For more than twenty years the memories of her other selves have lain buried like sharp splinters deep inside her – shattered pieces of another time and another place.
She starts walking, speeds up and jogs to the corner, but the woman has vanished.
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
IT’S LATE IN the afternoon in October and Jeanette is sitting in her office with a sheet of A3 in front of her containing a diagram of all the names that have cropped up during the investigation.
She’s put the names in groups and marked the relationships between them, and as she picks up her pen to draw a line from one name to another, Hurtig comes rushing into her office, just as the phone rings.
Jeanette can see the call is from ?ke and gestures to Hurtig to wait.
He looks frustrated. ‘Don’t answer that,’ he says. ‘We have to leave.’
Jeanette stares at Hurtig and holds two fingers up in the air. ‘?ke, I can’t talk right now.’
He sighs. ‘That doesn’t matter. We need to talk –’
‘Not now!’ she snaps. ‘I’ve got to go, I’ll be home in an hour or so.’
Hurtig shakes his head. ‘No, no, no,’ he says in a low voice. ‘You won’t be home that soon.’
‘?ke, hang on a moment.’ She turns to Hurtig. ‘What did you say?’
‘Annette Lundstr?m has called. We’ve got to –’
‘Just a moment.’ She picks up the phone again. ‘Like I said. I can’t talk now.’
‘As usual, then.’ ?ke sighs. The line goes quiet. He’s hung up, and Jeanette feels her cheeks burn as tears well up.
Hurtig is holding out Jeanette’s jacket. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to.’
‘Don’t worry.’ She pulls her jacket on as she herds Hurtig out, turns off the light and closes the door.
While they jog down the stairs to the garage Hurtig tells Jeanette what’s happened.
Annette Lundstr?m has contacted them. Someone’s put a photograph through her letter box.
A Polaroid of someone she recognises.
She didn’t want to say more over the phone.
Hurtig drives fast. First the Essinge motorway, then Norrtull and Sveaplan. He weaves between lanes, blowing his horn angrily at cars that block the way in spite of the blue lights and siren.
‘Why did she call you?’ Jeanette asks.
Hurtig brakes hard for a bus pulling up at a bus stop. ‘I don’t know.’
After the roundabout at Roslagstull the traffic thins and they turn onto the E18.
‘Is ?ke fucking with you?’
The outside lane is free of cars, and Hurtig speeds up. Jeanette sees that they’re going more than one hundred and fifty kilometres an hour now.
‘No, I can’t really say that. It’s probably something to do with Johan, and …’ She can feel herself getting close to tears again, this time not out of anger, but of a crushing feeling of not being good enough.
‘He’s OK. Johan, I mean.’
Jeanette realises that Hurtig is glancing at her, and that he’s trying to be discreet. Jens Hurtig can be abrupt and taciturn, but Jeanette knows that he’s quite sensitive under the surface, and realises that he cares about how she’s feeling.
‘But he’s at a difficult age,’ Hurtig goes on. ‘Hormones and all that crap. And with ?ke moving out as well –’ He stops himself, as if he’s aware of how clumsy the comment was. ‘There’s something funny about it, though.’
‘About what?’
‘About that age. Considering what happened in Sigtuna. Hannah ?stlund, Jessica Friberg and Victoria Bergman. I mean, at that age everything seems to get blown out of proportion. Like the first time you fall in love.’ Hurtig smiles, and seems almost embarrassed.
What Jeanette experiences at that moment must be one of the human intellect’s great mysteries. An igniting spark. A flash of genius.
She already knows who is in the photograph Annette Lundstr?m has received.
But she says nothing.
They drive the last few kilometres in silence.
Now that everything has fallen into place, Jeanette wants to get her suspicions confirmed as quickly as possible.
As they turn into the drive they see Annette Lundstr?m standing on the steps in front of the large house. Jeanette thinks she looks tired and shrunken.
While they’re getting out of the car a man approaches from the neighbouring house. He introduces himself and says he saw a woman he didn’t recognise put something through the Lundstr?ms’ letter box earlier that day.
‘She came walking from down there.’ He points along the street. ‘And because we look out for one another round here, well …’ He falls silent, and Jeanette understands what he means.
The Swedish suspicion of strangers, she thinks.
‘And you didn’t recognise her?’ Hurtig asks.
‘No. Never saw her before. Fair-haired. Nothing special about her clothes. Nothing remarkable at all, really. She went up to the letter box and put something through it. I didn’t see what.’
Jeanette looks at Hurtig, who merely nods back. The man seems credible.
‘OK, well, thanks for your help,’ Jeanette says, then turns towards Annette Lundstr?m while the man goes back home.
They go into the hall together, then into a bare living room.
A quantity of moving boxes, empty curtain rails, lots of dust.
Annette Lundstr?m sits down on one of the boxes while Jeanette stops just inside the door and looks around.
There are pale patches on the walls where paintings once hung. Holes and marks from dirty hands.
There’s a bottle of cognac on the windowsill, next to an overflowing ashtray. The air in the room is suffocating.
What had been a warm and welcoming room just a few days before is now just a dirty, empty space. A nothing, between one place and another.
A home that has been abandoned for another.
‘It’s all my fault. I should have said something earlier.’ Annette’s voice is monotonous, and Jeanette can’t help thinking that it might not be just the alcohol making her seem listless. She’s probably on tranquillizers.
Jeanette leans against the door frame. ‘What should you have said?’
She looks at the woman’s eyes, red from crying. They seem distant, and it takes her a long time before she answers.
‘I should have been honest the last time we met. I think it’s all about the past. Fredrika wasn’t a good person, and she’s got a lot of enemies … She is … or was …’ Annette falls silent. It looks like she’s having trouble breathing and Jeanette hopes she isn’t about to start hyperventilating and get hysterical.
‘It’s her in the photograph,’ Annette says, picking up an unstamped envelope and holding it out to Jeanette.
The lack of a stamp confirms the neighbour’s statement that it had been delivered by hand.
Jeanette takes the envelope, puts it on the windowsill and pulls on a pair of latex gloves before opening it.
‘It’s her!’ Annette says.
Jeanette stares at the photograph, a Polaroid of the dead Fredrika Grünewald.
A lifeless face, its mouth wide open, its blank eyes contorted in the anguished moment of death.
Blood is running down Fredrika’s pale blouse, and the piano wire has cut deep into her rigid neck.