The Crow Girl (80 page)

‘Sit yourself down here for a bit,’ Sofia says to Annette, pulling a chair over for her. As she sits down, one sleeve rides up, and Sofia catches sight of a plastic bracelet around her wrist. A white patient’s bracelet, marked
PSYCHIATRY, SOUTH STOCKHOLM
.

Of course, Sofia thinks.

She asks Annette to wait a moment, and goes to see Ann-Britt. In a low voice she asks her to get some coffee and mineral water. ‘Annette Lundström is a patient at one of South Stockholm’s psychiatric units. Can you call around and check?’

Five minutes later Annette Lundström starts to thaw out. Her face has regained a bit of colour, but is still slack and expressionless. She lifts the coffee cup to her lips with trembling hands and Sofia notices that Annette’s fingertips are covered in cuts.

‘What am I doing here?’ The woman’s eyes are darting about and she looks confused.

She puts her cup down, raises her hand to her mouth and starts biting at a cut on her index finger.

Sofia leans across the desk. ‘We’re just warming up for a bit. But you said you were on your way to Polcirkeln. What are you going to do there?’

The answer is confident. ‘Go to see Karl and Viggo and the others.’

She pulls off a scrap of skin and rolls it between her fingers before popping it in her mouth.

Karl and Viggo? Sofia thinks. ‘What about Linnea?’

Annette shuts her eyes, and a faint smile appears at one corner of her mouth. ‘Linnea is back home with God.’

Sofia starts to feel worried, even if it’s possible to interpret Annette’s words in many different ways, considering the state she’s in. ‘How do you mean, “Linnea is back home with God”?’

Annette opens her eyes and smiles broadly. The look in her eyes is distant and, together with her smile, forms an image that Sofia recognises.

Psychosis. A portrait of a person who isn’t the person she used to be.

‘First I have to go to Polcirkeln …’ Annette mutters. ‘To Karl and Viggo, then I’m going home as well, to God and Linnea … Viggo gave me money, and said Linnea didn’t need to see any more psychologists. So she could go home to God.’

Sofia tries to gather her thoughts. ‘Viggo Dürer gave you money?’

‘Yes … Wasn’t that nice of him?’ Annette looks at her with glassy eyes. ‘I can use the money to go to Polcirkeln and build a temple where we can prepare for the glory that will soon be here.’

They’re interrupted by the phone. Sofia apologises and picks up the receiver.

‘She’s a patient at Rosenlund,’ Ann-Britt says. ‘They’ll be here to pick her up in fifteen minutes.’

Sofia hangs up and regrets not waiting longer before asking Ann-Britt to call the psychiatric clinics. Rosenlund is pretty much just round the corner, less than a kilometre away, and Sofia would have liked longer to talk to Annette.

Now she’s only got fifteen minutes, and will have to be extremely efficient.

‘Sigtuna and Denmark,’ Annette Lundström says, out of nowhere, evidently immersed in herself. ‘Everyone from Sihtunum is welcome to live in Polcirkeln. That’s one of the ground rules.’

‘Polcirkeln, Sihtunum and Denmark, you say? And what are these ground rules?’

Annette Lundström smiles as she looks at her bleeding fingers with her head bowed.

‘The Original Order,’ she says. ‘Pythia’s instructions.’

And I make wild strawberries for the children, because I think they deserve them,

And other nice little things that are right when children are little.

And I make such lovely places, where the children can run around,

Where the children can be full of summer, and their legs full of life.

PARIAH
.

She has found the word in the dictionary, and she knows the definition by heart.

An outcast, a despised person.

The entire Lundström family are pariahs up here, and no one in the village talks to them.

It’s the games that others don’t like. But that’s only because they don’t understand them. They can’t sing the Psalms of the Lamb, and they’ve never heard of the Original Order.

The fact that she has been engaged to Karl for almost a year, since she turned twelve, is something else that the others find ugly. Karl is almost nineteen, and he’s her cousin.

She loves him, and they’re going to have a child of love as soon as she’s old enough.

The others don’t understand that either.

