The streets disappear behind them in the night haze, and they drive out across one of the bridges crossing the Dnieper River. The water glints black and she wonders how long she’d survive if she jumped in.
On the other side of the river the road is lined with industrial buildings, and Kolya slows down at an intersection, then turns right. ‘It is here …’ he says, without looking at her.
He pulls into a smaller side road and parks by the pavement next to a high wall, then gets out and opens the door for her.
The night is glitteringly cold, and the wind makes her feel frozen.
Kolya locks the car, and they walk along the wall. They stop at a shabby wooden barrier, flaking with red and white paint, beside something that looks like a small sentry box. Kolya raises the barrier and gestures to her to go through. She does so, and he follows her and lowers the barrier behind them. Then he unlocks the gate to the main building.
‘Fifteen minutes,’ he says, looking at his watch. A short, thin man in black steps out of the darkness and indicates that they should follow him.
They make their way to an internal courtyard and the man unlocks one of the doors to the building while Kolya stops and pulls out his cigarettes. ‘I wait outside.’
Madeleine goes into a corridor where the only window is completely covered with plywood. To the left there’s an open door, and she glimpses a large table inside with a row of guns lined up on top of it. The thin man is holding an automatic pistol and nods to her.
She goes in and looks around the room. Someone’s stripped off the wallpaper, scraping and plastering the wall ready for repainting, but evidently never started the work. Electrical cables hang diagonally across the walls, as though they were too short and had to take the most direct route to a socket.
The man passes her a gun. ‘Luger P08,’ he explains. ‘From the war.’
She takes the weapon, weighs it in her hand for a moment, and is surprised at how heavy it is. Then she pulls a bundle of notes from her jacket pocket and hands it to the man. Viggo Dürer’s money.
The seller shows her how the old gun works. She can see rust on it and hopes that the mechanism isn’t going to stick.
‘What happened to your finger?’ he asks, but Madeleine doesn’t answer.
As Kolya drives her through the night she thinks about what awaits her.
She’s sure Viggo Dürer is going to keep his part of the bargain. She knows him so well that she can trust him on that.
For her part, their agreement means that she can draw a line under the past, leave it behind and continue her cleansing process. Soon everyone who has ever owed her anything will be dead.
Apart from Annette Lundstr?m. But she has already been punished enough. Losing her entire family and ending up in a state of psychosis. Besides, Annette was never more than a passive onlooker to the abuse.
Now Madeleine just wants to get back to her lavender fields, and there she’ll stay for the rest of her life.
Kolya slows down, and she realises that they’re almost there. He pulls over onto the pavement and parks next to a bus shelter.
‘Syrets station,’ he says. ‘Over there.’ He points at a low, grey concrete building some distance away. ‘You find the way to the monument? The menorah?’
She nods and feels in the inside pocket of her jacket. The rusty old gun is cold to her touch as she feels the ridged butt.
‘Twenty minutes,’ he says. ‘Then the area will be safe.’
Madeleine gets out of the car and shuts the door.
She knows she has to turn right at the station to get to the monument, but first she goes down the steps to the little shops beneath the building. Five minutes later she finds what she’s looking for, a small fast-food place, and asks for a cup of ice cubes.
She goes back up the steps and turns off towards the large park. Her teeth ache as she crunches the ice, and she remembers the feeling of losing a tooth as a child. The stinging, chill sensation of having a hole in her gum. The taste of blood in her mouth.
The path leads to a small open area before continuing into the park. A paved circle with a statue on a plinth at its centre. The sculpture is unassuming, and represents three children. A girl with her hands raised, and two smaller children resting at her feet.
From the inscription on the plinth, she reads that the statue was erected in memory of the thousands of children who were executed there during the war.
Madeleine chews her ice cubes, leaves the statue behind and continues along the path into the park. For the time being the scream is still inside her, but soon she’ll be able to let it out.
Village of Dala-Floda
IT HAD STARTED snowing somewhere near Hedemora, and she’s long since given up all hope of a clear, starry sky above the lake by the cottage in Dala-Floda.
But the sky is probably never as clear as it is in childhood memories.
The forest gets thicker, and it’s not far now. The last time she came this way her dad was driving and she remembers the journey as a haze of arguments. It was just before the cottage was sold, and Mum had got the wrong idea about the sort of price they could expect.
She remembers other trips as well, and is grateful that the place where he used to stop so that she could make him happy is no longer the same. The road has been widened and the lay-by is gone.
She passes all the familiar places. Grang?rde, Nyhammar and, a bit further on, Bj?rbo. Everything looks so different, uglier and blacker, even though she knows that can’t be right.
How can she have such bright memories, considering everything she went through up here?
Maybe it’s because of that summer when she was ten and met Martin and his family. A few weeks without Dad, with just Aunt Elsa in the next house as a babysitter.
One more bend, then the cottage, on the left-hand side.
She sees that the house is still there, stops the van next to the hedge and switches the engine off. The wind has dropped slightly, unless the forest is providing a bit of shelter, and the snowflakes are big, falling softly in the darkness as she heads towards the gate.
Like the other houses up here, their old cottage is still a holiday home and is deserted and shut up. But it’s changed beyond recognition. Two outbuildings, and a terrace running right along the front and round both ends, modern windows and doors, and a new roof.
The mixture of old and new is provocatively tasteless.