The Crow Girl (44 page)

‘Africa’s such a long way away, and I …’

She’ll be completely at his mercy. Not knowing anyone, and with nowhere to escape to if she should need to get away.

‘We’ve arranged for you to be able to do a correspondence course. And you’ll get help a few times a week.’

He looks at her with his watery, grey-blue eyes. He’s already made up his mind, so there’s no point in her saying anything.

‘What sort of course?’ She feels a stab of pain in her tooth and rubs her chin with her hand.

They haven’t even asked her about her tooth.

‘It’s a basic course in psychology. We thought that would suit you.’

He folds his hands in front of him and waits for her response.

Mum gets up and takes her cup over to the sink. Without a word she rinses it, dries it carefully and puts it back in the cupboard.

Victoria says nothing. She knows there’s no point in protesting.

It’s better to store up the anger inside her, and let it grow big. One day she’ll open the floodgates and let the fire wash over the world, and when that day comes she will be merciless and unforgiving.

She smiles at him. ‘I’m sure it’ll be fine. After all, it’s just a few months. It might be fun to see something new.’

He nods and gets up from the table, to mark that the conversation is over.

‘Well, let’s all get back to our own business,’ he says. ‘Perhaps Victoria needs to get some rest. I’m going to continue out in the garden. At six o’clock the sauna will be heated up, and we can continue our conversation then. Is that OK?’ He looks expectantly first at Victoria, then at her mother.

They nod back.

That night she has trouble sleeping, and lies in bed twisting and turning.

She aches because he was so hard-handed. Her skin is stinging from the scalding water, and her crotch hurts. But she knows it will pass overnight. As long as he’s content and able to sleep.

She sniffs the little dog made of real rabbit fur.

In her memory she lists the injustices, and looks forward to the day when he and everyone else will beg her for mercy.

KILLING SOMEONE IS
easy. The difficulties are mainly mental, and the underlying factors for that are very different. For most people a whole range of barriers need to be bridged. Empathy, conscience and reflection usually function as hindrances against outbreaks of fatal violence.

For some people it’s no harder than opening a milk carton.

It’s visiting time, and there are lots of people moving about. Outside the rain is pouring down, and the storm is lashing the windows. Every so often lightning lights up the night sky, and thunder follows almost instantly.

The storm is very close.

There’s a floor plan on the wall beside the lifts, and because she doesn’t want to ask anyone for directions she goes over to it and checks that she isn’t in the wrong place.

In one hand she is clutching a bunch of yellow tulips, and every time she passes someone she looks down to avoid eye contact. Her coat is unremarkable, as are her trousers and the white shoes with soft rubber soles. No one pays her any attention, and if anyone were to remember her, against all expectation, they wouldn’t be able to remember any details of her appearance.

She could be anyone, and she is used to being ignored. Nowadays it doesn’t bother her, but once upon a time the carelessness used to hurt.

A long time ago she was on her own, but she isn’t any more.

At least not in the same way.

The second door on the left is his. She slips in quickly, shuts the door behind herself, then stops to listen, but can’t hear anything that worries her.

Everything’s quiet and, as expected, he’s alone in the room.

In the window there’s a small lamp, whose weak, yellow light gives the room a feverish glow and makes it seem even smaller than it actually is.

At the end of the bed is his medical chart, and she picks it up and reads.

Karl Lundström.

Beside the bed are a number of different gadgets, and two drip stands connected to his neck. There are two transparent tubes coming out of his nostrils, and another in his mouth.

He’s just a lump of meat, she thinks.

One of the life-support machines is making a rhythmic, soporific bleeping sound. She knows she can’t just switch them off. The alarm would go off and the staff would be there in less than a minute.

Same thing if she were to try to smother him.

She looks at him. His eyes are moving restlessly beneath his closed eyelids. Perhaps he’s aware of her presence.

Perhaps he even understands why she’s there, without being able to do anything about it.

She puts her bag down at the end of the bed, opens it and takes out a small syringe, then goes over to the drips.

