Red Wolf_ A Novel - Liza Marklund [101]
And now Thomas was unfaithful.
Right now he was probably in bed with blonde Sophia Grenborg, maybe he was entering her right now, maybe they were licking each other or relaxing in each other’s sweat.
She stared at the yellow shadows, planted her feet firmly on the wooden floor, the newly sanded floor that she had varnished three times. She folded her arms over her chest and forced herself to breathe slowly. The apartment responded to her with gentle caution.
How much was she prepared to sacrifice to hold her life together?
She had a choice. It was just a matter of making a decision.
The realization made her shoulders relax, and it was suddenly easier to breathe. She went over to her computer and logged on to the internet. In the darkness she looked up Sophia Grenborg in Stockholm in the census results, getting a load of hits.
The woman she had seen with Thomas outside NK was in her thirties, or slightly younger. Certainly not over thirty-five.
Annika narrowed the search.
As the representative of the Federation of County Councils in a research project looking into threats to politicians, she couldn’t be younger than twenty-five.
She removed anyone born after 1980.
Still too many.
She logged out and went into the Federation’s own website, and looked among the employees.
She spelled her name with ‘ph’. So incredibly bloody anally retentively absurdly sodding pretentious.
Back to the other website and the name search.
Sophia Grenborg. Just the one. Twenty-nine. Lived in Upper Östermalm, born in Engelbrekt parish. Oh how terribly, terribly bloody smart.
She printed out the page through the fax machine and logged out. With the printout in her hand she rang the duty desk of the National Police Board and asked for a copy of the passport belonging to the person with Sophia Grenborg’s personal identity number.
‘Ten minutes,’ the officer said tiredly.
Without making a sound she checked that the children were asleep, then crept out into the Stockholm night.
It had started to snow. Wet flakes materialized against the dirty grey sky, falling onto her face when she looked up. All sounds descended half an octave, striking her eardrums with doubt and deception.
She hurried through the snow, leaving damp tracks behind her on the pavement.
The entrance to the Stockholm Police Headquarters was on Bergsgatan, two hundred metres from her door. She stopped at the big electric gates, pressed the pedestrian intercom and was let into the oblong cage that led to the door itself.
The copy hadn’t arrived yet, so she was told to take a seat for a few minutes.
She sat down on one of the chairs along the wall, swallowed and refused to feel bad.
All passport photos in Sweden were still public documents and could be requested at any time. There had been discussions about restricting access, but so far no decision had been taken.
I don’t need to explain myself, she thought. I don’t need an excuse.
When she was given the envelope she couldn’t wait to see if she was right, and turned away from the reception desk and pulled out the Polaroid picture.
It was her. No doubt at all.
Sophia Grenborg.
Her husband was walking around Stockholm kissing Sophia Grenborg.
She put the photograph back in the envelope and went back to her children.
35
Margit Axelsson had believed in the innate power of human beings all her life. She was convinced that every individual had the power to influence events; it was just a matter of will-power and engagement. As a young woman she had believed in global revolution, that the masses would be freed and cast off the yoke of imperialism as the world rang out with hymns of praise.
She stretched her back and looked out over the room.
Today she knew that you could act on a large scale, or on a small scale. She knew that she was making a contribution, day by day, in her work with the children at the nursery, the collective future, everyone’s responsibility, but also in her work here, in the ceramics room of Pitholm’s People’s Hall.
The Workers