The Chosen Read Online Free PDF Page B

heart, and sensibly exhorted her to go carefully.
    Her mobile rang when she was a hundred metres from home.
    ‘Fredrika Bergman.’
    ‘It’s Alex – did you pick up my messages?’
    She hadn’t listened to her voicemail, but she had seen that he had called. She had been in too much of a hurry to get home to wonder what Alex wanted in her free time.
    It
’
s Spencer I
’
m married to. Not the job.
    Spencer with his tall, lanky body and those eyes that could see straight through her.
    ‘Was it something in particular?’ she said, wanting him to know that she did care, even if it might not seem that way.
    ‘You could say that. A pre-school teacher was shot dead outside the Solomon school in Östermalm a few hours ago.’
    Fredrika came to an abrupt halt.
    ‘Do you need me?’
    ‘If you’ve got time, it would be very helpful if you could come with me to see her parents.’
    ‘I’ll be there. I just have to go home and drop off my violin first.’
    ‘In that case I’ll wait for you.’
    Spencer was in the bathroom with the children when she got in; she could see them through the open door from the hallway, her son in the bath and her daughter perched on the toilet, fully
dressed. It could have been a perfectly ordinary chair as far as Saga was concerned. Spencer was kneeling beside the bath with his back to Fredrika, his shirt creased and his sleeves rolled up.
    So many people had told her it would never work, that she would have to do everything herself because Spencer was too old to be supportive; a man of his age didn’t have enough energy to be
the parent of small children.
    And they had all been wrong. Fredrika had met people of her own age who seemed older than Spencer. It wasn’t the number of years that mattered, but the general attitude towards life.
    ‘Hi,’ she said.
    She dropped her bag and her violin case on the floor, kicked off her shoes and went into the bathroom. She sank to her knees behind her husband and wrapped her arms around him. Just a brief
moment of closeness, then she would turn her attention to the murder Alex had told her about. A woman had been shot. In the middle of the city.
    Spencer’s body was like part of her own. After holding him for only a few seconds she knew that something was wrong. The feeling was so strong that she stiffened, didn’t even reach
out to the children.
    ‘Hi,’ he said.
    Saga greeted her mother cheerily like an echo of her father, energetically waving the book she was holding. Isak splashed away happily in the bath, in a world of his own.
    ‘Has something happened?’
    She had lowered her voice without knowing why.
    Spencer didn’t reply; he just reached down into the water and fished out a bottle of shampoo that Isak had knocked down.
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘Fredrika, we need to talk. When the children are asleep. It’s nothing serious.’
    Her arms dropped. He still hadn’t turned around. Fredrika was never more sensitive to the possibility of a setback than when she was happy. The sense of impending problems was so
powerful that it bothered her as much as a foul smell would have done.
    ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Alex called – I have to go into work for an hour or so.’
    ‘You’re going into work? Tonight?’
    ‘A teacher has been shot dead at the Solomon school in Östermalm.’
    ‘I heard about that. What’s it got to do with you?’
    ‘Apparently we’re investigating the case.’
    ‘Since when have you been involved in hate crimes?’
    He lifted his son’s slippery body out of the bath and wrapped him in a towel. He still hadn’t looked at her.
    She made an instant decision.
    ‘I’m not leaving here until you tell me what’s happened.’
    Isak tore himself free and scampered out of the bathroom, stark naked. Saga hopped down from the toilet and followed him, yelling at the top of her voice. Brother and sister. Created by
Fredrika and Spencer. Yet another incomprehensible mystery: the fact that it was possible to make a new