The Crow Girl (108 page)

‘No, I don’t know what to say,’ the secretary replies after a few moments of silence. ‘It’s all very sudden, of course.’

‘Are you going to miss me?’ Victoria wonders.

Ann-Britt clears her throat. ‘Yes, I am. Can I ask why you’re doing this?’

‘Because I can,’ she replies, and that answer will have to do for the time being.

When they hang up and she’s about to put the phone back she feels the keys in her pocket.

She takes the key ring out and holds it up in front of her. It’s heavy, and contains all her keys. To the practice, and all the ones for the building on Borgmästargatan. The key to the apartment, the storage compartment, the laundry, as well as another key that she can’t remember the purpose of. The bicycle store, perhaps.

She winds the window down and throws the keys out.

She leaves the window open, and the cold air spreads through the cab.

She hasn’t slept for almost two days, but doesn’t feel remotely tired.

Victoria looks at her phone. What does she really need it for? It only contains a mass of obligations, distracting phone numbers, and a diary with far too many appointments that Ann-Britt is now going to have to cancel. It’s pointless.

She gets ready to throw her phone out as well, but changes her mind.

With one hand on the wheel she struggles to tap in a short text message to Jeanette with the other. ‘Sorry,’ she writes, as she heads out over a bridge.

The last Victoria Bergman sees of her phone is as it hits the railing of the bridge with a clatter, before disappearing into the dark water below.

MADELEINE SILFVERBERG IS
sitting on a bench in the thin shadow of some trees full of blackbirds. The sun is warm even though it’s late autumn, and the gold cupolas of the vast monastery complex in front of her are glinting against the blue sky.

A quiet, colourless stream of people is passing along the path below the cathedral, whereas the building itself is primarily white, green and gold.

She puts her headphones on and tunes the radio. A faint crackle before the receiver finds a frequency with some Ukrainian voices, then an accordion followed by brass instruments and a drum that soon develops into a hybrid of klezmer music and hysterical Europop. The contrast between the music and the stillness of the monastery precinct is like her own life.

Her frantic inner life, unknown to anyone.

People just keep walking past, absorbed in their own concerns. Outside her, shut up inside themselves.

She leans back and looks up at the fractured pattern of branches. Here and there she can make out the shape of birds, shades of grey and black standing out from the trees in relief against the clear blue flatness of the sky.

On a summer’s day ten years ago Viggo had taken her to the red-and-white lighthouse at Oddesund, she had sat in his lap for several hours while he talked about his life, and the sky had been the same then as it is now.

She gets to her feet and begins walking towards the white walls that shield the area from the hubbub of the city. The music on the radio fades away and the voices return, just as excitable and present as the drums, accordion and horns.

When she was ten years old Viggo had told her about this place, and he had explained why the monks locked themselves inside the caves beneath the Pechersk Monastery. He had also told her that there is nothing worse in life than regret, and she had known even then what was tormenting him.

Something he had done as a child, when he was neither man nor woman.

And now she’s done as he wanted and everything is over.

He had selected her as his most trusted confidante, and she had never forgotten that. As a ten-year-old she had been proud, but now she realises that she has simply been his slave.

She walks out of the gate beneath the tall clock tower and the voices in her headphones fall silent as the music comes back, in just as fast a tempo as before, but this time with a female singer and a tuba in the background. She hears her heels strike the paving of the square at the same rapid pace, and when she reaches the other side and crosses the street she stops and takes off her headphones.

There’s an old man sitting at a small table at the street corner. He reminds her of Viggo.

The same face and posture, but this man is dressed in rags. On the rickety little table stands a mass of glasses, all different shapes and sizes. At first she thinks he’s trying to sell them, but when he catches sight of her his face cracks into a toothless smile and he moistens his fingertips with his tongue and gently rubs them on the rim of one of the glasses.

