The Crow Girl (31 page)

Presumably because they were details that she felt were important for Victoria.

She lights a cigarette and leafs a bit further through the pad. On the penultimate page she sees some new notes, written upside down, as if she had started to write in the pad from the other direction: BURN DOWN, WHIP, SEEK GOODNESS IN FLESH …

At first she doesn’t recognise the handwriting. It’s jagged, childish, almost illegible. She takes a pen from her bag and tries writing the words with the wrong hand.

She realises that she wrote the words, but with her left hand.

Burn down? Whip? Seek goodness?

Sofia feels giddy and can hear a faint buzzing inside her head, behind the headache. She wonders about going for a walk. Maybe a bit of fresh air would clear her thoughts.

The buzzing gets louder, and she’s having trouble concentrating.

The sound of children shouting out in the street penetrates the windows, and an acrid smell stings her nose. Her own sweat.

She gets up to switch the coffee machine on, but when she sees that it’s already on she gets a mug out of the cupboard instead. She fills it and goes back to the kitchen table.

There are already four mugs on the table.

One is empty, but the other three are full to the brim.

She can feel that she’s having trouble remembering.

As if she’s repeating herself, and has got caught in a loop. How long has she been awake? she wonders. Did she actually go to bed at all?

She tries to pull herself together, think about it, but it’s as if her memory can be divided into two parts.

First the past, all about Lasse and the trip to New York. But what happened after they got home?

Her memories from Sierra Leone are just as tangible as her conversations with Samuel, but what happened after that?

The noise from out in the street is loud, and Sofia starts to walk anxiously up and down in the kitchen.

The other part of her memory is more like frozen images, impressions. Places she’s been to. People she’s met.

But no broad panoramas, no faces. Just quick excerpts. A moon that looks like a light bulb, unless it was the other way round?

She goes out into the hall and puts her coat on, then looks at herself in the mirror. The bruising caused by Samuel’s hands has started to fade. She loops the scarf around her neck once more to conceal it.

It’s not quite ten o’clock, and the summer outside is hot, but it’s as if it can’t reach her. Her eyes are focused inward as she tries to understand what’s happening to her.

Thoughts she doesn’t recognise are flashing like lightning.

Victoria Bergman’s speech about exposing her body to violence. Her thoughts about who decides when an individual’s fantasies, impulses and desires pass the boundary of social acceptability and become destructive.

Victoria’s talk about good and evil, where evil, like cancer, can live and grow inside an apparently healthy organism. Unless it was Karl Lundström who said that?

When she reaches Björns Trädgård she sits down on a bench under the trees. The buzzing is now deafening and she doesn’t know if she’s going to be able to make it home.

Victoria’s monotonous voice.

Dare you? Dare you? Dare you today, you weak fucker?

No, she needs to get home and go to bed. Take a pill and get some sleep. She’s probably just been overdoing it at work, and she longs for the solitary darkness of her apartment.

When did she last eat? She can’t remember.

She’s malnourished. Yes, that must be it. Even though she has no appetite she’ll force herself to eat, then do her best to keep it down. She won’t vomit.

Just as she gets up a number of police cars go speeding past, sirens blaring. They’re followed by three big SUVs with dark tinted windows and flashing lights. Sofia realises that something big must have happened.

At the McDonald’s near Medborgarplatsen Sofia buys two bags of food, and understands from the excited chatter of the other customers that there’s been a raid on an armoured car further down Folkungagatan. Someone mentions gunshots, and someone else says several people have been injured.

Sofia takes her food and leaves.

She doesn’t see Samuel Bai when she emerges onto the street and starts to walk home.

But he sees her, and follows.

She passes the police cordon and turns right down Östgötagatan, over Kocksgatan, and then left into Åsögatan.

At the little park Samuel catches up with her and slaps her on the back.

Startled, she turns round.

He darts quickly past her, and she has to turn right round before she sees who it is.

‘Hi! Long time no seen, ma’am!’ Samuel smiles his dazzling smile and takes a step back. ‘Hav’em burgers enuff ’or me? Saw ya goin’ donall for two.’

