The Crow Girl (41 page)

‘How do you mean?’ Hurtig is starting to get tired of the commissioner’s insinuations. ‘Do you want me to tell her to stay at home because you don’t think women should have careers and ought to look after their husbands and children instead?’

‘Damn it, Jens, stop that. I thought we understood each other, and –’

‘Just because we’re both men,’ Hurtig interrupts, ‘doesn’t mean we share the same opinions.’

‘No, of course not.’ The commissioner sighs. ‘I thought that perhaps –’

‘Well, I don’t know. Bye for now.’ Hurtig ends the call before Dennis Billing has time to say anything else clumsy or just plain stupid.

At the Solna intersection he looks out across the Pampas Marina and the rows of sailing boats.

A boat, he thinks. I’m going to get myself a boat.

The rain is pouring down on the Bandhagen High School’s sports fields. Hurtig pulls up the hood of his jacket as he slams the car door. He looks around, and it all feels very familiar.

He’s been here several times as a spectator when Jeanette Kihlberg has been playing in matches for the mixed police team. He remembers being surprised at how good she was, better than most of the male players, and in her role as offensive midfielder she had been the most creative of them all, the one who made the penetrative passes, saw spaces no one else saw.

In a strange way he had been able to see how her personality as a police officer was reflected in her actions on the pitch. She had influence, but without being too dominant.

He can’t help wondering how she is. Although he doesn’t have children of his own, nor any desire to have any, he realises that she must be having a hard time right now. Who’s taking care of her now that Åke has walked out?

He knows the cases of the murdered boys have hit her hard.

And now something’s happened to her own son, making Jens wish he could be something more to her than just her sergeant. A friend.

He thinks about the nameless boys. If there’s a missing person, then there has to be someone who misses them.

Jens Hurtig feels dejected as he hurries over to the buildings beside the fields.

As Ivo Andrić pulls into the car park at Bandhagen High School, he catches sight of Hurtig, Schwarz and Åhlund. They’re sitting in a police car and are about to leave. When Jens Hurtig raises his hand in greeting he responds before parking next to the large brick building.

Andrić stays in his car, staring out across the dark, waterlogged football pitch. At one end the little forensics tent, and at the other a forlorn, abandoned goal with a damaged net. Rain is pouring down and shows no signs of easing, and he’s planning to sit in the car as long as possible. He’s full of an aching tiredness, and his eyes feel gritty. He thinks about recent events and the cases of the dead boys.

For a few hot weeks of summer they had taken all his time, and Ivo Andrić is still convinced they were dealing with a single perpetrator.

Jeanette Kihlberg had done a good job, but there was one police commissioner and one prosecutor who hadn’t done their jobs, and the whole business had left him feeling utterly disillusioned. His confidence in the criminal justice system had always been low, but now it had been wiped out completely.

When the prosecutor had shut down the investigation all the air had gone out of him.

Ivo Andrić pulls his jacket tighter and puts on his baseball cap. He opens the car door, gets out in the pouring rain and jogs over towards the crime scene.

SOFIA ZETTERLUND HAS
big gaps in her memory. Black holes that she drifts past in her dreams or on her endless walks. Sometimes the holes get bigger when she notices a smell, or when someone looks at her in a particular way. Images are recreated when she hears the sound of wooden shoes on gravel, or when she sees the back of someone in the street. On occasions like this, it’s as if a whirlwind sweeps through what Sofia calls ‘I’.

She knows she’s experienced something that won’t let itself be described.

Once upon a time there was a little girl called Victoria, and when she was three her dad built a room inside her. A deserted room where there was only pain and suffering. Over the years it became a room with sturdy walls made of sorrow, with a floor made of the desire for revenge and, lastly, a solid roof of hate.

It became a room so enclosed that Victoria hadn’t been able to get out.

And she’s in there now.

It wasn’t me, Sofia thinks. It wasn’t my fault. Her first emotion when she wakes up is guilt. All her body’s systems are getting ready for flight, to defend itself.

