Lundstr?m’s eyes were darting about, and Sofia doubted the truth of what he was saying.
‘Anders Wikstr?m bought children from a man from Organizatsiya. The third brigade or whatever they call it. Solntsevskaya Bratva. There are two videotapes in a cupboard. On the first one there’s a four-year-old boy and the man is a paediatrician from the south of Sweden. You never see his face in the film, but he’s got a birthmark on his thigh, like a clover leaf. On the second film there’s a seven-year-old girl with Anders, two other men and a Thai woman. From last summer. It’s the worst of the films.’
Karl Lundstr?m was breathing shallowly through his nose, and his Adam’s apple was bobbing up and down as he spoke. Sofia felt physical disgust looking at him. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear more, and she realised she was having difficulty maintaining an objective attitude to what he was saying.
But no matter how she looked at it, it was her duty to listen and try to understand him.
‘Last summer?’
‘Yes … Anders Wikstr?m and the fat man in the film. The others who were there didn’t want to say what their names were, and you can see the Thai woman doesn’t really want to be there. She was drinking a lot, and on one occasion when she didn’t do as Anders said, he hit her.’
Sofia didn’t know what to think.
‘I understand that you’ve seen the films,’ she tried. ‘But how do you know all the details about the recording?’
‘I was there when they were filmed,’ he said.
Sofia knew she’d have to tell the police what he had just told her.
‘Had you had other experiences of this sort of abuse?’
Karl Lundstr?m looked sad. ‘I’ll tell you how it works,’ he said. ‘Right now something like five hundred thousand people are hooked up on the Net swapping pictures and films of child pornography with each other. To take part you have to produce your own material. It isn’t hard if you’ve got the right contacts. Then you can even order children online. For a hundred and fifty thousand you can have a Latin American boy. Officially he doesn’t exist, you own him. It goes without saying that you can do what you like with him, and the way it usually ends is that he disappears. You have to pay for that as well if you can’t handle killing him yourself. That often costs more than the hundred and fifty thousand, and you don’t haggle with people like that.’
None of this was new to Sofia. It was in the interview transcripts. Yet she still felt nausea rising. As a pressure in her stomach, a dryness in her throat.
‘Are you saying that you yourself have actually bought a child?’
Karl Lundstr?m smiled distantly. ‘No. But, like I said, I know people who have. Anders Wikstr?m bought the children who were in the films I told you about.’
Sofia swallowed. Her throat was burning and her hands were trembling.
‘How did it feel to witness all that?’
He smiled again. ‘I got excited. What do you think?’
‘Did you participate?’
He let out a laugh. ‘No, I just watched … As God is my witness.’
Sofia looked at him. His mouth was still smiling, but his eyes looked mournful and empty.
‘You often mention God. Would you like to tell me more about your faith?’
He shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyebrows quizzically.
‘My faith?’
‘Yes.’
Another sigh. He sounded resigned when he went on. ‘I believe in a divine truth. A God who exists beyond our understanding. A God who was close to man at the beginning of time, but whose voice within us has faded away over the centuries. The more God has been institutionalised by human inventions like churches and the priesthood, the less remains of what was there at the start.’
‘And what was there at the start?’
‘Gnosis. Purity and wisdom. I used to think that God existed in Linnea when she was little, and … I thought I’d found Him. I don’t know, I was probably wrong. A child today is less pure at birth. It’s already been contaminated in the womb by the noise of the world outside. A stupid chatter of human lies and petty distractions, meaningless words and thoughts about material concerns …’
They sat in silence for a moment as Sofia reflected on what he had said.
She wondered if Karl Lundstr?m’s religious thoughts might somehow explain why he had abused his daughter, and felt that she was going to have to approach the core of what the conversation was about.
‘When did you first subject Linnea to sexual abuse?’
His answer came without reflection.
‘When? Well … she was three. I ought to have waited another year or so, but it was just too … It just happened, I suppose.’
‘Tell me how you felt that first time. And tell me how you look back on that occasion now.’
‘Well … I don’t know. It’s difficult.’ Lundstr?m squirmed in his chair and made several attempts to start talking. ‘It was … well, like I said, it just happened,’ he eventually said. ‘It wasn’t actually a good occasion because we were living in a house in Kristianstad at the time. In the centre of town, everyone could see what went on there.’
He paused and seemed to think.
‘I was giving her a wash out in the garden. She had a paddling pool and I asked her if I could get in as well, and she said yes. The water was a bit cold, so I fixed up the hose to add some hot water. It had one of those old, rounded metal spouts on the end. It had been in the sun all day and was nice and warm to the touch. Then she said it looked like a willy …’
He looked embarrassed. Sofia nodded to him to go on.
‘Then I realised that she was thinking of mine. Well, I don’t know …’
‘And how did you feel?’
‘I, I just felt sort of giddy … I had the taste of iron in my mouth, a bit like blood. Maybe it comes from the heart? That’s where all the blood comes from.’ He fell silent.
‘So you stuck the end of the hose inside her, and you don’t think you did anything wrong?’ Sofia was feeling sick, and was having difficulty suppressing her revulsion.
Karl Lundstr?m looked weary, and didn’t answer.
She decided to go on. ‘You said before that you thought you’d found God in Linnea. Did that have anything to do with what happened in Kristianstad? With your ideas about right and wrong?’
He shook his head slowly. ‘You don’t understand …’
Then he looked Sofia straight in the eye and carefully explained his reasoning.
‘Our society is based on a moral construct … Why isn’t mankind perfect if it’s a reflection of God?’
He thrust his arm out and answered his own question.
‘Because God isn’t the one who wrote the Bible, people did … The true God is beyond feelings about right and wrong, beyond the Bible …’
Sofia realised that he was likely to carry on a circular argument on the issue of right and wrong.
Perhaps she’d asked the wrong question to start with?