SOFIA ZETTERLUND TAKES the cutting down, carefully folds it up and puts it in her pocket.
It wasn’t me, she thinks.
It was you.
She opens the fridge and sees that as usual it is full of milk. Everything is the way it always is, everything is the way it ought to be. She knows he drinks two litres each day. Milk is pure.
She remembers him tipping an entire carton over her when she didn’t want to go to the cottage. The milk had poured down her head, over her body and onto the floor, but she had gone with him anyway, and then she had met Martin for the first time.
It should have been tears pouring down, she thinks, and closes the fridge door.
Suddenly she hears a buzzing sound, not from the fridge but from her pocket.
Her mobile phone.
She waits until it stops ringing.
She knows they’ll soon be finished downstairs and that she’ll have to hurry if she’s going to have enough time, but she still goes back upstairs to her room. She has to be certain there’s nothing she wants to keep. Nothing she’s going to miss.
She decides to rescue the little rabbit-skin dog.
It hasn’t done any harm, and actually comforted her for many years, listening to her thoughts.
No, she can’t leave him.
She picks up the dog from the bed. For a moment she wonders about taking the photograph album, but no, it must be destroyed. They’re Victoria’s pictures, not hers. From now on she’s only going to be Sofia, even if she’s going to be forced to share her life with someone else forever after.
Before she pads back downstairs she takes a look in her parents’ bedroom. Just like the living room, it looks the same as it always did. Even the brown floral bedspread is the same, just shabbier and paler than she remembers. On the landing she stops and listens. To judge by the murmuring from the sauna they’re in the middle of the reconciliation phase. Once again she looks at the time and realises that this is one of their marathon sessions.
She goes back down into the living room and hears a noise from the basement as someone comes out of the sauna.
Every sauna session was its own performance that followed a set pattern.
Phase one used to be silence and butterflies in her stomach, and even if she knew that phase two would come, she never stopped hoping that this time would be an exception and that they would simply have a sauna the way everyone else did. When he began to fidget and run his hand over his thinning hair it was time for the next stage and a signal to Mum. Over the years she had learned to interpret and understand the signal encouraging her to make herself scarce and leave them alone.
‘No, this is too hot for me,’ she usually said. ‘I think I’m going to go and put some water on for tea.’
But now the fat cow can’t get away any more.
From what she’s heard from the sauna, she understands that phase two these days is dominated by violence, in contrast to when she used to be left in there.
In her day it used to take about twenty minutes before he reached phase three, which was the worst part, with him crying and wanting to make up, and if you didn’t play your cards right it could mean that you had to go through phase two all over again. Before she goes downstairs to them she looks around one last time. From now on there will only be memories left, nothing physical to return to that might be able to validate the memories.
In the living room she takes down the picture from the wall and places it on the floor. Carefully she puts her foot down on it, breaking the glass. Then she takes the print out of the broken frame and stares at the picture one last time before slowly tearing it into pieces.
The interior of a house in Dalarna.
She is standing in the foreground, naked apart from big, black riding boots that reach up to her knees. She’s hiding a dirty sheet behind her back. In the background Martin is sitting on the floor, not interested in her.
Now she can only see a smiling girl and a sweet child who’s playing absent-mindedly with a tin or maybe a building block. The riding boots that she was forced to wear once when he abused her are two ordinary socks, and the sheet with her blood and his bodily fluids on it is a clean nightdress.
It’s like a Carl Larsson.
Only she knows that the idyll is fake.
Everyone else sees nothing but a decorative picture.
She takes a deep breath, and the stale smell of mould tickles her nose.
She hates Carl Larsson.
On the way down the stairs to the cellar she avoids the steps that she knows creak, and goes into the workshop. She picks up a plank that looks long enough, then goes into the shower room outside the sauna. She can hear them clearly now. He’s the only one talking.
‘Christ, you’re not getting any thinner, are you? Can’t you put a towel around yourself?’
She knows Mum will do as he says without protest. She stopped crying a long time ago. She’s accepted that life doesn’t always turn out the way you imagined.
No sadness. Just indifference.
‘If I didn’t feel sorry for you I’d tell you to get lost. And I don’t just mean out of the sauna, but for good. But how the hell would you survive? Eh?’
Mum says nothing. Just as she always has.
For a moment she hesitates. Maybe he’s the only one who should die.
But no, Mum needs to pay for her silence and her acquiescence. Without her, nothing could have happened. Silence was a precondition.
Keeping quiet means consent.
‘Say something, for fuck’s sake!’
They’re so wrapped up in themselves that they don’t even hear her pushing the plank up against the wooden handle of the sauna door and wedging it against the wall opposite.
She gets out her cigarette lighter.
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
THE PHONE RINGS, and Jeanette sees that it’s Commissioner Dennis Billing.
‘Hello, Jeanette,’ he begins, and his ingratiating tone of voice makes her immediately suspicious.
‘Hello, Dennis, my friend,’ she replies sarcastically, and can’t resist adding, ‘To what do I owe this honour?’
‘Oh, stop that,’ he says, chuckling. ‘It doesn’t suit you!’
The false facade crumbles, and Jeanette feels instantly more comfortable.
‘For over two months now I’ve been reading your reports without being able to understand the direction you’re heading in, and suddenly I get this.’ The commissioner falls silent.
‘This?’ Jeanette asks, feigning ignorance.
‘Yes, this utterly brilliant summary of the terrible events surrounding these dead …’ His voice trails off.
‘You mean the latest report about my conclusions so far relating to the boys’ murders?’
‘Yes, exactly.’ Dennis Billing clears his throat. ‘You’ve done a fantastic job, and I’m glad it’s over. Get a holiday request over to me, and you can be lying on a beach as early as next week.’