She reads the labels:
MORPHINE
and
NUTRITION
.

No sound but the rain outside and the respirator.

She holds up the syringe, sticks it into the top of the plastic bag of nutrients and squeezes in the contents. She removes the needle, then gently shakes the bag so that the morphine blends into the sugar solution.

When she’s finished, she fills a vase with water in the bathroom. Then she unwraps the tulips and puts them in the vase.

Before leaving the room she takes out her Polaroid camera.

The flash of the camera goes off at the same moment as another flash of lightning outside, the photograph comes out of the camera and the image gradually forms before her eyes.

She looks at the photograph.

The flash has completely bleached the walls and bed sheets, but Karl Lundström’s body and the vase of yellow flowers are perfectly exposed.

Karl Lundström. The man who abused his daughter for years. The man who had no regrets. The man who wanted to end his worthless life in a pathetic attempt to hang himself.

The man who even managed to fail at something anyone could manage.

Opening a milk carton.

But she can help him realise his intention. She can put an end to everything.

As she carefully opens the door she can hear his breathing getting slower.

Soon it will cease altogether and liberate a number of cubic metres of fresh air for the living to breathe.

THEY’RE SITTING IN
silence in the car. The only sounds are the windscreen wipers and the faint crackle of the police radio. Jens Hurtig is driving, and Jeanette is sitting in the back with Johan.

Hurtig turns onto the Enskede road and glances at Johan.

‘You’re looking OK.’ He smiles into the rear-view mirror.

Johan nods without speaking, then turns his head away and looks out of the window.

What happened to him? Jeanette wonders, and once again she’s on the verge of opening her mouth to ask him how he’s feeling. But this time she stops herself. She doesn’t want to put any pressure on him. Nagging won’t make him talk, and she knows that at this point the first move has to come from him. It will just have to run its own course. Maybe he doesn’t know anything about what happened, but she has a feeling there’s something he’s not saying.

The silence in the car feels oppressive as Hurtig pulls into the drive outside the house.

‘Mikkelsen called this morning,’ he says, switching off the engine. ‘Lundström died last night. I just wanted to tell you before you read it in the evening papers.’

She feels herself slump. For a moment the heavy drumming of the rain on the windscreen makes her think that the car is still moving, even though she knows it’s parked in front of the garage door. Her only lead in the hunt for whoever killed the dead boys is gone.

‘Would you mind waiting here, please? I’ll be right back,’ she says, and opens the car door. ‘Come on, Johan. Let’s get you inside.’

Johan walks ahead of her through the garden, up the steps and into the hall. He takes his shoes off without saying anything, hangs up his wet jacket and goes into his room.

She stops for a moment, staring after him.

When she goes back down to the drive the rain has eased to a constant shower. Hurtig is standing next to the car, smoking.

‘It’s become a habit, then?’

He grins and passes her a cigarette.

‘So, Karl Lundström died last night,’ she says.

‘Yes, it looks like his kidneys just gave out.’

Two corridors away. The same night Johan regained consciousness. ‘Nothing funny, then?’

‘No, probably not, more likely to be the result of all the medication they were pumping into him. Mikkelsen’s promised to let us have a report tomorrow, and … well, I just thought you should know.’

‘Nothing else?’ she asks.

‘No, nothing much. But he had a visitor just before he died. The nurse who found him said a bunch of flowers had appeared during the course of the evening. Yellow tulips. From his wife, or his solicitor. They were the only visitors registered yesterday evening.’

‘Annette Lundström? Isn’t she in hospital?’

‘No, not in hospital. Isolated, though. Mikkelsen said that Annette Lundström has hardly left their villa in Danderyd for several weeks now, other than to visit her husband. They went to see her this morning, to tell her what’s happened … evidently the house smells like it hasn’t been aired in weeks.’

Someone gave Karl Lundström yellow flowers, Jeanette thinks. Yellow usually symbolises betrayal.

‘Am I a bad mother?’ she asks.

