Nine minutes later she gets out of the train at Hammarbyh?jden and walks through the barrier with no problem. No ticket inspector either on the train or by the exit.
Finn Malmgrens v?g, past the school and through the little patch of woodland between the houses. Johan Printz v?g. In through the front door, up the stairs, unlock the door and in.
A heap of post. Advertising flyers and free papers.
She shuts and locks the door, and puts the safety chain on.
As she sinks down onto the hall floor she starts to cry. The pile of paper is soft against her back and she lies on her side.
In all the years she has lived with boyfriends who hit her, she has never cried.
When she came home from school and found her mum completely out of it on the sofa she didn’t cry.
Her grandmother had described her as a well-brought-up child. A quiet child who never cried.
But now she does, and as she does so she hears someone in the kitchen.
Ulrika Wendin gets to her feet and walks towards the kitchen door.
There’s a stranger standing in the kitchen, and before she has time to react he punches her on the nose.
She hears it crack.
Edsviken – Lundstr?m House
LINNEA LUNDSTR?M FLUSHES the charred remnants of the burned letter from her father down the toilet and goes back to her room.
Everything is in order.
She thinks about her psychologist, Sofia Zetterlund, who told her how Charles Darwin got the idea for his book The Origin of Species. How it appeared in his mind in the space of a second, and how he spent the rest of his life gathering evidence for his thesis.
Sofia also told her how Einstein’s theory of relativity appeared in his mind in less time than it takes to clap your hands.
Linnea Lundstr?m understands how they felt, because she is now looking at life with exactly the same clarity.
Life, which had once been a mystery, is now a dull reality, and she herself is just a shell.
Unlike Darwin, she doesn’t have to search for evidence, and unlike Einstein, she needs no theory. Some of the evidence is inside her, like pink scars on her soul. More is visible on her body, in the form of injuries and damage to her genitals.
In absolute terms, the evidence is there when she wakes in the morning and the bed is soaked with urine, or when she gets nervous and can’t hold it in.
Her father formulated the thesis long ago. At a time when she herself could say just a few words. In a paddling pool in the garden in Kristianstad he had put his thesis into practice, and since then the thesis had gone on to become a lifelong truth.
She remembers his soothing words on the edge of the bed.
His hands on her body.
Their shared bedtime prayer.
‘I long to touch you and satisfy your desires. Seeing your pleasure makes me happy.’
Linnea Lundstr?m pulls the chair away from the desk and puts it under the hook in the ceiling. She knows the lines by heart.
‘I want to make love to you and give you all the love that you deserve. I want to caress you tenderly inside and out, the way only I can.’
She takes her belt from her jeans. Black leather. Rivets.
‘I take pleasure from looking at you, everything about you gives me desire and pleasure.’
A noose. A step up onto the chair and the buckle of the belt around the hook in the ceiling.
‘You will experience a much higher level of satisfaction and pleasure.’
The belt around her neck. The sound of the television down in the living room.
Annette with a box of chocolates and a glass of wine and Swedish Idol.
Maths test tomorrow. She’s been studying all week and knows that she’d get a good mark.
A step out into thin air. The audience applauds loudly when the studio manager holds up a sign.
A little step, and the chair topples over to the right.
‘It is truthfully an expression of the divine.’
Hammarbyh?jden – a Suburb
ULRIKA WENDIN DOESN’T know how it’s happened, but she’s still on her feet. Her face is numb and she’s staring straight into the stranger’s eyes. For a moment she thinks she can see something like sympathy. A flicker of pity.
Then she comes back to reality and takes a couple of stumbling steps backwards, out into the hall, while the man watches her in silence.
Then everything happens very fast, but to Ulrika it seems to last an eternity.
She throws herself to the side, and slips on the pile of post, but manages to keep her balance before she grabs at the door handle.
Fuck, she thinks as she hears rapid footsteps behind her.
Both the lock and the security chain.
Her hands are familiar with the movements, yet it still feels like she’s fiddling with the chain for several minutes. As she throws herself out through the door she feels a hand on her back.
Her neck feels constricted. She can hear him panting right behind her and realises that he’s caught hold of the hood of her jacket.
She doesn’t think. Doesn’t even have time to feel frightened. She’s running solely on adrenalin. She twists free of his grasp, turns and kicks out as hard as she can, hoping for the best.
She hits him between the legs.
Run, run, for fuck’s sake, she thinks, but her legs won’t obey her.
She stands and watches the thickset man sink onto the stone landing out in the stairwell.
Only when she sees the man’s contorted face looking up at her does she realise that her whole body is shaking.
He snarls something inaudible and tries to get up.
And then she runs.
Down the stairs. Out of the front door and straight ahead. Past the bike shed. Around the tree by the cycle path and in among the shadows of the trees. Not looking back. Just running.
There’s no one in sight. She dare not run back, and in front of her is a little hill covered in bushes, and on the far side the lights of the apartment blocks.
Dusk. Tall pine trees, the ground stony and uneven, and why the hell did she run into the woods?
Then she sees him.
Ten metres away. He grins at her, and she thinks he’s got a knife in his hand. His arm is outstretched, as if he’s holding something, but she can’t see the blade. He walks towards her quite calmly, and she quickly realises why. Her only way out is the hill behind her, covered in tangled bushes.
She takes a chance. Turns and runs straight into the darkness among the twigs and thorns.
She screams. As loud as she can, and she does not look back.
Clambering upward, the branches scratching her face and arms.
She thinks she can hear his breathing, but it might just be her own.
She screams again. But it just sounds tight and rattling, and makes her breathless. Then she’s through the bushes. A few stunted pines, and the hill slopes downward and she runs.
The back of a building. Some cellar steps. She feels her stomach lurch when she sees that the door is open and the light is on inside.
If the light’s on, it means there’s someone there. Someone who can help her.
She pushes the last branches aside and throws herself down the steps, into the basement. ‘Help,’ she croaks. A corridor with storage compartment doors. ‘Help me,’ she repeats.