‘What can I get you?’
The smile on the girl’s thin face looks strained, her gaze is flitting about and her body language is anything but relaxed. ‘I’ll have whatever you’re having.’
They order, and Jeanette leans back on the sofa.
‘Is it OK to have a cigarette while we’re waiting for the food?’ Ulrika gets up before Jeanette has time to reply. Restlessness seems to be the girl’s defining characteristic.
‘Fine.’
They go out. Ulrika perches on the window ledge outside the bar, and Jeanette offers her a cigarette. ‘Ulrika, I understand that this might be difficult, but I’d like to talk about Karl Lundstr?m. You said before that you wanted to tell me everything. Have you done that?’
Ulrika Wendin lights the cigarette, then looks wearily at Jeanette through the smoke. ‘What does it matter. He’s dead now, isn’t he?’
‘That doesn’t mean we have to stop. Have you ever talked to anyone about what happened?’
The girl takes a deep drag and sighs. ‘No, they dropped the preliminary investigation. No one believed me. I don’t think even my mum did. The prosecutor kept going on about how there was a social safety net for people like me, but it turned out he just thought I should get psychological help for my attention-seeking behaviour. I was just a stupid teenage whore. And as for that fucking lawyer …’
‘What about him?’
‘I read his summary. The defence statement, von Kwist said it was called.’
Jeanette nods. Occasionally a defence lawyer is brought in during the preliminary investigation, even if that’s fairly unusual. ‘Of course, the defence statement. Go on.’
‘He wrote that I lacked all credibility, that I had nothing but problems … With everything, from school to alcohol. Even though he’d never met me, he made out that I was nothing. Worth absolutely nothing. I was so upset that I promised myself I’d never forget his name.’
Jeanette thinks about Viggo Dürer and Kenneth von Kwist.
Abandoned cases.
Are there more? She realises that they’re going to have to check. The backgrounds of both lawyer and prosecutor would have to be thoroughly looked into.
‘Viggo Dürer’s dead,’ Jeanette says.
‘And mourned by nobody.’ Ulrika stubs her cigarette out on the window ledge. ‘Shall we go in?’
Their food is on the table and Jeanette starts to eat, but Ulrika doesn’t so much as glance at the plate of French fries. Instead she looks out of the window, clearly thinking about something and drumming her fingers restlessly on the table.
Jeanette says nothing. Waits.
‘They knew each other,’ Ulrika says after a while.
Jeanette puts her knife and fork down and gives her a look of encouragement. ‘What do you mean? Who did?’
Ulrika Wendin hesitates at first, then takes out her mobile phone. One of the latest models, more like a little hand-held computer.
How could she afford something like that?
Ulrika touches the screen a few times, then turns it towards Jeanette.
‘I found this on Flashback. Read it.’
‘Flashback?’
‘Yes. Just read it. You’ll see.’
On the screen is a website with a sequence of comments.
One of the posts is a list of Swedes who were said to have given financial backing to a foundation called Sihtunum i Diasporan.
The list contains twenty or so names, and once Jeanette has looked through it she sees what Ulrika Wendin means.
Apart from the two names Ulrika has mentioned, she recognises another one of them.
Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
SOFIA ZETTERLUND IS sitting on the sofa in the living room, staring into the darkness. She hasn’t bothered to switch on any lights since she got home. It’s almost pitch black, except for the light from the street lamps.
Sofia feels she can no longer resist. She also knows that it isn’t rational to try to resist.
They’re going to have to cooperate, she and Victoria. Otherwise things will only get worse.
Sofia knows she’s ill. And she knows what needs to be done.
She and Victoria make up the complicated product of a shared past, but have split into two personalities in a desperate attempt to deal with the brutalities of daily life.
They have completely different ways of defending themselves, and different strategies for healing. Sofia has held her illness at bay by clinging to routines. Her work at the practice gives her a framework that muffles the chaos within her.
Victoria is governed by hatred and rage, simple solutions and black-and-white logic, where if it proves necessary everything can be cut away.
Victoria despises Sofia’s weakness, her desire to blend in and adapt. Her persistent attempts to suppress all manner of injustice and apathetically accept the role of victim.
Since Victoria returned, Sofia has been full of self-loathing and has lost the ability to see a clear path ahead of her. Everything has turned into a quagmire.
Nothing is obvious any more.
Two wildly different wills must be satisfied and distilled down to one. A hopeless equation, she thinks.
It’s said that a person is shaped by their fears, and Sofia has developed her personality out of fear of being Victoria. Victoria has lain dormant within Sofia, like an opposing pole, a trampoline.
Without Victoria’s characteristics, Sofia will cease to be and will become nothing but an empty shell.
Without substance.
Where did Sofia Zetterlund come from? she thinks. She can’t remember.
She runs her hand over her arm.
Sofia Zetterlund, she thinks. She tastes the name, is struck by the realisation that she is someone else’s creation. Her arm really belongs to someone else.
Everything started with Victoria.
I am a product of another person, Sofia thinks. Of another ego. The thought makes her dizzy, and she finds it hard to breathe.
Where can she find a point of contact? Where in Victoria is the need that Sofia fulfils? She has to find that point, but to do that she has to stop being scared of Victoria’s thoughts. She has to dare to look her in the eye with an open mind. Make herself receptive to everything she has devoted her whole life to avoiding.
To start with, she has to locate the point in time when her memories are her own and not Victoria’s.
She thinks about the Polaroid picture. About ten years old, on a beach wearing ugly red and white clothes. It’s quite clear that she doesn’t remember it. That time, that sequence, belongs to Victoria.
Sofia strokes her other arm. The pale scars are Victoria’s. She used to cut her arm with a razor blade or pieces of broken glass behind Aunt Elsa’s house in Dala-Floda.