Chapter 110
Fifteen pounds of pure love comes barreling toward Hanna when she steps over the threshold of her little gingerbread house.
It is almost like having a dog, given the enthusiasm with which Morris is rubbing against her legs. He is purring like a tractor.
“Hello, sweetheart.” She makes a fuss of him before heading for the kitchen, her clothes covered in cat hair.
It has been an incredibly long day. And deeply unsatisfying. She longs for Henry; she would love to sink into his warm embrace and simply shut out the rest of the world for a while, but he is almost four hundred miles away in Stockholm.
Because she interrupted their vacation in order to throw herself into the new investigation.
Her body is throbbing with exhaustion. She has worked for almost seventeen hours nonstop, and she can barely stay on her feet. And still they are getting nowhere.
It has proved impossible to break William, at least not this evening.
Both he and Pontus are spending the night at the station, but without more evidence they will have to release William tomorrow.
They have no forensics to connect him to the murder, and no witnesses who can place him at the scene of the crime.
Karin Carlsson’s statement is not enough.
They will have to try again in the morning.
Hanna takes out milk, cocoa, and sugar. She mixes a mug of chocolate, and while it is heating up in the microwave, she puts fresh food and water in Morris’s bowls.
She is tired and shivery, but still buzzing. It is going to be hard to get to sleep, even though she has to get up at six thirty and needs to be rested.
She must get a few hours’ sleep tonight; otherwise she is going to collapse.
She takes her drink into the bedroom and crawls beneath the covers. It is twenty to ten; she ought to call Lydia. She really doesn’t want to, but a promise is a promise.
She picks up her phone and reads through the texts that have arrived during the day.
A sweet message from Henry warms her heart.
Karro has also been in touch, saying that she knows it must have been difficult with all the online articles, and telling Hanna to call if she needs to talk.
Hanna types a quick reply thanking her for her kindness.
She also asks if Karro knows anyone who might be able to help Daniel with childcare.
Then there are way too many messages from nosey gossip columnists. There are even inquiries from overseas, wanting a comment about her and the well-known financier.
Hanna finds the contrast with the ongoing investigation upsetting.
Filippa, who was only nineteen years old, has lost her life, but these people couldn’t care less.
In a way it’s good that the media haven’t shown a prurient interest in the case as they have with other homicides, but at the same time the obsession with Hanna’s relationship with Henry feels inappropriate.
She sips her hot chocolate; it calms her and makes everything seem a little better. It is a reminder of another life, skiing in the early spring sunshine, waffles in a café by the slopes, relaxing days on the piste, far away from brutal murders and troublesome journalists.
A heavy thud at the foot of the bed tells her that Morris has followed her from the kitchen.
Full and contented, he picks his way across the covers and settles himself on Hanna’s stomach.
She tries to shuffle him to one side, and after some compromising he ends up right next to her ribs.
This means they have physical contact, but without her internal organs being squashed.
Morris is purring loudly and happily. Maybe she should stick with him as her life partner? She scratches him beneath his chin, and he stretches his neck so that she can reach the perfect spot.
Hanna has never had a successful long-term relationship. They have always ended in tears and disaster. Christian’s betrayal still hurts; she has never felt as worthless as she did on the day when she found out he had been seeing Valérie behind her back for months.
The odds on her relationship with Henry going wrong are also overwhelming. He just doesn’t know it yet. Or maybe he is so used to getting what he wants that he hasn’t considered an alternative outcome.
While she is too afraid, too damaged to give him a decent chance.
Will she ever be able to love for real again?
Morris bumps her nose with his head, as if he wants to distract her from such upsetting thoughts. True love and devotion shine from his eyes, and this is a love she can definitely return.
Time to call Lydia.
Hanna finishes her chocolate and clicks on her sister’s number, secretly hoping that Lydia has switched off her phone and gone to bed.
“At last!” Lydia says, as if she has been sitting there waiting for Hanna to call. “I want to hear all about your new boyfriend!”
Hanna closes her eyes. “There isn’t much to tell.”
“Nonsense. Start talking.”
Hanna does her best to explain when she and Henry first met, and how the relationship has developed since last spring. Why she tried to keep a low profile initially, and above all why she hasn’t said a single word about him to anyone, including Lydia.
She does not, however, mention Daniel or how her feelings toward him have affected the situation. Lydia doesn’t know anything about that part.
It’s too embarrassing. Hanna hasn’t revealed to anyone that she has had forbidden feelings for her colleague for a long time.
“He sounds fantastic,” Lydia says. “Almost too good to be true—a financier with a conscience.”
“That’s because of his previous career,” Hanna clarifies. “He says he needs to make up for a number of things.”
They haven’t talked about it in detail, but Henry has hinted that he probably pushed the boundaries in certain situations when he was building up his fortune.
Now he is trying to do better, and among other things has set up a foundation that works to keep the Baltic Sea clean.
The foundation takes up a great deal of his time these days.
Henry is putting both his energy and his money into various initiatives aimed at improving the water quality of the sea on which Sweden is so dependent.
“I like the fact that he’s intending to leave the majority of his fortune to a climate organization when he dies,” Lydia says. “Instead of the whole lot going to his sons so they can live it up on the French Riviera.”
“Have you been checking him out?” Hanna asks with a smile. Her eyelids are getting heavy, she needs to end the call and get a few hours’ sleep.
“Of course I have.”
Of course you have, Hanna thinks, unable to suppress a yawn. Lydia never leaves anything to chance; it’s not in her nature. Especially not when it comes to her troublesome little sister.
“Is this the real thing?” Lydia asks.
Hanna is taken aback.
“Are you in love with him?” her sister goes on before Hanna has the chance to speak.
Is she?
Hanna doesn’t know what she is most afraid of—asking herself that question, or giving the answer out loud.
“He asked if I want to move in with him,” she offers instead. “When we were in Niehku at the weekend.”
Lydia inhales sharply. “Wow—so it’s serious, in other words?”
“Yes. Yes, I guess it is.”
Hanna sees Henry’s handsome face in her mind’s eye, the tenderness in his voice when he brought up the subject. She thinks about his carefully chosen birthday present, which is in its box on the nightstand because she doesn’t want to wear the bracelet to work.
She really, really likes him.
And yet something is holding her back.
Is it because she is afraid of being hurt again? Because she can’t forget Christian’s deception?
Or is it still all about Daniel?