“Maybe we shouldn’t leave right away,” said Hjelm. “We have to continue being diplomatic.”
She sensed a slightly sarcastic bite and smiled. “Yeah, yeah, curiosity got the better of me, I admit it. My strategy went to hell.”
“CIA-”
“Okay, okay, rub it in. I made the judgment that he wouldn’t be angry.”
“I don’t think he was. More like relieved. What do you think?”
“I don’t know. But I understand why he got stuck on Jennings.”
“But he’s right that we have to think past him.”
“Are you sure?”
They looked at each other. Their jet lag, combined with the overdose of impressions, made them giggle foolishly. Their exhaustion was about to get the better of them. Hjelm liked the irresponsible stubbornness that had fallen upon them; their defense mechanisms were starting to be taken out of the game.
“Shall we say to hell with Schonbauer’s tour?” he asked.
“Can you be diplomatic and let him know in a nice way?”
“You’re the diplomat.”
“In theory. This is in practice. You were much better at it than I was.”
“I was just absent-minded,” he said, dialing Schonbauer’s number. “Jerry, this is Paul. Yalm, yes, Yalm. We’re going to try to work on this as long as we can manage, and then we’ll let our jet lag take over. Can we put our tour of Manhattan off until tomorrow? Good. Okay. ’Bye.”
He hung up and exhaled. “I think he was relieved.”
“Good,” said Holm. “Should we get an overview of what we have and let the details wait? I’ve had enough details for today.”
The computers contained all the necessary information. Detailed lists of all the victims. Folders with all the crime-scene investigations. Folders for every individual case investigation. Expert psychological profiles of perpetrators. Folders with all the autopsy results. Folders with all the press cuttings. Files with descriptions of weapons, FYEO.
“What does that mean?” Hjelm asked.
“For your eyes only. This must be where he has the top-secret details that connect the first round with the second.”
They glanced through the files; an incredible amount of information. How the hell could they add to this enormous investigation even a tiny bit? It seemed hopeless enough to motivate them to stop working. They turned their computers off after the countdown “one potato two potato three potato four!” and felt blissfully frivolous.
“Do you think we can run away from the FBI?” said Kerstin Holm.
Of course it would have been an experience to get out and see New York by night, but they weren’t disappointed that they’d declined Jerry Schonbauer’s offer. They enjoyed a quiet dinner in the hotel restaurant instead. It was two a.m. in Sweden, nine o’clock local time, when they came down to the lobby and looked for the restaurant in the restaurant. It was, in other words, very small.
Skipper’s Inn continued to play at being an English inn. What the restaurant lacked in variety and elaborateness, it made up for in quality. They chose one of the two possible entrées, beef Wellington, and a bottle of Bordeaux in an unfamiliar brand, Château Germaine. They sat at a window table and got at least a small, indirect view of Manhattan’s street life. The little restaurant, where they had been the first guests, filled up, and soon all twelve tables were occupied.
Paul Hjelm was struck by another sensation of déjà vu. Last time they had sat alone, enjoying a quiet dinner in a restaurant in an unfamiliar place, the consequences had been unmistakable. He squirmed slightly, thinking of Cilla and the children and the sense of family that they had so strenuously won back. He thought of the extreme temptation that the woman on the other side of the table still represented, of how she invaded his dreams and remained a pressing mystery. She had put on a modest but noticeable amount of makeup and had changed into a little black dress with tiny straps that crisscrossed her otherwise-bare back. She was so small and thin, and her face seemed smaller than usual within the frame of her dark, slightly messy pageboy. Had she fixed herself up on purpose?
He couldn’t help saying, “Do you remember the last time we sat like this?”
She nodded and smiled, incredibly attractively. “Malmö.”
That husky Gothenburg alto. Her duets with Gunnar Nyberg echoed in his ears. Schubert Lieder. Goethe poems. Was he trying to get away or to get closer? When he opened his mouth, he didn’t know what his next step would be. He let it happen.
“That was one and a half years ago,” he said.
“Soon,” she said.
“You remember?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“You know…”
The social wreckage bobbed on the surface. He tried to force it down and said abruptly, “What was it that happened?”
She could interpret that as she wished. She was quiet, then said at last, “I had to go another way.”
“Where to, then?”
“As far as possible from work. I was close to quitting.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“No one knew besides me.”
Not even him? He thanked his creator that he didn’t say it.
“Not even him,” she said.
He didn’t question it. She could go whatever way she wanted or needed to.
“After you and your agonizing over decisions, I planned to live without a man,” she said quietly. “I needed time to think. Then I met him, a silly coincidence. He kept calling at work, too, so soon everyone knew I had a new man. What no one knew was that he was sixty and a pastor in the Church of Sweden.”
Hjelm said nothing.
With her eyes on her fork, she poked distractedly at the half-eaten beef Wellington. “No one thinks you can have a passionate relationship with a sixty-year-old pastor in the Church of Sweden. But that’s what it was. That’s the only kind of relationship I seem able to handle these days.”
She looked out to the crowds of people on West Twenty-fifth Street. “He’d been a widower for twenty years,” she continued in the same slightly droning, toneless voice. “The pastor in the church where I sang in the choir. He cried when I sang, came up, and kissed my hand. I felt like a schoolgirl who finally got some attention. I was a daughter and a mother at the same time. After a while, out of that, a woman was reborn.”
She continued to avoid his gaze.
“There was so much unfinished in that man, but he finished a little of it with me. He carried so much quiet and lovely life wisdom-I don’t know if it’s possible to understand-an ability to enjoy the little gift of every day. If nothing else, he taught me that.”
“What happened?”
She finally looked at him for a split second, her eyes slightly veiled but very much alive. “He died.”
He took her hand and held it, unmoving. Both looked out onto the street. Time nearly stopped.
“He was already dying when we met,” she continued quietly. “I didn’t realize that until now. He had so much life in him and wanted to pass it on. Give a farewell gift to the living. I hope he got a little bit of me to take with him. Some passion, if nothing else.”
He had stopped thinking of how he ought to act and just listened. It was nice.
“It went quickly. He was actually supposed to go through his third round of chemotherapy. He didn’t bother-he chose one last period of health instead of a fight to the finish. I kept a vigil over him for a week, every day after work. That was last spring. It was like he just shrank up. But he smiled almost the entire time. That was strange. I don’t know if it was the giving or the taking that made him happy. Maybe just the exchange. As though he had received one last insight into the mysteries of life and could await the big mystery without fear.”
She turned to him for another split second, as if to make sure he was listening. He was. She turned away again.