The man’s fingers move to and fro, notes begin to ring out, and she realises that each of the glasses is filled with a different amount of water. They’re set out like three octaves on a piano, thirty-six glasses in total, and she stands in front of him, transfixed. All around her is the sound of traffic and people, and from the headphones around her neck comes a hissing chatter of voices, but the glasses on the table are making sounds she has never heard before.

The old man’s glass organ sounds like something from another world.

Only a few minutes ago, inside the monastery grounds, music had seemed like chaos in contrast to the calmness within the walls.

Now the reverse is true.

The notes from the glasses merge together, conveying a swaying sensation, like floating through the air or being gently rocked back and forth by waves in the sea. The ringing, whistling sounds flow out into the chaos of noise all around, and everything becomes a bubble of calmness.

On the pavement there’s a little metal can containing some crumpled notes, and under the table, beside the man’s battered shoes, she can see a bucket of water.

She realises that the water is there to keep the glass organ in tune, to replace water that evaporates from the glasses, and now she also notices that there are large chunks of ice in the bucket.

Frozen water with cleansing isotopes, just like inside her own body.

AFTER ENDING HER
call with Ivo Andrić, Jeanette Kihlberg sits quietly at her desk, while Jens Hurtig sits in the chair facing her, saying nothing. They’ve just listened to the pathologist’s description of what Ulrika Wendin suffered before she froze to death, and his account has left them speechless.

Ivo Andrić told them about living mummification, an ancient technique practised by, among others, certain sects within Japanese Buddhism.

His thoughtful, slow voice had described the procedure itself, which needs no more than a dry space with a limited supply of oxygen. Body fat is burned off with a diet of seeds, nuts, bark and roots, and bodily fluids are reduced by drinking sap. In Ulrika Wendin’s case, a form of downy birch had been used.

The pathologist also explained about sensory deprivation, and the effect of being denied all sensory information in an enclosed space insulated against light and sound. He stressed that it is extremely rare for a victim to survive more than a few hours in such a state. The lack of stimulation also affects the body, and it had been a miracle that the girl had survived as long as she had, and even more so that she evidently managed to escape and get away under her own steam.

Jeanette studies the ravaged look on Hurtig’s face, and knows they’re both feeling a sense of impotence, failure and self-recrimination.

Hurtig is looking straight at her, but he might as well be staring straight through her at the bookcase behind. It’s their fault.

To be honest, it’s mostly my fault, she thinks. If I’d acted more quickly and followed my gut instinct instead of being rational, we might have been able to save Ulrika Wendin’s life. It’s as simple as that, really.

Jeanette knows that right about now the girl’s grandmother will be hearing of her death from two police officers accompanied by a priest. There are some people who have a gift for that particular task, and Jeanette knows that she isn’t one of them. Truly loving someone can be terrifying, she thinks, and her thoughts go to Johan, who will soon be sitting in a plane on his way back from London. In a few hours she’ll see him again, and he’ll be happy after a successful weekend away with his dad. She understood that much from the text message she received just after they had found Ulrika Wendin’s body half covered with snow under a ragged pine tree. She had had a terrible death, and Jeanette will never be able to stop thinking about how frightened she must have been.

She brushes a few tears from her cheeks and looks at Hurtig. Has he got anyone to fear losing? His parents, of course. They seem to get along well, and have managed to come to terms with the loss of one member of the family. Someone who’ll never be coming back.

Perhaps Ulrika Wendin’s grandmother has no one she can share her grief with. Like Annette Lundström, the only survivor among all the people caught up in this horrible mess.

She finds herself thinking about a family from Sierra Leone who have also lost someone, and will soon be getting confirmation from the police.

In addition to the Polaroids in Viggo Dürer’s cellar out at Hundudden, forensics found a video recording.

Samuel Bai, chained up and fighting for his life against a half-naked man whom both Jeanette and Hurtig recognised as the man they found dead in the cottage up in Lapland.

