I’m going to do, but we couldn’t go on.
Then he reached out a trembling hand for his eighth cigarette of the day. Soon it would all be over and a better future would be secured.
BANGKOK, THAILAND
The Swedish Embassy opened at ten and she was there waiting. It had been a long and wretched night. In the end she had had to check into a cheap youth hostel on the outskirts of Bangkok and had spent the night anxiously awake. The money she had with her, what little the mugger had not taken, was not enough to pay her bill. She asked the man at reception where the nearest cashpoint machine was and implied she would soon be back with a handful of notes. He told her it was three blocks away, and she was able to leave the hostel without creating a scene.
The Embassy was housed in a tall building just next to the Landmark Hotel on Sukhumvit, occupying two whole floors. Her relief at seeing the Swedish flag on the door was so great that tears came to her eyes.
She had planned her story carefully. She must not on any account say why she had come to Thailand, but that was a minor problem as she saw it. She was a tourist, plain and simple. Like all the other hundreds of thousands of Swedes who came here every year. And the fact that she had been robbed of all her means could not be unheard of, either. In her trouser pocket she had the copy of the police report to substantiate her story. The rest of what had happened to her – the fact that someone had cancelled her flight home, closed her email accounts and checked her out of the hotel – was something she had decided not to tell them. It would provoke far too many questions that she was not prepared to answer.