She shrugs her shoulders. ‘Probably not too much, considering that it was put together from the evidence of one single witness who may have seen the person who abducted the boys. And that witness is an eight-year-old girl who’s blind in one eye and couldn’t say how old the man might be. You remember what Lowynsky said? In one interview the girl said he was forty, in another that he was really old, but of course we both know you can hardly ever rely on a child’s estimate of someone’s age.’
He drops the remainder of the kebab in a rubbish bin before they go back inside police headquarters, and opens the bag of chips as they enter the lift. Jeanette’s mobile rings, and her face breaks into a smile.
‘Hi. How are you getting on?’
Hurtig guesses that it’s Sofia Zetterlund. He looks at Jeanette’s face as she talks. Yep, she’s definitely in love, he thinks.
She presses the lift button repeatedly, as if that might make it skip a few floors and get up quicker.
‘Of course. That’s sounds great. My car’s broken down, so I’ll get the metro and pick you up, then we’ll take it as it comes.’
Hurtig assumes they’re going out for a meal, then back to Jeanette’s in Gamla Enskede, where they can have the whole house to themselves now that Johan is with ?ke.
And it’s Friday night as well, so they can have a drink or two.
‘And talk about anything apart from work,’ Jeanette says, laughing. ‘Sounds good. Big hug.’
Hurtig wolfs down the chips as the lift pings and the doors slide open. Jeanette puts her phone back in her jacket pocket and looks at him thoughtfully. ‘I think I might be in a relationship with Sofia,’ she says, to his surprise.
Mariatorget – Sofia Zetterlund’s Office
SOFIA HAS BEEN sitting at her desk for more than two hours, adding to her reading about Andrei Chikatilo with research both on the Internet and in the books she’s got in her office. She’s starting to compile a fair bit of material that might be of interest to Jeanette.
Over a period of some ten years Chikatilo killed more than fifty people in an area around the eastern Black Sea, in southern Ukraine and Russia. He killed boys and girls, and usually castrated the boys, almost without exception. On several occasions he ate part of his victims.
She looks down at her notes.
EXTREME PREDATORY BEHAVIOUR, CANNIBALISM, CASTRATION, NEED TO BE SEEN.
Why didn’t he conceal his victims better? she wonders, thinking about both Chikatilo and the murderer in Stockholm. That’s actually a question that has never been answered.
Sofia believes that the murderer wants to talk about his shame. It might sound contradictory, but someone driven by such peculiar sexual urges probably became aware very early in life that he was different, a perverse individual. Revealing his shame in public isn’t just a show of regret, it’s a way of seeking contact. She also has an idea about the castrations that she hopes to be able to explain to Jeanette.
She looks at the clock on the computer screen. In just under an hour, she thinks. She’s aware that it might be difficult to persuade Jeanette that her conclusions fit, because they feel far too morbid to accept.
When Chikatilo killed women, he ate their wombs. In the cases of the immigrant boys, the police hadn’t found any evidence of cannibalism, but the bodies had been missing their genitals. Her theory isn’t fully formulated yet, and she needs to think it through a couple more times before embarking on a discussion with Jeanette that could spoil the whole evening.
What she’s read about Chikatilo has disgusted her, and she’s going to have to ration the details.
Cannibalism, she thinks, looking at the empty chair on the other side of the desk.
She remembers sitting here on a couple of occasions and discussing the phenomenon with Samuel Bai when he had come to her for therapy back in the spring. Samuel had said that the rebel army used cannibalism as a way of violating and humiliating their victims, but that there had also been a ritualistic aspect to it.
Eating a heart had been a way of appropriating the enemy’s strength.
What else had he said?
Suddenly she can feel her headache coming back, the same throbbing ache as earlier in the day. Flashing in front of her eyes, a jagged stripe making her vision lose all focus. An epileptic migraine. But the attack is over in thirty seconds or so.
Sofia gets up and goes to the filing cabinet where she keeps her records. She unlocks it and quickly finds Samuel’s file and takes it back to the desk with her.
When she opens it she finds that it only contains one sheet of paper, and when she reads what she wrote it becomes clear that it’s just the notes of the first exploratory session, as well as a few lines from the two following meetings. Nothing from their other sessions.
Sofia takes out the diary where she records all her appointments.
They met nine times in May. In June, July and August he had come to see her twice a week, always punctual, never missing a session. From her diary it is abundantly clear that Samuel came to see her a total of forty-five times. She knows that’s right, and doesn’t need to count again. Her records also show that they met fifteen times on a Monday, ten times on Tuesdays, seven times on Wednesdays, and eight times on Thursdays. They only met on a Friday five times.
Sofia closes the diary and goes out to see Ann-Britt.
‘Would you mind checking how many times Samuel Bai came to see me, please?’ she says. ‘I think I may have forgotten to invoice social services in H?sselby.’
Ann-Britt frowns and looks surprised.
‘No, you haven’t,’ she says. ‘It’s been paid.’
‘OK, but how many times did he come?’
‘It was only three times,’ Ann-Britt says. ‘You decided not to see him again after he attacked you. Surely you remember that?’
Just as her headache strikes with renewed force, from the corner of her eye Sofia sees Jeanette come through the door.
Mariatorget – Sofia Zetterlund’s Office
‘SORRY I’M A bit late,’ Jeanette says, giving her a hug. ‘It’s been a hell of a day.’
Sofia is standing stock-still, frozen by Ann-Britt’s words echoing in her head.
It was only three times. You decided not to see him again after he attacked you. Surely you remember that?
No, Sofia doesn’t remember. She has no idea what’s going on. Everything is falling apart, while at the same time coming together.
She can see Samuel Bai in her mind’s eye. He spent session after session sitting opposite her, telling her about growing up in Sierra Leone and the abuses he had committed. In order to summon up one of his many personalities, she had once handed him a model motorcycle that she’d borrowed from Johansson, the dentist whose surgery was next door.
A model of a red-lacquered Harley-Davidson from 1959.
When he saw the motorcycle he was like a different person. He had punched her and …
Only now does the full memory return.
… picked her up with both hands tightly clasped around her neck, as if she were a doll.
Sofia realises that she’s been mixing up her memories and creating a new memory out of a number of different events. Squeezing millions of water molecules together to form a single snowball.
Sofia can feel Jeanette’s arms around her and the warmth of her cheek. Skin against skin, the proximity of another person.