She reaches for the box of paroxetine and uses her saliva to swallow two pills. She leans back and waits for Victoria’s voice to fall silent. Not completely, it never does that, but enough for her to hear herself.

Hear Sofia’s will.

What had actually happened?

A memory of smells. Popcorn, rain-wet paths. Earth.

Someone had wanted to take her to hospital, but she had refused.

Then nothing. Utterly black. She doesn’t remember the stairs up to the apartment, let alone how she managed to get home from Gröna Lund.

What time is it? she wonders.

The mobile phone is on the bedside table. A Nokia, an old model, Victoria Bergman’s mobile. She’s going to get rid of it. The last link to her old life.

The phone says it’s 07.33, and that she’s missed one call. She presses the button and reads.

She doesn’t recognise the number.

Ten minutes later she’s calm enough to get up. The air in the apartment is musty, and she opens the window in the living room. Borgmästargatan is quiet and wet with rain. To the left, Sofia Church rises up majestically in the middle of the late-summer greenery of Vita Bergen, and from Nytorget, slightly further away, comes the smell of freshly baked bread and exhaust fumes.

A few parked cars.

In the bicycle rack across the street one of the twelve bikes has a puncture. It wasn’t like that yesterday. Details that stick, whether she wants them to or not.

And if anyone were to ask her, she could list the colours of all the bikes in the right order. From right to left, or the other way round.

She wouldn’t even have to think.

She knows she’s right.

But the paroxetine makes her gentler; it makes her brain calm down and makes daily life manageable.

She decides to have a shower, but at that moment the phone rings. Her work phone this time.

It’s still ringing when she gets in the shower.

The water has a reviving effect, and as she dries herself she thinks that she’ll soon be completely alone. Free to do whatever she likes.

It’s been over three weeks since her parents died. Soon she’ll have access to more than eleven million kronor. She’ll have enough money not to have to worry about her finances for the rest of her life.

She can shut her practice.

Move wherever she wants. Start again. Become another person.

But not yet, she thinks. Soon, perhaps, but not yet. Right now she needs the routine that work gives her. Time when she doesn’t have to think about anything, and can just function in neutral. Not having to think gives her the calm she needs to keep Victoria away.

When she’s finished drying herself she gets dressed and goes into the kitchen.

She sets up the coffee machine, gets out her laptop, puts it on the kitchen table and switches it on.

On the directory enquiries website she discovers that the unfamiliar number belongs to the local police station out in Värmdö, and she gets a lump in her stomach. Have they found something? If so, what?

She stands and gets a cup of coffee as she makes up her mind to stay calm and wait. That can be a problem for the future.

She sits down at the computer, opens the folder she’s named
VICTORIA BERGMAN
, and looks at the twenty-five files.

All numbered versions of the name
CROW GIRL
.

Her own memories.

She knows she’s been unwell, and it’s been essential to compile all her memories. For several years now she’s been having conversations with herself, recording and analysing her monologues. That was how she got to know Victoria, and finally reconciled herself to the idea that they were always going to have to live together.

But now, when she knows just what Victoria is capable of, she has no intention of letting herself be manipulated.

She highlights all the files in the folder, takes a deep breath, then finally presses delete.

A dialogue box asks if she’s sure she wants to delete the files.

She considers.

She’s been thinking of getting rid of her conversations with herself for some time, but she’s never had the courage to do it.

‘No, I’m not sure,’ she says out loud, and presses no.

It feels like letting out a deep breath.

Now she’s worried about Gao.

She cooks a large pan of thin porridge and fills a Thermos and takes it in to him. He’s lying naked on the bed in the soft, dark room, and she can see from his eyes that he’s a long way away. His drawings are in a neat pile on the floor, and, even though she spent several hours cleaning, the smell of urine is still there under the smell of detergent.

What is she going to do with him? Now that he’s more of a liability than an asset.

She puts the Thermos on the floor by the bed. When she walks out she slides the bookcase back into place to hide the doorway and latches it. He’ll have to manage until the evening.

