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EXCERPT FROM ”THE SIXTH NIGHT”
Welcome me to my webpage!
Below is the first chapter of my thriller The Sixth Night, first released in Sweden in 2003.
This book has been translated to Norwegian and German since, but alas, not to English. Still, English-speaking friends have asked for a glimpse of the story – so here it is!
Sunday night
Journalist Eva Beldon was afraid.
She had known this could happen. She had formed a mental picture of it, at least she had thought that that was what she had done. But the reality was something completely different.
The public panel debate in the The Workers Educational Association building in Stockholm, the ABF, had come to an end as planned at 8:30 in the evening. The time set aside for questions, though, had to be extended. The auditorium was jampacked and the panel was all fired up and so was the audience. Accompanying her on stage had been four other participants: A leftist editor-in-chief, an activist from the riots in Gothenburg during the International Global Economy Summit, a female member of parliament and finally an extremely hard to get Public Affairs officer from the police. The theme for the evening was ”Is police culture glorifying violence?” and it had been difficult to find a law enforcement person willing to stick his neck out, since both those responding with an injured ”no!” and those answering ”yes!” to the question posed, had good reasons for steering clear of the event – the former because there was an overwhelming body of evidence proving the opposite, the latter because their participa ion would not sit all that well with their colleagues.
Debate over, the panelists had walked down the street together, still enganged in their exchange. For some reason they ended up at the Tip Top restaurant where the heated argument continued. Eva had found herself sitting next to the police representative. Here in more private surroundings he had opened up, revealing more of himself, and several contradictory emotions had surfaced. His love for the job, his discontent with a leadership that never seemed to give enough support, his feeling of being stalked and misunderstood by the media (for instance by Eva), and finally his own concerns with reactionary and racist undercurrents in the force. They had made quite a connection, so when she finally left for the subway station at Handelshögskolan close to 11:30 she was in a good mood, slightly intoxicated from several beers and from the warm sensation of actually having made contact with and talked to another human being, not just aiming at him from a trench.
Her husband and their ten year old son were fast asleep in the small three bedroom house in Alvik. They had bought it cheap twelve years ago, but due to the renowned New Economy, it had now all of a sudden been deemed a luxury dwelling and hit by a shocking raise in taxes. She was looking forward to coming home to them. She´d have a shower and then a late night sandwich in the kitchen before finally sneaking into bed next to her husband. She felt a quick and pleasant surge of longing for him. Tomorrow she would write an article about the ABF, its history and how its ideals of solidarity and respect for culture and education could be salvaged – had to be salvaged! – and brought unscathed and uncompromised into these new colder and more selfish times.
She stopped for a moment to look at herself in the large, dark windows of an expensive upper class gym. Short and rotund with happy eyes under blond curly hair and dressed in a quite nice wine red coat with black trimmings. She winked at her own reflection in the glass.
Twenty minutes later, she stepped out of the subway train at Alvik and began climbing the long slope up to their home. Lucky for her it was there, she thought, because labourously negotiating it was as close to any exercise as she ever got. The streets were empty. It was early in May and the nights were still cold, but the trees in the large dark park to her right were developing tiny new leaves and the smell of earth and grass and fresh flowers was intoxicating.
She was contending with the slope as best she could when her mobile phone rang. It was her husband.
”Aren´t you in bed yet?” she asked, surprised but glad at the chance of sharing her cheese sandwich with him at the kitchen table, telling him all that had transpired during the evening. Since he was a carpenter and began his days at dawn, he he usually had to go to bed early, so she hadn´t dared to hope for his company.
”No, Linda and Mattias came by a few hours ago and we are getting hungry. Where are you? When will you be home?”
”I´m here now, I´m just eight minutes away. Could you make some coffee for me?”
”Sure! It´ll be ready when you get here. Love you honey, see you!” He hung up.
She was just putting the cell phone away in her bag when she spotted the big white Volkswagen van higher up, parked all by itself just where the slope curved. It looked strange. She stopped and watched it and felt suspicion creeping in. She had promised herself never to ignore her inner warning signals, so without further thought she turned to make her way back to the subway station. Her husband would have to come and fetch her. Better safe than sorry. Especially in these times.
While she dug into her bag to get her mobile out again, she could hear the van engine roar to life. Amazingly, the sound came nearer. When she turned around, her heart froze as she realized that the van was backing down towards her at full speed.
She started running. She was alone in the street. The windows in the low apartment buildings on the opposite side of the street were all dark, the few shops closed and locked, and there was no time to cross the street anyway. She could make a beeline home through the park, but there would be a quarter of a mile to cover. If the man in the van took after her on foot, he would catch up with her.
The van slid past her close to the curb and braked. She hadn´t found her phone. She stopped and tried to catch her breath, her heart pounding. She wanted to scream for help, but she had no air left.
Through the windshield of the van she looked straight into the eyes of the man at the wheel. He was dressed in black with a black balaclava covering his face, and his eyes, glistening in the streetlamp lights, were filled with hate. Even at this distance, she could sense that he was far too bound up with rage for her to be able to talk to him and reach anything human inside of him.
Soon, maybe, he would destroy her life and in the process for ever his own.
She thought about how silent it was.
He opened the car door, jumped down onto the sidewalk and went up to her.
***
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Annika Bryn 2005
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