The Crow Girl (52 page)

For Sofia the meaning of Linnea’s drawings is crystal clear. Annette Lundström is confusing herself with the girl in the pictures, and for her Linnea is the eyeless figure, the one turned away, or running out of the picture.

Annette Lundström can’t see what’s been going on around her.

But Linnea has understood everything since she was five years old.

Sofia knows she has to arrange a meeting with Linnea Lundström, with or without her mother’s help.

‘Is it OK if I photograph these drawings?’

‘Yes, of course.’

Sofia takes out her mobile phone and takes a few pictures of Linnea’s drawings, then gets up from the sofa. ‘Here’s what we do. You and I will go to Danderyd together. The senior psychiatric consultant there is an old acquaintance of mine. We’ll explain the situation to her and maybe she’ll let me see Linnea if we play our cards right.’

By the time Sofia Zetterlund pulls out onto the Norrtälje road it’s almost six o’clock.

Viggo Dürer? Why can’t she remember him? They sorted out her parents’ estate together over the phone. The memory of his aftershave. Old Spice and Eau de Vie. That’s all.

But Sofia realises that Victoria knew Viggo Dürer. She must have.

She feels restless and turns the radio on. A gentle woman’s voice is talking about what it’s like to live with an eating disorder. The inability to eat and drink because of a fear of swallowing, a phobia triggered by trauma. Basic bodily reflexes knocked out of line. How easy it seems to be.

Sofia thinks about Ulrika Wendin and Linnea Lundström.

Two young girls whose problems are the consequences of the actions of one man.

Ulrika Wendin won’t eat, Linnea Lundström won’t talk. And soon they’ll be sitting opposite her with the next instalment of the man’s story.

The gentle woman’s voice on the radio and the sound of the traffic crawling through the drizzly darkness sends Sofia into an almost hypnotic state.

She pictures two hollow-eyed, sunken faces, and Ulrika Wendin’s emaciated figure merges with Annette Lundström’s.

Suddenly she realises who Annette Lundström is. Or, rather, was.

It was almost twenty-five years ago. Her face had been rounder, and she had been laughing.

OF HIS EARS
listen to lies. He mustn’t let any untruths in, because they’ll soon reach his stomach and poison his body.

He learned not to speak a long time ago, and now he’s trying to learn not to listen to words.

When he was little he used to go to the Pagoda of the Yellow Stork in Wuhan to listen to music.

Everyone said the old man was crazy. He spoke a foreign language that no one understood, and he was dirty and smelled bad, but Gao Lian liked him because his words became Gao’s.

The monk gave him sounds that Gao made his own when they reached his ears.

When the fair woman makes soft sounds in beautiful melodies he thinks of the monk and his heart is filled with a lovely warmth that is his alone.

Gao draws a big, black heart with the crayons she’s given him.

The stomach absorbs lies if you’re not careful, but she’s taught him that you can protect yourself by letting the acid in the stomach merge with bodily fluids.

Gao Lian from Wuhan sips the water, and it tastes of salt.

For a long time they sit facing each other, and Gao gives her some of his own water.

After a while no more water comes out of him. But from his neck runs blood, and it tastes red and rather sweet.

Gao looks for something that tastes sour, and then for something bitter.

When she leaves him alone he remains seated on the floor rolling a crayon between his fingers until his skin looks black.

Every day he makes new drawings and he’s getting better and better at transferring his internal images onto the paper. His brain doesn’t have to tell his hand what to do. He just moves the pictures from a point inside his imagination onto the paper, using his arm and hand.

He learns how to use black shadows to emphasise the white, and in the meeting of contrasts he creates new effects.

He draws a burning house.

INDUSTRIALIST BRUTALLY MURDERED
is the headline, and when Jeanette opens the paper she sees that they’ve mapped out Per-Ola Silfverberg’s life and career. After leaving school he studied industrial economics, learned Chinese and was one of the first to recognise the importance of the Asian market for exporting companies. Then he moved to Copenhagen and became managing director of a company that made toys.

He and his wife moved back to Sweden, leaving behind a criminal investigation that was later dropped. He gained a reputation as a talented businessman, and over the years accumulated a growing number of boardroom responsibilities.

Jens Hurtig comes in, closely followed by Schwarz and Åhlund.

‘Ivo Andrić has sent his report – I’ve just read it.’ Hurtig hands her a sheaf of papers.

‘Good, then you can tell us what he’s got to say.’

Schwarz and Åhlund look expectant. Hurtig clears his throat before he begins, and Jeanette thinks he seems rather shaken. She’s just relieved that the victim isn’t another child, but a grown man.

‘Let’s see, it says, “To slaughter an animal the knife is inserted at a particular angle to reach the main blood vessels around the heart”.’

‘All men are animals, don’t you think?’ Schwarz grins. Hurtig turns towards Jeanette and waits for her to comment.

‘I’m inclined to agree with Schwarz that this looks like a symbolic murder, but I doubt it’s Per-Ola Silfverberg’s gender that’s the main reason. I’m thinking of the expression “capitalist pig”, but let’s not get hung up on that now.’ Jeanette nods to Hurtig to continue reading from the report.

‘“The autopsy on Per-Ola Silfverberg indicates another unusual type of knife injury, on the man’s neck. The knife was inserted under the skin and twisted, and then the skin was sliced open from beneath.”’ He looks around at his audience. ‘Ivo’s never seen an injury like that before. The way the artery in the victim’s arm was cut open is also unusual. It suggests that the perpetrator has a degree of anatomical knowledge.’

