‘Linnea has confirmed what he said.’
Viggo Dürer looked surprised. ‘But I thought Annette …’ He fell silent, and Kenneth von Kwist was struck by the fact that he had stopped himself.
‘Annette, what?’
His eyes flitted about. ‘Well, that she’d put it behind her.’
There was something in Viggo Dürer’s attitude that strengthened Kenneth von Kwist’s suspicion that the girl had been right.
‘Linnea is also suggesting that you were involved in Karl’s … how should I put this … activities.’
Viggo Dürer went white as a ghost and put a hand to his chest. ‘Damn it.’
‘What is it – are you all right?’
The lawyer groaned and took several deep breaths before raising one hand. ‘I’m OK,’ he eventually said. ‘But what you’re saying sounds extremely troubling.’
‘I know. So you have to be pragmatic. If you understand my meaning?’
Mariatorget – Sofia Zetterlund’s Office
WHEN SOFIA GOT back to the office she felt completely empty. She had an hour before her next client, a middle-aged woman she’d seen twice before, whose main problem was that she had problems.
A conversation that would be devoted to understanding a problem that wasn’t a problem to start with, but which became a problem because it turned into one, more or less unnoticed, during the course of the conversation.
After that she would be seeing Samuel Bai.
Real people’s problems, she thought.
One hour.
Victoria Bergman.
She put her headphones on.
Victoria’s voice sounded amused.
It was so easy you almost couldn’t help laughing at their serious expressions when I bought a toffee for ten ?re and had my jacket full of goodies that I could sell to everyone competing to see who dared touch me on the breast or between the legs, and then laugh when I got cross and squirted glue in the lock so they were late and the old guy with the beard hit me over the head with the book so hard my teeth shook, and forced me to spit out the chewing gum that had already lost its taste anyway, and later on I stuck a fly to it …
Sofia was amazed at how the voice changed with the different associations. It was as if the memories belonged to different people who were competing for control of a medium. Mid-sentence, Victoria’s voice took on a melancholy strain.
… and of course I had more chewing gum in reserve, and could sneak another piece in while he was sitting and reading and checking to see if I was cheating using the answers on my hand, but they got smeared with sweat and I only got the spelling wrong because I was nervous and not because I was stupid like the other poor bastards who could do endless tricks with a ball but knew nothing about capital cities or wars but who ought to know because it was people like them who started wars the whole time and never realised when enough was enough, but kept on picking on anyone who stood out, whose trousers were the wrong label, or who had an ugly haircut or was too fat …
The voice got sharper. Sofia recalled that Victoria had been angry.
… like that big fat girl who always rode around on her tricycle, and whose face looked odd, she was always drooling, and once they told her to take her clothes off, but she didn’t understand until they started pulling her pants off. They had always thought she was just a big baby, so they got a surprise when they saw she was all grown up down there, and you would end up getting beaten up just because you didn’t cry when they thumped you in the stomach and you just laughed and carried on without telling anyone or complaining, and were just tough and focused …
Then the voice fell silent. Sofia could hear the sound of her own breathing. Why hadn’t she asked Victoria to continue?
She pressed fast-forward. Almost three minutes of silence. Four, five, six minutes. Why had she recorded this? All she could hear was breathing and the sound of paper rustling.
After seven minutes Sofia heard the sound of her pen clicking. Then Victoria broke the silence.
I never hit Martin. Never!
Victoria was almost screaming, and Sofia had to turn the volume down.
Never. I don’t let people down. I ate a load of shit for them. Dog shit. Fuck, I’m used to shit! Fucking Sigtuna snobs! I ate shit for their sake!
Sofia took off the headphones.
She knew that Victoria got her memories mixed up, and that she often forgot what she’d said just a few minutes before.
But were these gaps ordinary memory lapses?
She felt nervous before her session with Samuel. The conversation mustn’t get diverted into a dead end the way it had seemed to when they last met.
She had to get close to him before it was too late, before he slipped out of her hands completely. She knew she was going to need all her wits about her if she was going to be able to cope with the conversation.
As usual, Samuel Bai turned up punctually with a social worker from H?sselby.
‘Half past two?’
‘I thought we might have a longer chat this time,’ Sofia said. ‘You can pick him up at three o’clock.’
The social worker disappeared off towards the lift. Sofia looked at Samuel Bai, who let out a whistle. ‘Nice meeting you, ma’am,’ he said, and fired off a broad smile.
Sofia was relieved when she realised which of Samuel’s personalities was standing in front of her.
This was Frankly Samuel, as Sofia had described him in her notes, the polite, extroverted, pleasant Samuel who prefaced every other sentence with ‘Frankly, ma’am, I have to tell ya …’ He always spoke in a kind of homespun English that Sofia found faintly amusing.
Last time Samuel had assumed this personality as soon as the social worker disappeared and they shook hands.
Interesting that he chooses his polite persona when he sees me, she thought as she showed him in.
Frankly Samuel’s polite manner made him the most interesting of the various Samuels that Sofia had observed in their meetings so far. The ‘normal’ Samuel, whom she called Common Samuel, the one that was his dominant personality, was withdrawn, correct and not particularly expressive.
Frankly Samuel was the part of his personality who talked about the terrible things he had done as a child. It was fairly odd to see him smiling constantly and giving Sofia charming compliments on her beautiful eyes and well-formed bust, then going on to explain how he had sat in a dark shack on Lumley Beach outside Freetown, cutting a little girl’s ears off. Occasionally he would burst into infectious laughter that she thought reminded her of the football player Zlatan Ibrahimovíc. A deep, cheerful ‘ho-ho’ that lit up his whole face.
But several times his eyes had flashed, making her wonder if there wasn’t another Samuel in there, one who hadn’t shown himself yet.