Silenced

AUTUMN 2008

The compassionate Detective Inspector

STOCKHOLM

‘Did you have a good summer, Peder?’

Peder Rydh reflected.

‘Yes thanks. It was great, actually.’

‘Do anything in particular?’

Peder’s face lit up.

‘We had a motoring holiday in Italy. With our little boys and my brother Jimmy. Totally crazy, but unforgettable.’

‘So you and Ylva are together again now?’

‘Yes. I’ve sold my flat and moved back home.’

‘And that feels good?’

‘Very good.’

There was a pause.

‘We met a couple of times before your summer break, and I seem to recall you were a bit negative about our sessions to start with.’

Peder squirmed.

‘My experience of psychologists has been pretty mixed. I didn’t know what to expect.’

‘Ah, I see. And now what do you think?’

Peder hesitated for a moment, but then decided there was no reason to lie.

‘It’s been good for me,’ he said simply. ‘I’ve realised a few things.’

‘Things you weren’t aware of before, you mean?’

He nodded.

‘There was a lot of friction last winter between you and one of your colleagues, Joar. How are things now?’

‘Under control. I couldn’t care less about him.’

‘Really? But you have to work together, don’t you?’

‘No, he was transferred back to the Environmental Crime Agency. Or maybe he asked to go, I don’t know.’

‘So that only leaves you and Alex Recht?’

Sadness made Peder’s eyes fill up.

‘Er, it’s just me and a stand-in at the moment. Nothing’s been decided for definite, you could say. Alex is on leave for a few weeks.’

His voice petered out.

‘I wanted to see you to follow up on how you were, Peder. And to ask you a few last questions.’

Peder waited.

‘What’s the very worst thing that could happen to you today?’

‘Today?’

‘Today.’

Peder pondered.

‘Don’t think so much, say something spontaneous.’

‘Losing Ylva, that would definitely be the worst thing.’

‘And the boys?’

‘I don’t want to lose them, either.’

‘But it wasn’t them who came spontaneously to mind when I asked.’

‘No, it wasn’t. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love them. Just that I love them in a different way.’

‘Try to explain.’

Peder took a deep breath.

‘I can’t. I just know that’s how it is. If I woke up tomorrow and Ylva wasn’t there, I wouldn’t be able to carry on. I just wouldn’t be able to cope with what Alex is going through at the moment.’

Peder ran out of words. Ylva had given him a fresh chance. Now it was up to him to make the most of it.

BAGHDAD, IRAQ

Farah Hajib had already accepted that the man she loved was dead and would never come back, when a grey-haired, Western-looking man turned up at her front door.

He spoke no Arabic at all, and the English she had learned at school was not enough for her to make out what he was saying. So she signed to him to go with her to the house next door where her cousin lived, because he was good at English and had worked as an interpreter for the American forces.

Guests from the West were still a rarity in Baghdad. Those who did come were nearly all journalists or from one of the diplomatic missions bold enough to maintain a permanent presence in the area. But Farah could see straight away that her guest was of another kind. He had a different sort of physical fitness and his eyes were constantly scouring his surroundings for danger or things worth observing.

Police, she guessed. Or the military. Not American, but perhaps German.

But it was not the man’s behaviour Farah would remember. It was the boundless sorrow and pain she thought she could see in his eyes. A sorrow so deep she could hardly look at him. She decided her guest was too strange to be bringing any sort of good news. It would be a short visit to her cousin.

‘There’s something he wants to give you,’ her cousin said after a few minutes’ conversation with the man.

‘Me?’ she echoed in astonishment.

Her cousin nodded.

‘But I don’t know him.’

‘He says he comes from Sweden and works for the police. But he’s on leave at the moment. He says he investigated your fiancé’s death last spring.’

The words took Farah’s breath away and she looked at the older man’s grief-stricken face.

‘He says he’s afraid he can’t stay long because there’s someone else he has to see before he goes home. Another woman who lost her husband last spring. His name was Ali.’

Just then, her cousin’s wife came out of the kitchen, curious to see who this guest in their house was.

The stranger gave her a cautious nod and said something to Farah’s cousin.

‘He congratulates you on the baby you’re expecting,’ the cousin said to his very pregnant wife. ‘One of his close colleagues had a baby a few months ago and he’s going to be a grandfather by Christmas himself.’

Farah gave a melancholy smile, still at a loss as to why this man had come to see her out of the blue.

Then he quietly put his hand in his pocket and took out a tiny object.

Her fiancé’s engagement ring.

Without even thanking him, she took the ring and looked at it until the memories that it evoked overwhelmed her and her tears began to flow. When she looked up at the man who said he was a Swedish police officer, she saw he was crying, too.

‘It was his wife’s suggestion that he should come here and give you the ring,’ the cousin explained in a mumble, troubled by the guest’s tears.

‘You must thank her and send my greetings,’ Farah said stiffly.

She could almost have sworn that the stranger was smiling through his tears.