long enough. Time to hand it over, as it were.
He didn’t need to ring the bell. The door was open. He peered into the long hall.
‘Hello?’
‘Come in.’
He couldn’t see anyone, but Ewert’s voice was calling from a room further in. He stopped on the doormat.
‘Second door to your left.’
Sven Sundkvist wasn’t quite sure what exactly he had expected, but whatever, it wasn’t this.
It was the biggest flat he had ever seen.
He looked around as he walked slowly down a hall which never ended. Six rooms so far, possibly seven. High ceilings, elegant tiled stoves everywhere, plush rugs on perfect parquet floors.
Above all, it was empty.
He tiptoed, hardly breathed, feeling like an intruder even though nobody was about. He had never before been anywhere that felt so deserted. It was so large and clean and unimaginably lonely.
Ewert waited in something that might be called the library, one of the smaller rooms with bookshelves along two walls, from floor to ceiling. He was sitting on a worn black leather armchair in the light of a standard lamp.
Sven hardly noticed the rest of the room, because a few things caught his attention. On the wall by the door was a small embroidered wall hanging with MERRY CHRISTMAS in yellow letters on a red background. Next to it two black-and-white photographs, one of a man and the other of a woman, both in their twenties, both in police uniform.
A huge, never-ending place. But it was obvious. The two photos and the embroidered cloth were at its very heart.
Ewert looked at him, sighed, gestured to him to come in. He kicked a stool that he had been resting his feet on in the direction of his guest. Sven sat down.
Ewert had been reading when he rang the bell and interrupted. Sven tried to see what the book was, to find a way of starting the conversation, but it was lying to one side and he couldn’t see the title. So instead he got up and pointed at the door.
‘Ewert, what is this?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Have you always lived like this?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’
‘I spend less and less time here.’
‘Our little terraced house would fit into your hall.’
Ewert nodded at him, wanted him to sit down. He closed his book, leaned forwards, red in the face. He was getting impatient with this meaningless chitchat.
‘Sven, it’s Sunday night, I believe.’
Sven did not answer.
‘After eight o’clock. Isn’t that so?’
It wasn’t really a question.
‘I have a bloody right to be left alone. Don’t I?’
Silence.
‘Why this invasion of my privacy? Can you tell me that?’
Sven tried to stay calm. He had encountered this anger before, but never the fear. He was certain of that. Ewert had never shown that before. But here, sitting in his own leather armchair, his aggression was masking his fear.
He looked at his older colleague.
‘The truth, Ewert – you know how hard it is to face.’
Sven ignored Ewert’s obvious wish that he should stay put. He stood up and wandered over to the window, stopped to look down at the cars in the street as they hurried from one red light to the next, and then went to lean against a bookshelf.
‘Ewert, I spend more time with you, just about every day of my life, than with anyone else, more than with my wife and my son. I haven’t come to see you because it seemed like a nice idea. I’m here because I have no choice.’
Ewert Grens was leaning back, looking up at him.
‘What a lie, Ewert. What a fucking big lie!’
The man in the armchair didn’t move, only stared.
‘You have lied and I want to know why.’
Ewert snorted.
‘Seems I’m being visited by the inquisition.’
‘I want you to reply to my questions, yes. Snort away. Call me names, by all means. I’m used to it.’
He went back to the window. There were fewer cars and they drove more slowly. He longed to get out there, once this was over.
‘Officially, I’ve been on sick leave for two days.’
‘You seem fine to me. Well enough to play the interrogator anyway.’
‘I wasn’t ill. I was in Lithuania. In Klaipeda. Еgestam asked me to go.’
Sven Sundkvist had anticipated an outburst, of course. He knew that Ewert would stand up and shout.
‘That little prat! You went to Lithuania on his orders? Behind my back!’
Sven waited until he had finished. ‘All right. Sit down again, Ewert.’
‘Fuck off!’
‘Sit down.’
Ewert looked briefly at Sven and sat down, putting his feet on the stool.
‘I met Alena Sljusareva in an aquarium, a Klaipeda tourist trap. I got the answers we needed, step by step, the whole story. How she delivered the gun and explosives to Grajauskas. Very instructive.’
He waited. No reaction from Ewert.
‘I know that the two women communicated by mobile phone, several times. Before and during the hostage drama.’
He watched the silent man in the armchair.
Say something!
React!
Don’t just stare at me!
‘Before Sljusareva and I parted company outside a Chinese restaurant at the end of the evening, something odd happened. She wanted to know why I had asked all those questions, as she had already answered them. In an interview with another Swedish policeman.’
He said nothing.
‘Has the cat got your tongue?’
Nothing.
‘Say something!’
Ewert Grens burst out laughing. He laughed until tears came to his eyes.
‘What do you want me to say? What’s the point? You’re fucking babes in the wood, you two! Haven’t got a clue!’
He laughed even louder, wiping his eyes with his shirtsleeve.
‘As for Еgestam, it goes without saying. But you, Sven! Christ, little boy lost!’
He stared at his uninvited guest, who had invaded his house and taken away his right to be alone.
He was still chuckling, though, and shaking his head.
‘The perpetrator, Grajauskas, is dead. The plaintiff, Nordwall, is dead. Who cares about the whys and wherefores? Who? Eh, Sven? Not the taxpayers who pay our wages, that’s for sure.’
Sven Sundkvist stayed by the window. He felt like shouting to drown all this out, but kept quiet. He knew what it was about, after all, this fear masquerading as anger.