And now things have gone so far that they’ve got to move away from here. Fortunately Viggo has been able to help them sort everything out, and she’s going to start school in Sigtuna in the autumn. There will be friends there, people who are like them and understand.

She knows that if it weren’t for Viggo, they would be nothing.

He’s the one who has shown them the way, and helped them to understand how the world really is. And he’s the one who’s going to help them now, when everyone else, every single neighbour, has turned against them.

Viggo looks focused and nods silently when he sees her. He has a large paper bag with him, and she knows it contains presents for her. He’s been travelling, as far away as the Soviet Union.

He smiles at her, and she goes into her room.

If only they could stop talking soon, he can come in and give her the presents, and after that they can continue with the preparations for her impending marriage to Karl.

She’s going to be a good mother to her child, and a good wife to her husband, and for that to happen, she needs to practise.

‘
EVERY MORNING WHEN
I wake up, I think everything’s normal,’ Annette Lundström says. ‘Then I remember that Linnea isn’t here any more. I wish I could make the most of that short moment when everything feels normal.’

Linnea is dead? Sofia thinks.

There are brief periods of lucidity even in psychosis. Sofia realises that this is one of them, and quickly formulates another question to stay in contact with Annette Lundström.

‘What’s happened, Annette?’

The woman smiles. ‘My beloved daughter is with God. It was predetermined.’

Sofia realises she won’t get any further with that question now. ‘What was Linnea’s relationship with Viggo Dürer?’ she asks instead.

Annette’s rigid smile fills Sofia with disquiet. ‘Relationship? Oh, I don’t know … Linnea liked him. They played together a lot when she was little.’

‘She told me that Viggo Dürer abused her.’

Annette’s face darkens, and she goes back to gnawing at her fingers. ‘Impossible,’ she says defiantly. ‘Viggo’s so prudish, so concerned about not upsetting anyone.’

Annette lets out a deep sigh and lowers her head. She starts to talk in a quiet voice, and Sofia realises she’s quoting something.

‘Outside the Home of Shadows you shall behave with modesty in body and spirit,’ she says. ‘There are people who do not understand you and wish you harm, slandering you and then imprisoning you.’

Sofia understands where the words come from.

She glances at the clock. The orderlies from the psychiatric clinic will be here any moment. ‘You’re talking about the Home of Shadows,’ she begins. ‘Karl did that as well. He described it as a sort of sanctuary.’

Silence. Annette Lundström needs questions rather than suppositions.

‘What is the Home of Shadows?’ Sofia asks instead.

She’s right. Annette looks up at her.

‘The Home of Shadows is the original country,’ she says, ‘where mankind can be close to God. It’s the land of children. But it also belongs to adults who understand how ancient man lived. Men, women and children, hand in hand. We are all children inside.’

Sofia shudders. A country for children, created by adults for their own desires.

She is beginning to suspect that Annette Lundström’s psychosis not only contains an element of truth, but might even be some sort of confession. What she is saying sounds logical if you are aware of what she’s talking about. Her psychosis is prompting her to confess.

‘Do you meant a physical place, or is it a state of mind?’

‘The Home of Shadows exists where the faithful are; it only exists in the presence of the chosen children of men. On sacred ground in beautiful Jutland, and in the forests up in Polcirkeln.’

Sofia pauses to think. Denmark and Polcirkeln again.

She forces herself to smile. ‘Who was it who led the faithful?’ she goes on in a breezy tone of voice, as if to make light of everything.

It works, and Annette lights up. ‘Karl and Viggo,’ she begins. ‘And P-O, of course. He and Viggo took care of all the practical matters. They made sure the children were happy, that they had everything they could have wanted.’

‘And what was your role? And the children’s?’

‘I … we women probably weren’t that important. But the children were obviously among the initiated. Linnea, Madeleine, and the adopted children, of course.’

‘Madeleine? The adopted children?’

It’s as if everything Annette says demands a follow-up question. But her answers are unforced, and Sofia can only assume that what the woman is telling her is true.

‘Yes. We called them Viggo’s adopted children. He helped them come to Sweden from terrible conditions abroad, and they lived on the farm until he found new families for them. Sometimes they only stayed a matter of days, and sometimes a few months. We raised them in accordance with the word of Pythia –’

Annette jumps at the sound of the internal phone, and Sofia realises that the orderlies from Rosenlund have arrived.