It’s like she’s stopped breathing.

Calm, she thinks. Calm.

Her hand reaches instinctively to her throat.

Calm.

She recognises Frankly Samuel’s English and realises that he has been watching her for a while.

Smile.

She smiles and says there’s enough food for him too, and suggests that they eat at her place.

He smiles back.

Strangely, her fear vanishes as quickly as it appeared.

Suddenly she knows what to do.

Samuel takes one bag and they walk on, cross Renstiernas gata and turn onto Borgmästargatan.

She puts the bag of burgers on the living-room table. He asks if he can use the shower to freshen up before they eat, and she gets a clean towel out for him.

He shuts the door behind him.

What’s going on?

Sauna, baby birds, run, tape, voice, Copenhagen, roseroot, burn down, whip.

The pipes rumble.

‘Sofia, Sofia, calm down, Sofia,’ she whispers to herself, and tries to take deep, calm breaths.

Baby birds, run, tape.

She waits a while before going back into the living room. A rancid smell of burnt meat is coming from the hamburgers.

Burn down, whip.

Nausea overwhelms her, and she sits down heavily on the sofa with her face in her hands.

Sauna.

The shower is running and her head is full of Victoria’s voice. It’s as if it’s eating its way into her, gnawing at the tissue of her brain.

It’s a voice she’s been listening to her whole life, but never got used to.

Dare you, dare you today?

She gets up on unsteady legs and goes into the kitchen to get a glass of water. Come on, she thinks, I’ve got to calm down.

She sees her reflection in the hall mirror and realises how tired she looks. Tired, down to her very marrow.

She turns on the kitchen tap, but it’s as if the water doesn’t want to get cold enough, and in her mind’s eye she sees it being drawn from ancient rocks, deep beneath her, where it’s hot as hell.

She burns herself on the jet of water and she can see flames before her eyes.

Children in front of a campfire.

Mambaa manyani … Mamani manyimi …

Sofia shudders at the memory of the childish song.

She goes out into the hall and rifles through her bag, looking for the box of paroxetine.

She tries to gather enough saliva to swallow the pill. Her throat is dry, but she still pops a tablet in her mouth. Its bitterness takes her by surprise, and when she tries to swallow, it catches in her throat. She swallows over and over again, and feels it move jerkily down her throat.

Dare you today? Dare you?

‘No, I dare not,’ she mutters quietly, and slumps halfway down the wall of the hall. ‘I’m petrified.’

She curls up there, waiting for the medication to take effect. Trying to rock herself to a state of calmness.

Waiting. The rumbling noise she can’t get away from.

Sauna, baby birds, cloth dog.

She clings to the thought of the cloth dog, calmness. ‘Cloth dog, cloth dog,’ she repeats to herself to get the voice to shut up and to regain control over her thoughts.

Suddenly her mobile rings, but it’s as if the sound comes from another world.

A world she no longer has access to.

With an effort she gets up to answer the ringtone that fate has thrown her just as she is losing her grip. The phone call is the way back, the link between her and reality.

As long as she can manage to answer it, she can come back down and find her way home. She knows that’s how it is, and that conviction gives her the strength to grab her phone.

‘Hello,’ she mutters, sliding down the wall again. She managed it. She managed to catch the lifeline.

‘Hello? Is anyone there?’

‘Yes, I’m here,’ Sofia Zetterlund replies, and believes she’s home again. Safe.

‘Yes, hello … I’m trying to get in touch with a Victoria Bergman. Is this the right number?’

She hangs up and bursts out laughing.

Mambaa manyani … Mamani manyimi …

Suddenly she recognises Victoria’s voice, gets to her feet and looks around.

Do you think I don’t know what you’re up to, you weak fucker.

Sofia follows the sound into the living room, but the room is empty.

She feels she needs a cigarette and reaches for the packet. She fumbles but manages to get hold of one, sticks it in her mouth, lights it and inhales deeply while she waits for Victoria to make herself known.

She hears Samuel clattering about in the bathroom.

So you’re not smoking under the exhaust fan today?

