The Crow Girl (67 page)

She goes into the bathroom and gets the box of sedatives from the cabinet, takes two paroxetine and swallows them down with a quick jerk of her head. It’ll soon be over. Viggo Dürer is dead and Jeanette Kihlberg knows that Victoria Bergman is a murderer.

‘No, she doesn’t know that,’ she says in a loud voice. ‘And Victoria Bergman doesn’t exist.’ But there’s no point pretending. The voice is there, and it’s stronger than ever.

She goes back into the living room, then the kitchen. Her vision is shimmering, like at the start of a migraine.

The red lamp is glowing, to indicate that the little machine is recording.

She holds the recorder in front of her, hands trembling; she’s wet with sweat it’s as if she’s outside of her body, looking at herself sitting at the table.

Sofia feels she’s in two places at the same time.

She’s standing beside the table, and she’s inside the girl’s head. The voice is dark and monotonous and it echoes inside her and simultaneously bounces off the walls of the kitchen.

When she was trying to understand Victoria Bergman, the recorded monologues had functioned as catalysts, but now the reverse is true.

Her memories include explanations and answers. They are a manual, a guide to life.

Sofia is interrupted by a loud noise from the street, and the voice vanishes. She feels like she’s just woken up, switches off the recorder and looks around.

There’s an empty blister pack of paroxetine crumpled up on the table and the floor is filthy, covered with muddy footprints. She gets up and goes out into the hall, where she finds her shoes damp and dirty with soil and grass.

So she’s been out again.

Back in the kitchen she sees that someone, presumably her, has laid the table for five people, and notices that she’s also put names by their places.

She leans over the table and reads the cards. To her left Solace will be sitting next to Hannah, and on the other side Sofia and Jessica will be sitting next to each other. She has put Victoria at the head of the table.

Hannah and Jessica? she thinks. What are they doing here? Hannah and Jessica, whom she hasn’t seen since she left them on the train from Paris more than twenty years ago.

Sofia sinks down onto the floor and discovers that she’s holding a black marker in her hand. She puts it aside and looks up at the white ceiling. Vaguely she hears the phone ring out in the hall, but she’s not going to answer and shuts her eyes.

The final thing she does before the roaring in her head drowns out all other sounds is to switch the tape recorder on again.

Then darkness and silence. The roaring stops, and she’s calm and can rest while the pills start to work.

She sinks deeper into sleep, and Victoria’s memories come back to her in rolling waves, first as sounds and smells, then as images.

The last thing she sees before her consciousness finally goes out is a girl in a red jacket standing on a beach in Denmark, and only now does she realise who the girl is.

‘
THE MURDERER’S MISSING
her right ring finger,’ Jeanette repeats, sending a silent, posthumous call of thanks to the man named Ralf Börje Persson.

‘Not entirely insignificant.’ Hurtig grins.

‘It’s just tragic that one of our best leads comes from a witness we can’t talk to,’ Jeanette says. ‘Billing’s given me a gang from the police academy who are going through the class registers from Sigtuna, from all years. They’ve already started calling former pupils and staff, and there are three names that I’m particularly keen to see pop up over the course of the evening.’

‘I get it – you mean the victims of that initiation ritual. Victoria Bergman and the other two who disappeared?’

‘Exactly. And there’s one other phone call that needs to be made. The most important one, so I’m leaving that to you, Hurtig.’ She hands him the phone. ‘The person you need to call used to be the school’s headmistress. She’s retired these days and lives in Uppsala. She was evidently aware of what happened, and was actively involved in hushing it up. She’ll be able to give us the names, at least, and if she can’t remember them she can help us find their records. Make the call, I’m wiped out and my blood sugar’s crashed, so I’m going down to the cafeteria for coffee and something sweet. Do you want anything?’

‘No thanks.’ Hurtig laughs. ‘You never let up. I’ll call the head, you go and get some coffee.’

She gets back to her office just as Hurtig hangs up.

‘Well? How did it go? What did she say?’

