from the busiest roads on Söder. She tried the entry code, hoping it had not been changed. It was easy to remember: the Battle of Hastings, 1066. The door opened. Henrik lived on the top floor, with a view over rooftops and church towers. He had also told her, to her horror, that if he stood on the narrow railing outside one of his windows, he could just glimpse the water at Strömmen.
She rang the bell twice, then unlocked the door. She noticed immediately that the air in the flat smelled stale.
She suddenly felt scared. Something was wrong. She held her breath and listened. She could see into the kitchen from the entrance hall. There's nobody here, she thought. She shouted that she had arrived, but there was no reply. She felt better. She hung up her coat and kicked off her shoes. There was no post or junk mail on the doormat. So Henrik was not away, at least. She went into the kitchen. No dirty crockery in the sink. The living room was unusually tidy, the desk empty. She opened the bedroom door.
Henrik was under the covers. His head lay heavily on the pillow. He was lying on his back, one hand hanging down towards the floor, the other open over his chest.
She realised immediately that he was dead. In a desperate attempt to banish the thought, she screamed out loud, but he did not move, he just lay in his bed but was no longer there.
It was Friday, 17 September. Louise Cantor fell into an abyss.
Then she ran out of the flat, still screaming. Those who heard her said afterwards that she sounded like an animal howling in pain.
CHAPTER 3
A single tangible thought emerged from the chaos. Aron. Where was he? Did he still exist? Why was he not here by her side? Henrik was their joint creation, and that was not something he could run away from. But needless to say, Aron did not appear, he was absent just as he had always been absent, like a thin column of smoke that she could neither grasp hold of nor lean on for support.
Afterwards, she had no clear memory of the next few hours: all she knew was what others had told her. A neighbour had opened his door and found her lying on the stairs. In due course a constant stream of people turned up, police officers and ambulance men. She had been taken back to the flat, despite her resistance. She had no desire to go back in there, she had not seen what she had seen, Henrik had just slipped out, he would soon be home again. A woman police officer with a childlike face had patted her arm, like a friendly old aunt trying to console a little girl who had fallen and grazed her knee.
But Louise had not grazed her knee, she had been shattered by the realisation that her son was dead. The woman police officer kept repeating her name – Emma. Emma was an old-fashioned name that had recently become popular again, she thought confusedly. Everything came back eventually, even her own name which in the old days had been used mainly by the rich and high-born: now it had slipped down through the joists of the class system and become available to all. Her father, Artur, had been responsible for choosing the name, and she had been teased at school. At the time there was a Queen Louise in Sweden, an ancient old crone looking like a withered tree trunk. She had hated the name all the time she was growing up, until the end of her relationship with Emil when she had wriggled free of his bear hug and been able to move away. Then the name of Louise suddenly became a significant advantage.
Such thoughts whirled around inside her head as Emma sat patting her arm, as if beating time to the tragedy, or as if it were time itself ticking by.
One thing she could remember, one of the few things she did not need to be reminded of or to have explained to her: time was like a ship sailing into the distance. She was standing on the quay and the clocks of life were ticking away more and more slowly. She had been left behind, she was no longer involved in the course of events. It was not Henrik who was dead, it was her.
She occasionally tried to run away, to drag herself away from the