Free Babylon by Camilla Ceder

Tell.
    It really was an ungodly hour. Tell had been heading in the direction of home when a feeling of restlessness had made him choose between letting off steam with a couple of drinks and trying to work for a couple more hours. He hadn’t called Seja since he’d left that cowardly message asking her to cancel the booking. She hadn’t called back, which didn’t bode well. And now she was probably asleep.
    According to Rebecca Nykvist, Donner was an eccentric bachelor, a slapdash character who seemed all over the place, and Tell was banking on the fact that this lack of structure applied to his sleeping habits. His visit wasn’t ideal from a security point of view – current guidelines warned against conducting even preliminary interviews alone. But here he was. Alone.
    And Axel Donner was indeed still up. The paused image on the TV screen indicated that he’d been watching a DVD.
    ‘I won’t take up very much of your time,’ Tell repeated, but Donner didn’t seem to hear him.
    Slapdash wasn’t the first word that occurred to Tell when he stepped inside the tiny one-room apartment. Two simple bookshelves were well filled, and apart from that there were just four pieces of furniture. Sparse would be a more appropriate word under the circumstances.
    ‘I don’t understand . . . she rang me,’ said Donner. ‘Rebecca. Henrik’s girlfriend. She rang me last night, really late. She woke me up and asked about Henrik.’
    Tell pricked up his ears. ‘Go on.’
    ‘It was clear he’d told her – I might as well say it now – he’d told her we were going to revise together. But he wasn’t here, and she—’
    ‘Got upset?’
    ‘Yes, I think so.’
    ‘You knew about his affair with your tutor?’
    Axel Donner nodded. ‘I think a lot of her students knew but then again, maybe they didn’t. The ones who were on the study trip knew, though.’
    ‘Study trip?’
    ‘To Istanbul. Last September. That was when they got together – you couldn’t really miss it.’
    He leant back against the wall, his head thudding as it made contact.
    ‘Do you know what time it was when she rang?’
    ‘It was in the middle of the night, I don’t know exactly. Definitely after midnight.’
    That would be easy enough to verify. Tell tried another tack. ‘What do you know about Henrik’s relationship with Rebecca?’
    ‘She was a very jealous person,’ he said without skipping a beat. ‘Henrik used to talk about it – it was a real problem. I don’t know if he’d fallen out of love with her, but I think he was tired of her . . . how shall I put it . . . hysteria. I think he was on the verge of calling the whole thing off. Otherwise he’d never have gone with another woman. Henrik was really . . . ethical. A good bloke, kind of.’
    There was a glimmer of sorrow in Donner’s eyes and Tell gave him a few seconds to collect himself.
    ‘Did you know Henrik well?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Rebecca?’
    ‘No, not at all. She was never with us, she was . . . she wasn’t with us.’
    ‘And Ann-Marie Karpov?’
    ‘Did I know her personally, you mean? No, only as a tutor. She and Henrik didn’t really meet openly, or when other people were around. She was quite . . . she had integrity and . . . authority.’
    ‘Hmm . . . You don’t know if Henrik felt threatened in any way? Or to put it more accurately, was there anything odd about Henrik’s behaviour recently? Anything that seemed strange? Did his behaviour alter . . .? I’m sure you understand what I’m getting at.’
    Axel Donner gave the matter some thought. ‘Well . . . after he started seeing Ann-Marie Karpov, he pretended to be cool with everything, but I know he was stressed out by all the lies he had to tell. He was afraid Rebecca would find out. I think he was getting a bit tired of it all.’
    ‘Did he seem afraid of Rebecca?’
    Now I’m putting words in his mouth .
    ‘No, not exactly, but . . . maybe he was stressed about other stuff too. I think he might have