‘How’s the investigation going, anyway?’ Sofia asks.
Jeanette is reminded of how little they’ve spoken to each other recently, and how hectic the past few days have been for her.
‘I probably shouldn’t say any more over the phone.’ It would be better to tell her everything when they meet face-to-face. ‘Listen …’ Jeanette tries. ‘Maybe we could –’
‘I know what you’re about to say. You want to see me, and I want to see you as well. But not today. Could you come and pick me up from the practice tomorrow afternoon?’
Jeanette smiles. That was a long time coming, she thinks. ‘That suits me fine. I couldn’t do tonight anyway, because I want to see Johan before he goes off to London with ?ke. I –’
‘Look, I’ve got to go now,’ Sofia interrupts. ‘I’ve got a client in five minutes, and you said you were pretty busy. We can deal with the rest tomorrow. OK?’
‘OK. But –’ The line goes dead.
Jeanette feels empty, as if all the energy has drained out of her. If only Sofia weren’t so difficult, so unpredictable, she thinks.
She feels dizzy all of a sudden, her pulse is racing, and she has to rest her hands on the top of her desk.
Take it easy now. Breathe … Go home. You’re stressed out. Pack it in for the day.
No. First lunch with ?ke, then out to Johan Printz v?g in Hammarby to find out what’s happened to Ulrika Wendin.
She sits down again and looks at the mess on her desk as she takes deep, slow breaths. The evidence against Hannah ?stlund and Jessica Friberg. The photographs that confirm the women’s guilt. Case closed and Billing happy.
But there’s definitely something not quite right.
Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
SOFIA FEELS EXHAUSTED after her conversation with Jeanette. She’s sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of white wine, even though she knows she ought to be at the practice to see a client.
Getting to know yourself isn’t that different from getting to know other people, she reflects. It takes time, and there’s always something you don’t understand, something that slips through your fingers. Something contradictory.
It’s been that way with Victoria for a long time.
But Sofia feels that she’s made a lot of progress in recent days. While she still has trouble controlling Victoria, they’ve started to get closer to each other.
It had been Sofia who had called Jeanette, but Victoria who ended the call, and she can remember every word that was spoken. That isn’t usually the case.
Victoria had lied to Jeanette, saying she was at the practice waiting for a client, and Sofia was one hundred per cent aware of the lie, and even encouraged it.
It had been their shared lie, not just Victoria’s.
In fact she also remembers parts of the previous day’s events at the Clarion Hotel, for the hour or so when Victoria had taken over. Obviously she remembers Carolina Glanz turning up, and what happened afterwards, but she can also remember fragments of the conversation Victoria had with the German businessman, and has a reasonably clear image of what he looked like, how he moved.
This is a positive development, and it helps her understand what might have happened with her memory lapses recently. When she wakes up in bed in the morning with muddy boots and has no idea what she’s been doing during the night.
She’s starting to get an idea of why Victoria has spent countless evenings and nights getting drunk and picking up men in bars. She thinks it’s got something to do with liberation.
In spite of everything, she, Sofia Zetterlund, has been the leading personality for almost twenty years now, and she has a feeling that Victoria is trying to make her presence known through her misbehaviour. Trying to shake Sofia up a bit and remind her that she exists, and that her will and her feelings are just as important as Sofia’s.
She drinks the last of the wine, gets up and moves her chair closer to the stove before turning on the exhaust fan and lighting a cigarette. Victoria wouldn’t have done that, she thinks. She’d have smoked at the table and drunk three glasses of wine instead of one. Red, rather than white.
I am someone Victoria invented, she thinks. In other words, nothing started with me, I’m just a means of survival, a way of being normal, like everyone else. A way of suppressing the memories of abuse. But it didn’t last.
When she’s been at her worst, she has imagined the kitchen as an autopsy lab, and that all the bottles and jars contained formalin, glycerine and potassium acetate, substances used for embalming. Where she’s previously seen surgical instruments used for dissection she now sees a perfectly ordinary toolbox half open in the cleaning cupboard, with a hacksaw blade sticking up next to the shaft of a small hammer.
The smoke swirls up towards the filter and she can make out the blades of the fan behind it. She looks up under the extractor hood and sees a faintly vibrating shimmer of shadows from the spinning fan blades. Like the prelude to an epileptic migraine.
Struer, she thinks.
There were big fans in the cellar under Viggo Dürer’s house in Jutland, equipment meant to dry out pig meat, and sometimes the dull rumble down there had kept her awake all night and given her a headache. The door to the cellar had always been kept shut.
That’s how it should be, she thinks. The memories should come naturally, when I’m not making an effort.
It’s like holding on to a slippery bar of soap. It works if you’re relaxed, but if you squeeze too tight you lose it.
Relax, she thinks. Don’t try to remember, just let it happen.
Johan Printz V?g – Ulrika Wendin’s Apartment
HURTIG PICKS JEANETTE up outside the V?stermalm shopping centre. She opens the door and jumps into the passenger seat.
Hurtig turns into St Eriksgatan. ‘So it was Ulrika Wendin’s grandmother who called you?’
‘Yes. She’s been trying to get hold of Ulrika, without any luck,’ Jeanette says. ‘She’ll be waiting for us outside the apartment with the keys.’
Something’s happened to the girl, she thinks. Take it easy. Don’t assume the worst until we know more. Ulrika might simply have met a guy, fallen in love and spent a few days in bed with him.
‘How did lunch go?’ Hurtig asks.
To start with, ?ke had wanted to talk about Johan and how he was living now.
He had looked thinner than she remembered, he’d let his cropped hair grow out, and she reluctantly had to admit to herself that she missed him. Maybe you became blind to each other over time? Start to see only the problems rather than the things you once liked?
But then ?ke went on to boast about his success and how much having Alexandra Kowalska as his agent had meant for him.
After that he took out the divorce forms.
Already signed, the same signature he used on his paintings, and she reacted with a short but intense feeling of disappointment.