The Crow Girl (54 page)

She’s sure Annette Lundström remembers what happened in the tool shed. That she had laughed at her. And she’s just as sure that Annette has no idea that the woman she has just employed for therapy sessions with her daughter is the same woman she once laughed at.

She’s about to do Annette a favour. Helping her daughter to get over a trauma. The same trauma she herself is going through, and one she knows can’t be erased.

Yet she still clings to the hope that it might be possible, that she won’t have to confront those memories and regard them as her own. Her brain has tried to spare her that by not even letting her be aware of them. But it hasn’t helped. Without memories she is just a shell.

And it’s not getting any better. It’s just getting worse.

No matter how she looks at it, the only solution is for Victoria Bergman and Sofia Zetterlund to be integrated into a single consciousness with access to the thoughts and memories of both personalities.

She also realises that this is impossible so long as Victoria keeps pushing her away, and even loathes the part of her that is Sofia Zetterlund. And Sofia herself is resistant to the idea of reconciling herself to the violent things Victoria has done. They are two people without a common denominator.

Apart from the fact that they share a body.

‘
YOU’VE GOT A
visitor,’ Hurtig calls to Jeanette the moment she emerges from the lift. ‘Charlotte Silfverberg is sitting in your office. Do you want me to sit in?’

‘No, I can handle it.’ Jeanette waves him off, then continues along the corridor and finds the door to her room open.

Charlotte Silfverberg is standing with her back to the door, looking out of the window.

‘Hello.’ Jeanette walks in and goes over to her desk. ‘I’m glad you’ve come. I was thinking of contacting you. How are you doing?’

Charlotte Silfverberg turns round but doesn’t move from the window. She doesn’t answer.

Jeanette can see that the woman looks unsettled. ‘Sit down, if you’d like to.’

‘That’s OK, I’d rather stand. I won’t be long.’

‘So … Was there anything particular you wanted to talk about? If not, I’ve got a few things I’d like to ask you.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Sihtunum i Diasporan,’ Jeanette says. ‘You husband is listed as a donor. What do you know about the foundation?’

Charlotte squirms. ‘All I know is that it’s a group of men who meet once or twice a year to discuss charitable projects. I think it’s mainly an excuse to drink expensive wine and exchange old memories of national service. They had a tradition of going out on the
Gilah
a couple of times each year. That’s their boat.’

‘You never went along?’

‘No. We were never asked if we wanted to go. It was a bit of a boys’ thing.’

‘You know that Viggo and his wife died in an accident a couple of weeks ago?’

‘Yes, I read about it. A fire on board the
Gilah
.’

Jeanette thinks about Bengt and Birgitta Bergman. Also killed in a fire. In what was assumed to be an accident.

‘Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to kill the Dürers? Or Viggo, in particular?’

‘No idea. I hardly knew him.’

Jeanette accepts that the woman is as ignorant as she claims to be. ‘So … what did you want to talk to me about?’ she goes on.

‘There’s something I need to tell you.’ Charlotte pauses, swallows hard and folds her arms. ‘Thirteen years ago, the year before we moved here, P-O was accused of something. He was cleared and everything got sorted out, but …’

Accused of something, Jeanette thinks, and remembers the article she had read. So it was something compromising?

Charlotte leans back against the windowsill. ‘Sometimes I feel like I’m being stalked,’ she eventually says. ‘There’ve been a couple of letters.’

‘Letters?’ Jeanette can’t hold back any longer. ‘What sort of letters?’

‘Well, I don’t really know. It was odd. The first one came just after the case against P-O was dropped. We assumed it was from some feminist who was annoyed that he wasn’t charged.’

‘What did the letter say? Have you still got it?’

‘No, it was just a lot of incoherent nonsense, so we threw it away. In hindsight that was probably a silly thing to do.’

Shit, Jeanette thinks. ‘What makes you think it would have come from a feminist? What was he accused of?’

Charlotte Silfverberg sounds hostile all of a sudden. ‘You can look that up pretty easily, can’t you? I don’t want to talk about it. It’s all in the past, as far as I’m concerned.’

Jeanette realises it’s best not to upset the woman. ‘You’ve got no idea who the letter was from?’ Jeanette smiles ingratiatingly.

