The Mountain King by Anders de la Motte

Author:Anders de la Motte
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria/Emily Bestler Books
Published: 2024-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

HILL

Hill and Sofie are eating breakfast at his new dining table. She’s the one who made him buy it. She has long complained that his apartment, with its mismatched IKEA furniture and random flea-market bargains, mostly resembles a student den. That it isn’t befitting of a university lecturer, not to mention a best-selling writer.

So a few months ago he drove out to the fancy furniture boutique and bought a white table and matching chairs.

As soon as he got them home, he realized they weren’t at all his style, and he still eats most of his meals on his comfortably indented sofa, as always.

But Sofie was satisfied, at least.

Said that he would just have to hold any important social events in his kitchen from then on, with a no-access policy to the rest of the apartment.

She is in Malmö until Sunday, and has spent more nights than normal at his place. He likes it, likes her, has occasionally allowed himself to fantasize about how life might look if she got divorced and moved back home.

But he has never raised the subject.

As usual, Sofie is in a hurry to leave, to go to a meeting that she is already running late for. She finishes getting dressed and doing her makeup while eating.

“Oh, by the way. I checked with an old colleague at the prosecution authority. That Bengt Sandgren heads up the Department of Lost Souls.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, I’m afraid that’s what it’s called,” she says with a disgruntled frown. “A bunch of HR nightmares who’ve been shunted off to the basement, where they can’t do any damage. So whatever it is Sandgren’s working on, I don’t think it’ll help either Tor or us. But I’ve got to get going. I’ll call you later.”

She checks her makeup one last time, gives him a quick kiss, and hurries off before he even has a chance to finish his coffee.

Normally this type of hasty departure would leave Hill feeling a little down, even if he usually doesn’t quite want to admit it.

Today, however, he welcomes the chance to be alone with his thoughts. Did this morning really begin with a wake-up call from Leo Asker? It feels as though it was all a dream.

But the phone call is there in his calls log, along with her number. It’s real, which makes him both happy and nervous.

He was thinking about her not so long ago, and then she calls right out of the blue. Suggests getting a coffee, just like that, to talk about the very same Bengt Sandgren whom Sofie has just written off.

Leo Asker the detective—he finds that extremely difficult to imagine.

Their conversation adds to the sense of unreality that has been trailing him the past few days. The sense that something is happening around him that he doesn’t fully understand.

He browses the morning papers. The discovery of the car dominates the news. There is also a picture of Smilla Holst, with the headline:

MISSING FOR ONE WEEK, BOYFRIEND FOUND DEAD.

Luckily there is no picture of poor MM, at least.

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