The door. Close the door.
She turns round. Hears his panting breath outside, approaching the steps. With a final burst of effort she rushes for the door and slams it shut.
Two seconds. She has time to notice that there are some removal boxes in the corridor, big cardboard boxes and on top of them are some rag rugs. One of the doors has been wedged open.
‘Is anyone there?’
No answer. Her forehead is wet with sweat, and she’s breathing heavily. Her heart is pounding so hard she thinks it’s going to burst through her skin. There’s no one here.
The door handle. He’s tugging at it. Then she hears a rattle from the lock.
Keys?
But how did he get into her flat, anyway? Has he got keys?
Never mind.
She turns round to continue along the corridor, but at that moment the light in the ceiling goes out. The door is still rattling, and beside it the light switch is glowing like a red dot in the darkness. But she moves away. Doesn’t dare go closer to the door.
She feels her way further in. Sticking close to the wall, and only now does she notice the smell.
A cloying, sickly smell. Sewage? Excrement? She doesn’t know.
The corridor continues to the left and she goes round the corner. No light switch, and she hurries onward, deeper into the darkness. The storage compartments are made of chicken wire. She knows exactly what they look like, even though she can’t see anything and can only feel the metal netting with her hands.
Then she sees another red light switch just a couple of metres away.
She hears the outside door open, and he switches the light on.
Right in front of her, five metres away, a closed door. No latch. Just a keyhole.
On the left there’s a niche in the wall containing a large metal container and a load of pipes.
Enough space to hide behind.
She quickly creeps over, tucks herself in among the pipes and presses against the wall.
This is where the smell is coming from.
Sulphur, she thinks. The big metal container is a fat separator, and she has a vague recollection that there’s a pizza restaurant in the building.
She hears him come closer. The footsteps stop, very close by.
He moves again. She shuts her eyes. Hopes he can’t hear her breathing and the pounding of her heart.
As long as she doesn’t start sniffing. The blow to her nose was pretty severe. She can’t breathe through it and she’s bleeding. Her top lip feels warm.
She realises that it’s hopeless.
Completely hopeless.
She can see his boots in the gap between the fat separator and one of the thick pipes. He’s just standing there, less than a metre away from her. Not saying anything.
She stays where she is, squeezed between the metal container and the wall. The seconds go by and she thinks a good minute must have passed before he starts hitting the pipe with something.
A ringing sound, then another, and another. Light blows, and she knows it’s the handle of the knife.
There’s a sour taste in her mouth, and it catches at the back of her throat.
He starts to pace up and down. His boots creak and the banging against the metal pipe gets louder, as if he’s losing patience.
Then she sees what’s in the corner, less than an arm’s length from her. Some narrow copper pipes, sawn off at the top. The spikes could do some damage if they struck the right spot.
She reaches out for them, but stops.
Her open hand is shaking, and she realises that it’s pointless.
She hasn’t got the energy. Hasn’t got the energy to do a bloody thing.
Just kill me, she thinks. Kill me.
Tantoberget – Island of S?dermalm
SHE SEES THE car approaching and takes shelter behind some bushes.
Behind her, far below, is the greenery of Tantolunden, and the sun is just visible as a thin fringe above the rooftops. The narrow spire of Essinge Church is a thin spike in front of Smedsl?tten and ?lsten.
Down on Tantolunden’s large area of grass a few people are still defying the cold. Two of them are throwing a Frisbee, even though it’s almost dark. Over towards the shore she can see someone taking an evening swim.
The car stops, the engine cuts out and silence descends.
During all those years in Danish institutions she has tried to forget, but always failed. Now she is going to finish what she once made up her mind to do, long, long ago.
The women in the car will make it possible for her to return home.
Hannah ?stlund and Jessica Friberg must be sacrificed.
Apart from the boy at Gr?na Lund, she has been dealing with sick people. Taking the boy had been a mistake, and when she realised that she let him live.
When she injected him with pure alcohol he had passed out and she had put the pig mask on him. They had spent the whole night out at Waldemarsudde, and when she finally realised that he wasn’t her half-brother she had regretted what she’d done.
The boy was innocent, but the women waiting for her in the car aren’t.
To her disappointment she doesn’t feel any joy, not even relief.
The visit to V?rmd? had also been a disappointment. Grandma and Grandad’s house was a burned-out shell and they were both dead.
She had been looking forward to seeing the expression on their faces when she stepped through the door and confronted them.
His expression when she told him who her father was.
Daddy and Grandad, Bengt Bergman the bastard.
Foster-father P-O, on the other hand, had understood. He had even begged for forgiveness and offered her money. As if his fortune were large enough to compensate for his deeds.
There isn’t that much money in the world, she thinks.
At first the pathetic Fredrika Grünewald hadn’t recognised her. Which wasn’t really so strange, because it had been ten years since they last met at Viggo Dürer’s farm in Struer.
That was when Fredrika had told her about Sigtuna.
How Fredrika had stood by and enjoyed the show.
Sometimes lives had to be sacrificed. And through death those lives took on meaning.
She remembers their blank eyes, the sweat and the collective excitement in the room.
She pulls her cobalt-blue coat tighter around her and makes up her mind to go over to the car and the two women she knows all about.
When she puts her hands in her pockets to make sure she hasn’t forgotten the Polaroid pictures her right hand stings.
She didn’t regard it as much of a sacrifice to cut off her ring finger.
You always get caught by the past, she thinks.
Part III
Denmark, 1994
You mustn’t think that summer will come, unless someone starts it off
And makes everything summery, then the flowers will soon be here.
I make it so that the flowers bloom, I make the pasture green,
And now summer is here, because I’ve just removed the snow.
THE BEACH WAS deserted, apart from them and the seagulls.