The Crow Girl (88 page)

When she opens it she finds that it only contains one sheet of paper, and when she reads what she wrote it becomes clear that it’s just the notes of the first exploratory session, as well as a few lines from the two following meetings. Nothing from their other sessions.

Sofia takes out the diary where she records all her appointments.

They met nine times in May. In June, July and August he had come to see her twice a week, always punctual, never missing a session. From her diary it is abundantly clear that Samuel came to see her a total of forty-five times. She knows that’s right, and doesn’t need to count again. Her records also show that they met fifteen times on a Monday, ten times on Tuesdays, seven times on Wednesdays, and eight times on Thursdays. They only met on a Friday five times.

Sofia closes the diary and goes out to see Ann-Britt.

‘Would you mind checking how many times Samuel Bai came to see me, please?’ she says. ‘I think I may have forgotten to invoice social services in Hässelby.’

Ann-Britt frowns and looks surprised.

‘No, you haven’t,’ she says. ‘It’s been paid.’

‘OK, but how many times did he come?’

‘It was only three times,’ Ann-Britt says. ‘You decided not to see him again after he attacked you. Surely you remember that?’

Just as her headache strikes with renewed force, from the corner of her eye Sofia sees Jeanette come through the door.

‘
SORRY I’M A
bit late,’ Jeanette says, giving her a hug. ‘It’s been a hell of a day.’

Sofia is standing stock-still, frozen by Ann-Britt’s words echoing in her head.

It was only three times. You decided not to see him again after he attacked you. Surely you remember that?

No, Sofia doesn’t remember. She has no idea what’s going on. Everything is falling apart, while at the same time coming together.

She can see Samuel Bai in her mind’s eye. He spent session after session sitting opposite her, telling her about growing up in Sierra Leone and the abuses he had committed. In order to summon up one of his many personalities, she had once handed him a model motorcycle that she’d borrowed from Johansson, the dentist whose surgery was next door.

A model of a red-lacquered Harley-Davidson from 1959.

When he saw the motorcycle he was like a different person. He had punched her and …

Only now does the full memory return.

… picked her up with both hands tightly clasped around her neck, as if she were a doll.

Sofia realises that she’s been mixing up her memories and creating a new memory out of a number of different events. Squeezing millions of water molecules together to form a single snowball.

Sofia can feel Jeanette’s arms around her and the warmth of her cheek. Skin against skin, the proximity of another person.

Sticky chocolate cake, she thinks, hearing her mother’s voice.

Two eggs, two hundred and fifty grams of sugar, four tablespoons of cocoa, two teaspoons of vanilla sugar, one hundred grams of butter, one hundred and fifty grams of flour and half a teaspoon of salt.

‘Sorry I’m a bit late, it’s been a hell of a day.’

‘That’s OK,’ she says, pulling away from the embrace.

Reality comes back, her field of vision expands and her hearing returns to normal, while at the same time her pulse rate drops. Sofia looks at the receptionist. ‘I’m going now. See you tomorrow,’ she says, leading Jeanette towards the door. They go out to the lobby and into the lift.

As the door closes and the lift begins to move downward Jeanette takes a step towards her, cups her face in both hands and kisses her.

At first Sofia stiffens, taken aback, but gradually feels a sense of calm spreading out as her body softens, and she shuts her eyes and returns the kiss. For a moment everything stops. Sofia’s head is completely silent, and the way she feels as the lift finally comes to a stop and their lips part might best be described as happiness.

What’s happening? she thinks.

Everything is going so fast.

First she was sitting at her desk, then she went through Samuel Bai’s records, and after that Ann-Britt said he only came to see her three times. And then Jeanette arrived, and kissed her.

She looks at the time. An hour?

She thinks back and quickly realises that there’s a gap in her memory. The past hour feels like it’s been on fast-forward, and Jeanette’s kiss seems to have acted like the stop button. Sofia is breathing calmly again now.

Three times? she thinks, but knows that that’s right.

She has clear memories of three sessions with Samuel Bai.

No more.

The other memories are false, and are mixed up with the time she spent working for UNICEF in Sierra Leone. Everything is becoming clearer, and she gives Jeanette a smile. ‘I’m glad you’ve come.’

