She hangs up her jacket, goes into the kitchen and finds that the worktop she left beautifully clean that morning now looks like a bomb has hit it. There’s a faint haze in the living room, evidence of something burning, and there’s an open pack of fish fingers on the kitchen table, next to the remains of a head of lettuce.
‘Johan? Are you there?’ She looks out into the hall and sees light from his room.
She’s worried about him again.
According to his teacher he’s missed several lessons this week, and when he has been there he’s been distant and uninterested. Gloomy and introverted.
He’s also got into fights with classmates on several occasions, something that has never happened before.
‘Knock-knock,’ she says, opening the door to his room. He’s lying on his bed with his back to her. ‘How are you, darling?’
‘I made dinner for you,’ he mutters. ‘It’s in the living room.’
She strokes his back, then turns and can see through the doorway that he’s laid the table. She kisses him on the forehead, then goes to look.
On the table is a plate containing some cremated fish fingers, instant macaroni and some lettuce, neatly arranged with a hefty dollop of ketchup. The cutlery is on a napkin beside the plate, and there’s a glass of wine, half filled, and a lit candle.
He’s made her dinner. That’s never happened before. And he’s gone to a lot of trouble over it.
Damn the mess in the kitchen, she thinks. He’s done this to cheer me up.
‘Johan?’
No response.
‘You’ve no idea how happy this makes me. Aren’t you going to have any?’
‘I’ve already eaten,’ he calls irritably from his room.
She feels suddenly dizzy and incredibly tired. She doesn’t get it. If he wants to cheer her up, why reject her like that? ‘Johan?’ she repeats.
More silence. She goes and sits on his bed, until she realises he’s fallen asleep. She turns out the light, carefully closes the door and goes back to the living room. When she sees the table Johan’s laid for her again, she almost bursts into tears.
She sighs as she remembers how she and ?ke would spend evenings in front of the television, eating chips and laughing at some bad film, but the way she feels now that’s hardly a period of her life that she misses. It had been a sterile wait for something better, an emotionally stunted existence that had relentlessly swallowed evening after evening, going on for months, years.
Life is too precious to be wasted waiting for something to happen. Something that can help you move on.
She can’t remember what she had hoped for, what she had been dreaming of.
?ke, on the other hand, had fantasised about how his coming success would give them the opportunity to realise their shared dreams. He had said she’d be able to leave the police, and got angry when she had said it was her life and that all the money in the world wouldn’t change that. As for her idea that dreams had to remain dreams if they weren’t to disappear, ?ke had dismissed that as nothing but pseudo-intellectual rubbish picked up from trashy magazines.
After that argument they hadn’t spoken for several days, and even if that occasion hadn’t been decisive, it had been the beginning of the end.
Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
SOFIA WAKES UP on the living-room floor. It’s dark outside and she notices that it’s just past seven o’clock, but she has no idea if it’s morning or evening.
When she gets up and goes out into the hall, she sees that someone has written on the mirror with the marker. In childish handwriting it says ‘UNA KAM O!’ and Sofia recognises Solace’s jagged scrawl at once. The African serving girl had never learned to write properly.
UNA KAM O, Sofia thinks. It’s Krio, and she understands the words. Solace is asking for help.
As she wipes the writing off with her sleeve she sees that there’s something else further down the mirror, written with the same pen, but in tiny, almost unhealthily neat handwriting.
Silfverberg Family, Duntzfelts Allé, Hellerup, Copenhagen.
She goes into the kitchen and sees that there are five used plates and the same number of glasses on the table.
There are two full bags of rubbish in front of the sink, and she pokes through them to get an idea of what was eaten. Three bags of crisps, five bars of chocolate, two packets of pork chops, three large bottles of fizzy drink, one roast chicken and four cartons of ice cream.
She can taste vomit in her mouth and can’t be bothered to look in the other bag, seeing as she knows what it contains.
Her diaphragm is aching and cramping, and her giddiness is slowly subsiding. She decides to tidy up and suppress whatever’s happened. The fact that she lost control and gorged on food and sweets.
She picks up a half-full bottle of wine and goes over to the fridge. She stops when she sees the notes, newspaper cuttings, ads and her own drawings, all stuck to the fridge door. Hundreds of them, layer upon layer, held up by magnets and tape.
A lengthy article about Natascha Kampusch, the girl who was held prisoner in a cellar outside Vienna in Austria. A detailed plan of the secret room Wolfgang Priklopil built for her.
On the right a shopping list in her own handwriting: Polystyrene. Carpet glue. Duct tape. Tarpaulin. Rubber wheels. Latch. Electric cable. Nails. Screws.
On the left a picture of a taser.
Several of the drawings are signed ‘Unsocial mate’.
Antisocial friend.
She sinks slowly down onto the floor.
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
WHEN JEANETTE DRIVES Johan to school he appears to be in a good mood, and it seems silly to keep going on about the events of the night before. At the breakfast table she had thanked him again for dinner, and he had actually given her a little smile. That would have to do.
The first thing she sees when she opens the door to her office is a package sitting on her desk.
Three yearbooks from Sigtuna College for the Humanities.
After a couple of minutes she finds her.
Victoria Bergman.
She reads the caption below the photograph. Runs her fingers along the rows of young students in identical uniforms, and concludes that Victoria Bergman is standing in the middle row, second from the right, is slightly shorter than average, and looks rather more childlike than the others.
The girl is thin, fair-haired and probably blue-eyed, and the first differences Jeanette notices are her serious expression and the fact that she doesn’t have breasts, unlike the other girls.
Jeanette thinks that there’s something familiar about this serious little girl.
She’s also struck by how ordinary she looks, which for some reason isn’t at all what she was expecting. The fact that she isn’t wearing make-up makes her look almost grey alongside the other young girls, all of whom seem to have made an effort to look as good as possible. She’s also the only one who isn’t smiling.