The Crow Girl (91 page)

What the hell just happened?

LÅNGHOLMEN IS AN
island in the centre of Stockholm, and forms a distinct part of the city. It is about a kilometre long, and not quite five hundred metres across, and for many years it was Stockholm’s prison island. One of Långholmen’s inmates was Hanna Hansdotter. The last woman in Sweden to be sentenced to death for witchcraft.

Madeleine drives onto the island across the Pålsund Bridge, and parks behind Sjömansskolan. She knows the way because she’s been here before.

She’s spent several nights staying at the camping site beneath the Western Bridge. There are too many people, and she doesn’t want to have to answer any questions from curious tourists. But it’s better than Sjöfartshotellet, where she felt watched the whole time.

Since she got back from Mariehamn she’s spent all her time in the car. A restless day with no other goal but tracking down her real mother. She’s got the photograph Charlotte gave her in her pocket.

She’s done what she set out to do, and now she wants to wipe out the body she was born from. It’s turned out to be harder than she expected. Viggo had once said he’d seen Victoria Bergman down by the water in Norra Hammarbyhamnen, and Madeleine has been there several times, but hasn’t found her.

And time will soon be running out. Her deal with Viggo needs to be completed.

Madeleine gets out of the car and walks over to the quayside. The water here is as black as it was out in the Åland Sea.

She puts her headphones on, turns on the radio and tunes it in between two frequencies. A faint wordless hiss that usually makes her feel calm, but now she only feels frustrated, and she digs out Clint Mansell’s film score to
Requiem for a Dream
instead. With the opening notes of ‘Lux Aeterna’ thundering in her head, she starts walking up towards the former prison building.

When she reaches the old stone wall she stops and looks at it with a degree of reverence. She thinks about all the people who have passed through here. Understands all the anger that was stifled by the work of cutting the rectangular blocks from lumps of granite, and can feel in her own chest the hatred that would have pounded beneath the rough prison uniforms of the prisoners who were forced to build their own wall.

And she thinks about the moment when she finally decided not to be a victim any more.

Don’t take my hate away. It’s the only thing I’ve got.

THE SUN WAS
high above the mountain ridge, the snaking road was eating its way along the sides, and five hundred metres below the Verdon River looked like a thin turquoise line. The safety barriers are low and death no further away than a few seconds’ hesitation or a wrong reflex decision when you encountered another vehicle. Above her were another two hundred metres of mountain that ended in bright blue sky, and there were regular warnings of landslides. Every time she passed one of the signs she let out a loud yell, because the thought of being buried under an avalanche of cold rock appealed to her.

If I’m going to manage to live, Madeleine thought, then they can’t be allowed to.

She didn’t believe in a longing for revenge as a way for a victim to cling to life. No, it was hate that kept her breathing, that had kept her alive since her time in Denmark.

Will the hate stop when they’re dead? she thought. Will I have peace?

She realised at once that the questions were irrelevant. She was free to choose, and her choice would be the simple, original path.

In many primitive cultures revenge was a duty, a fundamental right that gave the victim the opportunity to regain respect. Retribution marked the end of a conflict, and the right to vengeance was unquestioned; the act in itself was the actual resolution of the conflict, and there was never any need for analysis.

She remembered what she had had to learn when she was very small. When she was still unspoiled and could acquire proper knowledge.

She had learned that all people live their lives in two different worlds. One is a prosaic life and the other poetic, but only certain people have the ability to move between the worlds and experience them as separate from each other, or as synchronous, symbiotic.

One world was like an X-ray picture, the prosaic world, while the other was a naked, living, poetic human body. The one that she had now chosen to enter.

The road sloped down steeply, and after a bend she shut her eyes and took her hands off the wheel.

The next few seconds, containing the possibility that she was heading straight for a low, poorly maintained road barrier and on into the deep ravine, were transformed into a liberating confluence.

Life and death at the same time.

