The Long Shadow (23 page)

‘You must have known that David and Filip knew each other, for instance. How long for?’

Nina let out a sigh. ‘They grew up together,’ she said.
‘David and Filip and Yvonne and little Veronica were more like brothers and sisters than anything else. More than they ever were with me.’

Annika screwed her eyes shut and tried to fit the pieces in place.

David Lindholm, the most famous policeman in Sweden, had married the girl from Södermanland, Julia Hensen, who had grown up next door to her friend Nina Hoffman. David himself had grown up alongside Filip Andersson, who had two sisters, the insane killer Yvonne Nordin, and police officer Nina Hoffman, whose best friend Julia he had gone on to marry, even though he was simultaneously having an affair with Yvonne Nordin, and got her pregnant …

‘How long had you known David Lindholm?’ she asked.

‘The first time I met David was when he lectured at Police Academy.’

‘So you didn’t grow up with him?’

‘I suppose I must have bumped into him when I was little, and of course I knew who he was, but I didn’t know him. Mum and I moved to Tenerife when I was three, and by that time Filip and Yvonne were already grown up. I ended up outside Valla when I was nine, and that’s where I got to know Julia.’

‘You once told me,’ Annika said slowly, ‘that David came up to you and Julia after that lecture at the Police Academy. Did he know who you were?’

‘Obviously. I think he was extremely curious to see what had become of me.’

‘But he pretended to be more interested in Julia?’

‘He didn’t have to pretend. I mean, he married her.’

There was a subtext of bitterness, unspoken, but it was there.

Annika rubbed her head. ‘The murders on Sankt
Paulsgatan took place nearly five years ago. When did you realize that Filip and Yvonne were involved?’

‘When Filip was arrested. That was the worst moment of my life.’

‘And Yvonne? She was the one who did it, after all. When did you realize that?’

‘When Filip told me, after she was dead. But I hadn’t spoken to Yvonne for years before that. I lost contact with her after the abortion. She withdrew, became a bit peculiar.’

‘The abortion?’ Annika said, putting her hand on her forehead. ‘You mean when she aborted her and David’s child?’

‘The same time that Julia was pregnant with Alexander,’ Nina confirmed. She fell silent for a few moments. ‘It’s not like you think,’ she said finally. ‘I never meant to hide anything, but my family and childhood are a bit of an open wound for me.’

Annika didn’t know what to say.

When Nina went on, her voice was thin and distant. ‘I loved my mum, but she was hardly capable of looking after herself. Filip and Yvonne slipped away from her because she couldn’t take care of them. I was lucky, because I had Julia’s family. It’s always felt like … like an obligation, somehow. As if I have some kind of duty to put everything right.’

Was that why you joined the police? Annika thought, but didn’t say.

‘Somewhere I believe in people’s innate goodness,’ Nina continued, her voice stronger now. ‘I think everyone can change, if we’re just given the chance. Mum tried, and it worked for a while, but she was too damaged for it to last.’

‘Is your mum dead?’ Annika asked cautiously.

‘Nine years ago. She died the day after David and
Julia got married. Now all the others are gone too, apart from Filip.’

Annika was making an effort to keep up. ‘You said there were four of them who were like a family?’ she said. ‘David, Filip, Yvonne and … who was the fourth?’

‘Little Veronica. Veronica Paulson. But she’s dead too.’

‘Did you know her as well?’

Nina sighed deeply. ‘Not exactly. She and her mum came to visit us on Tenerife a couple of times, but I haven’t seen her since I moved back to Sweden.’

‘She can’t have been that old. How did she die?’

Nina sounded surprised when she replied. ‘You’ve just been writing loads of articles about that. She was murdered a few days ago.’

Everything around Annika stopped. There was total silence inside her head and time stood still. ‘What do you mean?’ she said, scarcely able to breathe.

‘She married that ice-hockey player,’ Nina said. ‘Sebastian Söderström.’

She arrived at Gudagården with no shoes and wearing a tattered dress. The lady from the Child Welfare Commission shoved her out of the car. The gravel on the drive was as sharp as glass beneath her feet.

‘Curtsy to your foster-mother and foster-father,’ the lady said, driving her forward towards the wall of people.