Sofia jerks. How the hell can Victoria know that that’s what she usually does? How long has she been here? No, she tries to calm herself. It’s impossible.

What’s really going on in your kitchen?

‘Victoria, what do you mean by that?’ Sofia makes an effort to resume her professional role. Whatever happens, she mustn’t show that she’s afraid, she has to stay calm, regain control.

The bathroom door opens.

‘Talkin’ to ya’self?’

Sofia turns round and sees Samuel standing naked in the doorway. He observes her, dripping with water from the shower. He smiles.

‘Who you talking to?’ He looks around the room. ‘Nobody here.’ Samuel takes a few steps out into the hall and walks over to the doorway. ‘Who’s there?’

‘Forget about her,’ Sofia says. ‘We’re playing hide-and-seek.’ She takes Samuel’s arm.

He looks surprised and raises his hand to her face.

‘What’s happened to ya’ face, ma’am? Look strange …’

‘Get dressed and eat before it gets cold.’ She opens a drawer of the dresser and passes him yet another towel. He wraps it around himself and goes back into the bathroom.

She closes the door behind him, gets the box of pentobarbitone from her handbag and empties it into the mug of Coca-Cola.

Are you going to lock him up as well?

‘Victoria, please,’ Sofia pleads. ‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about. What do you mean?’

You’ve got a little boy locked up here in the apartment. In the room behind the bookcase.

Sofia understands nothing, and her unease is growing stronger and stronger.

Then she remembers the significance of the song the first time she heard it, when she was sitting tied up in a pit in the jungle.

Mambaa manyani … Mamani manyimi …

Scarecrow fuck children … Must have a dirty cunt …

You disgusting fat whore. Didn’t it do any good, cutting your arms with a razor blade?

Sofia thinks how she used to sit behind Aunt Elsa’s house cutting herself.

Hiding the bleeding wounds with long-sleeved tops.

And now you buy shoes that are too small instead. To remind yourself of the pain.

Sofia looks down at her feet. On her heels she has terrible calluses from years of tormenting herself. On her arms pale scars from razor blades, shards of glass and knives.

Suddenly the other part of her memory opens up, and what have previously been fuzzy still images become fragments of film.

What was past becomes present, and everything falls into place.

Dad’s hands, and the judgemental look in Mum’s eyes. Martin on the Ferris wheel, the jetty down by the Fyris River, then the shame at having lost him. University Hospital in Uppsala, the medication and therapy.

Memories of Sigtuna and the masked girls in a ring around her.

The humiliation.

The boys who raped her at Roskilde, then her flight to Copenhagen and the failed suicide attempt.

Sierra Leone and the children who didn’t know what they hated.

A tool shed in Sigtuna, a hard earth floor and a light bulb through a blindfold.

The same image.

Sofia has dug into Victoria’s internal world and occasionally seen things Victoria has spent her whole life trying to forget. Now Victoria is walking around in her home, in her private space. She is everywhere and nowhere.

And the tape player that you spend hours with, talking and talking and talking. No wonder Lasse left you. He probably couldn’t bear you banging on about your horrible childhood. It was you who wanted to go to a sex club in Toronto, you who wanted group sex. Thank fuck he didn’t want to have children with you.

Sofia makes an attempt to protest, but can’t make a sound. But he’d been sterilised, she thinks.

You’re perverted. You tried to steal his children. Mikael is Lasse’s son! Have you forgotten that?!

The voice is so loud that she flinches away and sinks onto the sofa. It feels like her temples are about to burst.

Mikael? Lasse’s son? That can’t be right …

The image of the happy family at home in Saltsjöbaden that New Year’s Eve. Sofia sees Lasse drink a toast with Mikael.

Once you’d killed Lasse you picked up Mikael. Don’t you remember? The phone books you scattered across the floor to make it look like suicide? The rope was too short, that was it, wasn’t it?

Distantly Sofia hears Samuel emerge from the bathroom and hazily sees him sit down at the coffee table. He opens the bag of food and starts to eat as she sits there in silence and watches him.

Samuel gulps down the Coke.

‘Who ya talking to, lady?’ He shakes his head.