She doesn’t want to admit it to herself, but somewhere Sofia suspects that Jeanette Kihlberg has a hidden agenda, and is drawing her into a trap.
Sofia Zetterlund swallows. Her throat feels like someone’s rammed a dry apple into it.
Jeanette Kihlberg swirls the last of her wine around the glass before drinking it. ‘I think Victoria Bergman is the key,’ she says. ‘If we can find her, we solve the case.’
Take it easy. Breathe.
Sofia Zetterlund takes a deep breath. ‘Why do you think that?’
‘Just a feeling,’ Jeanette says, scratching her head. ‘Bengt Bergman used to work for the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, in Sierra Leone among other places. The Bergman family lived there for a while during the late eighties, which feels like yet another coincidence.’
‘I’m not with you.’
Jeanette laughs. ‘Well, Victoria Bergman was in Sierra Leone and Samuel Bai was from Sierra Leone. And it’s struck me that there’s you as well, you’ve been there too. You see, it really is a small world.’
What does she mean? Is she implying something?
‘Maybe,’ Sofia says thoughtfully, while her insides are churning with anxiety.
‘One or more of the people we’re looking into knows the murderer. Karl Lundstr?m, Viggo Dürer, Silfverberg. Someone in the Bergman or Lundstr?m families. The murderer might just as easily be someone inside that constellation as outside it. Either way. I still think Victoria Bergman knows who the murderer is.’
‘And what are you basing that hypothesis on?’
Jeanette laughs again. ‘Instinct.’
‘Instinct?’
‘Yes, I’ve got three generations of police blood in my veins. My instinct’s hardly ever wrong, and in this case I get a strong feeling whenever I think about Victoria Bergman. Call it my cop’s blood, if you like.’
‘I’ve had a first go at putting together a psychological profile of the perpetrator. Do you want to see it?’ She reaches for her bag, but Jeanette stops her.
‘I’d love to, but first I want to hear what you’ve got to say about Linnea Lundstr?m.’
‘I saw her recently. For therapy. And I think she was exploited by more than just her dad.’
Jeanette looks at her intently. ‘And you believe her?’
‘Absolutely.’ Sofia considers the situation. And feels that the moment has arrived when she could open up and reveal parts of herself that she has kept hidden up to now. ‘I had therapy myself when I was younger, and I know how liberating it can be to get the chance to talk about everything. Being able to talk about what you’ve been through without any inhibitions and interruption, and to have someone who really listens. Someone who may have been through the same thing but has devoted a lot of time and money to educating themselves to understand the human psyche and who takes your story seriously and is there for you and helps to analyse things, even if it’s just a drawing or a letter, and who can draw conclusions and isn’t just wondering what drugs it might be suitable to prescribe, and who isn’t necessarily trying to find fault, find a scapegoat, even if –’
‘Hey,’ Jeanette interrupts her. ‘What’s going on, Sofia?’
‘What?’ Sofia opens her eyes and sees Jeanette in front of her.
‘You disappeared for a moment.’ Jeanette leans across the table and takes Sofia’s hands. Strokes them gently. ‘Is it difficult to talk about?’
Sofia feels her eyes pricking as tears well up, and she wants to give in. But the moment has passed and she shakes her head.
‘No. What I was trying to say is that I think Viggo Dürer was involved.’
‘Yes, well, that would explain a whole lot.’ She pauses, and seems to be choosing her words.
Wait, let her go on.
‘Go on.’ Sofia hears her own voice as if she were standing alongside. She knows what Jeanette’s about to say.
‘P-O Silfverberg lived in Denmark. Viggo Dürer too. Dürer defends Silfverberg when he’s accused of abusing his foster-daughter. He defends Lundstr?m when he is accused of raping Ulrika Wendin.’
‘Foster-daughter?’ Sofia is having trouble breathing, and reaches for her wine glass to hide her agitation. She raises it to her lips, and sees that her hand is trembling.
Her name is Madeleine, she’s got fair hair and she likes it when you tickle her tummy.
Screaming and crying when she was welcomed into the world with a blood test.
The little hand clutching a forefinger.
Stockholm, 1988
SHE DIDN’T HAVE to make an effort, because the stories seemed to come by themselves, and sometimes it was like she predicted the truth. She would come up with a lie, and then it happened. She liked having such a strange power.
As if she could steer the world around her with her will, just by lying and having her lies come true.
The money lasts all the way home from Copenhagen to Stockholm, and she gives the eighteenth-century music box that she stole from the farmhouse in Struer to a drunk outside Central Station. At a quarter past eight in the morning Victoria gets on the bus from Gullmarsplan to Tyres?, sits down right at the back and opens her diary.
The road is in a poor state because of all the construction, and the driver is going far too fast. That makes it hard to write. The letters get very shaky.
Instead she sinks into the notes of her sessions with the old psychologist. Everything is recorded in her diary, every single one of their meetings. She puts her pen back in her bag and starts to read.
3 March
Her eyes understand me, and that feels safe. We talk about incubation. That means waiting for something, and maybe my incubation period will soon be over?
Am I waiting to get ill?
Her eyes ask me about Solace and I tell her that she’s moved out of the wardrobe. We share the bed now. The stench from the sauna has accompanied us to bed. Am I already ill? I tell her that the incubation period started in Sierra Leone. I was carrying the illness in me when we left, but I didn’t get rid of it when we got home.
The infection remained inside me and made me mad.
His infection.
Victoria prefers not to call the psychologist by her name. She likes thinking about the old woman’s eyes; they make her feel safe. The therapist is those eyes. And in them Victoria can also be herself.
The bus stops, and the driver gets out and opens a hatch on the side. There seems to be something wrong. She seizes the opportunity, grabs her pen and starts to write.
25 May
Germany and Denmark belong together. North Friesland, Schleswig-Holstein. Raped by German boys at the Roskilde Festival, then by a Danish German bastard. Two countries in red and white and black. Eagles fly over the flat fields, shitting on the grey patchwork and landing on Helgoland, a North Friesian island where the rats fled when Dracula carried the plague to Bremen. The island looks like the Danish flag, the cliffs are rust red, the sea foams white.