She stared at the ground. The people stared at her.

‘She looks like a troll,’ Foster-mother said.

The lady kicked the back of her knee and forced her head down. Quick as a polecat she spun round and bit the lady’s hand. Then she ran away across the gravel, cutting the soles of her feet.

After night had fallen, Foster-father pulled her down from the haystack. She landed on the stone floor hard on her hip. ‘Let’s see if we can’t whip the Devil out of you,’ he said, raising his riding-crop. And he beat her and beat her and beat her until the skin on her thighs and buttocks was in ribbons. Then he locked the door. She fell asleep in the hay and dreamed that she was lying in an anthill. The insects were eating into her legs and backside, constructing passageways under her skin, a whole society with paths and storerooms and nurseries and everything else ants needed, everything Sigrid had told her about the amazing life of ants.

When she woke up day had already broken. The hay was stuck to the scabs on her legs. She knew she needed to wash.

She found a loose plank at the back of the shed. The hole was narrow, and it was hard to get her head through, but her body slid after it, as if she was a little worm.

She had seen a lake out of the car window. It must be close by.

She took a long detour round the farm. There was nobody in sight.

She found a small beach with white sand under a large oak. She got into the water still wearing her dress and underwear. Her legs stung.

A wall-eyed boy caught sight of her when she was creeping back towards the farm. He called for Foster-father, who came rushing out, his big boots flapping. He was quick and she was weak with hunger and pain.

He tore her dress off and flayed the skin off her back as well.

‘You are never, ever to run away from this farm again,’ Foster-father hissed in her ear. ‘If you do, I’ll kill you.’

But she ran away, and he beat her, and she ran away, and he beat her.

In the end he got tired of beating her, and then she stopped running away.

She was given a room in the loft, with the baby swallows and the wasps’ nests. From the crack of dawn the swallow parents would start flying in and out, bringing food to their young, gathering it in their beaks and stomachs, then vomiting it for their babies. Sigrid had told her about the amazing life of birds.

Sigrid had told her fairy tales as well. She had told her about other girls who also had a hard life, like the Little Match Girl.

‘So the little girl wandered along with her little feet red and blue with cold. She was carrying a great pile of matches in an old apron and she held one bundle in her hand as she walked. No one had bought any from her all day, no one had given her a halfpenny. Hungry and frozen, she went on her way, so woebegone, poor little thing! The snowflakes fell upon her long fair hair that curled so prettily at the nape of her neck, but she certainly wasn’t thinking about how nice she looked …’

The girl had unruly black hair that the Child Welfare Committee had cut short, so short, to get rid of the lice. She wasn’t a pretty girl, she was a little troll girl. She knew that because Foster-mother had told her. She was the Troll Girl with the Matches, even though she hadn’t sold matches but illicit homebrew, and it had all been going so well until Foster-mother ended up in prison and the Child Welfare Committee came to take her away.

At night she could see out through a crack in the roof, and once she saw a falling star.

The Little Match Girl had also seen a falling star in the fairy tale.

‘Her old granny, the only one who had been kind to her but who was now dead, had said that when a star falls a soul goes up to God …’

She wondered who was going up to heaven this time, and clasped her hands together and prayed to the Lord: O Father, let it be Foster-father next time, and then Wall-eye.

And she thought that one day she herself would be a grandmother, the sort who was kind to troll girls nobody liked.

But as time passed and the darkness came, and the cold, and the harvest was brought in, and she thought her back would break, her prayers changed.

O Father, let it be me next time.

She repeated this prayer until the day the Princess came to the farm.

It was a wonderful day. The little Troll Girl had never seen anything so beautiful.

The Princess had blonde curls that hung down to her waist, and a pale-blue dress that swayed around her calves, and a doll like a fairy in her arms.

But Foster-father, who saw the temptations of the Devil in everything that was pure and lovable and beautiful, tore the dress off the girl, and her coat with the fur collar, and
took away the lovely doll, and poured paraffin over the lot. As the flames rose up into the autumn sky he screamed that the sinner must burn in Hell.

