Sofia falls silent. Everyone wants to be clean, she thinks. And Victoria has struggled for that all her life.
‘So how do people handle it?’ Jeanette asks, putting a big piece of V?sterbotten pie in her mouth. ‘I mean, not everyone becomes a serial killer because they didn’t get along with their parents.’
Victoria smiles at Jeanette’s appetite and likes what she sees: a person with an appetite for more than just food. For knowledge and experiences. An intact person with an undisturbed libido. Someone to be envied.
‘I don’t like Freud, but I agree with what he says about sublimation.’ Victoria notices the quizzical look on Jeanette’s face and explains: ‘That’s a defence mechanism where repressed needs find expression through creativity and artistic activity and …’
She loses her train of thought when Jeanette bursts out laughing, turns round, and points at the brass sign above her seat. ‘So you, or Freud, mean that someone who’s written a book about inhuman murders could have become a serial killer instead?’
Victoria joins in with her laughter, and they look into each other’s eyes. They stay like that, in the depths of recognition, while their laughter slowly fades away and is replaced by wonder. ‘Go on,’ Jeanette says once they’ve calmed down and the moment is over.
‘It’s probably easiest if I read from my notes,’ Sofia says. ‘And you can just ask if you want me to elaborate on anything.’ Jeanette nods, still with a smile on her lips.
‘The perpetrator is in many respects still a child,’ Sofia begins. ‘His gender identity may be uncertain, and he is probably impotent, in the clinical sense. Impotent literally means “without power”, and this individual has thought of himself as powerless since he was a child. He may have been the butt of jokes, someone other people laughed at, an outsider. In his isolation he has constructed an image of himself as a genius, and it is this that other people can’t handle. He believes he is meant to become something big. He is driven by a desire for revenge, but when that day never comes he begins to feel physically sick at the sight of the world around him living and loving. He finds this incomprehensible. Because of course he is the genius. And his frustration spills over into anger. Sooner or later he discovers that violence turns him on, and he gets sexually excited by seeing another person’s powerlessness. The same powerlessness that he himself feels, which may in turn lead to him killing.’ Sofia puts her notepad down. ‘So, boss, any questions?’
Jeanette says nothing, and is just staring blankly ahead of her. ‘You’ve done your homework,’ she eventually says. ‘The boss is happy. Very happy.’
Wollmar Yxkullsgatan – S?dermalm
JEANETTE IS FEELING slightly drunk. After the food they had another two beers, and it was her idea for them to continue their walk before catching a taxi home.
‘Ugh, I woke up here once when I was fourteen. The old Maria Centre.’
Jeanette points at the entrance to the Maria Treatment Centre, and remembers how she had been picked up from there one sunny summer’s morning by her father, who had been anything but pleased to find his beloved daughter a complete wreck and covered in vomit. The night before, she and some friends had been celebrating the start of the summer holidays by drinking a whole bottle of Kir, with predictably disastrous consequences.
‘And there I was thinking you were a good little girl,’ Sofia says, stroking her cheek teasingly.
Her touch makes Jeanette feel warm, and she wants to get home as soon as possible. ‘I was, as well. Until I met you. Shall we give up and get a taxi?’
Sofia nods, and Jeanette notices that she seems serious and thoughtful again.
‘There’s one thing I’ve been wondering about,’ Sofia says while Jeanette looks around for a taxi. ‘After you found Samuel Bai, you came to my practice to ask some questions about him, didn’t you?’
Jeanette can see a free taxi further down the street. ‘Of course, you’d met him a few times, hadn’t you? Three sessions, I think you said.’ Jeanette turns round, and sees Sofia start. ‘Is anything wrong?’
‘Can you remember if you told me how you found Samuel? I mean, if you revealed any details that I couldn’t have found out otherwise?’
‘I told you everything. Such as the fact that someone had struck him in the eye. If memory serves, it was his right eye.’ She steps out into the road to wave down the taxi, which pulls up at the kerb.
When she turns back towards Sofia she sees that she’s gone completely pale. Jeanette opens the taxi door and leans in.
‘Just a moment, please,’ she says to the driver. ‘We’re heading out to Gamla Enskede. Can you give us a couple of minutes? Please, start the metre running.’
She takes Sofia under the arm and leads her a few steps away from the car. She can feel that Sofia is shaking, as if she were freezing. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s OK,’ Sofia says quickly. ‘But I’d like you to repeat everything you told me about Samuel.’
Jeanette can see that for some reason this is extremely important. It had been the second time she’d met Sofia, and she had been attracted to her even then. Her memory of what she said is crystal clear.
‘I told you that someone had hanged him and then thrown hydrochloric acid at him. We assumed there were at least two perpetrators because Samuel was too heavy for one person. I know I told you the rope was too short. It takes a certain length of rope for the person hanging themselves to be able to reach up to the noose from whatever they’re standing on.’
Sofia’s face is ashen. ‘Are you sure you told me all that?’ she says, almost in a whisper.
Jeanette is getting worried, and puts her arm around Sofia. ‘I felt I could tell you. We talked for quite a long time, because you told me you had treated a woman who was suspected of having murdered her husband the same way. Probably the same woman that Rydén, the medical officer, mentioned.’
Sofia’s breathing is fast and shallow. What’s going on? Jeanette wonders.
‘Thanks,’ Sofia says. ‘Let’s go back to your place.’
Jeanette strokes her hair. ‘Are you sure? We can skip the taxi and walk for a bit longer, if you’d rather?’
‘No, I’m fine. Let’s go.’
As Sofia makes a move to go back to the taxi she suddenly bends over and throws up over her shoes. Three pints of Guinness and four bites of V?sterbotten cheese pie.
Stockholm, 2007
You gotta stand up straight unless you’re gonna fall,
then you’re gone to die.
And the straightest dude I ever knew,
was standing right for me all the time.
SHE WAS ON her way to the Forensic Psychiatry Department in Huddinge to meet a woman who was suspected of murdering her husband. She was having trouble concentrating, and felt tired and overworked. She was looking forward to having a holiday, a few days off in New York. She turned up the volume of the stereo and began to sing along.