‘No, like I said, it could have been someone who didn’t like the fact that P-O was completely exonerated.’ She stops, takes a deep breath, then continues. ‘Last week another letter arrived. I’ve got it with me.’

Charlotte Silfverberg pulls a white envelope from her handbag and puts it on the desk.

Jeanette quickly finds and puts on a pair of latex gloves. She realises that the envelope has already been contaminated by Charlotte Silfverberg’s own fingers, as well as many more in the sorting office, but she does it out of reflex.

A perfectly ordinary white envelope. The sort you can buy in packs of ten from the supermarket.

Postmarked in Stockholm, addressed to Per-Ola Silfverberg, childish writing in black ink. Jeanette frowns.

The letter is written on a white sheet of folded A4 paper. Sold everywhere in packs of five hundred sheets.

Jeanette unfolds the letter and reads. The same printed letters in black ink: YOU ALWAYS GET CAUGHT BY THE PAST.

How original, Jeanette thinks with a sigh. She looks at Charlotte Silfverberg. ‘The phrasing seems odd. Most people would say, “The past always catches up with you,”’ she says. ‘Does that suggest anything to you?’

‘It’s not necessarily odd,’ Charlotte replies. ‘It sounds like the Danish way of saying it.’

‘You appreciate that this is evidence. Why did you wait a week before bringing it in?’

‘Well, I haven’t exactly been myself. I’ve only just summoned up the strength to go back into the apartment.’

Shame, Jeanette thinks. Shame is what always gets in the way.

Whatever Per-Ola Silfverberg was accused of, it’s something shameful.

Charlotte nods towards the letter. ‘Last week I got two phone calls. When I answered there was just silence on the line, then whoever it was hung up.’

Jeanette shakes her head. ‘Excuse me,’ she says, turning towards Charlotte Silfverberg, then picks up the internal phone and dials Hurtig using the speed dial.

‘Per-Ola Silfverberg,’ she says when Hurtig answers. ‘This morning I contacted the police in Copenhagen regarding that case against him that was dropped. Can you check if we’ve received a fax?’

Jeanette hangs up and leans back in her chair.

Charlotte Silfverberg’s cheeks are bright red. ‘I was wondering,’ she begins in an unsteady voice, then clears her throat and goes on. ‘Is it possible to get some sort of protection?’

Jeanette can see that this might be necessary. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

‘Thank you.’ Charlotte Silfverberg looks relieved, quickly gathers her things together and walks towards the door, as Jeanette adds, ‘I might need to talk to you again.’

Charlotte stops in the doorway. ‘OK,’ she says with her back to Jeanette, as Hurtig comes in with a brown folder. He drops it on Jeanette’s desk and goes back to his office.

The preliminary investigation into Per-Ola Silfverberg runs to seventeen pages in total.

The first thing that strikes Jeanette is that Charlotte, besides not mentioning any details about the actual case, also neglected to mention a not entirely irrelevant fact.

Charlotte and Per-Ola Silfverberg have a daughter.

AT NINE O’CLOCK
one client who was having trouble sleeping, followed at eleven by one who was dealing with anorexia.

Sofia can hardly remember their names as she sits at her desk and glances through her notes of the sessions.

Her body feels off-kilter after the previous night’s lacuna. Her hands are cold and clammy and her mouth dry. Her condition isn’t made any better by the fact that she knows she’s about to meet Linnea Lundström. In a few minutes Sofia is going to meet herself as a fourteen-year-old. The fourteen-year-old she’s turned her back on.

She arrives at the practice at one o’clock in the company of a nurse from Danderyd Hospital.

Linnea Lundström is a young woman with a body and face that look considerably older than her fourteen years. She has been forced to grow up far too early, and already carries within her body a whole lifetime’s accumulated hell, which she’ll have to devote the rest of her life to learning to cope with.

After quarter of an hour Sofia is starting to realise that it’s not going to be easy.

She was expecting a girl full of darkness and hate, sometimes expressed through silence and sometimes through impulsive outbursts, governed by an innate destructiveness. If that had been the case, Sofia would have had something to grab hold of.

