The loss of all her work material was hard to bear. The full weight of it had hit home in the night. Even her camera with all the pictures was gone. She swallowed to keep the tears at bay. Soon she would be home and then she could start to sort out this mess. At least she hoped so, with all her heart.
Maybe she should have foreseen that it would never work. That whoever had already taken such pains to take apart her life bit by bit naturally had not overlooked the possibility that she would turn to the Embassy. But she had not thought that far ahead, and did not notice the hard stare of the receptionist which followed her as she was shown in to see a member of the diplomatic staff.
First Secretary Andreas Blom greeted her with a cool handshake. His face was impassive as he asked her to sit down. When an assistant came by to ask if his guest wanted coffee, he waved her away and asked her to leave the door open. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a security guard patrolling the corridor, never far from the room where she was sitting.
‘I’m not sure what you think I can help you with,’ said Andreas Blom, leaning back in his seat.
He kept his hands clasped in his lap and looked at her through half-closed eyes. As if he was highly practised in not expending too much energy.
She cleared her throat several times, wished he would offer her a glass of water. But all he gave her was silence.
‘As I say, I’m in serious trouble,’ she began cautiously.
And she told him the story she had decided on. Of the mugging, and what she referred to as ‘a mistake’ at the hotel, which meant all her luggage had disappeared.
‘I’ve got to get home,’ she said, starting to cry. ‘I can’t get in touch with my parents and a friend who was going to help me hasn’t rung back either. I need a new passport and to borrow a bit of money. I’ll repay it as soon as I get home – if only you’ll help me.’
She let her tears flow freely, incapable of maintaining any façade. Only after a long silence did she raise her head and look at Andreas Blom. His face was immobile and he was still just sitting there.
‘Is that your version of events?’ he asked.
She stared at him.
‘Pardon?’
‘I asked if that’s the story you intend to tell the Thai authorities when they’re dealing with your case?’
‘I don’t understand,’ she said.
‘What did you say your name was?’ he interrupted.
She automatically repeated her forename and surname.
‘You’re really not making it easy for yourself,’ he said.
His words were greeted with silence; she had no idea what he expected her to say.
‘What I can help you with, Therese, is the following: legal representation, and a named contact here at the Embassy. But if you don’t immediately hand yourself over to the Thai police, your situation will automatically get considerably worse. You have already made things bad enough for yourself by giving a false identity to a person in a position of authority.’
She said nothing when he had finished. Thoughts were flapping round in her head like wild birds.
‘I don’t understand, I’m afraid,’ she whispered, though she was beginning to suspect the full extent of her problems. ‘And my name’s not Therese…’
Andreas Blom took a piece of paper out of his desk and put it in front of her.
‘Is this a copy of a report you made to the police yesterday?’
She quickly took out her own copy and compared them. It was the same document.
‘But that’s not your name,’ he said, pointing.
‘Yes it is,’ she said.
‘No,’ said Andreas Blom, ‘it isn’t. Because this is your name.’
He passed over another sheet of paper.
She stared at it without properly taking in what she was seeing. A copy of a passport with her photograph but a different personal identity number and another person’s name. Therese Björk, the passport holder was called.
The room began to spin.
‘No, no, no,’ she said. ‘That’s not me. Please, there has to be a way to sort this out…’
‘It can be sorted out very easily,’ said Andreas Blom firmly. ‘This is your passport and your identity. I’ve rung the Swedish police and the Swedish tax authorities to check. This is you, Therese. And this passport was found with all your other things in the hotel you were actually staying at, Hotel Nana. In the room you had left when the drug squad raided the hotel and found half a kilo of cocaine among your possessions.’
She suddenly felt sick and was afraid she would throw up on the floor. What Andreas Blom said after that only got through to her intermittently. She had the greatest difficulty in joining the fragments together to make a whole.
‘Between you and me, you’ve got a good chance at the trial if you do the following. One: hand yourself in right away. Two: tell them who it was that tipped you off about the raid so you could get out of the hotel in time. Two very simple things.’
He held two fingers up in the air to underline how simple it was.
She shifted uneasily and could not stop her tears from flowing.
‘Why would I come here to you and not leave the country if I was guilty of everything you’ve told me?’ she said, looking him in the eye.
He leant back in his chair again and gave a supercilious smile.
‘Because this is Thailand,’ he said, ‘and you know as well as I do that for you there’s no way out.’
STOCKHOLM
The night had brought new nightmares, variations on a theme. In these dreams she was no longer being hunted but was tied to a tree, surrounded by men in hoods who wanted to harm her. Fredrika Bergman had no idea at all where these absurd scenarios had come from. They did not remind her of anything she had experienced or ever heard of. And she hated being woken by her own screams, night after night, dripping with sweat and on the verge of tears. And tired. So horribly tired.
But she still went to work. She simply could not sit at home.
‘How are you?’ asked Ellen Lind gravely when they ran into each other in the staff room.
Fredrika did not even try to lie.
‘Pretty awful, I have to say,’ she admitted. ‘I’m sleeping terribly badly.’
‘Should you be here, then?’ asked Ellen. ‘Shouldn’t you be at home, resting?’
Fredrika shook her head stubbornly.
‘No more than I already am,’ she said wearily. ‘I’d rather be here.’
Ellen didn’t ask any more questions. She, like everyone else, wondered what Fredrika had thought it was going to be like. Expecting a baby, largely on your own, and then giving birth without the father there.
Fredrika felt guilty because Ellen was always the one asking the questions and she never reciprocated. She never asked Ellen how she was, or about her children or how things were going with the love of her life. They had met on a package holiday the previous year, and Ellen had fallen head over heels in love.
In love.
Until she fell pregnant, she had always been more or less content with the arrangement she and Spencer had. His coming and going in her life did not worry her; after all, she sometimes behaved the same way. Finding one lover and leaving another. Losing that lover and going back to Spencer. The problem was only becoming obvious now that she wasn’t her former self any more, and always felt better when she was closer to him. Of course he came as often as he could, and these days he always answered the phone when she rang. But he still was not a permanent fixture in her daily life.