‘The girls’ names were Hannah Östlund and Jessica Friberg. We’ll be getting their personal details sometime this evening.’

‘Good work, Hurtig. Do you think any of them’s missing a ring finger?’

‘Friberg, Östlund or Bergman? Why not Madeleine Silfverberg?’

Jeanette looks at him with amusement. ‘She may have a motive for her foster-father, but I can’t see any direct connection to Fredrika Grünewald.’

‘OK. But that’s not enough. Anything else?’

‘Henrietta Nordlund married the lawyer, Viggo Dürer.’

Hurtig says nothing, just nods thoughtfully.

‘And, last but not least … During the initiation ritual in Sigtuna, Hannah Östlund, Jessica Friberg and Victoria Bergman were served dog shit by Fredrika Grünewald. Need I say more?’

He breathes out and looks suddenly very tired. ‘No thanks, that’s enough for now.’

It doesn’t matter how exhausted he is, she thinks. He’s never going to give up.

‘How’s your dad getting on?’

‘Dad?’ Hurtig rubs his eyes and looks amused. ‘They’ve amputated several fingers from his right hand, and now he’s being treated with leeches.’

‘Leeches?’

‘Yes, they stop the blood coagulating after amputations. And they actually managed to save one of his fingers. Can you guess which one?’

Hurtig grins and yawns at the same time, before pre-empting her and answering his own question.

‘His right ring finger.’

WHEN JEANETTE KIHLBERG
gets home she’s so wiped out that she doesn’t even notice the smell of cooking from the kitchen at first.

Hannah and Jessica, she thinks. Two shy girls that nobody remembers terribly well.

Tomorrow, if the school yearbooks arrive as promised, at least she’ll be able to put a face to Victoria Bergman. The girl with the highest marks in every subject but behaviour.

She hangs up her jacket, goes into the kitchen and finds that the worktop she left beautifully clean that morning now looks like a bomb has hit it. There’s a faint haze in the living room, evidence of something burning, and there’s an open pack of fish fingers on the kitchen table, next to the remains of a head of lettuce.

‘Johan? Are you there?’ She looks out into the hall and sees light from his room.

She’s worried about him again.

According to his teacher he’s missed several lessons this week, and when he has been there he’s been distant and uninterested. Gloomy and introverted.

He’s also got into fights with classmates on several occasions, something that has never happened before.

‘Knock-knock,’ she says, opening the door to his room. He’s lying on his bed with his back to her. ‘How are you, darling?’

‘I made dinner for you,’ he mutters. ‘It’s in the living room.’

She strokes his back, then turns and can see through the doorway that he’s laid the table. She kisses him on the forehead, then goes to look.

On the table is a plate containing some cremated fish fingers, instant macaroni and some lettuce, neatly arranged with a hefty dollop of ketchup. The cutlery is on a napkin beside the plate, and there’s a glass of wine, half filled, and a lit candle.

He’s made her dinner. That’s never happened before. And he’s gone to a lot of trouble over it.

Damn the mess in the kitchen, she thinks. He’s done this to cheer me up.

‘Johan?’

No response.

‘You’ve no idea how happy this makes me. Aren’t you going to have any?’

‘I’ve already eaten,’ he calls irritably from his room.

She feels suddenly dizzy and incredibly tired. She doesn’t get it. If he wants to cheer her up, why reject her like that? ‘Johan?’ she repeats.

More silence. She goes and sits on his bed, until she realises he’s fallen asleep. She turns out the light, carefully closes the door and goes back to the living room. When she sees the table Johan’s laid for her again, she almost bursts into tears.

She sighs as she remembers how she and Åke would spend evenings in front of the television, eating chips and laughing at some bad film, but the way she feels now that’s hardly a period of her life that she misses. It had been a sterile wait for something better, an emotionally stunted existence that had relentlessly swallowed evening after evening, going on for months, years.

Life is too precious to be wasted waiting for something to happen. Something that can help you move on.

She can’t remember what she had hoped for, what she had been dreaming of.

