You're Mine Now (17 page)

Alternatively, one of those square Asian knives that could be used for everything. Ikea probably had an adequate variation. His own bread knife certainly wouldn’t do and the filleting knife was really only meant for skin and muscle. Good to open things up, but not much else.

How many? He went out and looked at Kathrine. Her legs were bent. He pushed them up even more. Folded the arms more. When rigor mortis set in it would be a lot harder. The torso was a problem. He could always divide it just below the ribs. And remove the head.

Two bin liners for the arms and legs. One for the pelvis and head, one for the upper torso. Four in all. And double, obviously, to avoid the risk of leakage. So eight. Plus a couple more for clothes and waste.

He sat down at the kitchen table again. What else? He couldn’t carry out twenty-kilo rubbish bags, that would look suspicious.

Naturally. Easy to carry, wouldn’t attract attention. They were sold in packs of ten at Ikea.

Entrails. What about the contents of her insides? Another brainwave.

He could flush the mix down the toilet.

It would be important to close the rubbish sacks properly before he took them out, because of the smell. If he decided to dump them in the sea, he would have to open them again to put in some stones or something else suitably heavy before he pressed out as much air as possible and closed them again. In other words, he needed something that would allow him to open and close the bags safely.

What else? Of course.

Normal washing-up gloves would be fine. And it would be good if the apron was plastic so he could just wipe any mess off.

He folded the list and put it in his back pocket, felt his front pocket to see if the car keys were there, and left the flat.

Erik turned Kathrine’s phone to silent, wiped it against his top and threw it into a rubbish bin outside Ikea. He left it on so that if it was traced it would show that she had left Erik’s flat and gone to Väla. He got a trolley and raced through the prescribed consumption path that was the furniture giant’s trademark.

He picked out the items he had on his list. He didn’t manage to find a suitable apron, so he picked up an extra roll of refuse sacks instead. He could make his own apron. He put all the things in the car and drove home to the flat. He was lucky enough to get a parking place right outside the entrance. That certainly made things easier.

A quarter of an hour later he’d carried everything in and was dressed in a black rubbish bag, with holes for his arms and head. He had a T-shirt on underneath and yellow rubber gloves on his hands. A pair of scissors, the filleting knife and meat cleaver were lying on the toilet seat. He’d arranged the empty refuse sacks on the floor.

At one point he was close to giving up. A person wasn’t a halibut. He had to cut, hack, prise and sweat to get the limbs off and when he split open her belly like a surgeon, the entrails spilled out. It smelt fucking awful and he had to run back and forth between the bathroom and the kitchen in order to cut and blend her innards into something that could be flushed down the toilet. And then there was a problem with the torso, which was too big to fit in a removal box, even without the head. He was forced to break and remove the pelvis.

It was five o’clock by the time he could finally take off the gloves and rinse the blood from his arms. He went to get a removal box and cursed Ikea several times before he managed to fold it together. He then made up a further three, before checking that it was dark outside. That suited him perfectly.

A whole afternoon without any reminders. Her relief edged into anxiety. Anna had thought the danger had passed a couple of times before. Erik Månsson was like two people. One who was friendly and charming, the other who was unreasonable and ruthless.

She hadn’t been ambiguous. To the contrary, she had been too harsh and offended him. That was obviously it, otherwise he would never have reacted so aggressively.

She stood at the bus stop and looked around. She was keeping an eye out for his car, terrified that he would pop up at any moment.

Was he mentally ill? Genuinely? Psychopaths were said to be experts at reading people and winning their trust. Only to suddenly turn. Erik Månsson had a screw loose, there was no doubt about it. Whether he was actually dangerous as well remained to be seen. But it was unnerving enough to have him sneaking around in the bushes.

The video, oh my God, the video.

Immediately Anna was all hot and sweaty. How could she even doubt it? Erik Månsson was sick, completely mad. Or was it down to his age, something that his generation did? God knows, they seemed to document everything else in their lives and publish the most uninteresting thoughts for everyone’s perusal.

She saw the bus approach in the distance, got out her pass. The bus stopped, she got on and looked closely at every passenger as she made her way down the aisle. She sat right at the back, so she had an overview, didn’t want to risk any nasty surprises.

