The Final Word Read Online Free

forgiven her for Sven. Her sister had been crazy about him, in an irritating little-sister way. He used to grab Birgitta and tickle her until she screamed. There had been something uncomfortablyintimate about it – Birgitta was only two years younger than her, blonde and pretty. Annika hunched her shoulders and took a firmer grip of her bag, then looked up ‘Birgitta Bengtzon’ on the phone-directory app on her mobile. (She hadn’t taken Steven’s surname, Andersson, when they married.)
    One result: Branteviksgatan 5F in Malmö.
    Malmö? Hadn’t she been going to move to Oslo?
    Thomas watched Annika put her mobile into that hideous bag of hers and hurry off towards Scheelegatan, a tiny bobbing head four floors below, dark hair flying. He watched her until she disappeared, just a few seconds later, swallowed by cars and treetops. His heart sank, his pulse slowed. He had caught sight of her by chance: she was standing on the pavement, her face turned up towards his bedroom window, and he’d assumed she was on her way to see him. He had made up his mind not to let her in: he had nothing to say to her.
    Then she had turned away and walked off.
    His disappointment turned to prickling rage.
    He was
no one
to her, the sort of no one whose windows you walked past or stopped directly below to talk on your mobile for a while, maybe to your new man. He hoped she’d been talking to him because she had looked uncomfortable. Trouble in Paradise? Already?
    The thought made him feel a bit better. He realized he was hungry, and he had some gourmet food in the fridge, ready to heat up. He was the sort of man who ate anddrank well, who put a bit of effort into making sure everyday life had a bit of style to it. He had been brought up to recognize the importance and advantages of a well-groomed exterior, correct behaviour, and an engaging, articulate manner. And that was why he was so ill-suited to this terrible flat, a mere three rooms on the top floor of a building in an old working-class district. He opened the fridge with the hook, got out the sole fillets with his hand – his only hand – and put the dish into the microwave. It was so fucking unfair that he of all people should have suffered such an affliction.
    The microwave whirred. A light fish lunch because he would be having a substantial dinner, an official dinner, in the dining room on the ground floor of the government Chancellery. At least his job suited him. He had a high-profile role as a civil servant in the Ministry of Justice: he was secretary to a large inquiry with its own parliamentary committee, a prestigious assignment.
    He was looking into online anonymity (a superannuated former minister was the official investigator, but Thomas was doing all the work). Online bullying was a growing problem. Society needed sharper tools to find people who insulted others on the internet, but who should be allowed to identify their IP-addresses, when, and in what ways? The police, prosecutors, or should it require a court order? How should international cooperation be coordinated, and what were the complications if the servers were in other countries? As usual, technology and criminality were several steps ahead of the authoritiesand the police, and the law was without doubt lagging well behind.
    The directives governing the inquiry had been worked out by the under-secretary of state, Jimmy Halenius, with the minister and the director general for legal affairs. It was an open investigation, rather than one with specific goals. Occasionally the government instigated an inquiry simply to confirm something that had already been decided, but that wasn’t the case this time. The result of the inquiry wasn’t predetermined, and therefore lay entirely in his hands. He was in charge of his own time, could come and go as he pleased, and now the report was practically finished, ready to be discussed at the next cabinet meeting, then sent out for consultation. Thomas was, in short, a