The Crow Girl (74 page)

When she came home from school and found her mum completely out of it on the sofa she didn’t cry.

Her grandmother had described her as a well-brought-up child. A quiet child who never cried.

But now she does, and as she does so she hears someone in the kitchen.

Ulrika Wendin gets to her feet and walks towards the kitchen door.

There’s a stranger standing in the kitchen, and before she has time to react he punches her on the nose.

She hears it crack.

LINNEA LUNDSTRÖM FLUSHES
the charred remnants of the burned letter from her father down the toilet and goes back to her room.

Everything is in order.

She thinks about her psychologist, Sofia Zetterlund, who told her how Charles Darwin got the idea for his book
The Origin of Species
. How it appeared in his mind in the space of a second, and how he spent the rest of his life gathering evidence for his thesis.

Sofia also told her how Einstein’s theory of relativity appeared in his mind in less time than it takes to clap your hands.

Linnea Lundström understands how they felt, because she is now looking at life with exactly the same clarity.

Life, which had once been a mystery, is now a dull reality, and she herself is just a shell.

Unlike Darwin, she doesn’t have to search for evidence, and unlike Einstein, she needs no theory. Some of the evidence is inside her, like pink scars on her soul. More is visible on her body, in the form of injuries and damage to her genitals.

In absolute terms, the evidence is there when she wakes in the morning and the bed is soaked with urine, or when she gets nervous and can’t hold it in.

Her father formulated the thesis long ago. At a time when she herself could say just a few words. In a paddling pool in the garden in Kristianstad he had put his thesis into practice, and since then the thesis had gone on to become a lifelong truth.

She remembers his soothing words on the edge of the bed.

His hands on her body.

Their shared bedtime prayer.

‘I long to touch you and satisfy your desires. Seeing your pleasure makes me happy.’

Linnea Lundström pulls the chair away from the desk and puts it under the hook in the ceiling. She knows the lines by heart.

‘I want to make love to you and give you all the love that you deserve. I want to caress you tenderly inside and out, the way only I can.’

She takes her belt from her jeans. Black leather. Rivets.

‘I take pleasure from looking at you, everything about you gives me desire and pleasure.’

A noose. A step up onto the chair and the buckle of the belt around the hook in the ceiling.

‘You will experience a much higher level of satisfaction and pleasure.’

The belt around her neck. The sound of the television down in the living room.

Annette with a box of chocolates and a glass of wine and
Swedish Idol
.

Maths test tomorrow. She’s been studying all week and knows that she’d get a good mark.

A step out into thin air. The audience applauds loudly when the studio manager holds up a sign.

A little step, and the chair topples over to the right.

‘It is truthfully an expression of the divine.’

ULRIKA WENDIN DOESN’T
know how it’s happened, but she’s still on her feet. Her face is numb and she’s staring straight into the stranger’s eyes. For a moment she thinks she can see something like sympathy. A flicker of pity.

Then she comes back to reality and takes a couple of stumbling steps backwards, out into the hall, while the man watches her in silence.

Then everything happens very fast, but to Ulrika it seems to last an eternity.

She throws herself to the side, and slips on the pile of post, but manages to keep her balance before she grabs at the door handle.

Fuck, she thinks as she hears rapid footsteps behind her.

Both the lock and the security chain.

Her hands are familiar with the movements, yet it still feels like she’s fiddling with the chain for several minutes. As she throws herself out through the door she feels a hand on her back.

Her neck feels constricted. She can hear him panting right behind her and realises that he’s caught hold of the hood of her jacket.

She doesn’t think. Doesn’t even have time to feel frightened. She’s running solely on adrenalin. She twists free of his grasp, turns and kicks out as hard as she can, hoping for the best.

She hits him between the legs.

Run, run, for fuck’s sake, she thinks, but her legs won’t obey her.

She stands and watches the thickset man sink onto the stone landing out in the stairwell.

Only when she sees the man’s contorted face looking up at her does she realise that her whole body is shaking.

He snarls something inaudible and tries to get up.

And then she runs.

Down the stairs. Out of the front door and straight ahead. Past the bike shed. Around the tree by the cycle path and in among the shadows of the trees. Not looking back. Just running.

There’s no one in sight. She dare not run back, and in front of her is a little hill covered in bushes, and on the far side the lights of the apartment blocks.

Dusk. Tall pine trees, the ground stony and uneven, and why the hell did she run into the woods?

Then she sees him.

Ten metres away. He grins at her, and she thinks he’s got a knife in his hand. His arm is outstretched, as if he’s holding something, but she can’t see the blade. He walks towards her quite calmly, and she quickly realises why. Her only way out is the hill behind her, covered in tangled bushes.

She takes a chance. Turns and runs straight into the darkness among the twigs and thorns.

She screams. As loud as she can, and she does not look back.

Clambering upward, the branches scratching her face and arms.

She thinks she can hear his breathing, but it might just be her own.

She screams again. But it just sounds tight and rattling, and makes her breathless. Then she’s through the bushes. A few stunted pines, and the hill slopes downward and she runs.

The back of a building. Some cellar steps. She feels her stomach lurch when she sees that the door is open and the light is on inside.

If the light’s on, it means there’s someone there. Someone who can help her.

She pushes the last branches aside and throws herself down the steps, into the basement. ‘Help,’ she croaks. A corridor with storage compartment doors. ‘Help me,’ she repeats.

The door. Close the door.

She turns round. Hears his panting breath outside, approaching the steps. With a final burst of effort she rushes for the door and slams it shut.

