Ulrika Wendin shuts her eyes, and when she opens them again she can move at last. It takes several more seconds for her to remember that her feet are bound with duct tape, that she’s sitting on a concrete floor in a cellar, nowhere.
She’s surrounded by a cloying, stifling smell. It reminds her of whey cheese, the same smell from biology classes when the teachers forced the children to dissect cow eyes with small scalpels. She twists her head. Beside her, leaning against the same wall, a man is sitting and staring at her with a broad smile on his lips. Her other hand is trapped beneath his vast bulk. He has a hole in his stomach, and that’s where the smell is coming from.
‘Eto konets, devotchka,’ he mutters, still smiling. The expression on his face is no longer blank, and it strikes her that he looks almost happy. As for her, she’s experiencing a calmness that she’s never felt before. A calmness so great that it leaves no room for hatred or forgiveness.
He coughs, and now even his eyes are smiling. ‘You are strong, devotchka,’ he says in a whisper as a trickle of blood escapes his mouth.
She has no idea what he means. She tries to swallow, but it hurts badly, and she realises that her larynx is damaged.
She looks on in fascination as he makes a great effort to reach into the pocket of his filthy jeans. The hole in his stomach keeps throbbing.
The knife, she thinks. He’s looking for his knife.
But it isn’t a knife. It’s a mobile phone. So small that it almost vanishes into his huge hand.
A bleep. Then another one before he puts the phone to his ear.
It feels to her like an eternity before she hears the ringing tone get interrupted by a voice at the other end, and the man is still staring happily at her.
While his eyes slowly fill with blood he utters one single word.
‘Konets,’ he says, and as the phone slips from his hand the light in his eyes has already gone out.
She doesn’t know how long she sits there with the drill in her hand, and she hardly notices when she puts it down, removes the tape from her ankles and stands up.
She has to get out of there, but first she needs to find something to wear, and she walks on unsteady legs into the next room, where she finds a pair of thin, white protective overalls.
It’s snowing, it’s cold, and she isn’t dressed for it, but she has no choice.
The snow reaches almost to her knees as she stumbles down the slope towards the edge of the forest.
Lapland – Northern Sweden
JEANETTE AND HURTIG are the last to get out of the helicopter, and as the engines fall silent she can hear nothing but the wind in the branches of the spindly pine trees, covered with a thick layer of snow. Winter comes early in the mountains, a thousand kilometres north of Stockholm. It’s cold, and the snow crunches under their boots. The only light is from the lamps on the response unit’s helmets.
‘We’ll split into groups of three, and approach the cottage from all four sides.’
The head of the unit indicates the directions on a map, then points at Jeanette and Hurtig. ‘You two come with me, we’ll take the shortest route straight to the cottage. We’ll go slowly, so the others have time to get round without being spotted. OK?’
Jeanette nods, and the other police officers give the thumbs up.
The forest is thin, but every now and then she still manages to brush against a branch, covering her with snow that seeps under her collar. The heat of her body meets the cold snow and she shivers as it melts and runs down her back. Hurtig is marching ahead of her with long, determined strides, and she can see that he’s on home territory. He probably spent his entire childhood in Kvikkjokk walking through similar forests in similar conditions.
The unit head slows down and holds a hand up. ‘We’re here,’ he says quietly.
Through the trees Jeanette can see the cottage, and recognises it at once from the photograph. There’s a faint glow in one of the windows, and she can see the veranda where Viggo Dürer sat and smiled at the camera, but she can’t see any sign of life inside the house.
At that moment the forest bursts into life and the specially trained police officers rush towards the cottage with their weapons drawn.
As Jeanette follows Hurtig towards the house with her eyes firmly on the ground, she sees footprints leading in the opposite direction.
There’s a trail of bare footprints leading through the snow, from the house into the forest.
Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
THE HALL IS full of black bin bags and Victoria is going to make sure it all disappears.
Everything must go, every last scrap of paper.
The answers to her questions aren’t there, they’re inside her, and the healing process has progressed far enough for her to feel she’ll soon have full access to her memories. The notes and newspaper clippings helped her to take the first steps, but she no longer needs them. She knows which way she needs to go.
Gao’s room is empty now, the exercise bike is in the living room, she’s taken the mattresses up to her storage compartment in the attic, and all that remains is to rip out the insulation.
She ties the last bag and puts it in the hall. She needs to get rid of the bags herself, but she doesn’t yet know how that’s going to work. In total there are twelve bags, 125 litre capacity each, and she’s going to have to hire a trailer or a van to move everything in one trip.
The simplest solution would obviously be to take it all to a recycling centre, but that doesn’t feel right. She’s going to need a ritual farewell. A symbolic act of closure, like a book burning.
She goes over to the bookcase in the living room and closes the door to Gao’s room.
As she lifts the hook to slot it into the catch she stops, takes the hook out, lets it hang against the side of the bookcase, and then repeats the action. Once more, then again, and then once again.
There’s a memory in that action.
Viggo Dürer’s cellar at the farm in Struer, and the room within. A shudder runs through her body. She doesn’t want to return to that memory.
Lapland
THE WORLD IS white and cold and she’s been running through the loose snow for what feels like an eternity.
Despite her dehydration and lack of sleep in the last twenty-four hours, she’s wide awake. As if her body is forcing itself on, even though it has no reserves left.
The weather is also helping, and the cold drives her forward. Sharp snowflakes sting her face.
A few times she’s found herself running into her own footsteps and realises that she’s been going in circles. She can hardly feel her feet any more, and is having trouble walking. When she stops to try to warm them up she listens for the sound of anyone in pursuit. But everything is completely silent.
The world is so white that not even the darkness of night can hide its clarity, which strikes her in the form of cotton-wool cold as she makes her way through the sparse forest, and she knows she’s not going to live to be much older than this.