—
When Anneli looked up “Sandal” and “Stenl?se” on the Internet, all she found was a homeowners’ association in Sandalsparken, which, now that she was standing here, she realized was a huge area. Two long blocks containing approximately one hundred apartments. How on earth was she supposed to find out which one Jazmine lived in when she wasn’t registered as living there—unless she found her dancing along the walkways? It wouldn’t be a good idea to trudge around for hours on end until the early hours. Should she just call the bitch and come up with some excuse or other about a cheap TV package or something? The risk that she wouldn’t bite was significant, and it might sow the seed of suspicion.
She looked dejectedly at the first block of apartments. There were names on every buzzer, according to the rules of the association, but there were just so many. Then she thought she could just check the residents on the Internet instead but realized there was little chance that Jazmine would have changed her details online already. Of course, she could take each doorway in turn, checking the mailboxes one by one, but again, the chances that Jazmine had put her name on the mailbox were minimal.
Anneli sighed. She had an opportunity within her grasp, and that was better than nothing.
She began at entrance A, at one end of the first block of apartments, checking the names on the silver-colored mailboxes that hung in clusters in the hallway. And then just when she was about to give up—because this obviously wasn’t the sort of association where people simply stuck impromptu names on the mailboxes—she caught sight of a name in entrance B that made her heart skip a beat.
Two birds with one stone, she thought immediately.
Because there on the mailbox, written as per the rules of the association, was the name RIGMOR ZIMMERMANN.
A surname that, while it wasn’t Jazmine’s, was the surname of someone else high up on Anneli’s death list.
23
Tuesday, May 24th, 2016
Even outside her office, the scent was unmistakable. Sensual bygone days and months reached Carl’s nostrils, sending his mind into a state of alert. Why hadn’t he worn a smarter shirt? Why hadn’t he borrowed one of Morten’s vanilla-scented deodorants and given his armpits a quick wipe? Why hadn’t he . . . ?
“Hi, Carl. Hi, Assad,” came the voice that had once been able to bring him to his knees.
She was sitting in a room without a desk but with four armchairs, smiling at him through her red lips as if they had seen each other yesterday.
He nodded to her and Yrsa—that was all he could manage—and sat down with a lump in his throat so big that it would be hard to utter a sound.
Mona was her usual self and yet different. Her body was still slender and desirable, but he saw her face in a new light, even though the differences were minimal. Her red lips were thinner, the small wrinkles above her top lip deeper, the skin on her face looser, but all in all more tempting to caress.
His Mona had aged. His Mona who had lived for years without him. What had time done to her?
He clung for one second to the short-lived but intense smile she sent him, and gasped for breath. Like a blow, he felt it inside, and it was almost physically painful.
Had she noticed his reaction? He certainly hoped not.
She turned to Rose’s sister, sitting in the armchair next to her.
“Yrsa and I have gone through Gordon Taylor’s list and the accompanying timeline of when Rose Knudsen changed the phrases in her mantra notebooks, as we might call them. Yrsa has a lot to add, judging from what I’ve already heard. Would you, Yrsa? I will support you along the way and add my own comments when necessary.”
The red-haired imitation of a character from a Tim Burton film nodded, seeming genuinely affected by the situation. Please excuse me if I start to cry, her eyes seemed to say. Then she took a deep breath and began.
“You’ll know a lot of this already, but I don’t know exactly what you know, so I’ll just sketch out the details. It’s quite strange, but this is actually the first time I’ve really considered exactly what Rose has written. The things Gordon has noticed make sense to me now.”
She placed the sheet with all the phrases in front of them. Carl knew them almost by heart.
“My dad started hounding Rose when I was seven years old, Vicky eight, Lise-Marie five, and Rose nine. I don’t know why, but it was as if something or other happened in 1989 that made him single her out. From 1990 to 1993, it became worse and worse. When Rose begins writing that she is ‘scared’ in 1993, it is about the time she begins isolating herself in her room. Actually, there was a time when she also locked the door, only opening up for me or my big sister Vicky. We’d bring her food because she had to eat something. We had to keep knocking and give her reassurances that Dad wasn’t standing outside before she’d open. She only ever left her room to go to school or the toilet, and the latter only if everyone else was asleep.”
“Can you give a few examples of the psychological terror your dad inflicted on Rose?” said Mona.
“Well, he did it in so many different ways. Rose could do no right in his eyes, and he put her down at every opportunity. Crushed her by calling her ugly, saying that no one in the whole world wanted her and that it would have been better if she’d never been born. That sort of thing. The rest of us blocked it out because we couldn’t stand hearing it. So I am afraid a lot of it is repressed now. We have discussed it, Lise-Marie, Vicky, and I, and we just don’t remember much at all. It’s really . . .” She swallowed a couple of times, suppressing her desire to cry, but her eyes gave away how sad she was that they had noticed so little of Rose’s misery.
“Go on, Yrsa,” said Mona.
“Okay. In ’95 you can see that Rose goes on the defensive. Can’t you sense it when she writes ‘I can’t hear you’?” She looked questioningly at them.
“So you think these phrases are a sort of internal conversation with your dad, and that it continued even after his death?” asked Carl.
Yrsa nodded. “Yes, without doubt. And Rose changes in ’95 from being a timid and scared Rose to one who dares to stand up for herself, and there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s because of a new girl who started in her class in the middle of the previous year. As far as I can recall, her name was Karoline. A cool girl who listened to rap and hip-hop artists like 2Pac, Shaggy, and 8Ball while the rest of us girls were crazy about boy bands like Take That and Boyzone. She came from Vesterbro and refused to fit in, which rubbed off on Rose. Suddenly our sister was wearing the type of clothes that annoyed our dad most of all, and began covering her ears when he went for her.”
Carl saw it all too clearly. “And yet he didn’t hit her?”