Two seconds. She has time to notice that there are some removal boxes in the corridor, big cardboard boxes and on top of them are some rag rugs. One of the doors has been wedged open.

‘Is anyone there?’

No answer. Her forehead is wet with sweat, and she’s breathing heavily. Her heart is pounding so hard she thinks it’s going to burst through her skin. There’s no one here.

The door handle. He’s tugging at it. Then she hears a rattle from the lock.

Keys?

But how did he get into her flat, anyway? Has he got keys?

Never mind.

She turns round to continue along the corridor, but at that moment the light in the ceiling goes out. The door is still rattling, and beside it the light switch is glowing like a red dot in the darkness. But she moves away. Doesn’t dare go closer to the door.

She feels her way further in. Sticking close to the wall, and only now does she notice the smell.

A cloying, sickly smell. Sewage? Excrement? She doesn’t know.

The corridor continues to the left and she goes round the corner. No light switch, and she hurries onward, deeper into the darkness. The storage compartments are made of chicken wire. She knows exactly what they look like, even though she can’t see anything and can only feel the metal netting with her hands.

Then she sees another red light switch just a couple of metres away.

She hears the outside door open, and he switches the light on.

Right in front of her, five metres away, a closed door. No latch. Just a keyhole.

On the left there’s a niche in the wall containing a large metal container and a load of pipes.

Enough space to hide behind.

She quickly creeps over, tucks herself in among the pipes and presses against the wall.

This is where the smell is coming from.

Sulphur, she thinks. The big metal container is a fat separator, and she has a vague recollection that there’s a pizza restaurant in the building.

She hears him come closer. The footsteps stop, very close by.

He moves again. She shuts her eyes. Hopes he can’t hear her breathing and the pounding of her heart.

As long as she doesn’t start sniffing. The blow to her nose was pretty severe. She can’t breathe through it and she’s bleeding. Her top lip feels warm.

She realises that it’s hopeless.

Completely hopeless.

She can see his boots in the gap between the fat separator and one of the thick pipes. He’s just standing there, less than a metre away from her. Not saying anything.

She stays where she is, squeezed between the metal container and the wall. The seconds go by and she thinks a good minute must have passed before he starts hitting the pipe with something.

A ringing sound, then another, and another. Light blows, and she knows it’s the handle of the knife.

There’s a sour taste in her mouth, and it catches at the back of her throat.

He starts to pace up and down. His boots creak and the banging against the metal pipe gets louder, as if he’s losing patience.

Then she sees what’s in the corner, less than an arm’s length from her. Some narrow copper pipes, sawn off at the top. The spikes could do some damage if they struck the right spot.

She reaches out for them, but stops.

Her open hand is shaking, and she realises that it’s pointless.

She hasn’t got the energy. Hasn’t got the energy to do a bloody thing.

Just kill me, she thinks. Kill me.

SHE SEES THE
car approaching and takes shelter behind some bushes.

Behind her, far below, is the greenery of Tantolunden, and the sun is just visible as a thin fringe above the rooftops. The narrow spire of Essinge Church is a thin spike in front of Smedslätten and Ålsten.

Down on Tantolunden’s large area of grass a few people are still defying the cold. Two of them are throwing a Frisbee, even though it’s almost dark. Over towards the shore she can see someone taking an evening swim.

The car stops, the engine cuts out and silence descends.

During all those years in Danish institutions she has tried to forget, but always failed. Now she is going to finish what she once made up her mind to do, long, long ago.

The women in the car will make it possible for her to return home.

Hannah Östlund and Jessica Friberg must be sacrificed.

Apart from the boy at Gröna Lund, she has been dealing with sick people. Taking the boy had been a mistake, and when she realised that she let him live.

When she injected him with pure alcohol he had passed out and she had put the pig mask on him. They had spent the whole night out at Waldemarsudde, and when she finally realised that he wasn’t her half-brother she had regretted what she’d done.

The boy was innocent, but the women waiting for her in the car aren’t.

To her disappointment she doesn’t feel any joy, not even relief.

The visit to Värmdö had also been a disappointment. Grandma and Grandad’s house was a burned-out shell and they were both dead.

She had been looking forward to seeing the expression on their faces when she stepped through the door and confronted them.

His expression when she told him who her father was.

Daddy and Grandad, Bengt Bergman the bastard.

Foster-father P-O, on the other hand, had understood. He had even begged for forgiveness and offered her money. As if his fortune were large enough to compensate for his deeds.

There isn’t that much money in the world, she thinks.

At first the pathetic Fredrika Grünewald hadn’t recognised her. Which wasn’t really so strange, because it had been ten years since they last met at Viggo Dürer’s farm in Struer.

That was when Fredrika had told her about Sigtuna.

How Fredrika had stood by and enjoyed the show.

Sometimes lives had to be sacrificed. And through death those lives took on meaning.

She remembers their blank eyes, the sweat and the collective excitement in the room.

She pulls her cobalt-blue coat tighter around her and makes up her mind to go over to the car and the two women she knows all about.

When she puts her hands in her pockets to make sure she hasn’t forgotten the Polaroid pictures her right hand stings.

She didn’t regard it as much of a sacrifice to cut off her ring finger.

You always get caught by the past, she thinks.

You mustn’t think that summer will come, unless someone starts it off

And makes everything summery, then the flowers will soon be here.

I make it so that the flowers bloom, I make the pasture green,

And now summer is here, because I’ve just removed the snow.

THE BEACH WAS
deserted, apart from them and the seagulls.

She was used to the cries of the birds and the noise of the waves, but the rustling of the big windbreak made of thin blue plastic annoyed Madeleine. It made it hard to sleep.