Hurtig laughs nervously. ‘No, for God’s sake. Johan’s a teenager now, after all. He ran off, met someone who gave him booze. He got drunk, it all went wrong and now he feels ashamed.’

Just trying to cheer me up, Jeanette thinks. But that’s not right.

‘Are you being sarcastic?’

But she can see that he isn’t.

‘No, Johan’s ashamed. You can see it on him.’

He leans against the bonnet. Maybe he’s right, Jeanette thinks. Hurtig drums his fingers on the car roof.

They say goodbye, and she goes back into the house. She gets a glass of water from the kitchen and takes it with her into Johan’s room.

He’s fallen asleep, so she puts the glass down on the bedside table and strokes his cheek.

Then she goes down into the basement, where she gathers together a load of Johan’s dirty clothes for the washing machine. His sports gear and football socks. And the shirts Åke has left behind.

She pours in some detergent, shuts the door, then sits down in front of the rotating drum. Traces of an earlier life spin round before her eyes.

She thinks about Johan. Silent the whole way home. Not a word. Not a glance. He’s decided that she’s disqualified. And has consciously chosen to shut her out.

That hurts.

SOFIA ZETTERLUND HAS
done the cleaning, paid the bills and tried to take care of practical matters.

At lunchtime she calls Mikael.

‘So you’re still alive?’ She can hear how angry he sounds.

‘We need to talk …’

‘Now isn’t a good time. I’m on my way to a lunch meeting. Why don’t you call this evening instead? You know what my days are like.’

‘You’re pretty busy in the evening as well. I’ve left several messages –’

‘Listen, Sofia.’ He sighs. ‘What are we doing? Don’t you think we should just call it a day?’

She’s speechless, and swallows a few times. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, we clearly haven’t got time to see each other. So why keep going?’

When she realises what he means, she feels a huge sense of relief. He pre-empted her by a matter of seconds. He wants to break up. Simple. No fuss.

She lets out a short laugh. ‘Mikael, that’s actually why I’ve been trying to contact you. Haven’t you got five minutes so we can talk?’

After the call, Sofia sits down on the sofa.

Washing, she thinks. Cleaning and paying bills. Watering the plants. Ending a relationship. Practical matters of roughly equal significance.

She doesn’t imagine she’s going to miss him.

On the table is the Polaroid picture she found in her pocket.

What am I going to do with that? she thinks.

She doesn’t understand. It’s her in the picture, yet it isn’t.

On the one hand her memories can’t be trusted, Victoria Bergman’s childhood is full of holes, but on the other hand the details in the photograph are so clear that they ought to stir some sort of memory in her.

She’s wearing a red quilted jacket with white detailing, as well as white wellington boots and red trousers. She’d never wear that. It looks like someone’s dressed her up.

The lighthouse in the background is red and white as well, which makes it look like the picture has been composed around those colours.

You can’t see much of the surroundings, apart from the beach with its broken wooden poles. The landscape looks bleak, with low hillocks of tall, yellowing grass.

It could be Gotland, maybe the south coast of England, or Denmark. Skåne? North Germany?

Places she’s been to, but not when she was that young.

It looks like late summer, possibly autumn, considering her clothes. It seems windy, and looks cold.

The little girl who is her has a smile on her lips, but her eyes aren’t smiling. When she looks closer at the picture, she thinks her eyes look desperate.

How did this end up in my pocket? Has it been there the whole time? Did I pick it up out in Värmdö before the house burned down?

No, I didn’t have that jacket on me then.

Victoria, she thinks. Tell me what it is I don’t remember.

No reaction.

Not a single feeling comes to her.

AFTER SEVERAL YEARS
of excavations into the Brunkeberg Ridge, Kungsgatan was inaugurated in November 1911. While work was going on, they found the remains of a Viking settlement that once stood roughly where Hötorget is today.

The street, originally known as Helsingegathun, was renamed Lutternsgatan in the early eighteenth century. It was a rough area, lined with small shacks and old wooden houses.