LIE AND SLANDER
, and Gao Lian from Wuhan must be careful about what people say.

Nothing must be able to surprise him, because he has control and he is no animal. He knows that animals can’t plan for deviations from the norm. Squirrels gather nuts before winter in a tree trunk, but if the hole freezes up they understand nothing. The nuts never existed because they are out of reach. The squirrel gives up and dies.

Gao Lian understands that he must be prepared for the unpredictable.

Eyes see what is forbidden, and Gao must shut his and wait for it to disappear.

Time equals waiting, and is therefore nothing.

What will happen after that is the opposite of time.

When his muscles tense, his stomach tightens and his breathing is shallow but rich in oxygen, he will be at one with everything. His pulse, previously slow, will rise to a deafening roar, and everything will happen at once.

At that moment time will no longer be ridiculous, it will be everything.

Every second will have its own life, its own story with a beginning and an end. Every hundredth of a second’s doubt can have fateful consequences. It can be the difference between life and death.

Time is the best friend of the weak-willed and those incapable of action.

The woman has equipped him with pen and paper, and he can sit in the darkness for hours, drawing. He takes the subjects of his pictures from his internal bank of memories. People he’s seen, things he misses, feelings he’s forgotten he had.

A little bird in its nest with its young.

When he’s finished he puts the sheet aside and starts again.

He never stops to look at what he’s drawn.

The woman who feeds him is neither true nor false, and for Gao there is no longer any time before her. No before, and no after. Time is nothing.

All of him is turned inward, towards the mechanics of memory.

JEANETTE LEAVES JOHAN’S
room and heads off to the cafeteria by the main entrance to the hospital. She’s a police officer, and a female one at that, which means she can’t put her work to one side, even under circumstances like this. She’s aware that it would be used against her at a later date.

The lift doors open, and as she walks out into the hubbub of people on the entrance level, she looks up and sees their movements, their smiles. She fills her lungs with air that is full of life. Although she has trouble admitting it, she knows she needs a break from her bedside vigil.

Hurtig is carrying a tray holding two steaming cups of coffee and two cinnamon buns. He puts it down on the table between them before sitting down. Jeanette takes a cup. The hot coffee is warming, and she feels the urge to smoke.

Hurtig picks up his cup and looks at her closely. She doesn’t like the critical look in his eyes.

‘So. How’s he doing?’ Hurtig asks.

‘It’s under control. Right now the worst thing is not knowing what happened to him.’

‘I can understand that, but I suppose that’s something you can talk about once he’s better and is allowed home. Don’t you think?’

‘Sure.’ Jeanette sighs before she goes on. ‘But sitting on my own in that silence is driving me mad.’

‘Hasn’t Åke been?’

Jeanette shrugs. ‘Åke’s got his exhibition in Poland; he wanted to come home, but when we found Johan, then …’ She shrugs again. ‘Well, there wasn’t much he could do.’

Jeanette can see that Hurtig wants to say something, but cuts him off.

‘And what does Billing say?’

‘You mean apart from saying he thinks you should stay at home with Johan, it’s your fault he ran away, and that it’s your fault Åke wants a divorce?’

‘He said that? Fucking snake.’

‘Yep. Came right out with it, no beating about the bush.’ He raises his eyebrows.

Jeanette feels exhausted and useless.

‘Goddamnit,’ she mutters, and looks around the room.

Hurtig sits in silence, pulls a piece off his bun and pops it in his mouth. She can see something’s troubling him.

‘What is it? What’s on your mind?’

‘You haven’t let go of it, have you?’ he says tentatively. ‘It’s pretty obvious. You’re pissed off that we were taken off the case.’ He brushes away some crumbs that have caught in his stubble.

‘Jens, listen to me …’ She thinks for a moment. ‘I’m just as frustrated as you are about what happened, and I think it’s fucking awful, but at the same time I’m smart enough to realise that it isn’t economically justifiable to –’