Itkul and Karakul. Of course. It’s logical. She can’t get a word out, and Ivo looks questioningly at her. ‘Even if the victim at Thorildsplan had no teeth,’ he says, ‘it’s possible to estimate roughly how his teeth would have looked, particularly if there are any abnormalities. I didn’t really pay much attention to his crooked jaw at the time, but right now it’s of great interest.’
‘Yes, you can say that again.’ She can hear that she almost sounds like Hurtig, and she can hardly wait to tell him about this. ‘You’ve obviously been kept up to date about what happened yesterday? That the boy at Thorildsplan has been identified?’
Ivo looks surprised. ‘What are you saying?’
Jeanette feels herself getting angry. How incompetent could a person be and still get to call themselves a boss? Dennis Billing had promised to contact Ivo yesterday.
‘We’ve got a name for the boy at Thorildsplan, and we might have a name for this boy as well. He might very well be called Karakul Zumbayev, and his brother, in all likelihood, is called Itkul.’
Ivo Andri? throws up his hands. ‘OK, if I’d known that then obviously this would all have been a bit quicker. But let’s just be pleased. The picture is starting to get clearer.’
‘You’re right.’ Jeanette gives him a pat on the shoulder. ‘You’ve done a terrific job.’
‘One more thing,’ Ivo says, pulling at the duct tape around the boy’s feet. ‘I’ve found fingerprints, but there’s something odd.’
Jeanette stiffens.
‘Odd? What’s odd about that? Surely it’s –’
For the first time ever Ivo Andri? interrupts her. ‘It’s odd,’ he says, ‘because the fingerprints on the tape have no papillary ridge pattern.’
Jeanette considers this. ‘So you’re saying that the fingerprints had no fingerprints?’
‘Pretty much, yes.’
The perpetrator has been careful up to now, she thinks. No fingerprints at Thorildsplan, Danvikstull or out in Svartsj?landet. So why get careless now? Although, on the other hand … If you don’t have any fingerprints, why not leave some?
‘Could you elaborate, please? Whoever bound his ankles was wearing gloves?’
‘No, definitely not. But this individual’s fingertips don’t leave any prints.’
‘And why would that be?’
He looks bewildered. ‘It’s peculiar. I don’t know yet. I’ve read of cases where perpetrators have rubbed silicon on their fingertips. But that’s not what’s happened here. From the tape I managed to get a print of part of a palm, and it’s definitely bare skin I can see there, but at the end of the fingers it’s just, let’s say …’ He leaves a long pause.
‘Yes?’
‘Blank,’ Ivo Andri? suggests.
Nowhere
ULRIKA WENDIN UNDERSTANDS that whoever is keeping her captive isn’t going to let her live. At the same time she also knows that her chances of getting out of here by herself are getting smaller and smaller with each passing hour. Her body is deteriorating rapidly and she’s worried that lack of nutrition is making her sluggish and apathetic. Her only chance is to hold out as long as she can and hope that someone finds her.
Can weakness of the body be countered by the brain working better? She’s heard of people who voluntarily choose to live an isolated life, hermits, wise men, and monks who live shut up in monasteries, meditating and learning to be at one with themselves. Some are even said to have learned to levitate, floating above the ground.
Now that she can hardly feel her own body any more, she’s starting to understand how they do it. Sometimes it almost feels like she’s floating in the dark space surrounding her, for long periods she doesn’t even think about where she is, and she’s also started travelling in her mind.
She spends a long time reciting multiplication tables. Then she moves on to listing all the countries she can think of in alphabetical order, and after that capital cities. The effect is that other, new thoughts come to her as she trawls through old knowledge she thought she’d forgotten.
When she recites the names of American states there are only four missing.
She realises that she knows much more than other people have had her believe. In her mind she builds up a mental map of Europe’s coastline, from the White Sea to the Black Sea. Then Asia and Africa and the rest of the world.
In the end she looks down at the world from above, as if she were a satellite, and she knows that what she sees matches reality.
She doesn’t need a map to know what the world looks like.
She doesn’t know if it happens in a dream or reality, but she feels someone removing the tape and coughs as two hands take hold of her face and push something into her mouth. A porridgy sludge that tastes dry and very bitter.
Then she is left alone, gliding back out into space and the stars.
Gradually Ulrika Wendin lets go of her body and disappears into the twinkling darkness.
It tastes like walnuts.
Rosenlund Hospital
ANNETTE LUNDSTR?M HAS seen darkness. That’s the first thing that occurs to Hurtig when he enters the room. Her face is sunken and grey, and her body so thin that it feels like he might break her hand when he introduces himself.
He doesn’t, but her hand is ice-cold, which makes her even more like a ghost.
‘I don’t want to be here,’ she says in a low, broken voice. ‘I want to be with Linnea and Karl and Viggo. I want to be where everything’s the way it used to be.’
He suspects that this isn’t going to be an easy task. ‘I understand, but you’ll have to wait a little while for that. First we’re going to have a little talk, you and I.’
He feels unsettled, and he knows why.
The room reminds him of the one where his sister spent much of the last six months of her life.
But now he’s here in his capacity as a police officer, and he takes a deep breath and makes a concerted effort to suppress his memories.
‘Can you help me get out of here?’ Annette Lundstr?m’s voice is pleading, almost hopeful. ‘I’m going back to Polcirkeln, it’s been so long since anyone checked the house up there. The plants need watering and all the apples … It is autumn now, isn’t it?’
‘Oh yes,’ he says. ‘I come from Kvikkjokk myself, and that’s not so very far from Polcirkeln. But it’s winter up there now.’
His attempt at adopting a familiar tone seems to work. Annette Lundstr?m brightens up a little and looks him in the eye. Her gaze is unnerving, and there’s a distance in her eyes that he has no words for.
Madness, he thinks. No, more the eyes of someone who’s left this world and is in another. A psychologist would probably call it psychosis, which is exactly what the doctor he just spoke to said. But he has a feeling that the woman’s physical and mental fragility are portents of something, and that this is what he can see in her eyes.
She’s going to die soon. Die of grief.
‘Kvikkjokk,’ the thin voice says. ‘I went there once. It was so beautiful. It was snowing as well. Is it snowing outside now?’
‘Not here. But up there it’s snowing. Are there more people you’re thinking of seeing when you go to Polcirkeln, apart from Karl, Viggo and Linnea?’
‘Gert, of course, and P-O and Charlotte, and their daughter. Hannah and Jessica probably won’t come.’