She gets ready to throw her phone out as well, but changes her mind.
With one hand on the wheel she struggles to tap in a short text message to Jeanette with the other. ‘Sorry,’ she writes, as she heads out over a bridge.
The last Victoria Bergman sees of her phone is as it hits the railing of the bridge with a clatter, before disappearing into the dark water below.
Kiev – St Sophia’s Cathedral
MADELEINE SILFVERBERG IS sitting on a bench in the thin shadow of some trees full of blackbirds. The sun is warm even though it’s late autumn, and the gold cupolas of the vast monastery complex in front of her are glinting against the blue sky.
A quiet, colourless stream of people is passing along the path below the cathedral, whereas the building itself is primarily white, green and gold.
She puts her headphones on and tunes the radio. A faint crackle before the receiver finds a frequency with some Ukrainian voices, then an accordion followed by brass instruments and a drum that soon develops into a hybrid of klezmer music and hysterical Europop. The contrast between the music and the stillness of the monastery precinct is like her own life.
Her frantic inner life, unknown to anyone.
People just keep walking past, absorbed in their own concerns. Outside her, shut up inside themselves.
She leans back and looks up at the fractured pattern of branches. Here and there she can make out the shape of birds, shades of grey and black standing out from the trees in relief against the clear blue flatness of the sky.
On a summer’s day ten years ago Viggo had taken her to the red-and-white lighthouse at Oddesund, she had sat in his lap for several hours while he talked about his life, and the sky had been the same then as it is now.
She gets to her feet and begins walking towards the white walls that shield the area from the hubbub of the city. The music on the radio fades away and the voices return, just as excitable and present as the drums, accordion and horns.
When she was ten years old Viggo had told her about this place, and he had explained why the monks locked themselves inside the caves beneath the Pechersk Monastery. He had also told her that there is nothing worse in life than regret, and she had known even then what was tormenting him.
Something he had done as a child, when he was neither man nor woman.
And now she’s done as he wanted and everything is over.
He had selected her as his most trusted confidante, and she had never forgotten that. As a ten-year-old she had been proud, but now she realises that she has simply been his slave.
She walks out of the gate beneath the tall clock tower and the voices in her headphones fall silent as the music comes back, in just as fast a tempo as before, but this time with a female singer and a tuba in the background. She hears her heels strike the paving of the square at the same rapid pace, and when she reaches the other side and crosses the street she stops and takes off her headphones.
There’s an old man sitting at a small table at the street corner. He reminds her of Viggo.
The same face and posture, but this man is dressed in rags. On the rickety little table stands a mass of glasses, all different shapes and sizes. At first she thinks he’s trying to sell them, but when he catches sight of her his face cracks into a toothless smile and he moistens his fingertips with his tongue and gently rubs them on the rim of one of the glasses.
The man’s fingers move to and fro, notes begin to ring out, and she realises that each of the glasses is filled with a different amount of water. They’re set out like three octaves on a piano, thirty-six glasses in total, and she stands in front of him, transfixed. All around her is the sound of traffic and people, and from the headphones around her neck comes a hissing chatter of voices, but the glasses on the table are making sounds she has never heard before.
The old man’s glass organ sounds like something from another world.
Only a few minutes ago, inside the monastery grounds, music had seemed like chaos in contrast to the calmness within the walls.
Now the reverse is true.
The notes from the glasses merge together, conveying a swaying sensation, like floating through the air or being gently rocked back and forth by waves in the sea. The ringing, whistling sounds flow out into the chaos of noise all around, and everything becomes a bubble of calmness.
On the pavement there’s a little metal can containing some crumpled notes, and under the table, beside the man’s battered shoes, she can see a bucket of water.
She realises that the water is there to keep the glass organ in tune, to replace water that evaporates from the glasses, and now she also notices that there are large chunks of ice in the bucket.
Frozen water with cleansing isotopes, just like inside her own body.
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
AFTER ENDING HER call with Ivo Andri?, Jeanette Kihlberg sits quietly at her desk, while Jens Hurtig sits in the chair facing her, saying nothing. They’ve just listened to the pathologist’s description of what Ulrika Wendin suffered before she froze to death, and his account has left them speechless.
Ivo Andri? told them about living mummification, an ancient technique practised by, among others, certain sects within Japanese Buddhism.
His thoughtful, slow voice had described the procedure itself, which needs no more than a dry space with a limited supply of oxygen. Body fat is burned off with a diet of seeds, nuts, bark and roots, and bodily fluids are reduced by drinking sap. In Ulrika Wendin’s case, a form of downy birch had been used.
The pathologist also explained about sensory deprivation, and the effect of being denied all sensory information in an enclosed space insulated against light and sound. He stressed that it is extremely rare for a victim to survive more than a few hours in such a state. The lack of stimulation also affects the body, and it had been a miracle that the girl had survived as long as she had, and even more so that she evidently managed to escape and get away under her own steam.
Jeanette studies the ravaged look on Hurtig’s face, and knows they’re both feeling a sense of impotence, failure and self-recrimination.
Hurtig is looking straight at her, but he might as well be staring straight through her at the bookcase behind. It’s their fault.