“And do you?” Ulf had asked.
Anna had shaken her head. “Not really. One or two, perhaps, but then they’re all about human misfortune, aren’t they, and how much can you laugh about that? He’s harmless enough, I suppose. A bit dim, but harmless.”
“He never tells me any,” Ulf observed.
“That’s because you’re a man. He wouldn’t get the same thrill in telling you about a man who…Well, he just wouldn’t. For a man to relate a risqué story to a woman is to intrude sexually. I’m not sure that men in general understand that.”
Installation art, and football, and risqué anecdotes too were forgotten as Anna crossed the room towards Ulf’s table. One of the engineers nodded to her as she passed, and she smiled at him.
“They seem pretty preoccupied with something,” said Anna as she sat down.
“They’ve been talking about crumbling cement,” said Ulf. “I’ve heard snippets. Apparently, the Mafia have been putting cheap cement into bridges—passing it off as the real stuff, whereas it’s actually icing sugar.”
“No!”
“Well, perhaps not icing sugar, but certainly not proper cement.”
Anna looked in the direction of the engineers. “No wonder they’re animated,” she said. Then she turned her attention to Ulf. “Good weekend? You were off at some group therapy thing, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” said Ulf. “So-so. Some of it was interesting, but some not so much. One of the participants walked out within minutes; another one went on and on about nothing very much. And we had an obsessive-compulsive pilot.”
Anna took a sip of her latte. “Ah. I won’t ask you what you yourself talked about.”
“Nothing very much.”
She was not surprised. “I’ve never believed you need to go and see that shrink of yours, Dr….Dr….”
“Svensson.”
“Yes, him. Anyway, I suppose it passes the time.”
Ulf wanted to change the subject. He was generally unembarrassed by the fact that he had psychotherapy, except with Anna. It pleased him that she thought he did not need it, and it pleased him even more to know that she even felt that it made him more interesting.
“And you?” he asked. “How was your weekend? Were the girls swimming?”
Anna nodded. It seemed to Ulf that she was distracted by something. “They had a club night on Saturday. They each won a race: breaststroke and butterfly. Butterfly’s rather hard on the deltoid muscles; it really pushes them. I thought they did very well.”
Ulf congratulated her. “You must be proud of them, Anna. They’ll be swimming for Sweden one of these days.”
She acknowledged the compliment, but then frowned. “Yes, perhaps. Perhaps.”
“I mean it,” he said.
She was avoiding his gaze.
“And Jo?” he asked. “Was he working this weekend?”
She lifted her coffee cup to her lips. He saw it as an evasion. He waited.
She looked at him now. “Ulf, could I talk to you about something?”
“Of course. Anything.” He felt his breathing shorten. There was something wrong, and Jo was the problem. He took an illicit thrill in this. Jo, the rival ... But then he said to himself, No, I must not. I simply must not. And so he said, “Is Jo all right? He’s not ill, is he?”
She put down her cup. “Ulf, you know that Jo and I have a perfectly sound marriage. You know that?”
He tried not to show regret. “Yes, and I’m glad that’s so, Anna.”
“Thank you.” She paused before continuing, “You see, I think that Jo might be seeing somebody. Might be—not is—might be.”
Ulf caught his breath. “An affair?”
She nodded. She looked miserable now, and he struggled to stop himself from reaching out across the table for her hand.
“I know that there’s nothing worse than the suspicious spouse—always looking for signs of infidelity, that sort of thing. But I have some evidence, or possible evidence, you see, and well, I’m eaten up by doubt…”
“Evidence?”
“Yes.” She looked at him pleadingly. “I was hoping you wouldn’t ask what it is.”
“I won’t ask,” he said quickly. “Not if you don’t want me to.”
“I don’t, but then ... Well, it’s so ridiculous. Just ridiculous.”
Ulf waited.
“I was doing the laundry,” she began.
He looked away. He did not want to hear this sort of thing. Why were unfaithful husbands so stupid about all that? Because they normally weren’t married to detectives—that’s why.
She lowered her voice. “I was doing the laundry, and I found an earring in his boxer shorts.”
Ulf could not dissemble. He spluttered over his coffee. “What? In what?”
Looking thoroughly miserable, Anna continued, “An earring in his boxers. Not one of mine. Too flashy for me. It had got caught up—the pin was in a seam. That’s why it didn’t fall out.”
She looked at him, as if challenging him to laugh. “You can imagine how I felt.”
“I certainly can,” said Ulf. “But there could be some innocent explanation. After all, it’s a very unusual thing to find in a pair of boxers.” He paused. “It may have been on a chair, and he may have sat on it. You never know.”
She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. And anyway, there’s something else.”
Ulf raised an eyebrow. “Oh, yes?”
“You know that thin man in the robbery squad? You know him? I’m on the public engagement committee with him. He wears those blue-tinted glasses. He lives a block away from us, as it happens.”
Ulf remembered him vaguely. It had struck him that an ascetic-looking man with blue-tinted glasses was an unusual policeman to find in the robbery squad, a robust and rather tough group of officers.
“Well, he happened to remark,” Anna went on, “that he had been reviewing CCTV footage taken from a camera near an ATM. The machine had been fitted with some fraudulent device and they were looking at who used it. Well, he said to me, ‘I saw Jo on screen a couple of hours ago. Or his double.’ He seemed embarrassed, and something was obviously worrying him. And I was puzzled, of course, and since our committee meeting had been delayed, I went to his office and he wound things back. And there was a man with a woman. He had his arm around her waist as she went up to the ATM.”