Silver Tears(66)

“Yes?” she said, answering irritably.

“I need to talk to you.”

“I don’t feel like talking about Revenge right now. Give me a couple of hours to digest it.”

“Yes, well, about Revenge, we need to meet up and make a plan—see what we can do to avoid losing control of the company. But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Please, Ylva, this isn’t a good time.”

“It’s about David. You’ll want to see this. You may not believe me, but you asked me to go over his proposal, his finances, everything. That’s what I’ve spent the last few days on. Everything is here. Paper doesn’t lie. Paper doesn’t pass judgment.”

Faye stopped. She looked out across the water toward the elegant nineteenth-century fa?ades. It was all so beautiful. How could it all be so beautiful when she was in the midst of a nightmare?

“Where are you?” she asked.

“I couldn’t stay at the office after Henrik came by—who knows how long it will be before he chucks us out. So I came back to Alice’s.”

“I’ll come there,” said Faye.

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” Faye whispered. “I don’t know.”

“Where are you?”

“Berzelii Park.”

“Stay there. I’ll pick you up.”





Heaps of papers were scattered across the desk in Alice’s study, which had been placed at Ylva’s disposal when she had moved in. She pulled out a chair, firmly pushed Faye into it, and sat down next to her.

They hadn’t said a word to each other in the taxi.

“Thanks,” Faye mumbled.

Ylva looked her deep in the eyes.

“There’s nothing to thank me for. You would have done the same for me. What’s happened? Well, apart from the obvious—the massacre we witnessed this morning. But there’s something else. Want to talk about it?”

Faye sighed. “Can you open that window? I need some air…”

Ylva nodded and went over to the window. Speaking slowly and hesitantly, Faye said: “I’m beginning to think you were right. I don’t know…Jesus, I don’t know anything any longer.”

Ylva scrutinized her with a frown.

“What do you mean?”

Faye ran the nail of her middle finger along the desktop. She didn’t know where to start. She was burning with shame.

She cleared her throat.

“All this time, David has been seeing Johanna as if nothing has happened. To be honest, I don’t even know if he ever had any plans to get divorced from her. All those stories about him fighting for the two of us, that it was going to be us, I think it was all a lie. They went to Marstrand together when he told me he was at home all weekend fighting with her. They were on the rollercoasters at Liseberg in Gothenburg when he told me he was on a business trip to Tallinn.”



Faye couldn’t stop the tears.

“Please forgive me, Ylva. For the way I treated you when you tried to tell me. I know you had my best interests at heart—that you wanted to protect me.”

Ylva shifted closer to Faye and put her head on her shoulder.

“None of us wants to hear that kind of thing about the person we think loves us,” she said. “And I didn’t know for certain. I had no idea. All I knew was that he was exaggerating to you how crazy Johanna was.”

“I don’t understand how I could be so blind. So stupid.”

Faye was sobbing by now. Ylva stroked her hair, hushing her.

Eventually, Faye was able to wipe the tears from her face. With a sigh, she put a hand on the stack of papers in front of her.

“So what does this prove, then? I assume it’s bad news.”

Ylva cleared her throat. Faye could tell from her expression that she was worried about hurting her.

“Out with it!” she said. “I can take it.”

“David Schiller is pretty much broke. You and Revenge are his last hope. And it’s actually worse than that. It’s all connected.”

Then she began to explain.





FJ?LLBACKA—THEN

There was a phone booth in the harbor. While Sebastian tied up, I rushed over to it, grabbed the receiver, and dialed 90000 for the emergency services. Half an hour later, the jetty was crawling with people. Someone had tipped off the local paper and a reporter and photographer from Bohusl?ningen were prowling back and forth, waiting for an opportunity to talk to us.

They were circling me and Sebastian like sharks anticipating their prey, but the policemen asked them to wait until we’d had a chance to explain what had happened. I must have looked scared and so small. But inside I was proud. Sebastian was as pale as a corpse. I stayed close to him all the time. The police and the others probably thought I was sticking to him because I was afraid, but my only aim was to ensure that he stuck to the story I had given him.

“And you’re saying they fell in?” one of the policemen asked.

Sebastian nodded.

“We turned the boat around and went back, but there wasn’t a trace of them,” he said in a low voice.

The police exchanged tired glances. There was no suspicion, just sorrow and resignation.

“You shouldn’t have gone out in this weather,” said the policeman, before he turned away.