The Chosen Read Online Free PDF Page A

staggered home drunk at four in the morning and thrown
up in the children’s shoes. Collapsed on Ylva’s lap and wept until there was nothing left. She had leaned forward and whispered in his ear:
    ‘You can try as hard as you want, Peder, but I’m not leaving you. Not again.’
    Counselling had been good, but expensive. It had formed part of his package on leaving the police, thank God. At least they hadn’t chucked him out at thirty thousand feet without a
parachute.
    He still found it difficult to sleep, and only occasionally slept right through the night. He had spent many long hours lying there wide awake, staring up at the ceiling.
    Could he have done anything differently?
    Had he really had a choice?
    He always reached the same conclusion. No, he couldn’t have done anything differently. No, he hadn’t had a choice. And therefore there was no room for
regret.
    ‘Why don’t I feel guilty?’ he had asked his counsellor. ‘I shot a man in cold blood. Three times. Two of the bullets went into his heart.’
    ‘You do feel something,’ the counsellor had said. ‘That’s what differentiates you from the man you killed. You know you did the wrong thing.’
    No one who knew Peder regarded him as a murderer. He had been confused; he couldn’t be held responsible for his actions. The court had agreed; the man who had been killed had to carry his
fair share of blame for the way things turned out. The prosecutor hadn’t been happy. He had appealed against the verdict of the Magistrates’ Court, determined to see Peder convicted of
manslaughter or premeditated murder, but the Crown Court had acquitted him as well.
    Things had been different when it came to the police. They couldn’t simply disregard the fact that he had voluntarily placed himself in the situation which led to the shooting of a suspect. His actions showed a lack of judgement which, combined with a whole load of other old crap, was enough to lead to his dismissal, as they put it.
    Perhaps he could have appealed.
    Alex had suggested it, and Peder should have listened. But Alex also said quite a lot of other things. He thought it was time Peder pulled himself together and stopped brooding. Those demands
had come much too soon after what had happened; it was as if Alex expected Peder to function like some kind of machine. He couldn’t do it.
    Sorry to disappoint you, Alex. I have a heart and a brain, I can
’
t just stop feeling the way I do.
    To hell with the police, there were other careers for someone with Peder’s background. The private security industry was growing, and there were plenty of jobs. It hadn’t been
difficult to get a foot in the door; at the moment Peder was working for two agencies who took it in turns to provide him with assignments. One of them had put his name forward for the post of head
of security with the Solomon Community. Peder had no objections; admittedly he knew nothing whatsoever about the community, but stuff like that always became clear once you were on the spot.
If you weren’t happy, you just moved on.
    Alex helped Peder by acting as a referee, and whatever had happened between them in the past, Peder almost always got the jobs he applied for. So Alex must have said something good about
him.
    Hopefully he would do the same this time.
    Peder had already heard that a teacher had been shot dead outside the Solomon school in Östermalm, and had tried to read as much as he could in the media before he went to the meeting. There had been very little concrete information in the flow of news: a young woman, shot in the back. No trace of a suspect
so far.
    He had briefly considered calling one of his former colleagues to ask for more details, but he had a feeling it was far too early for that. Besides which, he didn’t know who to call.
It was a long time since he had had a handle on who was dealing with what.
    When he arrived it was clear that he was expected. A security guard asked him for his ID, and he