She calls for him. She hunts desperately among the bushes and reeds along the shore. She falls and cuts herself on a sharp stone, but Martin is nowhere to be found.
She runs back out onto the jetty but sees that the water is completely still. Nothing. Not a single movement.
It feels like she’s inside a watery bubble that shuts out all sound, all sensory impressions.
When she realises she can’t find him she runs back to the fairground on weak legs, and wanders helplessly around the stalls and carousels until she finally sits down in the middle of one of the busiest paths.
Legs and feet, and a suffocating smell of popcorn. Flashing lights, all different colours.
She gets the feeling that someone has hurt Martin. And that’s when the tears come.
When Martin’s parents find her she’s beyond reach. Her sobbing is bottomless, and she’s wet herself.
‘Martin’s gone,’ she keeps repeating. In the background she hears Martin’s dad call for first aid, and feels someone wrap a blanket around her. Someone takes her by the shoulders and puts her in the recovery position.
To begin with they aren’t particularly worried about Martin, seeing as the fairground covers a large area and there are plenty of people who could look after a child on his own.
But after half an hour or so of looking their anxiety starts to grow. Martin isn’t in the fairground, and after another thirty minutes his dad calls the police. Then they start searching the area closest to the fair more systematically.
But Martin isn’t found that evening. It’s only when they start to drag the river the following day that they find his body.
To judge by his injuries, he seems to have drowned, possibly after hitting his head against a rock. What is most remarkable is that the body has been very badly damaged, presumably during the evening or night. The conclusion is that the injuries were caused by boat propellers.
Victoria is admitted to University Hospital for observation for a few days. During the first twenty-four hours she doesn’t say a word, and the doctors declare that she is in a state of severe shock.
It isn’t until the second day that she can be questioned by the police, but she suffers an attack of hysterics lasting over twenty minutes.
She tells the police interviewing her that Martin disappeared after they had been on the big wheel, and that she panicked when she couldn’t find him.
During her third day in the hospital Victoria wakes up in the middle of the night. She feels like she’s being watched, and the room stinks. When her eyes get used to the darkness she can see there’s no one there, but can’t shake the feeling that someone’s watching her. And there’s still that nauseating smell, like excrement.
She creeps carefully out of bed, leaves her room and goes out into the corridor. It’s lit up, but silent.
She looks around to find the source of her anxiety. Then she sees it. A flashing red light. The realisation is brutal and hits her like a punch in the stomach.
‘Shut it off!’ she screams. ‘You’ve got no damn right to film me!’
Three of the night staff appear simultaneously.
‘What’s the matter?’ one of them asks as the other two take hold of her arms.
‘Fuck off!’ she yells. ‘Let go of me, and stop filming! I haven’t done anything!’
The care workers don’t let go, and when she struggles they take a firmer grip.
‘OK now, time to calm down,’ one of them tries.
She hears them talking behind her back, ganging up on her. Their scheming is so obvious that it’s laughable.
‘Stop talking in damn code and stop whispering!’ she says firmly. ‘Tell me what’s going on. And don’t try lying, I haven’t done anything, it wasn’t me who smeared shit on the window.’
‘No, we know it wasn’t,’ one of them says.
They try to calm her down. They lie to her face, and she’s got no one she can call out to, no one who can help her. She’s at their mercy.
‘Stop it!’ she cries when she sees one of them preparing a syringe. ‘Let go of my arms!’
Then she falls into a deep sleep.
Rest.
In the morning the psychiatrist comes to see her. He asks how she is.
‘What do you mean?’ she says. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me.’
The psychiatrist explains to Victoria that she’s been having hallucinations because she feels responsible for what happened to Martin. Psychosis, paranoia, post-traumatic stress.
Victoria listens to him in silence, but inside her a mute, solid resistance is rising up, like a coming storm.
The kitchen
WAS SET UP like a basic autopsy room. The shelves in the pantry no longer contained jars and tins of food, but bottles of glycerine and potassium acetate and a whole load of other chemicals.
On the clinically clean worktop lay a range of common tools. There was an axe, a saw, and various pairs of pliers, some flat-nosed, some for cutting, and a large pair of pincers.
The smaller instruments were laid out on a towel. A scalpel, tweezers, needle and thread, as well as a long tool with a hook at one end.
When she was finished she wrapped the body in a clean white towel. She placed the jar containing the amputated genitals beside the other containers in the kitchen cupboard.
Using a bit of powder she dusted his face, then carefully applied eyeliner and some pale lipstick.
The last thing she did was to shave all the fine, downy hair from his body, because she had discovered that formalin made the body stiffen slightly, and the skin swell. Now the hair would be pulled in, and the skin would end up smoother.
When she was finished the boy looked almost alive.
As if he were asleep.
Danvikstull – Crime Scene
THE THIRD BOY was found four weeks after the first at the boules club below Danvikstull, and was, according to the experts, a good example of successful embalmment.
Jeanette Kihlberg was in a terrible mood. Not only because her football team had lost their match against Gr?ndal, but also because she was now on her way to yet another murder scene instead of going home for a shower. She arrived at the scene sweaty and still wearing her football gear. She said hi to Schwarz and ?hlund, then went over to Hurtig, who was having a smoke next to the cordon.
‘How was the match?’ ?hlund asked.
‘Lost three to two. One bad penalty decision, one own goal and one torn knee ligament for our goalie.’
‘You see, just like I’ve always said,’ Schwarz said with a grin. ‘Girls shouldn’t play football. You always get knee trouble. You’re just not built for it.’
She could feel herself getting wound up, but couldn’t face having the same argument again. It was the standard comment from her colleagues whenever her football matches were mentioned. But she still thought it odd that someone as young as Schwarz could have such tired, obsolete opinions.
‘I know all that. What’s it look like here? Do we know who it is?’