Unspoken

her, he had no idea. What if she had agreed to meet him just to tell him that it was over?
    As he got out of the shower, there was a knock on the door. No, it couldn’t be . . . He needed to get dressed, comb his hair, and put on some aftershave. He stopped. Or was it their food? He crept over to the door with water dripping all over.
    “Yes?”
    “Room service,” said a voice on the other side of the door. Relief flooded over him. Why did everything feel as if it were a matter of life and death?
    The waiter started setting the table. No, no, that wasn’t necessary, thanks. He couldn’t offer him a tip, standing there like that in his underwear with a meager towel held up in front of him as a shield. Two minutes left. He threw on some pants and a clean shirt. Then it was twelve ten and she hadn’t arrived. Time for a panic attack. What if she didn’t come? Had he missed a text message on his cell phone? It was on the table. No, no messages. She had to come, damn it. He looked at himself in the mirror—pale, helpless, at the mercy of his stormy emotions and the despair that would inevitably flood over him if it turned out that she had changed her mind.
    There was a knock on the door. He took such a deep breath that he saw stars. He shook his head. To think he couldn’t take control of his own life.
    It was unreal seeing her standing there in the corridor. With her dark eyes and rosy cheeks, she looked shamelessly perky and healthy. She smiled at him, and that was enough to make the floor disappear from under his feet.
    “Mmmm . . . that smells good. Meatballs,” she said without much enthusiasm.
    How could he be so hopelessly stupid? Offering a teacher meatballs. That’s what they probably had every day at school. What an idiot. They sat down at the table.
    “Would you like a beer?”
    “Sure, thanks.”
    What an absurd situation. Here they sat, each of them with a plate of food on the table, in a hotel room with cloudy skies outside, and it was the first time they had seen each other in almost a month. She had put on a little weight, he noticed. It suited her.
    “How are you?”
    The question sounded as artificial as the flowers on the table.
    “Fine, thanks,” she replied without looking up from the food. “What about you?”
    “Not too bad.”
    The meatballs felt like cardboard in his mouth.
    Silence.
    They looked up from their plates at the same time and finished chewing with their eyes fixed on each other.
    “Actually, I feel like hell,” said Johan.
    “Me, too.”
    “Miserable, in fact. I feel sick all the time.”
    “Same here. I keep feeling as if I’m going to throw up.”
    “The whole situation is rotten.”
    “Rotten to the core,” she said, and her eyes danced.
    They burst out laughing, but stopped abruptly. She took another bite of her food.
    Johan leaned toward her, earnest now.
    “I feel as if I’m only half alive. You know—I do all the usual things that I’m supposed to do. Get out of bed in the morning, have breakfast, go to work, but nothing is real. Everything seems to be happening somewhere else. I keep thinking that it’s going to get better, but that’ll never happen.”
    She carefully wiped her mouth with the napkin and got up from the table. She had a solemn look on her face. The only thing he could do was sit still. Quietly she pulled him up from his chair. They were almost the same height. She put her arms around him, kissed him on the neck. He felt her warm breath in his ear.
    Her strong, hard body against his. They tumbled onto the bed, and she pressed herself against him, their legs intertwined, their arms wrapped tightly around each other. Her lips were soft and warm, her hair smelled like apple. He felt tears stinging his eyelids. Embracing her was like coming home.
    He didn’t really know what he did, or what she did; he knew only that he didn’t want it to end.
    It turned out that Martin Kihlgård from the national police did come after all. He was accompanied by Hans Hansson, who was a gaunt and unobtrusive man, compared with his boisterous colleague. Everyone in the criminal division welcomed Kihlgård with open arms. He was a big man whose clothes were always in disarray, but he was a respected and capable detective. There was much backslapping and handshaking all around. Karin Jacobsson gave him such a long hug that Knutas felt a pang of the same irritation he had felt last summer. Those two had gotten along so well that Knutas was