Peder laughed out loud as he thought of Fredrika getting bogged down in every little tip-off and sidetrack that cropped up in the investigation. She was no bloodhound, that was certain. More a very tired little pug dog with short legs and a snub nose. Peder gave another laugh. A pug, that was her. And pugs shouldn’t play with the big dogs like Peder and Alex.
Peder’s legs found their own way to the bar. He was walking tall as he went in through the door. By chance, Pia Nordh was there. He noted that several of the lads recognized her and grinned at him. He grinned back. No comments, guys.
Peder was a man who liked relying on sheer chance. Chance had made him very happy on more than one occasion. Ylva had less faith in chance and liked to plan everything that possibly could be planned. Taking the day as it came was not something that appealed to her.
In fact, that was the spark in their relationship, the glow, Peder told himself. It was fun and a challenge to live with somebody who thought differently, followed a different pattern.
But there was a down side, too.
Chance lives a life of its own and isn’t amenable to being structured out of existence. It was so ironic that chance was the very thing that had devastated their lives. Peder didn’t like thinking along those lines, particularly when he was on the beer and a bit drunk, but that was precisely what had happened. Their lives were pretty much devastated, and sheer chance was to blame. Along with Ylva’s inability to go with its flow.
When Ylva had the ultrasound scan, both she and Peder had been dumbstruck to discover they were expecting twins.
‘But,’ Ylva stuttered, ‘there are no twins on either side of the family.’
The midwife had explained. Two-egg twins could be the result of genetic predisposition. Identical twins, on the other hand, from a single egg, are purely random.
Peder found the phrase energizing, a source of great strength. Random twins. But Ylva, he realized later, had started to fall apart from the very first moment she heard the words.
‘But this wasn’t what we planned at all,’ she said repeatedly during her pregnancy. ‘This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.’
Peder remembered being surprised, since he had not in any way shared that clear image of ‘how it was supposed to be’.
One of the other lads in the group interrupted his reverie by thumping him on the back.
‘How’re things going in the Recht team?’ he asked, his eyes plainly signalling his envy.
Peder savoured the moment. To hell with all his gloomy thoughts; here was a source of energy to tap into.
‘They’re going bloody well,’ he said with a genial smile. ‘Alex is such a pro. He’s got an incredible feel for the job.’
His colleague nodded attentively and Peder felt himself almost blushing. Who would have thought that after only a few years in the police department he’d be standing here referring to the great Alex Recht by his first name?
‘Things have turned out bloody well for you, Peder,’ said his colleague. ‘Congratulations, you jammy bastard!’
Peder gave a self-deprecating wave of the hand and thanked him for the compliment.
‘The next round’s on me,’ he said loudly, and instantly found yet more colleagues flocking round him.
He had to answer a steady stream of questions. The guys were all very interested in how things were done in Recht’s team. Peder relished being the centre of attention and didn’t bother to mention the elements of his new situation that for him felt distinctly negative. Like the fact they were often short of resources and had to borrow people right, left and centre. Like the fact that he had to work on his own to a far greater extent than ever before. And like the fact that Alex Recht didn’t really live up to his amazing reputation in many ways.
After a while they switched to talking about the other members of the exclusive team. Almost immediately, the conversation turned to Fredrika Bergman.
‘You know what,’ said one of Peder’s colleagues from the Södermalm police, ‘we’ve got a so-called civilian appointment in our team, too. And I’ve never worked with a more useless individual. Goes on the whole time about databases and structures, draws diagrams and rules lines. All talk and no action, in fact.’
Peder eagerly swallowed a gulp of beer and nodded.
‘Too fucking right!’ he exclaimed. ‘And, like, no feeling at all for which lines of enquiry are seriously worth following up. Trying to keep all the balls in the air at the same time, and impossible to work with as a result.’
Another mate from his time in Södermalm squinted hazily in Peder’s direction, and gave him a crooked grin.
‘But maybe she’s a nice eyeful, that Fredrika?’
Peder grinned back.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I hate to say it, but… yep, she’s a very nice eyeful.’
Enthusiastic grins spread from face to face around the assembled party, and they ordered another round.
It was eleven before Peder was able to leave the bar with a modicum of discretion in the company of Pia Nordh. His head was spinning with alcohol and lack of sleep, but his gut instinct was telling him unmistakably that this was another of those rare occasions in a man’s life when he has the right to go to bed with a woman other than his wife.
As Pia closed the door of her flat behind her a short while later, there wasn’t a trace of bad conscience in his body. Just alcohol and desire. Overwhelming desire. He gave it a right royal welcome.
Teodora Sebastiansson was a relic of a bygone era, a fact she was very aware of, and it was a status she cherished. Sometimes she felt almost as though she had no place in the age in which she was now living.
Her own mother had never beaten about the bush when it came to telling Teodora what life was ultimately all about. You had to get an education, get married, and immortalize yourself. The last of these you achieved quite simply by reproducing. Education, husband and children: the holy trinity of womanhood. There was no room for a career within the strict boundaries of that trinity, and nor would you need one, since a husband was expected to support his wife. You only bothered with education as an aid to making conversation with cultivated people.
As she had told Fredrika Bergman, Teodora was of the firm opinion that her son could have made a far better match than Sara. Teodora had waited patiently in the wings, hoping her son would come to his senses and leave his wife while he still had the chance. To her aggravation, he never did, and it was Sara who bore Teodora her first grandchild.
Since Teodora had herself been brought up in one of life’s harder schools, she had honestly seen nothing to object to in her son’s desperate and justified efforts to bring his wife up to scratch. Despite what she had told Fredrika Bergman, she had considerable insight into her son’s life with Sara and the turbulent aspect the relationship sometimes assumed. Teodora could not help regretting Sara’s inability to please her husband. Sara had certainly – certainly – never tried to hide who she was. And Teodora accepted that her son had married Sara to a large extent as an embarrassingly delayed rebellion against his poor parents. Nonetheless, Teodora was in no doubt at all where her daughter-in-law’s loyalties lay once things came to a head and she turned to the police for help. So the life of luxury Gabriel could offer didn’t suit her after all!
It was stupid of Sara, very stupid, to think that a good mother like Teodora would let her husband and grandchild down, under any circumstances. She was thinking above all of Lilian, she told herself as she lifted the receiver and rang two of her husband’s faithful old servants, who owed the Sebastiansson family large sums of money and considerable favours.
The simple part was saving Gabriel’s skin by arranging the alibis he needed and deserved. The hard part was guiding and directing him in life from now on. After the second phase of trouble and the second report to the police, Teodora had had a serious talk to her son. She had no particular problem with his attempts to knock Sara into shape, but the police involvement had got to stop. It was awkward for the family, and clearing his name repeatedly could prove difficult in the long run. Particularly as his efforts to smarten Sara up left such visible marks, and particularly as she hadn’t the sense to keep quiet about things one always sorted out within the family.