‘The police asked about you, but I didn’t say anything.’ Charlotte chews each syllable several times, as if the words taste bitter and she wants to get rid of them as quickly as possible. Sometimes her mouth moves but nothing comes out, and it looks like she’s spasming. She’s squirming uncomfortably, picking at imaginary crumbs on the table, then takes a deep breath and lets out a heavy sigh. ‘What do you really want?’ she asks wearily, and Madeleine can see more than just cruelty in the soon-to-be-dead woman’s eyes. Behind Charlotte’s green irises she can detect a hint of genuine bemusement.
Does she not understand? Madeleine wonders.
No, that can’t be possible. She was there, after all. She stood by and watched.
On the other hand, ignorance and innocence are just other names for evil, she thinks.
I hate, hate, hate …
She shakes her head. ‘Yes, I’m back, and I think you know why.’
Charlotte’s eyes flicker. ‘I don’t understand what you –’
‘You understand well enough,’ Madeleine interrupts. ‘But before you do what you have to do, I want the answers to three questions.’
‘What three questions?’
‘First I want to know, what was I doing with you two?’ Madeleine asks, but assumes she’s seeking the impossible. Like asking for the meaning of life, the point of everything, or how much sorrow a human being can bear.
‘That’s easy,’ Charlotte replies, as if she hasn’t understood the true meaning of the question. ‘Your grandfather, Bengt Bergman, knew P-O through their work for a foundation, and together they decided that we should look after you when your mum went a bit crazy.’
She’s only scratching the surface, Madeleine thinks.
‘But you were always so obstinate, and we were forced to treat you harshly,’ Charlotte goes on.
Madeleine thinks about the men who came to her room at night. Remembers the pain and shame. Everything that formed a hard little ball inside her that gradually became a stone and that has since become part of her body.
She can’t answer, because she doesn’t understand the question, Madeleine thinks. But nor have any of the others she’s killed. When she asked them, they just stared at her stupidly, as if she were talking another language.
‘Who made the decision about my operation?’ Madeleine asks without commenting on what Charlotte has just said.
Charlotte looks at her coldly. ‘P-O and I did,’ she says. ‘Obviously after consulting doctors and psychologists. You used to fight and bite, and the other children were scared of you, so in the end we gave up. There really wasn’t any other option.’
Madeleine remembers how they got the voice in her head to shut up in Copenhagen, but since then she hasn’t been able to feel anything. Nothing at all.
After Copenhagen only ice cubes have any taste, and Madeleine realises that here too she’s reached a dead end. She’s never going to know why.
She has been searching for answers, and has killed those who couldn’t bring themselves to share the truth that then, now and forever after is conspicuous in its utter absence.
Just one question remains.
‘Did you know my real mum?’
Charlotte Silfverberg starts digging through her handbag and holds out a photograph. ‘This is your crazy mother,’ she snarls.
They go out on deck together. The rain has stopped and the sky is still. The Baltic night is blue with damp, and the dark sea is unsettled.
The rolling waves strike threateningly at the stern of the MS Cinderella with a powerful hiss, and the breaking seawater hits the hull with full force and throws up a thin cloud of mist that falls on the foredeck like gentle rain.
Charlotte is staring blankly ahead of her, and Madeleine knows that she has decided. She has made her choice.
There’s nothing more to say. Words are finished, and only action remains.
She sees Charlotte go over to the railing. The woman she has never called mother bends over and takes off her boots.
She climbs up onto the railing and throws herself into the darkness without a sound.
The MS Cinderella forges relentlessly ahead. Doesn’t even slow down.
What am I doing? Madeleine thinks, feeling pointlessness penetrate the wall of determination. Am I going to be free when they’re all gone at last?
No, she realises, and her clarity is a white page being turned in a dark room.
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
IT’S ALREADY LATE morning and Jeanette is sitting at her desk with her eyes firmly fixed on a vent in the ceiling, but she’s not aware of what she’s looking at because her mind is busy thinking about Sofia Zetterlund.
After the trip to Hundudden, Jeanette had gone straight home, utterly wiped out. She had called Sofia just before midnight, but hadn’t got an answer, nor had Sofia replied to the two or three texts she’d sent after that.
As usual, she thinks, feeling very alone. It’s time for Sofia to take the initiative. Jeanette doesn’t want to be clingy, there’s nothing less attractive than that, and she’s not about to call again. Besides, ?ke has phoned to remind her about lunch. They’ve agreed to meet at a restaurant down on Bergsgatan, even if she can’t honestly say that she’s looking forward to it.
Jeanette starts to play with a ballpoint pen as she glances at the piles of papers relating to the two dead women, Hannah ?stlund and Jessica Friberg.
Her hopes of reopening the cases involving the fires at the Bergmans’ house and Dürer’s boat were dashed the moment Billing snorted at her and said she was a conspiracy theorist. Besides, according to him those cases had already been thoroughly investigated.
There’s a knock at the door, and ?hlund looks in. ‘Sorry,’ he says breathlessly. ‘I didn’t have time to get to the hotel yesterday, so I looked in this morning instead. Which turned out to be rather fortuitous.’
‘Come in.’ Jeanette bites the end of the pen. ‘What do you mean, fortuitous?’
He sits down opposite her. ‘I spoke to the receptionist who saw Madeleine Duchamp when she checked in and out.’ He laughs. ‘If I’d gone yesterday evening I wouldn’t have seen him. But he was on duty today.’
‘And what did he say about Duchamp?’
?hlund clears his throat. ‘A woman between twenty and thirty. Travelling alone, spoke poor English. Evidently they don’t keep copies of the personal details of EU citizens, but the receptionist remembered that the woman had dark hair in the picture on her driving licence.’
Dark hair, Jeanette thinks. ‘So he described her hair on her driving licence. I’m more interested in what she looked like in reality.’
?hlund clears his throat again. ‘He said she was pretty, but seemed extremely shy. Wouldn’t look him in the eye, just stared down at the floor, and had her face hidden under a big woolly hat.’
Great, Jeanette thinks. Not much of a description. ‘Anything else? Tall, short?’
‘Average height, ordinary build. Considering that he’s a receptionist, I have to say he was very bad at remembering a face. But there was one thing that struck him.’
‘What’s that?’
‘He said the woman came down several times that evening to ask for ice cubes.’
‘Ice cubes?’
‘Yes, he thought it was a bit odd, and I’m inclined to agree with him.’
Jeanette smiles. ‘Me too. Well, our receptionist doesn’t sound like he could give much information to a police artist. What do you think?’