But instead she is confronted with something very different.

Linnea Lundström answers her questions shyly, her body language is defensive and her eye contact non-existent. She’s sitting half turned away, fiddling with a Bratz doll on a key ring. Sofia is surprised that the senior consultant at Danderyd managed to persuade Linnea to agree to the meeting.

Just as she’s about to ask Linnea what she’s expecting from their session, the girl asks a question that takes Sofia by surprise.

‘What did Dad actually tell you?’

Linnea’s voice is surprisingly clear and strong, but her eyes are still fixed on her key ring. Sofia wasn’t expecting such a direct question and hesitates. She mustn’t answer in a way that will make the girl withdraw completely.

‘He made a lot of confessions,’ Sofia begins. ‘A lot of them turned out not to be true, and others more or less true.’

She pauses to gauge Linnea’s reaction. The girl hasn’t moved a muscle.

‘But what did he say about me?’ she says a few moments later.

Sofia thinks about the three drawings Annette showed her during her visit to the villa in Danderyd. Three scenes that Linnea drew as a child, and which in all likelihood are depictions of abuse.

‘Annette said that you understand … understood Dad. He said so to Annette. That you understand him. Do you?’

Another direct question. ‘If you think you’d feel better if you understood him, maybe we can help each other out. Would you like that?’

Linnea doesn’t answer immediately. She fidgets for a while, and Sofia can see her hesitating. ‘Can you help me?’ she finally says, putting the key ring in her pocket.

‘I think so. I’ve got a lot of experience with men like your dad. But I need your help as well. Can you help me to help you?’

‘Maybe,’ the girl says. ‘That depends.’

Linnea’s back disappears from view as the lift doors close, and even if the girl clammed up the moment the nurse appeared, at least Sofia saw her open up. Their conversation, in spite of the reserve, exceeded her expectations, and she’s optimistic about being able to get closer to the young woman – assuming that she met the real Linnea and not just a shell. From her own experience, she knows that some things can never be completely repaired.

Something will always be in the way.

JEANETTE KIHLBERG HAS
just had a long conversation with Dennis Billing, who after some serious persuasion has agreed to let her have two officers to protect Charlotte Silfverberg.

When they hang up she goes back to reading the Danish investigation into Per-Ola Silfverberg.

The person who reported him was Per-Ola and Charlotte’s foster-daughter. She had been with the Silfverberg family since birth, living in a Copenhagen suburb. There’s no indication of why she was placed in foster care.

Because the file is in the public domain, the name of the injured party has been redacted with thick black lines, but Jeanette knows she can easily find out the girl’s name.

But right now she’s mainly interested in discovering who Per-Ola Silfverberg is. Or was.

A pattern is starting to emerge.

Jeanette sees mistakes, things that have been neglected, not investigated, as well as manipulation. Police officers and prosecutors who didn’t do their job, influential people lying and distorting the facts.

In what she’s reading there’s a pronounced lack of energy, an unwillingness and an inability to get to the bottom of the accusations against Per-Ola Silfverberg. The power not to investigate has been exercised with peculiar consistency.

The more she reads, the more depressed she feels about it. She works in the Violent Crime unit, but it feels as if she’s completely surrounded by sex offenders.

Violence and sex, she thinks. Two things that shouldn’t belong together, yet that are combined far too often.

By the time she’s finished she feels drained, but knows she has to go and brief Hurtig about the new facts that have come to light. Jens Hurtig is sitting immersed in a bundle of case notes much like the one she’s just been reading.

‘What’s that?’ Jeanette points in surprise at the documents in his hand.

‘The Danes sent over some more material, and I thought it might make sense for me to read it, then we can put together what we know.’ Hurtig smiles at her and goes on. ‘Do you want to start, or shall I?’

‘I will,’ Jeanette replies, and sits down. ‘So, thirteen years ago Per-Ola Silfverberg was suspected of having abused his foster-daughter.’

‘She’d just turned seven,’ Hurtig adds.

Jeanette looks down at her notes. ‘And the daughter gave detailed descriptions of, and I quote, “Per-Ola’s physical methods of child rearing, using beatings and other violence against her, but she has had difficulty talking about sexual abuse.”’