When she opened her eyes again she was still in the middle of the road, with the drop a safe distance away on the other side of the roadway. She had survived with several metres to spare.

Her heart was pounding hard and her whole body shivering. This was happiness. Exaltation at not being afraid of dying, yet simultaneously a sense of lightness.

She knew that a person wasn’t dead once their heart stopped beating. When the brain was disconnected from the heart it entered a new state where there was no time. Time and space lost their meaning and consciousness went on existing forever.

It was all about how you regarded your own existence, and how you saw death. If you knew that death was just another state of consciousness, then you didn’t need to hesitate before killing. You weren’t sentencing someone to a lack of existence, you were just sentencing them to enter a new state, beyond time and space.

She was approaching another bend, and this time she slowed down, but moved into the other lane before sweeping round the edge of the rock face. Then she shut her eyes after the bend, when she was back on the straight. No oncoming cars.

No death this time either. But life and death in a short period of symbiosis.

THEY’VE FINISHED THE
red wine and have moved into the living room, leaving the discussion of paedophilia and cannibalism in the kitchen.

Those thoughts can lurk in a dark corner until tomorrow.

And they’ve switched to white wine. It feels lighter, cleaner, and Jeanette starts to feel better as the conversation slips onto more private subjects.

She talks about her evening together with Johan, when they watched football, and Sofia agrees that that’s the right way to handle him.

‘Johan will be fine,’ Sofia says. ‘He’ll survive the divorce, believe me. Have you and Åke signed the papers yet?’

‘Yes, when we met yesterday at lunchtime. Before they left for London. It feels very definite, somehow.’

If Jeanette has ever hesitated up to now because of some sense that she had to be faithful to Åke, that feeling is gone. Maybe because of something as simple as signing divorce papers.

Sofia’s reaction is a cautious smile. She puts her wine glass down and looks at Jeanette.

‘You mean a lot to me,’ Jeanette says. ‘You’ve made me realise that …’

She tails off. Can’t quite express how she feels.

‘Realise what?’ Sofia prompts. Her smile is no longer shy.

It’s expectant.

Jeanette tries to find the right words, but isn’t confident that she’ll ever be able to find them.

‘That I’m not as uncomplicated as I thought,’ she tries.

‘You mean sexually?’

‘Yes.’

Jeanette suddenly finds it much easier to breathe.

That a single word can make so much difference …

Yes.

She’s just said yes to Sofia.

It just happens.

One kiss, then they leave the living room.

Up the stairs.

A kiss is a start. As the night outside is mother of the day.

For the first time in she doesn’t know how long, Jeanette wants to go to bed.

Blood is pumping through her body in an entirely new way, yet it still feels so familiar.

A pure, original feeling of liberation, of released longing.

Sofia rolls over on the bed and puts her hands under the pillow. The contours of her naked hips distract Jeanette.

What’s going on? she thinks. It’s as if her movements are happening automatically, as if she can’t control them.

Everything just happens.

She explores Sofia with her eyes closed. Letting her hands, lips and skin see for her. Sofia’s neck is warm and vibrates against her mouth. Her breasts are soft and taste of salt. It’s a strong body, a powerful body that she wants to make her own. Her stomach slowly moves up and down, and Jeanette’s fingertips detect soft little hairs that get more numerous and coarser below her navel.

Her tongue is soon inside her and her own arousal flares.

She feels dizzy. As if everything is fluid and her brain is finally giving way to her body and not the other way. The room around them no longer exists.

Their movements are soft and unquestioned and she loses herself in the warmth down there. Hardly notices when Sofia rolls onto her side and lies the other way up.

Come closer, she thinks.

Sofia understands. Every muscle in Sofia’s body understands.

Everything is fluid and they merge together to form a single beating heart, a single simmering being.

She thinks she might be crying.

Her tears are of release and gratitude, and time no longer exists. Later she would come to think of this night as simultaneously as long as an eternity and as short as a moment.

