When the outer doors to Gotgatan 76 slid aside and let her in, it was a quarter past nine. Through the glass of the double doors she saw that the foyer of the Tax Office was already full of people, but she was in no hurry. She had three days to find out what she needed to know; they wouldn’t be back until Wednesday.
She had never been here before, but where else than at the Tax Office would it be possible to get hold of someone’s tax reference? If she had that, she imagined that everything else would go more smoothly. There was Kerstin’s revelation about something troublesome in Linda’s past. A piece of information that might be both interesting and useful.
A white notice was taped up on the glass door: ‘Please take a number for the desired category.’
Desired category. It was probably better if she didn’t say.
There were four alternatives: tax questions, overseas, national registration, birth certificates.
National registration sounded good. She pressed a button for a number slip and sat down on one of the many chairs; there were fifteen numbers ahead of her. She looked around. To her left there were four computers set up, and she got up to take a closer look. Maybe it was some sort of self-service; it would be best if she didn’t have to talk to anyone. One of the computers was free, so she pulled out the chair and sat down. To her left sat a middle- aged man in a checked suit over a sloppily buttoned shirt. Papers spread out on the desk beside him. He looked as if he knew his way around.
‘Excuse me.’
He stopped and looked at her.
‘If I have a name and address, can I find the social security number on this machine?’
He nodded.
‘Go into the main register. Under the start menu.’
‘Thanks.’
She followed the instructions and a dialogue box came up with three choices.
Physical woman. Physical man. Legal entity.
Even though ‘physical woman‘ made her furious, she realised that was the category she had to search. She typed in Linda Persson and the address she had given on the day-care list: Duvnasgatan 14, 116 34 Stockholm.
The computer searched and got a hit.
740317-2402.
Hallelujah. They would be celebrating her birthday during their little love getaway too.
Well, make sure you do celebrate.
She wrote down the number, clicked on Clear and returned to her chair to wait.
‘I would like to know where this person was born. Seventy-four, zero three, seventeen, twenty-four, zero two.’
The woman behind the window keyed it into her computer.
‘A Linda Persson?’
‘Yes.’
‘Jonkoping.’
The screen was at an angle so she couldn’t read it.
‘What else does it say?’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘You couldn’t give me a printout, could you?’
‘Of course.’
A printer at the woman’s side spat out a sheet of paper. Eva accepted it through the open slot in the window. She thanked the woman and got up, reading.
‘740317-2402, K, PHOTO (6401 V3.34), Linda Ingrid Persson.’
A bunch of indecipherable abbreviations and then more social security numbers and names. Biological mother and father with complete names and social security numbers and then one more. ‘670724-3556 Hellstrom, Stefan Richard. Type S.’
The woman in the window was looking for her next client but Eva got there first.
‘Excuse me for asking, but what does “Type S” mean?’
‘Spouse.’
A revelation that left her speechless for a moment.
‘So you mean this person is married?’
The woman stuck out her hand for the paper and read.
‘No, civil status D, divorced since 2001.’
She took in the information, tried to decide what it meant, whether it presented any useful possibilities. They were linked together like one big family, whether those involved liked it or not. Some divorced, some still married.
‘Could I get a printout of this social security number as well? Sixty-seven, zero seven, twenty-four, thirty-five, fifty-six.’
The woman typed and another sheet of paper was handed over. Without reading it Eva headed towards the exit.
On the way out through the automatic doors she thought she had received good value for the time spent.
She brewed herself a cup of coffee and even whisked some hot milk into it before she sat down at the desk in his office. He had cleaned up well after himself, not one paper was lying about. She found some notes with scribbled telephone numbers, but since he had left them for her to see she knew they were useless.
Anyway, she no longer needed his help.
She unfolded the paper with the information on Linda’s former husband. Residence address in Varberg. Biological parents’ names and social security number, the father with a DE, and a new date following the social security number. She picked up the attached sheet with explanations of the abbreviations and saw that it meant Deceased. Under the parents was Linda’s name and the S for spouse and the same date for the divorce as on her printout. And then under her, Hellstrom, Johanna Rebecca. 930428-0318. DE 010715.
A child that had died. The divorce only a few months later. Linda’s former husband had lost a child right before they got divorced.
She stood up, feeling bad. The ache in her chest again, started as always by guilty feelings about Axel. The thought of their inability to give him a good start in life. Wondering whether something might happen to him. How would she be able to survive? She had sometimes wondered whether anyone would dare have a child if they fully understood in advance what it involved. To want the very, very best but always believe that you’re not doing enough.
The nervousness and the guilty conscience were a constant companion to the absolutely unconditional love. She was thankful that she hadn’t known ahead of time. Axel was the greatest thing in her life; his birth had changed everything, given life new dimensions. She had learned never again to want to put herself in first place, always to be willing to subordinate herself. That is precisely what he had taught her. And yet she spent most of the hours of the day somewhere else, away from him. Despite the fact that over these past six years she’d realised how fast time passed.
And now Henrik intended to see to it that she lost half of what was left. Force her to be an every-other-week mother without giving her the slightest opportunity to choose for herself.
She went to the kitchen and drank some water and then sat down in front of the computer again.
She logged in and clicked onto Google’s search site. Searched for Linda’s name and got 1,390 hits. She skipped over all the doctoral candidates at the institute of geotechnics and other home pages that definitely had nothing to do with the Linda she was after, but finally had to give up. She added ‘+Varberg’, which gave her information on the results in women’s football in division 2 and a complete employee database of the Swedish Municipality Association; neither of those seemed especially relevant. Adding ‘+Jonkoping’ produced equally uninteresting results. Linda’s exhusband’s name had some hits on lists of results in orienteering competitions, and one hit on a car rental company in Skelleftea, neither of which filled her with much enthusiasm.
She picked up her coffee cup and went into the living room, looking out at the garden through the picture window. How would it feel to keep living here alone with Axel? Would she be able to cope with doing everything
