The Cruel Stars of the Night - Kjell Eriksson [27]
Seven
She walked in the door with a smile, nodded to Ann-Charlotte, entered in the code, and took the elevator to her division. Barbro looked up from her desk in surprise.
“Oh my, Laura, how is everything?”
Barbro loved tragedies, which is why she smiled a little more widely when she discovered who the visitor was.
“How are things?”
“Fine, thank you,” Laura said.
She heard Stig and Lennart’s voices from the conference room. They were bickering as usual.
“Nothing new about your father?”
Laura shook her head.
“How awful for you,” Barbro said sympathetically. She had stood up, walked over to Laura, and placed a hand on her arm.
Let go of me, Laura thought. Barbro’s breath settled like a sticky membrane over Laura’s face.
“How awful,” Barbro repeated and her grip on Laura’s arm hardened.
“I just want to talk a little with Stig,” she said and smiled, disengaging herself.
“Of course, Stickan has been wondering . . .”
Laura left Barbro without listening to the rest, heading toward the open door of the conference room. She hated it when people called Stig “Stickan.”
She stopped outside the door and listened. They were talking about the German affair. Lennart was dissatisfied with their approach, which Laura already knew. Stig’s voice was calm as usual.
She opened the door completely and stepped into the room. Her colleagues looked up.
“But Laura, there you are! I have sent you three thousand e-mails.”
“I’ve been having some problems with e-mail,” Laura said.
“And you haven’t been answering the phone. We were getting worried. But I’m glad you came by,” Stig Franklin said and got to his feet.
He was wearing the sweater vest. It didn’t suit him, looking—like most of his clothes—out of place, but that was Stig. His scent and his hand gripped her. Lennart remained seated and stared at Laura with a vacant expression.
“We’re talking about our plans in Essen,” he said.
He dropped her hand.
“I took the revised offer with me. I have added some of the missing information,” Laura said. “It makes sense to attach a copy of a calculation for the second year. It will give them a better overview, and Hausmann likes that.”
“Marvellous,” Stig said enthusiastically.
She looked at him. Every day she thought she saw something new in Stig. His beard was freshly trimmed, which she liked. She had an urge to caress his cheek. The messy hair made him look boyish.
“Jessica ran a calculation on the second year,” Lennart said, “and she thought the figures for education and training were on the low side.”
Laura shot him a quick glance.
“She doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” she said.
At that moment a woman walked into the room.
“Laura!”
“We were just talking about you,” Lennart said.
“How are you? I’ve been thinking so much about you.”
Laura didn’t answer, just sat down and started digging around in her purse.
“Here is the new one,” she said and threw a folder on the table.
“Have you been working while you’ve been at home?” Jessica Franklin said. “You certainly didn’t need to.”
Lennart snorted.
“But do tell, have the police said anything else about your father?”
Jessica’s voice was pleasant, not at all as shrill as Barbro’s, but it nonetheless made Laura shiver. She saw how Jessica’s red lips moved and how her tongue ran over her lower lip. Her speech was well-groomed, just as her appearance. She was wearing a red dress that Laura would never have worn to work but on Jessica it looked completely natural and it fit her perfectly. She had a little ornament on a thin silver chain around her neck. Laura knew it depicted the love goddess from Bali, a woman who had given birth to twelve children.
Jessica’s hair was bobbed, very blond, and rested on her shoulders. Sometimes she threw her head back and ran her hands through her hair, gathering it into a ponytail, especially when she was excited,