WAS BATHED IN the flickering light of the television. The Discovery Channel had been on all night, and at half past five in the morning she woke up on the sofa to the narrator’s monotonous voice.
‘Pla Kat is Thai, and means ‘plagiarism’, but it’s also the name of the large, aggressive species of fighting fish bred in Thailand for use in spectacular contests. Two males are set loose in a small aquarium, where their innate territorial instincts lead them to attack each other immediately. The brutal and bloody trial of strength doesn’t end until one of the fish is dead.’
She smiled and sat up, then went out into the kitchen to switch on the coffee machine.
While she waited for it to be ready she stood at the kitchen window looking out onto the street.
The park and the leafy trees, the parked cars and the thawed-out people.
Stockholm.
S?dermalm.
Home?
No, home was something completely different.
It was a state of being. A feeling that she would never experience. Not ever.
Gradually, piece by piece, an idea began to take shape.
She drank her coffee, cleaned up and went back into the living room.
She moved the floor lamp, lifted the catch and opened the door behind the bookcase.
She saw that the boy was sleeping heavily.
The table in the living room was full of newspapers from the past week. She had expected at least a mention of a missing child, and more likely screaming headlines.
A child vanishing into thin air was surely big news?
Something that could keep the sales of the evening tabloids up for at least a week.
That was usually the way.
But she hadn’t found any indication that he was missing. There were no announcements on the radio, and she began to realise that he was even more perfect than she could have hoped.
If there wasn’t anyone looking for him, it meant he would turn to her for protection as long as she fulfilled his basic needs, and she knew she was going to do that.
She would more than fulfil them.
She would refine his desires so that they matched hers, and the two of them would become one. She would be the intelligent brain of the new being, and he its muscles.
Right now, as he lay knocked out on the mattress, he was just an embryo. But once he had learned to think like her, only one truth would exist for them.
When she had taught him how it feels to be victim and perpetrator at the same time, he would understand.
He would be the beast, and she the one who decided if the beast should give in to its urges. Together they would be a perfect person, one whose freedom of will was governed by one consciousness, and whose physical desires by another.
Her desires could be fulfilled through him, and he would enjoy it.
Neither of them could be held responsible for what the other did.
The body would be made up of two beings, one beast and one human being.
One victim and one perpetrator.
One perpetrator and one victim.
Free will united with physical instinct.
Two antipodes in one body.
The room was gloomy, and she turned on the light in the ceiling. The boy came round, and she gave him a drink. Bathed his sweating brow.
In the little bathroom she filled the sink with warm water. She washed him with a small facecloth, soap and water. Then she dried him carefully.
Before she went back out into the apartment she gave him another injection of tranquilliser, and waited for him to sink back into unconsciousness.
He fell asleep with his head against her chest.
Harvest Home Restaurant
AS USUAL, THE clientele was a mixture of local artists, a few semi-famous musicians and actors, and passing tourists who wanted to experience the supposedly bohemian S?dermalm.
In fact these blocks were the most middle class and ethnically homogeneous in the entire country. It was also one of the most crime-ridden neighbourhoods, but was always portrayed in the media as trendy and intellectual instead of violent and dangerous.
Weakness, Victoria Bergman thought with a snort. She had been going to therapy with Sofia Zetterlund for six months, and what had they come up with so far?
To begin with she had felt the conversations were giving her something; she got a chance to air her feelings and thoughts, and Sofia Zetterlund had been good at listening. Then she began to think she wasn’t getting anything back. Sofia Zetterlund just sat there, looking like she was asleep. While Victoria was genuinely opening up, Sofia sat opposite her nodding coolly, making notes, shuffling her papers, fiddling with her little tape recorder and generally looking rather distant.
She took a packet of cigarettes from her bag and put it on the table, drumming her fingers nervously on the tabletop. A feeling of discomfort weighed heavy on her chest.
It had been there a long time.
Far too long to be able to bear it.
Victoria was sitting at a pavement table on Bondegatan. Since she’d moved to S?dermalm she often went there to have a glass of wine or two.
The staff were friendly, without being too personal. She hated bartenders who started calling you by your first name after just a few visits.
Victoria Bergman could see Sofia Zetterlund’s sleepy, uninterested face in front of her, and a thought struck her. She took a pen from her jacket pocket and lined up three cigarettes on the table in front of her.
On one she wrote the name SOFIA, on the second WEAK and on the third SLEEPY.
Then she scrawled SOFIA ZZZZZZZZZZZ … across the front of the packet.
She lit the cigarette with SOFIA on it.
To hell with it, she thought. No more of those sessions. Why should she go any more? Sofia Zetterlund called herself a psychotherapist, but she was a weak person.
She thought about Gao. She and Gao weren’t weak.
Recent events were still fresh in her mind, and she felt almost euphoric. But in spite of her excitement, something unsatisfactory, some sort of discontent was still gnawing away at her. As if she needed something more.
She realised she had to set Gao a test that he couldn’t succeed at. Then maybe she’d feel the way she had at the start. She understood that she wanted to see the look in Gao’s eyes, not anyone else’s. The look in his eyes when he realised she’d betrayed him.
She knew she used betrayal as a drug, and that she told lies to make herself feel good. Having two people in her power, and deciding for herself who to embrace and who to strike. If you kept mixing it up, randomly switching victims, you could make them hate each other and do anything to get approval.
Once they were sufficiently insecure, you could make them want to kill each other.
Gao was her child. Her responsibility, her everything.
Only one person before him had been that. Martin.
She sipped the wine and wondered if it had been her fault that he had disappeared. No, she thought. It wasn’t her fault, she had been just a child then.
The fault lay with her dad. He had ruined her faith in adults, and Martin’s dad had had to bear the collective guilt of all men.
He simply liked me, and I misinterpreted the way he touched me, Victoria thought.
I was just a confused child.