She’ll have the answers tomorrow, and if she’s right it will mean that the case can be sent to the prosecutor’s office and declared closed.
But first they need to search the women’s homes. Find evidence of their culpability, then it will be up to her and Hurtig to put everything together and hand it over to von Kwist. Not that she thinks she’s done a particularly good job. Just followed a winding path and, with the help of a bit of luck and experience, reached a conclusion.
Fredrika Grünewald and Per-Ola Silfverberg had been murdered by two vengeful women.
Folie à deux. Symbiotic psychosis, as it’s also known, occurs almost exclusively within families. For instance, a mother and a daughter living apart but sharing a mental illness. Although Hannah ?stlund and Jessica Friberg aren’t actually related, they did grow up together, attended the same schools and then chose to live close to each other.
Someone had left yellow tulips beside Grünewald. And the night Karl Lundstr?m died he also received yellow tulips. Could they have killed him as well? An overdose of morphine? Well, why not? Karl Lundstr?m and Per-Ola Silfverberg were both paedophiles who had abused their own daughters. That must be the connection. Yellow tulips and Sigtuna College are the common factors.
Revenge, she thinks. But how the hell could it have such extreme consequences?
Jeanette gets the loaf out of the freezer, breaks off a couple of slices and puts them in the toaster.
She realises she can’t expect to find answers to everything.
Jeanette, she thinks, you have to learn that if there’s one thing you can’t expect as a police officer, it’s peace of mind. You can’t understand everything.
The toaster rattles, and the phone rings. ?ke, of course.
He clears his throat. ‘Yes, I want to take Johan to London this weekend. A football match. Just him and me. Just be a dad, I suppose …’
Dad? So you want to do that now, do you? she thinks. ‘OK. Is he up for it?’
?ke laughs quietly. ‘Oh yes, not much doubt about that. London derby, you know.’
?ke falls silent, and Jeanette thinks about their life together, which seems so far away now.
‘Erm …’ he finally says, ‘do you fancy having lunch before Johan and I set off?’
She hesitates. ‘Lunch? Have you got time for that?’
‘Yes, that’s why I’m asking,’ he says, sounding annoyed. ‘How about tomorrow?’
‘The day after would be better. But I’m waiting to get the go-ahead to search a couple of houses, so we might have to keep it provisional.’
He sighs. ‘OK. Let me know when you can make it, then.’ And he hangs up.
She mirrors his sigh down the dead line, gets up from the table and takes the toast from the toaster. Not good, she thinks as she gets the butter. This isn’t good for Johan. Not a hint of stability. She remembers the comment Hurtig made. ‘At that age everything seems to get blown out of proportion,’ he had said, and in the case of ?stlund and Friberg that couldn’t have been more true.
But what about Johan? Her own teenager? First the separation, then what happened at Gr?na Lund, and now all this bloody shuttling between her, who hardly has any time for him, and ?ke and Alexandra, who are behaving like teenagers themselves and hardly know what they’re going to be doing in two days’ time.
She forces herself to eat the last piece of dry, cold toast, then goes back to the phone. She needs someone to talk to, and the only person who qualifies is Sofia Zetterlund.
The autumn evening is full of stars and glitteringly beautiful, and just as Jeanette is wondering what it is about people that makes everything go so completely fucking wrong, Sofia answers.
‘I miss you,’ she says.
‘Me too.’ Jeanette feels warmth returning. ‘It’s lonely out here.’
Sofia’s breathing feels very close. ‘Here too. I want to see you again soon.’
Jeanette shuts her eyes and imagines that Sofia really is there with her, that she’s lying against her shoulder and whispering in her ear, right beside her.
‘I dozed off a little while ago,’ Sofia says. ‘I dreamed about you.’
Jeanette still has her eyes closed as she leans back in her chair and smiles. ‘What did you dream?’
Sofia laughs quietly, almost shyly.
‘I was drowning, and you rescued me.’
Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
SOFIA ZETTERLUND PUTS the phone down and sinks onto the floor. She’s just been speaking to Jeanette, but doesn’t know what they were talking about.
A vague idea of mutual signs of affection. An indistinct longing for warmth.
Why is it so complicated to say what you really think? she wonders. And why do I have so much trouble not lying?
She feels that she needs to pee so she gets up and goes into the bathroom, and as she pulls down her pants and sits down she realises that she must have been to the Clarion Hotel earlier. The man she must have met has left traces on the inside of her thighs.
A thin crust of dried semen is stuck to her pubic hair, and she washes herself at the sink. Afterwards she dries herself carefully using the guest towel and then goes back into the room behind the bookcase. The room that had once been Gao’s, but which is now a museum to Victoria’s erratic path through life. Odysseus, she thinks. The answers are in here.
In here is the key that fits the lock on the past.
She leafs through Victoria Bergman’s papers, trying to organise the sketches, notes and torn-out newspaper articles. She knows what she’s looking at, yet still doubts it.
She sees a life that was once hers, and that, when reconstructed, becomes, if not her own, then at least a life. Victoria’s life. Victoria Bergman’s life.
It’s a tale of decay.
One name keeps recurring in many of the notes, and it rouses strong feelings in her.
Madeleine.
Her daughter and sister.
The child she once had with her own father.
The girl she was forced to give up for adoption.
Among the notes about Madeleine there is also a photograph, a Polaroid picture of a girl aged about ten standing on a beach, dressed in red and white.
Sofia inspects the picture carefully and is convinced that it’s her daughter. She recognises some of her own features in the way the girl looks. Her face looks troubled and the photograph makes Sofia feel very unsettled. What sort of an adult has Madeleine become?
On another sheet she reads about Martin. The boy who vanished during a trip to the fair, and who was later found drowned in the Fyris River. The boy she hit on the head with a stone and dumped in the water. The police wrote his death off as an accident, but ever since she has been living with the guilt that her actions inexorably brought with them.