you’ve got to do it for old times’ sake? It has to be you.”
“What do you mean, the children need me?”
Sanna grabbed hold of Rebecka’s jacket with both hands.
“Mum and Dad will take them away from me,” she said, pain in her voice. “That mustn’t happen. Do you understand? I don’t want Sara and Lova to spend even five minutes with my parents. And now I can’t stop it. But you can. For Sara’s sake.”
Her parents. Images and thoughts fought their way to the surface of Rebecka’s mind. Sanna’s father. Well dressed. Perfect manners. With his soft, sympathetic manner. He’d gained considerable popularity as a local politician. Rebecka had even seen him on national television from time to time. In the next election he would probably be on the list of parliamentary candidates for the Christian Democrats. But underneath the warm façade was a pack leader, hard as nails. Even Pastor Thomas Söderberg had deferred to him and shown him respect over many issues within the church. And Rebecka remembered with distaste how Sanna had told her—with a lightness of tone, as if the whole thing had happened to someone else—how he had always killed her animals. Always without warning. Dogs, cats, birds. She hadn’t even been allowed to keep an aquarium her primary-school teacher had given her. Sometimes her mother, who was completely under his thumb, had explained that it was because Sanna was allergic. Another time it might be because she hadn’t been working hard enough at school. Most of the time she got no explanation at all. The silence was such that it was not possible even to form the question. And Rebecka remembered Sanna sitting with Sara on her knee when she was small and didn’t want to go to sleep. “I’m not going to be like them,” she’d said. “They used to lock my bedroom door from the outside.”
“I need to speak to my boss,” said Rebecka.
“Are you staying?” asked Sanna.
“For a while,” replied Rebecka in a strangled voice.
Sanna’s expression softened.
“That’s all I’m asking,” she said. “And how long can it take—after all, I’m innocent. You don’t believe I did it, do you?”
An image of Sanna walking along in the middle of the night, the bloodstained knife in her hand illuminated by the street lamps, formed in Rebecka’s head.
But then, why did she go back? she thought. Why would she have taken Lova and Sara to the church to “find” him?
“Of course not,” she said.
Case number, total hours. Case number, total hours. Case number, total hours.
Maria Taube sat in her office at the law firm Meijer & Ditzinger filling in her weekly time sheet. It looked good, she decided, when she added up the number of debited hours in the box at the bottom. Forty-two. It was impossible to make Måns happy, but at least he wouldn’t be unhappy. She’d worked more than seventy hours this week in order to be able to debit forty-two. She closed her eyes and flipped down the back of her chair. The waistband of her skirt was cutting into her stomach.
I must start doing some exercise, she thought. Not just sit on my backside in front of the computer, comfort eating. It’s Tuesday morning. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Four days left until Saturday. Then I’ll do some exercise. And sleep. Unplug the phone and go to bed early.
The rain pattered against the window, sending her to sleep. Just as her body had decided to give in and rest for a little while, just as her muscles relaxed, the telephone rang. It was like being woken up by a kick in the head. She sat bolt upright and grabbed the receiver. It was Rebecka Martinsson.
“Hi, kid!” exclaimed Maria cheerfully. “Hang on a minute.”
She rolled her chair away from the table and kicked the office door shut.
“At last!” she said when she picked up the phone again. “I’ve been trying to ring you like mad.”
“I know,” replied Rebecka. “I’ve got hundreds of messages on my phone, but I haven’t even started listening to them. It’s been locked in the car, and… no, I haven’t got the energy to tell you the whole miserable story. I assume one or two might be from Måns Wenngren, who’s presumably absolutely furious?”
“Mmm, well, I’m not going to lie to you. The partners have had a breakfast meeting about what was on the news. They’re not very happy about Channel 4 showing pictures of the office and talking about angry lawyers. They’re buzzing about like bees