On the desk, next to the film of Samuel’s death, are dozens of files and a heap of folders, one of them containing copies of Viggo Dürer’s photographs of the bodies from Thorildsplan, Svartsjölandet, Danvikstull and Barnängen. It’s now almost incidental that Dürer spent several years being treated for cervical cancer, or that the car that scraped the tree where the body was found out in Svartsjölandet is the same one parked under a tarpaulin at Hundudden.

But the investigation isn’t over just because their four cases have been solved. There’s evidence of another forty bodies, and all the files will be passed on to Europol.

None of that really makes any difference, though, Jeanette thinks, since everybody concerned is dead. Including the murderer.

The bodies that ended up cremated on Viggo Dürer’s boat were, in all likelihood, Henrietta Dürer and Anders Wikström.

And Dürer has been found dead in a park in Kiev, shot in the back of the head. A murder that Iwan Lowynsky will have to deal with until Europol takes on the case.

It’s over, she thinks. But I’m still not happy.

There’s something that isn’t right, something that can’t be properly understood, leaving unanswered questions. All investigations include some degree of anticlimax, but she’s found it impossible to get used to that and accept it. Like the fact that she never managed to find Madeleine Silfverberg. When it comes down to it, maybe she was just a phantom anyway. Maybe the murders of the former Sigtuna pupils really were Hannah and Jessica’s work. She’s never going to know, and that’s just one part of everything she’s going to have to live with.

What would I do if I didn’t have Johan? she thinks. Resign and just take off somewhere? No, I probably wouldn’t dare. Maybe apply for a leave of absence and do something else. Mind you, I’d probably return to work after a week, since police work is all I can do. Or would I?

She doesn’t know, and is reminded of the fact that her personal life is as full of unanswered questions as her investigations. Does she even have a personal life? A relationship?

‘What are you thinking about?’ Hurtig suddenly asks.

They’ve been silent for so long that Jeanette had almost forgotten that he’s sitting on the other side of the desk.

In relationships with other people you only see a fraction of each other, she thinks. Most of your real life takes place inside your head, and can’t be translated easily into verbal communication.

‘Nothing,’ she says. ‘I’m not thinking about anything at all.’

Hurtig gives her a weary smile. ‘Me neither. And it feels very nice, actually.’

Jeanette nods, then hears footsteps out in the corridor followed by a light knock on the door. It’s Billing, who gives them a concerned look as he shuts the door behind him. ‘How’s it going?’ he asks quietly.

Jeanette gestures towards the piles on her desk. ‘We’re done, we just need von Kwist to come and get what we’ve put together.’

‘Good, good …’ the commissioner mutters. ‘But, if I’ve understood correctly, as soon as this is made public it’s going to cause … problems?’

Billing looks troubled, and Jeanette suddenly realises why he’s there.

‘Yes, that’s probably unavoidable,’ she says. ‘It’s not really possible to remove Berglind from the case.’

‘This is the last thing we need right now.’ Billing sighs. ‘The press are going to crucify us.’ He shakes his head and leaves the door open when he leaves.

The press? Jeanette thinks. So the worst thing about all this is what the papers are going to say about us?

She glances at the stacks of evidence on the desk, in which the fact that Billing’s predecessor, the former police commissioner Gert Berglind, was involved in financing child pornography is revealed in macabre detail. Crucifixion probably isn’t the right word for how the press is going to react.

More like slaughter.

The phone rings once Hurtig has left her office.

A call that, if it doesn’t turn her entire life upside down, certainly changes the future forever.

Miracles rarely happen. That’s in the nature of things.

But occasionally they do.

The call is from her bank. An impersonal call in every way, were it not for its highly personal import.

Someone has paid off the outstanding balance of her and Åke’s mortgage.

Two million, four hundred and fifty-three thousand kronor.

‘What did you say?’ is all Jeanette can manage.

‘It’s quite true,’ the voice at the other end says, making it sound like some sort of punishment. ‘The individual in question has also transferred another two million into your personal account.’

Jeanette feels dizzy.