‘So, not a doctor, but maybe a hunter or someone who works in a slaughterhouse?’ Åhlund suggests.

Hurtig shrugs. ‘Ivo also thinks there was more than one killer. That seems to be supported by the number of wounds, and the fact that some of them seem to have been made by someone right-handed, and some by a left-handed person.’

‘So we might have one killer with some knowledge of anatomy, and one without?’ Åhlund asks, making notes on a pad in front of him.

‘Maybe,’ Hurtig replies, then looks at Jeanette, who nods without saying anything. Loose threads, nothing more, she thinks.

Hurtig goes on reading: ‘“The body has been dismembered using a sharp instrument, such as a heavy, single-edged knife. The distribution of the wounds suggests that at least the dismemberment was conducted by two people. The broader picture suggests excessive brutality, and most of the evidence indicates that it was carried out by someone with sadistic tendencies. In this context, by sadism I mean that the individual is stimulated by imposing suffering or humiliation on others. I should add that previous forensic experience suggests that murderers of the type who took Silfverberg’s life have a pronounced tendency to repeat the offence, usually in a similar way, and with a similar victim. In a case as extreme and rare as this, the relevant literature will have to be studied carefully, which will take time.”’

He puts the report down, and silence descends on the room.

Two people, with different knowledge of anatomy, Jeanette thinks.

‘What does his wife say?’ she asks. ‘Does she know if Per-Ola had received any threats?’

‘We didn’t manage to get any sense out of her yesterday,’ Hurtig replies. ‘But we’re talking to her again a bit later.’

‘Has she got an alibi?’

‘Yes. Three friends all confirm they were with her when the murder was committed.’

‘The lock was intact, so it seems likely to have been someone he knew,’ Jeanette begins, but is interrupted by a knock on the door. They wait in silence for a few seconds before Ivo Andrić steps into the room.

‘I happened to be passing,’ Ivo says.

‘So you’ve got something else for us?’ Jeanette says.

‘Yes. Hopefully a slightly clearer picture.’ Ivo sighs, taking off his baseball cap and sitting down on the desk next to Jeanette. ‘I’m assuming Silfverberg and the perpetrator met in the street, then went inside together. The body shows no signs of being tied up, so it was probably just an ordinary situation that got out of hand. But in spite of that, I think the murder was planned.’

‘What makes you draw that conclusion?’ Åhlund looks up from his notebook.

‘There’s no sign that the perpetrator was intoxicated, and no indication of mental illness. We found two wine glasses, but both had been carefully cleaned.’

‘What can you say about the dismemberment?’ Åhlund goes on.

Jeanette sits and listens. Observing her colleagues.

‘The dismemberment that followed isn’t the usual sort, cutting the body up so it’s easier to move. It looks like it took place in the bathroom.’

Ivo Andrić describes the order in which the body was most probably dismembered, and how the perpetrator arranged the pieces in the apartment. And how the apartment had been thoroughly searched throughout the night and that morning for other evidence. The U-bends in the bathroom pipes had been examined, along with the drains and the grille in the floor.

‘It’s worth noting that the thighs were skilfully cut away from the hip bone with just a few cuts, and the same skill was used to cut the lower legs free from the knee ligaments.’

Ivo falls silent, and Jeanette concludes by asking two open questions, not really directing them at anyone.

‘So what does the dismemberment of the body say about the killer’s state of mind? And is he going to do it again?’

Jeanette looks at each of them in turn. Meets their gaze.

They sit in silence in the airless conference room, united by impotence.

IN SPITE OF
its name, Klara sjö is no lake, just a dirty patch of water, useless for fishing and bathing.

There’s an extensive network of drains running into it, and the industry in the area and the traffic on Klarastrandsleden have led to serious pollution in the form of high levels of nitrogen, phosphorous, metals and tar. It’s practically impossible to see clearly through it to any depth, just like the Public Prosecution Authority nearby.

Kenneth von Kwist leafs through the photographs of Per-Ola Silfverberg.

This is just too much, he thinks. I can’t handle any more.

If it weren’t for Viggo Dürer, he would be sitting here nice and quietly, counting down the days to his retirement.

First Karl Lundström, then Bengt Bergman and now P-O Silfverberg. All introduced to him by Viggo Dürer, not that the prosecutor had ever regarded them as his friends. He had merely been acquainted with them.

Was that enough for a curious journalist? Or a pedantic detective like Jeanette Kihlberg?

From personal experience he knows that the only people you can be sure of are those who are utterly selfish. They always follow a set pattern, and you know exactly what they’re going to do. That’s also the reason why they’re the only people you can deceive successfully.

But when you run into someone like Jeanette Kihlberg, someone with an underlying sense of justice, the situation is less easy to predict.

So he can’t try to shut Kihlberg up in the usual way. He’ll simply have to make sure she never gets access to the material he’s sitting on, and he knows that what he’s about to do is criminal.

From the bottom drawer in his desk he takes out a thirteen-year-old file and switches on the document shredder. It rumbles into life, and before he begins to feed the papers into it he reads what Per-Ola Silfverberg’s Danish defence lawyer had claimed:

He slowly feeds the page into the shredder. There’s a whirring sound, and out come tiny, illegible strips.

Next page.

More paper, more strips.

Home to Sweden, Prosecutor Kenneth von Kwist thinks, switching off the shredder.

THERE’S NO GOOD
reason to begin again, he had said. You’ve always belonged to me, and you always will. She felt as if she were two people.

One who liked him, and one who hated him
.

The silence feels like a vacuum.

He breathes loudly and heavily through his nose all the way to Nacka, and that sound absorbs her completely.