“Are you in Stockholm for a reason?” I asked.
“Every chance I get, I come back. I’ve been offered a part in a movie. It’s a small one in some kind of horror or fantasy film. What do you think about that?”
I’d heard that fantasy was going to be the next big thing after crime but I thought it was just a temporary trend. I shrugged. “You could always play the dragon,” I said.
“I wish! That would be a great part! But no... more like running around and showing skin...” She turned her head, and I could see her white neck.
I asked why she’d even wanted to see me.
She said there was something she needed to ask me. She’d remembered the photos I’d taken of her. Mostly innocent enough — photos from the parties we attended and the like, but there were a few nudes and a few more, well... unusual ones. Some taken in a cemetery, for example. I wished I had been able to forget about them. Not easy, when every single day I tortured myself by looking at them.
“Oh, the photos,” I said, “I’d almost forgotten them.”
“Anyway,” she said, “I just wanted to check in with you to make sure you weren’t still angry with me and that you had no intention of doing something stupid.”
Stupid? I’d never do anything like that. I used them for myself, masturbating and crying and keeping them as inspiration for my artistic ambitions. “I’d never do that,” I said.
“It’d be great if you just deleted them.”
“Sure. Trust me,” I lied.
We stopped by the fence. A jogger ran past us.
“How’s it going with the drugs?” she asked.
“Pretty much quit,” I said, but I noticed that even as I said it, my speech was slurred.
She asked me if I had a few “test products” on me. I’d expected her to ask and I handed over — after checking behind my shoulder to see whether the dark-skinned guy was still hanging around and looking at us, but he was gone — an envelope. What she was interested in was a medical product not available to just anyone. A niche drug.
“How much do I owe you?” she asked, reaching for her purse.
I stopped her by grabbing her wrist.
“Ow,” she said. I have strong hands. I’d grabbed harder than intended.
“I’m not going to sell to you,” I said. “And if I ever sell to you, I won’t do it like this.” Then I let go of her wrist.
As I walked back, it was starting to get dark. The sun peeked though the pillars of the highway bridge, as it got ready to prepare another beautiful sunset over Vinterviken Bay. If things had been different, we could have walked back together to watch the sun set.
They found her dead in the water the next day. She was right where I had left her. The scene did not match any of the ones I’d imagined: She was in the water with all her clothes on and no obvious wounds. Her hair was loose, the best fashion for drowned people. (A hundred years ago, someone would have written a poem about the scene, and it would have been just as perverse as anything crime novelists write today.)
The cause of death was drowning — but not a typical suicide. In addition to the psychological improbability of the whole thing, it was just not possible to jump into the water and drown right there without rocks or weights in your pockets or a great deal of sleeping pills in your system. Neither of those was found. Yes, a small amount of alcohol, but nothing else, no foreign substances in her blood. How carefully did they check, though? Did they know what to look for? Her purse was missing, and with it, the small envelope I’d given her.
The scene was suspicious — not just because of the missing purse, but also the bruises on her wrists and neck. This could indicate that her head had been held underwater. Or something else. But when the police traced the text messages between us, which they’d gotten from the phone company, and realized I was her overemotional and disappointed ex, it did not look good for me.
I had no alibi, of course. When the police took me in, I pointed out she’d told me she had another errand to run nearby. I told them about the dark-skinned guy who’d been hanging around. What did he look like? “Dark-skinned” and “sweats” were not much to go on. I don’t think they worked very hard to track him down, either. Shortly after that, they confiscated my computer, which, stupidly enough, I hadn’t erased any documents from. The photos of Anette, the detailed descriptions of murder, the records of my side business — it certainly did not look good for me.
So you can imagine how it went. First she appeared in the headlines: “Fashion Model Found Dead.” Then I came into the picture: “Model Murder: Police Suspect Ex-Boyfriend.” And on and on: investigation, arrest, jail, court case. Everything has been written in such detail that it makes me sick to write another word about it. I was no longer a nobody. I was either a killer or a man wrongfully accused. I got hate mail and letters of admiration. There are so many idiots out there.
I was convicted, by a divided court, over my protestations of innocence. Yes, yes, I was guilty of trading in illegal substances, there’s no doubt about that. In Sweden, that’s just as bad as murder anyway. But as far as Anette’s death goes, there was hardly any real evidence — a disturbing lack of it — and my lawyer and many other people knew this. Perhaps I did too.
So we’re in the midst of an appeal, a process that’s slowly moving forward. I’ve begun to serve my sentence. I’m a great prisoner. My cell reminds me of my tiny office, even if it lacks a view of the water.
Prison is not a game, but it has done wonders for my work ethic. I’ve finished my crime novel, such as it is. I now have some new experiences I can use. It also helps that describing murder scenes is no longer an obsession of mine, and I’ve found that I no longer believe crime never happens in Stockholm.
It was easy to find a publisher. I was infamous, hardly a disadvantage. The book is coming out next year. I’m already writing a second. That’s what crime writers do: they write one book and then the next.
Still, my appeal is coming up. My lawyer is convinced I’ll be set free, if I don’t do something stupid (he’s not all that happy about my devotion to the written word). Whatever happens, the dead are still dead, and people will continue to believe whatever they want about the living. Whether the court decides I’m innocent or guilty is just a small detail in the bigger picture.
Only losers care about details.
Horse
by Anna-Karin Selberg
Translated by Rika Lesser
Rågsved
I’ve pursued her for months. Waited. Waited for tracks she must have left behind, signs. People think they can be invisible moving through the world, but they always leave something behind. Sooner or later, if you wait long enough. If there’s anything I’ve learned, this is it.
At first, all I could do was sense her, a slender shadow in the investigation, she scarcely existed, but gradually she assumed a body, and finally all her names collapsed into one.
I hold it in my hand. Kim. There’s something about her that almost arouses jealousy in me. Her face in the passport photo, the narrow marked jawline, the serious expression. And then something in the eyes that doesn’t go with the rest of her expression, a slight feminine nonchalance almost creating a touch of condescension around her. Natural, inborn contempt. I can see how she uses it, how with only a glance or gesture she dismisses anything in her surroundings that doesn’t suit her. She knows the art of disdain and I can sense the feeling of being its target. The resentment that would call for revenge. But I’m not someone she can dismiss. She chose me such a long time ago, she waits for me as patiently as I do her. As if our lives sought each other out from the first moment. In retrospect, everything we ever experienced will appear as inevitable steps, slowly closing the distance between us.