One last question.

‘Who else was at the farm? You said there were several women?’

Annette Lundström’s smile is still in place. Sofia thinks it looks dead, empty and hollow.

‘Everyone from Sigtuna,’ she says happily. ‘And of course there were others who came and went. Other men as well. And their Swedish children.’

Sofia knows that this is something she’s going to have to tell Jeanette, and makes a mental note to call her as soon as possible.

The handover takes place without drama, and five minutes later Sofia is sitting alone in her office, tapping a pen against the edge of her desk.

Psychosis, she thinks. Psychosis as a form of truth serum.

Highly unusual, not to mention improbable.

She’s just found out from the Rosenlund staff that Linnea Lundström hanged herself in her home while Annette was watching television in the living room.

It feels as if Linnea was there very recently. Sofia can see her in her mind’s eye, sitting in the chair on the other side of the desk. A young girl who wanted to talk, wanted to feel better. They had been making progress in their sessions, and she feels deep sorrow about what has happened.

She looks out of the window. The two orderlies who came to collect Annette Lundström are leading her towards a car park on the other side of the street. The woman’s thin, hunched figure looks so frail, as if the wind and rain out there could tear her apart.

A slender, grey silhouette dissolving into air.

A life torn to shreds.

HURTIG GETS IN
the driver’s seat and pulls out his mobile while he waits for Jeanette to finish talking to Ivo Andrić. Before Jeanette has time to open the car door he manages to type a quick message. ‘Talk tonight? Are you sending the pictures?’

He starts the car and winds down the window to let some fresh air in as Jeanette jumps into the passenger seat and smiles at him.

Ivo Andrić’s good mood seems to have been infectious, and she pats Hurtig cheerily on the thigh.

‘So what do we do now?’ he says.

‘We should probably go and see Charlotte Silfverberg and tell her what we know. Her husband was murdered, and it looks like these two women did it, and she’s got a right to know before she reads about it in the papers.’

Hurtig drives through the cordon, out of the open gate and onto the street.

They sit in silence all the way past Södra Ängby and Brommaplan, and as they’re passing Alvik and can see the boats down at Sjöpaviljongen he turns to Jeanette. ‘Do you like boats?’

‘Not much,’ she says. ‘I’m probably the type that prefers a summer cottage.’

‘You mean you prefer simplicity?’ he says.

‘Yes, something like that.’ Jeanette sighs. ‘Simplicity. God, that sounds dull.’

He can see that she’s contemplating saying something. ‘Billing and von Kwist will probably be pleased that these cases are solved,’ she says eventually. ‘But I’m not, and you know why?’

Her question surprises him. ‘No, I can’t say that I do.’

‘I don’t prefer simplicity at all,’ she says emphatically. ‘Think about it … Everything about this case feels too simple, too neat. It was already nagging at me in Östlund’s kitchen, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. And in Hannah Östlund’s home we find the photographs. But they only show the murder victims. If you want to show that you’ve carried out a series of murders, why not make it as obvious as possible? Why isn’t there a picture of Hannah or Jessica painting Silfverberg’s apartment with his blood, something like that?’

He doesn’t quite understand what Jeanette’s getting at. ‘But Annette Lundström identified Hannah Östlund from the picture at the caverns.’

‘Yes, I know.’ Jeanette sounds irritated. ‘Annette said it was Hannah because she was missing her ring finger, but that was the only reason. Why doesn’t Hannah show her face? And there’s something else that’s bothering me. Why did they kill their dogs in such a revolting way?’

Jeanette’s got a point, Hurtig thinks. But he’s not entirely convinced. ‘So you mean it could be someone else? Someone who arranged the whole thing? The photographs and so on?’

She shakes her head. ‘I don’t know …’ Jeanette gives him a serious look. ‘This might sound like a long shot, but I think we should take another look at Madeleine Silfverberg. I’ll ask Åhlund to check the hotels in the city. After all, Madeleine had a good motive for killing her father.’