Åke, on the other hand, had fantasised about how his coming success would give them the opportunity to realise their shared dreams. He had said she’d be able to leave the police, and got angry when she had said it was her life and that all the money in the world wouldn’t change that. As for her idea that dreams had to remain dreams if they weren’t to disappear, Åke had dismissed that as nothing but pseudo-intellectual rubbish picked up from trashy magazines.

After that argument they hadn’t spoken for several days, and even if that occasion hadn’t been decisive, it had been the beginning of the end.

SOFIA WAKES UP
on the living-room floor. It’s dark outside and she notices that it’s just past seven o’clock, but she has no idea if it’s morning or evening.

When she gets up and goes out into the hall, she sees that someone has written on the mirror with the marker. In childish handwriting it says ‘UNA KAM O!’ and Sofia recognises Solace’s jagged scrawl at once. The African serving girl had never learned to write properly.

UNA KAM O, Sofia thinks. It’s Krio, and she understands the words. Solace is asking for help.

As she wipes the writing off with her sleeve she sees that there’s something else further down the mirror, written with the same pen, but in tiny, almost unhealthily neat handwriting.

She goes into the kitchen and sees that there are five used plates and the same number of glasses on the table.

There are two full bags of rubbish in front of the sink, and she pokes through them to get an idea of what was eaten. Three bags of crisps, five bars of chocolate, two packets of pork chops, three large bottles of fizzy drink, one roast chicken and four cartons of ice cream.

She can taste vomit in her mouth and can’t be bothered to look in the other bag, seeing as she knows what it contains.

Her diaphragm is aching and cramping, and her giddiness is slowly subsiding. She decides to tidy up and suppress whatever’s happened. The fact that she lost control and gorged on food and sweets.

She picks up a half-full bottle of wine and goes over to the fridge. She stops when she sees the notes, newspaper cuttings, ads and her own drawings, all stuck to the fridge door. Hundreds of them, layer upon layer, held up by magnets and tape.

A lengthy article about Natascha Kampusch, the girl who was held prisoner in a cellar outside Vienna in Austria. A detailed plan of the secret room Wolfgang Priklopil built for her.

On the right a shopping list in her own handwriting: Polystyrene. Carpet glue. Duct tape. Tarpaulin. Rubber wheels. Latch. Electric cable. Nails. Screws.

On the left a picture of a taser.

Several of the drawings are signed ‘Unsocial mate’.

Antisocial friend.

She sinks slowly down onto the floor.

WHEN JEANETTE DRIVES
Johan to school he appears to be in a good mood, and it seems silly to keep going on about the events of the night before. At the breakfast table she had thanked him again for dinner, and he had actually given her a little smile. That would have to do.

The first thing she sees when she opens the door to her office is a package sitting on her desk.

Three yearbooks from Sigtuna College for the Humanities.

After a couple of minutes she finds her.

Victoria Bergman.

She reads the caption below the photograph. Runs her fingers along the rows of young students in identical uniforms, and concludes that Victoria Bergman is standing in the middle row, second from the right, is slightly shorter than average, and looks rather more childlike than the others.

The girl is thin, fair-haired and probably blue-eyed, and the first differences Jeanette notices are her serious expression and the fact that she doesn’t have breasts, unlike the other girls.

Jeanette thinks that there’s something familiar about this serious little girl.

She’s also struck by how ordinary she looks, which for some reason isn’t at all what she was expecting. The fact that she isn’t wearing make-up makes her look almost grey alongside the other young girls, all of whom seem to have made an effort to look as good as possible. She’s also the only one who isn’t smiling.

Jeanette opens the next book and finds Victoria Bergman’s name in the list of pupils not present. The same thing happens in the last year, and Jeanette has a feeling that Victoria Bergman was good at hiding even then, as she pulls out the first yearbook and looks at the picture again.

It had been taken almost twenty-five years ago, and she assumes it’s useless for identification purposes today.

Or is it?

There’s something about the look in those eyes that she recognises. A fleeting impression.