military. Karolina had grown up with him around, thought of him as an extra dad. The sinewy little man was always polite, never behaving with less than military correctness toward those around him. He only spoke when he had something important to say, which wasn’t very often. He was also considerate, almost protective toward Karolina and the girls. Yet there was still something about Boman that irritated Stenberg. Something about his eyes that was, in the absence of a better description, actively unpleasant. They were pale blue, cold. Almost like a fish’s. They always seemed to be watching and judging him. And not in a way that did him any favors.
His wife came back into the kitchen.
“Daddy doesn’t want to say anything to you yet,” she said, and he could hear the excitement in her voice. “But he’s having an informal meeting with the prime minister this afternoon. He’s worried about the opinion polls. And the likelihood that people regard him as old and tired, especially now that he has to walk with a stick since the operation. Yesterday’s interview was the final test, and you passed. The prime minister is going to ask if you’re ready to stand by his side for the last part of the campaign. His unofficial crown prince.”
Stenberg nodded. He could feel his face automatically delivering the right expression as his wife went on talking.
“All our dreams are coming true. After all our hard work. And sooner than we could ever have hoped. Prime Minister Jesper Stenberg—how does that sound? I’ve booked us a table at the Diplomat this afternoon to celebrate. Lina will stay on for a couple of hours to look after the girls.”
Stenberg went on smiling at his wife. Nothing can spoil this moment, he told himself. Nothing and no one.
* * *
“Good afternoon, Minister,” Oscar Wallin said in an exaggeratedly cheery voice as he walked into Stenberg’s spacious office.
He stopped obediently behind one of the leather armchairs that were positioned at just the right angle for visitors to be able to see both the City Hall and the water of Riddarfjärden through the large windows facing Rosenbadsparken.
“Congratulations on your excellent performance on television last night. You looked like you owned the whole studio. That vicious little journalist really didn’t have much luck. The lead article in my paper declared that you’re the future of the party, possibly even our next prime minister.”
“Hello, Oscar. Have a seat.” Stenberg nodded toward the chair on the other side of the desk. “You wanted to see me?” he added before Wallin had a chance to go on with his predictable flattery.
Wallin opened the blue folder he had been carrying under his arm and put it down on the table between them with a flourish. Stenberg did his best to maintain a neutral expression.
“Well, I just wanted to update you on the body that was found in Källstavik last weekend. I thought it would be good for you to know. The body was found just a stone’s throw from your father-in-law’s country retreat. My guess is that sooner or later someone will start asking questions.”
Stenberg waved one hand. “Of course. But keep it brief, if you don’t mind.”
Wallin started to talk, but Stenberg was only half listening. He knew that Wallin would let his secretary have a detailed memo. To show how clever he was, how industrious. The problem with Oscar Wallin was that he tried too hard, not least when he’d done something wrong, which made him look slippery and ingratiating rather than reliable and trustworthy.
He had begun to get seriously fed up with Wallin. His boyish appearance, the little water-combed curl in his hair, the breezy tone of voice. Not to mention that tired old thing he did with his folders. Wallin was intelligent—very intelligent, even, at least in some respects. But in others he was a complete idiot. Wallin had made a serious mistake last winter, biting the hand that fed him. But he didn’t actually seem to realize that he ought to have handed in his resignation instead of prancing about in the corridors, trying to find things to do and look important.
For a couple of days last Christmas, Stenberg had been worried. Wallin indicated that he had found a trace of blood in Sophie Thorning’s apartment. He had kept the documentation inside one of his blue folders and intimated that he could link Stenberg to Sophie, possibly even to her suicide. At first he had considered giving in to Wallin’s demand and appointing him as the new national police chief. But then he calmed down. Realized that Wallin was actually playing poker and was bluffing. Wallin had seen to it that dozens of prominent police chiefs had lost their jobs and privileges. Without political protection his career in the police authority was doomed. Probably within the entire justice system, actually. And the only person protecting Wallin was Stenberg himself.
So he had seen through the bluff and consequently deprived Wallin of his dream job. And there was nothing Wallin could do to stop him. It was three days until he appeared in Stenberg’s office with a servile smile and a blue folder under his arm. But by then Stenberg had begun to doubt that there had ever been a trace of blood at all.
He had contemplated going whole hog and firing Wallin. Or, even better, giving him a tedious job in some inquiry and letting his career gradually wither away. He had already slashed Wallin’s budget and seen to it that he had lost his colleagues. All it would take was a single stroke of the pen, and he’d be gone.
But that blue folder Wallin was carrying was still a signal. If Wallin was utterly humiliated, there was a risk that he’d start talking to John Thorning, reveal that Stenberg had been having a secret affair with John’s daughter for years and that Wallin strongly suspected that Stenberg had been there when she killed herself.
Stenberg daren’t take the risk of his former mentor becoming his enemy. He still needed John’s support, not least because he was general secretary of the Bar Association. So Wallin was allowed to keep his office, at least for the time being.
Wallin was still talking. He was halfway through a lengthy description of how bodies decompose in water. Something about bottom-feeders eating the dead bodies.
Stenberg couldn’t help thinking of Sophie, of how her beautiful, slender body was lying in a coffin deep below the ground. Skin and tissue slowly turning to wax. If the worms hadn’t gotten there first.
He felt suddenly nauseous. He stood up abruptly and went over to one of the windows. The smoke from the steamers by the City Hall was drifting on the breeze above Riddarfjärden.
Just a few meters outside his window a seagull hung in the air, almost motionless. It stared at him with empty, dead eyes.
* * *
When Oscar Wallin closed the door of his office his watch struck the handle with an alarmingly loud noise. It had been a Christmas present to himself, a Patek Philippe, exactly the same as the one Jesper Stenberg wore. Before he sat down behind his desk he anxiously checked to make sure the diamond-polished glass wasn’t damaged. His mother had commented on the watch when they had dinner recently. A gift, he had told her, for professional accomplishments. “From the minister?” she had asked, but her tone revealed that she already knew the answer. He had managed to avoid the trap.
Six years ago he helped organize an apartment on Gärdet for her, just a stone’s throw from his own. He moved her out of the dull suburb where his father had exiled them to a three-room apartment, ninety square meters with a view of the city center. He’d had to pull a lot of strings to get it, but obviously the apartment wasn’t the same thing as a grand villa, which it hadn’t taken her many minutes to point out.
All through the years when he was growing up she had waited. Every evening she had forced him to dress for dinner. “Your father will call soon, you’ll see, and you must promise to be a good boy this time.”
The fact that the professor had replaced her with a woman fifteen years her junior, and that the villa was now inhabited by his new family, appeared to make little difference. She had gone on waiting, hoping, and nothing he did could possibly replace what had been taken from her.
As a teenager, he had sometimes gone back to their old home, creeping through the garden gate and standing there in the