Afterwards the bed is warm and damp and Jeanette pushes the covers aside. Sofia’s hand strokes her stomach in soft, slow movements.

She glances down at her naked body. It looks better when she’s lying down than standing up. Her stomach is flatter and the scar from the Caesarean section seems smoother.

If she squints, she looks pretty good. If she examines carefully, all she sees are liver spots, veins and cellulite.

Sofia’s body is purer, like a teenager’s, and right now it’s moist with sweat. On her arms and back Jeanette can see little white lines, almost like scars.

THEY’RE LYING IN
the warmth of the bed, and Sofia has no idea how many hours have passed since they got in.

‘You’re wonderful,’ Jeanette says.

I’m not, Sofia thinks. Her cleansing process is exhausting, and she had been too hasty in thinking that she was no longer shocked by her memories. What she now knows about herself turns everything upside down. If most of her memories are constructed out of things other people have told her, then what’s left of her past?

How can memories like that arise?

How can they be so strong that she could seriously believe that she had murdered several children, and Lasse too? What else is false apart from her memories, and how will she ever be able to trust herself again?

Maybe it’s best not to remember after all?

As soon as she is alone again she can at least do a search for Lars Magnus Pettersson, that would be a concrete act, and if he’s dead she’ll be able to find out about it. But with Samuel she can’t do much more than wait for her memories to return.

She feels wiped out, but Jeanette seems unaffected by the hours they’ve spent in bed, apart from the fact that she’s glowing with sweat and her face is slightly flushed.

‘What are you thinking? You seem a bit distant.’ Jeanette strokes her cheek.

‘Oh, it’s nothing. I’m just trying to catch my breath.’ Sofia smiles.

Jeanette’s body is so strong, so powerful. As for her, she’d rather be a bit rounder, more feminine, but knows that’s a vain hope that will never be realised. No matter how much she eats.

There’s one thing that she ought to have told Jeanette already. When she spoke to her on the phone the day after her meeting with Annette Lundström.

The adopted children.

‘When I met Annette she was incoherent, and I had trouble working out how much of what she said was in her imagination or not. But there’s one detail I’ve been thinking about since then, and I think you ought to ask her about it when you see her.’

Jeanette’s eyes narrow. ‘What’s that?’

‘She mentioned adopted children. Said Viggo Dürer helped children from difficult backgrounds abroad come to Sweden, and that they used to live with him until he found new families for them. Sometimes they only stayed a few days, sometimes several months.’

‘Jesus …’ Jeanette runs a hand through her hair, which is wet with their combined sweat, and Sofia gently strokes her arm with the back of her hand.

‘An adoption agency? As well as being a pig farmer, a lawyer and an accountant at a sawmill. Multitasking, to put it mildly. He’s supposed to have been in a concentration camp as well.’

Sofia is brought up short. ‘A concentration camp?’

‘I can’t put together a picture of the man,’ Jeanette says. ‘He just doesn’t seem to make sense.’

A memory comes back to Sofia. Flaring up like a dazzling spark before fading and leaving a blind spot on her retina.

All the randy little Danish bitches. They were whores for the Germans. Five fucking thousand of the swine.

A memory of a beach in Denmark and Viggo assaulting her. Or had he? All she remembers is that he had played one of his ‘games’ with her, groaning and rubbing himself against her, sticking his fingers in her and then getting up and walking away. She had been left lying there, her body sore from the stony ground, and her top had been torn. She wants to tell Jeanette, but can’t.

Not yet. It’s the shame that’s stopping her, it’s always shame that gets in the way.

‘Come here,’ Jeanette whispers. ‘Move closer to me.’

Sofia curls up with her back to Jeanette. She huddles like a child, shuts her eyes, and enjoys the closeness, warmth and the calm deep breathing from the body behind her.

They lie there in silence, and soon she realises that Jeanette has fallen asleep. She lies awake for a while, but when sleep finally comes it’s more of an unsettled doze. A state she has experienced many times before, neither sleep nor wakefulness, nor a dream.