Their walk to the other side of Södermalm resembles the Sleepwalker’s route. A semicircular detour, Swedenborgsgatan to Södra station, then down to Ringvägen, past the Clarion Hotel, turning north into Renstiernas gata towards the hills of Vita bergen.

Jeanette’s voice whispering in her ear, her arm around her waist and a light kiss on her neck. The warmth of her breath.

‘Things are starting to move at work,’ she goes on. ‘The boy we found at Thorildsplan has been identified. His name is Itkul, and he’s one of two brothers who’ve been missing for some time.’

The calmness Sofia feels is very pleasant. She’s fragile, open to everything being said to her, prepared for the possibility that Victoria might react, but she feels calm at the prospect.

It’s time to lower her guard and just let everything happen.

‘And the other brother?’ Sofia asks, even though she’s sure the boy is dead.

‘His name is Karakul, still missing.’

‘Sounds like human trafficking,’ she says.

‘The brothers were working as prostitutes.’ Jeanette sighs and falls silent, but Sofia has no problem realising what she means. She can see the chain of events as clearly as if it had been spelled out to her.

The arm around her waist again, and the warmth of Jeanette’s breath once more. ‘We’ve got an identikit,’ she says. ‘But I’m not expecting much. The witness is an eight-year-old girl who’s blind in one eye, and as far as the face in the picture is concerned, it’s – how can I put it – neutral? I can’t even see it in my mind’s eye now, even though I’ve spent half the afternoon staring at it.’

Sofia nods. She’s never had a face in mind while she’s been working on the perpetrator profile. But a blank slate. This type of murderer is faceless until they get caught, and then they look like anyone at all, like an ordinary man in the street.

‘And then there’s Karl Lundström and Per-Ola Silfverberg,’ Jeanette goes on. ‘We know who killed them. Their names were Hannah Östlund and Jessica Friberg. They were also responsible for killing the homeless woman in the cavern. They’ve committed suicide, you’ll probably see it in the papers soon. Almost everyone involved was at boarding school in Sigtuna.’

Sofia replies to Jeanette, but doesn’t hear what she says. Possibly something along the lines of not being surprised. But she is.

Hannah and Jessica? Sofia thinks. She knows she ought to be reacting more strongly than she is, but she feels nothing but emptiness, and that’s because it can’t be right. Victoria knows Hannah and Jessica, and they’re not murderers. They’re apathetic little girls who like dogs, and Jeanette’s got it all wrong, but she can’t tell her that, not yet.

‘How can you be so sure it was those two?’

Sofia imagines she can see a hint of doubt in Jeanette’s eyes. ‘Several reasons. Among other things we’ve got a picture of Hannah Östlund killing Fredrika Grünewald. She’s got a very specific distinguishing feature. She’s missing her right ring finger.’

Sofia knows that’s true. Hannah was bitten by a dog and had to have her finger amputated.

Nonetheless … Jeanette’s explanation sounds a bit too rehearsed.

Now Sofia takes the initiative for a kiss. They stop in a doorway on Bondegatan and Jeanette’s arms slip under Sofia’s coat.

They stay in the doorway for a while, wrapped up in the warmth of their embrace.

Physical closeness can be so liberating. Five minutes in which thoughts drift apart, only to collect themselves into a new, clearer structure afterwards.

‘Come on,’ Jeanette eventually says. ‘I’m hungry, I didn’t have any lunch.’

Jeanette gives Sofia a serious look as she opens the door to the bar. ‘Charlotte Silfverberg has committed suicide,’ she says. ‘Several people saw her jump from a Finland ferry late in the evening of the day before yesterday. It feels like everyone involved in this story ends up dead before their time. There’s only Annette Lundström left, and we both know what sort of state she’s in.’

As they step inside the glazed porch, Sofia isn’t thinking about Annette or Charlotte.

She’s thinking about Madeleine.

Jeanette interrupts her thoughts. ‘What’s annoying me most about all this,’ she says as she takes her jacket off, ‘is that I never got to meet Victoria Bergman.’

Sofia can feel her skin tighten and shrink.

‘Although I did talk to her once, funnily enough.’

