Free Babylon by Camilla Ceder Page B

with butter.’
    He laughed and rolled onto his back. ‘Such pretentions! Well, if a day-old croissant isn’t good enough for you, I don’t know where to shop.’
    ‘For God’s sake, we’re in the most chi-chi part of Gothenburg, among the most pretentious people in the entire city! You could get a proper French breakfast on every street corner around here. Off you go. It’s the least you can do after yesterday. And besides, do you know how much crawling I had to do over the phone so that we wouldn’t have to pay the full amount at the B&B?’
    ‘You didn’t have to do that,’ Christian ventured, even though he knew the discussion would get him nowhere. At the moment he couldn’t work out whether there was a serious undertone, or whetherSeja was joking. ‘I would have paid, obviously. And this is blackmail, by the way.’
    He went over to the wardrobe. ‘Is it OK if I have a shower before I go?’
    ‘No, and in any case it would be a waste of time. You’re going to get all sticky with jam and chocolate if we’re to have breakfast in bed.’
    ‘Chocolate? I thought you said you wanted plain.’
    ‘Get both.’
    Tell pulled on yesterday’s clothes. In the back of his mind he knew perfectly well that he should have been at work hours ago. He glanced at Seja, lying on her back with her arms above her head, her eyes closed and a gentle smile playing on her lips. His decision was made.
    ‘Hey,’ she said with laughter in her voice just as he was about to leave. ‘I was only joking, you know that, don’t you? Go if you have to. I’ll see you at Åke and Kristina’s tonight, if not before.’
    ‘I do have to go, but I’ll nip over to the café first and buy breakfast. You deserve it.’

13
    Istanbul, September 2007
    Ann-Marie Karpov tipped back her head. The greenery formed a vault over the walkway, the interwoven branches forming walls and a ceiling, overrun by skinny feral cats. One of the cats got its claws caught and let out a loud shriek. The men sitting on stools around a table by the kitchen door laughed quietly as cat pee trickled down through the branches and splashed the paving below. Marie Hjalmarsson quickly backed away. The cat tore itself free and scampered over to the next roof.
    Marie, Henrik, Axel, Annelie and Helena, all students at the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Civilisations, were on a study trip with their tutor and guide Ann-Marie Karpov and had almost finished their kebabs, koftas and stews. The owner of the bar pulled up a chairand told them that he had visited Sweden as a young man. Somewhere near Stockholm, with his football team; two nights in Sweden and two in Norway. He remembered a tunnel, a long, long . . .?
    He told them he’d spent eleven years working in Germany, long time ago .
    ‘Building cars. Nine men in a small apartment, no furniture. I sent all my money home.’
    No, he didn’t remember what the tunnel was called. It was more than twenty years ago!
    When he came back from Germany he had opened his restaurant.
    Henrik Samuelsson thought the whole thing was fantastic. He wanted to go back to the restaurant the following day. Said he’d never eaten such a perfect lamb stew, and tucked the man’s card away in his wallet.
    They moved on, heading down towards the harbour. The smell of fried fish hung over the square in Eminönu. In the twilight the ground was covered with blankets displaying the goods on offer – belts, toys, clothes, sandals. Bargaining was done under cover of darkness; the party was left dizzied by the combination of heat and poor street lighting in some areas, which lay in soft, warm darkness as night fell.
    Marie wanted to buy a top for her daughter and they stopped at the end of the bridge. She had just paid the hawker when a signal passed through the sea of people.
    Plain-clothes police. Blankets were gathered up, turning the displays of goods into big, unwieldy bundles. The men were gone in seconds, dispersing at lightning speed.