Erik cleaned Kathrine’s nails and scrubbed them with a brush. He had no scratch marks but she had tried. He rinsed every body part with the shower, then dried them carefully with a towel before putting them in double refuse sacks. He put the sacks into the removal boxes, rinsed out the bath and the sink and then took a quick shower himself.

How did you get rid of a body? Obviously, the best thing would be to dump the body parts with something heavy somewhere out to sea. But you needed a boat to do that and even if Erik had access to one, he couldn’t load it up with removal boxes or heavy black rubbish bags without attracting attention. The coastline was watched. There were always people looking out at sea and keeping an eye on what was going on on the shoreline.

An alternative was to drive up to Kullaberg and throw the sacks over the cliffs under cover of darkness, but he guessed that it wouldn’t take more than a couple of weeks before some diver would be splashed across a double spread in the local paper, telling the story of his macabre find.

Rubbish tip? No, they had cameras and checked everything that was driven in or out.

Was it even necessary to hide the body? The main thing was that he got rid of it without being caught.

He went out on to the landing and called the lift, carried the boxes out and went down.

‘Oh, are you moving?’

A helpful neighbour held open the door.

‘Just helping a friend with a few things.’

Erik carried the boxes out and stacked them in the car.

It was so easy when you didn’t try to hide anything. It was stupid to make things more complicated. If everyone was screaming, you’d only hear the person who whispered. Erik could leave the boxes outside the Salvation Army in town and no one would notice. But perhaps that was being a bit foolhardy. It wouldn’t be a bad thing if the body wasn’t discovered for a few days.

He headed north, without knowing why. Somehow it felt most natural. Perhaps because she lived there. He saw that the façade of a building was being renovated on Margaretaplatsen. Big skips on the street. He got as far as Pålsjö before he turned around and drove back. He parked in front of a skip, opened the boot and took out the removal boxes. Then he lifted out the black refuse sacks and dumped them over the edge.

An elderly couple walked by. They looked at him and Erik gave them a friendly smile. They reciprocated, no doubt knowing themselves how hard it was to get rid of bulky waste. Erik put the removal boxes back in the car and drove away. He found a recycling station further south, tore the boxes to pieces and stuffed them into the green igloo marked ‘Cardboard’.

When he got home, someone else had taken the perfect parking place. His bad luck never ran out.

‘Where did you say your mother was?’

‘Copenhagen. She was going to see Ditte.’

Anna’s reply was mechanical. Her thoughts were elsewhere, in a happier space. As the bus had passed Erik’s flat, she’d seen him filling the car with removal boxes. Whatever had the policeman said to him? It didn’t matter. If it meant that Erik was leaving town, she was eternally grateful.

‘Theeeeaaaatre?’ Magnus exclaimed.

Anna shrugged.

‘No idea.’

‘Don’t see what pleasure she gets out of it. Sitting there, crammed in with four hundred dentists pretending to be intellectual.’

‘Dentists?’

‘The only professional that goes to the theatre.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘There’s a lot you don’t know,’ Magnus quipped, happily.

Then he became serious again.

‘I don’t get it. It’s a dead art form. What’s wrong with the cinema?’

‘The one doesn’t exclude the other, does it?’

Hedda laughed with delight in her room. She was skyping a friend with the door shut. Anna and Magnus looked at each other and smiled.

‘At that age, even the theatre was fun,’ Magnus said. ‘It’s behind you! No, it’s not.’

‘She’s not that little any more.’

‘Almost feels like it.’

They settled down in front of the television. Sat beside each other on the sofa and with relative indifference watched news reports on various ways to die. Magnus took Anna’s hand. She glanced up at him and smiled before looking back at the telly and swallowing.

Hedda bounced out of her room, a happy reminder of how life had once been before it petrified into its current form.

‘Mum, can I borrow your phone?’

‘You’ve got your own.’

‘But yours has got better games.’

Magnus looked at his wife with reproach.

‘I think I might have left it at work,’ she tried.

Hedda was already in her handbag.

‘No, here it is.’

‘Sweetheart, I don’t like you going through my handbag.’

‘You’ve got a missed call.’

Anna knew that it showed. She blushed and started to blink. She couldn’t hide it, had never been able to. Even strangers could read her like an open book.

‘It’s a long number,’ Hedda said.

