Victoria hesitates.
She can remember what it was perfectly well, but isn’t sure if she can say it.
It sounds so ridiculous.
‘Excellent,’ she says sarcastically. ‘It said, “You have a phenomenal understanding of the neural processes, and add exciting thoughts of your own that I would like to see you develop in a longer piece of work.”’
The therapist looks at her, wide-eyed, and claps her hands together. ‘But that’s wonderful, Victoria! Didn’t you feel pleased when you got your work back with something like that on it?’
‘But,’ Victoria begins, ‘it doesn’t really matter. I mean, it’s only pretend.’
‘Victoria,’ the psychologist says seriously. ‘I know you’ve talked about your difficulties telling the difference between what is real and what’s pretend, as you put it, or what’s important to you and what isn’t, as I put it … If you think about it, isn’t this a good example of that? You claim you feel good when you iron shirts, but you don’t really want to do it. And when you study, which you like doing, you do very well indeed, but’ – she raises a finger and fixes her eyes on Victoria’s – ‘you don’t allow yourself to be happy when you receive praise for something you enjoy doing.’
Those eyes, Victoria thinks. They see everything she herself has never seen, only suspected. They enlarge her when she tries to shrink herself, and they gently show her the difference between what she thinks she sees, hears and feels, and what is happening in everyone else’s reality.
Victoria wishes she could see with old, wise eyes. Like the psychologist.
The lightness she feels in the psychologist’s room only lasts for the twenty-eight steps down to the main entrance. Then silence in the car home.
They pass block after block, house after house, family after family. She sees a girl her own age walking arm in arm with her mother. They look so untroubled.
That girl could have been me, Victoria thinks.
She realises she could have been anyone.
But she ended up as her.
‘We’re going to have a talk over dinner,’ he says as he opens the car door and gets out onto the street. He grabs his trousers and hoists them so far up over his stomach that she can see the outline of his testicles. Victoria looks away and walks towards the house.
The house is like a black hole that destroys everyone who enters it, and she opens the door and lets herself be swallowed up.
Mum says nothing when they come in, but she’s got dinner ready. They sit around the table. Dad, Mum and Victoria. When they sit there she realises that they look like a family.
‘Victoria,’ he begins, folding his veiny hands and putting them on the table. Whatever he’s about to say, she knows this isn’t a talk. He’s giving orders. ‘We think you might benefit from a little change of scenery,’ he says, ‘and your mother and I have decided the best solution would be to combine work with pleasure.’ He looks expectantly at her mother, who nods and serves him some potatoes.
‘Do you remember Viggo?’ He looks questioningly at Victoria.
She remembers Viggo.
A Danish man who used to come on regular visits when she was little.
Never when Mum was at home.
‘Viggo has a farm in Jutland, and he needs someone to look after the farmhouse. Nothing too demanding, because of course we’re aware of your current condition.’
‘My current condition?’ Once more she feels the pulsating fury that settles like a luminous screen over her paralysis.
‘You know what I mean,’ he says in a louder voice. ‘You walk around talking to yourself. You have imaginary friends even though you’re seventeen years old. You have tantrums and behave like a small child. We all want what’s best for you, and Viggo has contacts in Aalborg who can help you. You’ll be going down to his farm in the spring. And that’s all there is to it.’
They sit in silence as he ends his meal with a cup of tea. He puts a lump of sugar between his lips and any moment now he’ll filter the tea through it until it dissolves.
They sit in silence as he drinks. Slurping, the way he always does.
‘It’s for your own sake,’ he concludes, then gets up and goes over to the sink, where he rinses his cup with his back to them. Mum squirms on her seat and looks away.
He turns off the tap, dries his hands and leans back against the worktop. ‘You’re not an adult yet,’ he says. ‘We’re responsible for you. There’s nothing to discuss.’
No, I know that, she thinks. There’s nothing to discuss, and there never has been.
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
ONCE IVO ANDRI?, Schwarz and ?hlund have left the conference room, Hurtig leans forward across the table and speaks to Jeanette in a low voice. ‘Before we go any further with Silfverberg, where are we with the old cases?’
‘Not much progress. At least not from my side. How about you? Anything new?’
‘Good and bad news,’ he says. ‘What do you want first?’
‘Anything but a cliché,’ Jeanette says. He loses his train of thought, and she grins at him. ‘Sorry, only joking. Start with the bad news. You know that’s what I prefer.’
‘OK. First Dürer and von Kwist’s judicial history. Apart from five or six dropped cases where they were on opposite sides, I can’t see anything odd. And even that isn’t particularly surprising seeing as they specialise in the same sort of crime.’
Jeanette nods. ‘Go on.’
‘The list of donors. Sihtunum i Diasporan is supported by a group of former students at Sigtuna College, businessmen and politicians, successful people with flawless records. There are just a few with no direct link to the school, but we can probably assume that they know a former student or have other contacts there.’
A dead end, at least for the time being, Jeanette thinks, and gestures for Hurtig to go on.
‘The IP address was a bit tricky. The user who posted the list of donors only made that one comment, and I had to do some digging before I could identify the IP address. Guess where it leads?’
‘A dead end?’
He throws out his hands. ‘A 7-Eleven shop in Malm?. If you’ve got twenty-nine kronor, you can buy a ticket from a machine completely anonymously and sit down at one of the terminals for an hour.’
‘And the good news?’
Jens Hurtig grins. ‘Per-Ola Silfverberg is one of the donors.’
Before Jeanette Kihlberg leaves police headquarters for the day, Dennis Billing informs her of the budget for the Silfverberg case, and as she drives past R?dhuset it occurs to her that even the preliminary budget Billing has allocated is more than ten times what she was given for her work on the murdered boys.
Dead children with no papers are worth less than dead Swedes with careers and money in the bank.