An hour more or less, depending on how long it takes to freeze to death, and she curses her stupidity in not searching the house for some better clothes to wear.
It’s below freezing, and she’s barefoot and wearing just a thin pair of protective overalls.
An hour, ordinarily such a negligible period of time, now feels like the most precious thing there is, and that’s why she’s running to meet her fate with an open heart. With the freezing air stinging at her throat she stumbles on, as if salvation existed, and the branches lashing her face create the illusion that she’s on her way towards something. Towards a place that is beyond such concepts as onward, ahead and later.
Ulrika Wendin takes a deep breath and runs as though hope did exist in a world of rock, snow and cold.
She runs and thinks, thinks and runs. She remembers what has been, without regretting her choices, and allows herself to dream about things that haven’t yet happened. Things she’s done, things she’s going to do.
But the cold is relentless, and is making her breathing irregular.
Above the white treetops she can see a thin, reddish-yellow strip, and knows that dawn is coming, but holds out no hope that the rising sun will be able to warm her sufficiently. The Swedish winter sun is a worthless sun, no good for anything. Even if it’s the same sun that burns African farmers’ fields to dust, up here in the north it’s ice-cold.
Life, she thinks once more, and the thought repeats as she hears the sound of a helicopter approaching. Ulrika stops and listens. The helicopter is getting closer and closer, and when it’s something like a kilometre away she hears it slowly sink; then the sound of the engines dies away and finally stops altogether. They’re close, she thinks. Maybe even at the house she was held captive in, and she knows she has to hurry if she’s going to find her way back.
She tries to retrace her steps, but the wind has already covered her tracks.
Her legs are moving forward, and the numb soles of her feet aren’t bothered by the stones and branches bruising and cutting her. Pain means life, she tells herself, realising that the helicopter might mean that someone has come to rescue her. Once more she is filled with hope that there might be a future.
Her tracks in the snow are getting fainter and fainter, until eventually the wind has had long enough to erase them completely. Now the cold is hurting so much that it’s anaesthetising her, and her nerves do what they can to deceive her. Her whole body is screaming with cold, but her brain is telling her that she’s sweating. As she stumbles on, it feels like her clothes are scalding her.
The last thing Ulrika Wendin does in life is tear the oversized overalls off. Then she lies down naked in the cold, white snow and understands that it’s over. Life goes on, she thinks. It always does.
And at least she’s warm now.
Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
VICTORIA BERGMAN IS sitting on the wide windowsill in the kitchen with a cup of coffee and her mobile phone in her hand. The morning sun is strong, casting razor-sharp shadows on the street below.
The shadow play looks like a cubist puzzle, where the edges of the pieces are like shards of glass, and she contemplates her own internal puzzle, now so close to completion.
Can she go on working as a psychologist? She doesn’t know, but she knows she must accept for the time being that she is Sofia Zetterlund, a psychotherapist with her own private practice in rented premises on Mariatorget.
Victoria Bergman unofficially, she thinks. And Sofia Zetterlund on paper. This has been the case for a long time, but the big difference is that now the Sleepwalker is dead, and I’m the one making the decisions, feeling and acting.
No more memory lapses. No nocturnal walks and visits to bars, no more staggering through dark parks drunk. She no longer has to remind Sofia of her existence that way. Once she had even fallen in the water, down by Norra Hammarbyhamnen, and she remembers Sofia sitting in the kitchen the day after with her wet clothes, desperately trying to work out what had happened. The answer was both simple and extremely tasteless. She had gone to the Clarion Hotel, went with someone to his room, fucked until she felt sick, then walked down to the water with two bottles of wine, got too drunk and fell in.
Victoria jumps down from the windowsill, puts her cup on the draining board and goes into the hall. Just the bags to sort out.
Now she knows what she’s going to do with them and where she’s going to take them. The logical place.
She calls Ann-Britt and says that she’s thinking of closing the practice for the foreseeable future. She needs a holiday, needs to get away somewhere, anywhere, and doesn’t know how long she’ll be gone. She might stay a month or two, or she might be back in a few days. But the rent for her office has already been paid a year in advance, so that won’t be a problem.
She promises to get in touch with more definite information later, and ends the call.
Another phone call, this time to a van-rental company.
She books a light van with a capacity of twenty-two cubic metres, and is told she can pick it up in an hour. Which is good, because she’s got a fair distance to drive, and it’s also going to take her a while to carry the bags down to the van.
She stops.
An idea is starting to form in her head.
When you feel that you have always made the wrong decisions in life, sooner or later there has to come a time when you make the right one.
This is one of those times.
Victoria Bergman gets her phone out again and calls her bank.
She is put through to a woman who helps her conduct the transactions. It’s rather more complicated than usual, and at first the woman advises her against it.
But Victoria is certain. Unshakeably certain.
And Sofia doesn’t object.
The next call is received without any attempts to dissuade her. On the contrary, her idea is welcomed by the young man at the Audi centre in Smista.
When she hangs up everything feels lighter.
She’s put an end to her life in Stockholm.
And now she’s going to a place that still means something to her.
A place where she will be on her own, where the houses are all empty at this time of year, and the starry sky is as high and clear as it was when she was really small.
Kiev
IT’S SAID THAT the two industrial cities in the east of Ukraine, Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk, are the only cities in the world where the snow is black. But now she knows that’s wrong. Black snow also falls on the capital, and a swarm of ash flakes is hitting the car’s windows.
Madeleine is sitting in the back seat and the driver’s face is reflected in the windscreen against the dark backdrop of tall cranes, chimneys and factory buildings. His face is pale, thin, unshaven. His hair is black and his eyes bright blue, cold and agitated. His name is Kolya.