The little Troll Girl was standing right at the back, watching in amazement at the Princess’s despair. She lay on the gravel drive, in just her vest and pants, weeping so hard that she was shaking, until Wall-eye walked up and kicked her, and Foster-mother grabbed her by the arm and dragged her inside the house.

They installed another bed in the loft.

The Princess was scared and looked at the little Troll Girl and said something to Foster-mother in a language she didn’t understand, and Foster-mother replied in the same language.

Then Foster-mother came over with her stone face and said to the little Troll Girl: ‘You leave her alone, do you hear? You’re a bit simple in the head, and you don’t say a word.’

But that very first night the little Troll Girl got into bed beside the Princess and kept her warm when she was shaking, and told her fairy tales that Sigrid had taught her, about the Ugly Duckling and Thumbelina and the Little Match Girl, and the Princess lay there, clear-eyed, listening, and that was how she learned Swedish.

Case no. Ö 3490–11

Stockholm, 26 April

PLAINTIFF

Filip Andersson

Representation: Sven-Göran Olin, barrister

OPPOSING

Prosecutor’s Office

CASE

Appeal for retrial regarding murder and other convictions

SUPREME COURT VERDICT

The Supreme Court authorizes a retrial in Stockholm Appeal Court case no. Ö 9487–01, and orders that this case be reconsidered by the appeal court.

The Supreme Court’s decision to suspend sentence stands.

The rain was beating against the windows. Annika was standing in the kitchen stirring a pan of hot chocolate. Under the grill two slices of bread with tomato and cheese were toasting, one with ham and the other without. The cheese was spitting ominously, and she took the pan off the ceramic hob and pulled out the grill-pan. Another thirty seconds.

She peeled two clementines and opened two small pots of coconut yoghurt. She took the toasted sandwiches out and put them on separate plates, then the fruit and the yoghurts. She put the plates on the kitchen table, poured the hot chocolate into two mugs, one red, one blue, then went out through the windowless living room towards the children’s rooms.

Ellen still slept with her thumb in her mouth. Thomas was seriously worried about that, and kept saying she would have to have braces when she was bigger, but Annika wasn’t worried. There would be worse things to wrestle with when the children reached their teens. Braces wouldn’t be a major disaster.

She crept into bed beside the little girl, took her in her arms and nuzzled her neck. ‘Darling,’ she whispered. ‘It’s time to wake up now. It’s a new day.’

Ellen stretched like a cat, yawned loudly, then curled
up into a little ball beside her mother.

‘I’ve made breakfast for you,’ Annika said, stroking the hair from her daughter’s forehead.

‘Mmm,’ the little girl said. ‘Coconut yoghurt?’

‘And toasted sandwiches,’ Annika said. ‘And hot chocolate. Don’t go back to sleep or it’ll get cold.’

‘Mmm,’ Ellen said, as her thumb drifted into her mouth again.

Annika pulled it out with a little plop. ‘You know what Daddy says about your teeth,’ she said.

‘Daddy doesn’t live here,’ the little girl said, turning away, still curled into a little ball.

Annika got out of the bed and went in to see Kalle. ‘Hello, sweetheart,’ she said. ‘Are you wide awake or still tired?’

‘Tired,’ he said, and yawned noisily.

‘There’s a toasted sandwich for you in the kitchen,’; she said, pulling him to her.

He hugged her back. He was warm and a bit clammy. ‘Has it got ham in it?’ he asked.

‘Not yours,’ she said.

‘Good.’

She kissed his forehead, hair and ear, laughing when he pretended to fend her off, then went back in to Ellen, who had fallen asleep again. ‘Come on, you,’ she said, shaking her gently. ‘Your hot chocolate’s getting cold.’

‘Carry me,’ the child said, holding her arms out.

She lifted the little body up in a single swift movement, spun round on the wooden floor with her, then jumped out into the kitchen. Her daughter was laughing. Annika put her on one of the four chairs round the table. Kalle stumbled into the kitchen in pyjamas that were too big for him. Annika steered him to the table, pulled out his chair and tucked him in at the table.

Their morning rituals had their foundation in her
fears about how vulnerable the children were. If she gave them enough love and confidence during the first hour of the day, she liked to imagine that it gave them some sort of protection against the cruel world.