He began groping her again. Even rougher than before.
“No,” she said. “I don’t want to.”
“Just a little. You can just give me a little.”
He pushed her down onto the sofa, pulled down her zipper, and took a firm grip on her jeans, pulling them off with a jerk. They were so tight that her panties came off with them. She was completely exposed and realized that she didn’t have a chance. She stopped struggling and lay still. He pushed her thighs apart.
Then she started to cry.
“I don’t want to,” she screamed. “Stop it! Stop it! ”
All of a sudden he seemed to come to his senses. He let go of her.
When he drove her home, he didn’t say a word the whole way. She didn’t, either.
Against all odds, Emma had agreed to meet him for lunch. Johan had finished the interview with the county governor, which meant that he was free for the rest of the day. He was supposed to fly home in the morning.
They had agreed to meet at his hotel room. She didn’t dare go anywhere else.
Grenfors had called to talk about the story Johan had been assigned to do back in Stockholm; it sounded totally uninteresting.
After the phone conversation, he sat in an armchair and looked at his watch. He had twenty minutes until Emma arrived. Should he order lunch now, to get that out of the way? It was probably a good idea. If the food was delivered faster, they would have more time to themselves. He grabbed the menu and scanned the selections: toast, Caesar salad, sole on a bed of spinach for two hundred and forty kronor-scandalous. Hamburgers with pommes frites-couldn’t they just write French fries for once?
What would Emma like? What did she eat? Shrimp, shellfish-no, not shrimp soup. Pasta Bolognese-a fancy way of saying ordinary spaghetti with meat sauce. Something light, but not too light. But maybe she was super-hungry. How about an omelet?
He started to sweat. He would have to take a shower. Without making up his mind, he punched the number for room service. What did they recommend? What’s fast, good, not too heavy, and not too expensive? Meatballs with cream sauce and lingonberries-sure, maybe not very elegant, but what the hell.
He ordered two portions and then tore off his clothes. Fifteen minutes left. Would the food come on time, or would they be interrupted in the midst of this longed-for rendezvous? At least he had been longing for it-as for her, he had no idea. What if she had agreed to meet him just to tell him that it was over?
As he got out of the shower, there was a knock on the door. No, it couldn’t be… He needed to get dressed, comb his hair, and put on some aftershave. He stopped. Or was it their food? He crept over to the door with water dripping all over.
“Yes?”
“Room service,” said a voice on the other side of the door. Relief flooded over him. Why did everything feel as if it were a matter of life and death?
The waiter started setting the table. No, no, that wasn’t necessary, thanks. He couldn’t offer him a tip, standing there like that in his underwear with a meager towel held up in front of him as a shield. Two minutes left. He threw on some pants and a clean shirt. Then it was twelve ten and she hadn’t arrived. Time for a panic attack. What if she didn’t come? Had he missed a text message on his cell phone? It was on the table. No, no messages. She had to come, damn it. He looked at himself in the mirror-pale, helpless, at the mercy of his stormy emotions and the despair that would inevitably flood over him if it turned out that she had changed her mind.
There was a knock on the door. He took such a deep breath that he saw stars. He shook his head. To think he couldn’t take control of his own life.
It was unreal seeing her standing there in the corridor. With her dark eyes and rosy cheeks, she looked shamelessly perky and healthy. She smiled at him, and that was enough to make the floor disappear from under his feet.
“Mmmm… that smells good. Meatballs,” she said without much enthusiasm.
How could he be so hopelessly stupid? Offering a teacher meatballs. That’s what they probably had every day at school. What an idiot. They sat down at the table.
“Would you like a beer?”
“Sure, thanks.”
What an absurd situation. Here they sat, each of them with a plate of food on the table, in a hotel room with cloudy skies outside, and it was the first time they had seen each other in almost a month. She had put on a little weight, he noticed. It suited her.
“How are you?”
The question sounded as artificial as the flowers on the table.
“Fine, thanks,” she replied without looking up from the food. “What about you?”
“Not too bad.”
The meatballs felt like cardboard in his mouth.
Silence.
They looked up from their plates at the same time and finished chewing with their eyes fixed on each other.
“Actually, I feel like hell,” said Johan.
“Me, too.”
“Miserable, in fact. I feel sick all the time.”
“Same here. I keep feeling as if I’m going to throw up.”
“The whole situation is rotten.”
“Rotten to the core,” she said, and her eyes danced.
They burst out laughing, but stopped abruptly. She took another bite of her food.
Johan leaned toward her, earnest now.
“I feel as if I’m only half alive. You know-I do all the usual things that I’m supposed to do. Get out of bed in the morning, have breakfast, go to work, but nothing is real. Everything seems to be happening somewhere else. I keep thinking that it’s going to get better, but that’ll never happen.”
She carefully wiped her mouth with the napkin and got up from the table. She had a solemn look on her face. The only thing he could do was sit still. Quietly she pulled him up from his chair. They were almost the same height. She put her arms around him, kissed him on the neck. He felt her warm breath in his ear.
Her strong, hard body against his. They tumbled onto the bed, and she pressed herself against him, their legs intertwined, their arms wrapped tightly around each other. Her lips were soft and warm, her hair smelled like apple. He felt tears stinging his eyelids. Embracing her was like coming home.
He didn’t really know what he did, or what she did; he knew only that he didn’t want it to end.
It turned out that Martin Kihlgard from the national police did come after all. He was accompanied by Hans Hansson, who was a gaunt and unobtrusive man, compared with his boisterous colleague. Everyone in the criminal division welcomed Kihlgard with open arms. He was a big man whose clothes were always in disarray, but he was a respected and capable detective. There was much backslapping and handshaking all around. Karin Jacobsson gave him such a long hug that Knutas felt a pang of the same irritation he had felt last summer. Those two had gotten along so well that Knutas was jealous, even though he would never admit it out loud. Kihlgard was a big lug, but it was obvious that Jacobsson appreciated his outgoing personality.
When he caught sight of Knutas, Kihlgard’s jovial smile got even bigger.
“Well, hello, Knutie,” he shouted heartily, slapping him on the back. “How’s it going, old boy?”
He sounds like Captain Haddock in the Tintin comics, thought Knutas as he returned the smile. He found it very annoying that Kihlgard had suddenly decided to call him Knutie.
They sat down in Knutas’s office and started reviewing the case. No more than ten minutes passed before Kihlgard began grumbling about food.
“Aren’t we going to have lunch?”
“Of course, it’s almost time for it,” said Jacobsson promptly. “Why don’t we go to the Cloister? Anders’s friend owns the place, and they have great food,” she explained, turning to both officers from National.
“That sounds excellent,” growled Kihlgard. “You get us a good table, okay, Knutie?”
Lunch was pleasant, in any event. Leif gave them a window table with a view of Saint Per’s Ruin. Hans Hansson had never been to Gotland before, and he was impressed.