Anna got up quickly from the sofa and went over to her daughter.

‘Sweetie, can I…?’

Hedda gave her the phone.

‘It’s a Danish number,’ she said with relief, and wondered if it was unnatural to give Magnus that information.

‘It’s probably your mum calling from Ditte’s,’ he said, his eyes not leaving the screen.

‘Maybe I should call back?’

And why on earth should she ask her husband’s advice on something so trivial, which in fact had nothing to do with him?

‘Weren’t they going to go to the theatre?’ Magnus asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘It’s what they normally do,’ Magnus said. ‘Did she leave a message?’

‘No.’

‘Well then.’

To be so submissive, to consult her husband. It was so unlike Anna.

‘Can I have the mobile?’ Hedda asked, impatiently.

‘Yes, yes, of course.’

Anna handed it to her.

‘But only for a while.’

‘Right.’

‘After all, it’s actually the magazine’s phone.’

Hedda went back into her room and Anna had no choice other than to return to her husband on the sofa. She stared into thin air. The mobile was an undetonated bomb that threatened to blow her family to pieces at any moment.

‘Why’s it suddenly so important?’ Magnus wondered.

‘What?’ Anne said, evasively.

‘Your mobile.’

‘Well, she changes all the settings and mucks about with it. I don’t like it. And if it were to break…’

Magnus let out a weary sigh.

Erik slept well, despite having a sore back after all those hours stooped over the bath. When he woke up it was broad daylight outside. He stretched, blinked his way into the present, looked at the clock and realised that it was nearly lunchtime.

He tried to think logically, go through the remaining details. He would have to scrub the bathroom with chlorine, get rid of Kathrine’s clothes and handbag, as well as the bloody towel that he’d used to dry the body parts with. None of it was such a big deal; in fact, compared to yesterday, they were relatively easy tasks.

He was assailed by a wave of emptiness, an overwhelming emotional understanding that there was no meaning to anything. He could barely move, he just lay there on the mattress and stared at the wall.

It wasn’t the things he was forced to do under the rather unfortunate circumstances, they didn’t matter. Kathrine had been a challenge he’d had to face, and he’d won. No, what made him almost stop breathing was the realisation that it didn’t matter. The outcome of all his efforts would be as good as nothing. Kathrine’s disappearance would, if anything, bring Magnus and Anna closer together. At least temporarily.

On the other hand, Erik was suddenly full of hope: it wasn’t Kathrine who kept them together. The only thing that bound Anna to her boring husband was their daughter. Kathrine’s disappearance might remind Anna of her own mortality, make her mature, in the sense that she would understand that life is short. Because it was. The days raced by at high speed and life wouldn’t go on for ever. Anna couldn’t keep lying to herself.

Erik got up from the mattress, felt much happier. He went over to the window and looked out to see what was going on down on the street. Not much. The moment rush hour was over, the traffic flow was so meagre that no more than four cars gathered at one time for the red light by Stadsteatern.

He might as well get started with what he still had to do. He went out into the bathroom, rinsed the clothes and towel clean of blood, wrung them out and put them into several plastic bags. He scrubbed the walls and sink, the toilet and floor. First with Ajax and a scrubbing brush, then again with chlorine. The bath sparkled white, except for a few chips in the enamel from the meat cleaver when he’d got the angle wrong.

Erik had a long, hot shower.

Who might know that Kathrine had come to see him? he asked himself. Not Anna, judging by the text message. Kathrine had looked him up on her own initiative, out of her concern for her daughter. When Erik asked her how she had got hold of the entry code, she said that a man had let her in, a man on his way out. Erik tried to visualise his neighbours. It took a few seconds before he realised that it probably wasn’t one of his neighbours, but the policeman, that fat, stupid local guy who Anna had pumped full of lies, the pompous loser who’d had the cheek to try to frighten Erik in his own home.

That made things more complicated. But no more so than that he would have to be open and honest about Kathrine having come to see him. She had been there and then left, that’s what he’d say. Which would be confirmed by the location of her mobile phone.

Erik got out of the shower, dried himself and dressed. He was on his way out when he caught sight of the bowls and the blender. He’d washed the parts carefully, but decided to bin them all the same. Maybe he was chicken.

He glanced quickly around his newly scrubbed flat, picked up the bags and went out.