Hello, my name’s Jeanette Kihlberg, I’m calling from the Stockholm police. I’ve actually been given this phone number by your father’s lawyer, who’s wondering if you’d be able to act as a character witness for your father in a forthcoming trial.

‘What’s funny about that?’ Sofia says.

‘She was given a protected identity and disappeared off all official registers. But at least I got the chance to meet her former psychologist.’

Sofia already knows what Jeanette’s going to say.

‘We haven’t actually seen each other since then, and it’s so strange that I didn’t even consider talking to you about it over the phone. Victoria’s psychologist has got exactly the same name as you. She lives in a nursing home out in Midsommarkransen.’

Walk in silence, don’t walk away in silence.

See the danger, always danger.

Endless talking, life rebuilding.

Don’t walk away.

THE LAST TIME
. The farewell, their last meeting.

If she had her way, she would go on seeing her, but the decision she had made meant she had to go against her own will completely.

Victoria Bergman could never see Sofia Zetterlund again.

She knocked but didn’t wait for an answer. Sofia was sitting in the living room with her knitting, and looked up at her as she entered the room. Her eyes seemed tired, and perhaps like she hadn’t slept that night either, and perhaps she had also been thinking about their impending separation.

Sofia’s smile was as tired as her eyes. She put her knitting down and gestured to Victoria to sit on the sofa. ‘Would you like some coffee?’

‘No, thanks. How long can I stay?’

Sofia looked at her warily. ‘One hour, like we agreed. You were the one who suggested that, and you made me promise not to make any attempt to persuade you otherwise.’

‘I know.’ She sat down on the sofa, as far away from Sofia as possible. It’s the right decision, she thought. This is the last time, it has to be.

But she was reluctant. Soon she would have the decision of the Nacka District Court in her hand, and then Victoria Bergman would no longer exist. Part of her felt that she wasn’t yet finished with herself, that Victoria wasn’t just going to disappear simply because she had arranged for it to happen in legal terms. Another part of her knew that this was absolutely the right decision, her only possibility to heal.

Become someone else, Victoria thought. Become like you. She cast a quick glance at the psychologist.

‘There’s one thing we have never really finished talking about,’ Sofia said. ‘And because this is our last session, I’d like to –’

‘I know what you mean. What happened in Copenhagen. And Aalborg.’

Sofia nodded. ‘Do you want to tell me?’

She didn’t know where to start. ‘You know I had a baby last summer,’ she attempted, as Sofia looked at her encouragingly. ‘In a hospital in Aalborg …’

It had been the Reptile who gave birth for her. The Reptile who had stored up the pain and hardly made a noise during the birth. The Reptile who had squeezed out an egg and then crept away to lick its wounds.

‘A little bundle of jaundice that they put in an incubator,’ she went on. ‘She’s probably got learning difficulties as well, considering that he’s the father and I’m the mother.’

Why was Sofia staying so bloody quiet? Only the Eyes, looking at her, prompting her. Carry on talking, they seemed to say. But she couldn’t do more than just think about what she ought to say, the words wouldn’t come out.

‘Why is it that you don’t want to tell me?’ Sofia eventually asked.

It had survived when she dropped it on the floor, anyway.

But forget her now. Forget Madeleine. She’s just an egg in a blue onesie.

‘What is there to say?’ She could feel a welcome anger bubbling inside her. Better that than anxiety, than shame. ‘Those bastards stole my baby. They drugged me and dragged me to some quack at University Hospital in Copenhagen and forced me to sign a load of papers. Viggo had arranged everything. Papers saying I had been declared legally incompetent in Sweden, papers saying Bengt had power of attorney, papers saying the baby was born four weeks earlier than it really was, because I would have been of age then. They covered their backs the whole way with masses of papers. If I was to claim that I was of age when the baby was born, they had papers saying I had been declared incompetent. If I dared to suggest that the baby was born on a particular date, they could produce another piece of paper saying that it had been born four weeks earlier, before I came of age. All those fucking papers, important names that couldn’t be contradicted. I’m of age now, but I wasn’t then, when the baby was born. Back then I was mentally ill and incompetent. And, on their papers, seventeen years old rather than eighteen, just to make sure.’