The Crow Girl (36 page)

She doesn’t want to remember anything else, just wants to put an end to it all. All that remains is going down to them and doing what she came here to do.

She leaves the room and goes down the stairs, but stops at the kitchen doorway. She goes in and looks around.

There’s something different.

Where there used to be an empty space under the worktop there’s now a shiny new dishwasher. How many hours did she spend down there, hidden behind the little curtain, listening to the adults talking?

But something else is still there, just as she suspected.

She walks over to the fridge and looks at the cutting from
Upsala Nya Tidning
, now extremely yellow after almost thirty years.

TRAGIC ACCIDENT: 9-YEAR-OLD BOY FOUND DEAD IN FYRIS RIVER
.

Sofia looks at the cutting. After reading it daily for several years, over and over again, she knows it by heart. She is taken aback by a sudden sense of unease, not what she usually felt when she read it.

The unease isn’t sadness, but something else.

Just as it used to, it comforts her to read about how nine-year-old Martin had inexplicably drowned in the Fyris River. That the police didn’t think there was anything suspicious about it, and were treating the incident as a tragic accident.

She feels a sense of calm spreading through her body, and the feelings of guilt gradually subside.

It had been an accident. Nothing else.

DOWN ON THE
jetty she moves her hand back and forth in the water.

‘It’s not that cold,’ she lies.

But he doesn’t want to go out to her.

‘Can’t we go back? It smells, and I’m freezing.’

She finds his indecision annoying. First it was the Ferris wheel, then he changed his mind. Then he wanted to swim, but now he doesn’t.

‘Well, hold your nose if you think it smells. Look at me, you can see it isn’t cold!’

She looks around to make sure there’s no one around. The only people who could possibly see her would be anyone sitting in the big wheel, but she can see it isn’t moving at the moment and is standing there empty.

She takes off her knitted cardigan and top and sits down on the jetty. Then she pulls off her trousers and socks, and stretches out on the jetty in just her underwear. Her skin rises in goosebumps as a cold wind sweeps her back.

‘See, it isn’t cold. Please, Martin, come here!’

Carefully he walks out to her and she rolls onto her side and unties his shoes.

‘We’ve got our coats with us, so we won’t freeze. Anyway, it’s warmer in the water than it is on land.’

She reaches in front of her and pulls the forgotten towel from the post. ‘Look, we’ve even got a towel to dry ourselves on. It’s not wet, and you can use it first.’

Suddenly there’s a shrill alarm from the Kungsängen Bridge, over by the sewage treatment plant. Martin gets scared and jumps. She laughs because she knows it’s just the signal that the bridge is about to be raised to let river traffic pass. The first signal is followed by several shorter ones, and it’s gloomy enough down on the jetty for the rhythmic flashing of the red light to be reflected in the trees above them. But the bridge itself isn’t visible.

‘Don’t be scared. It’s just the bridge opening to let the boats through.’

He looks lost standing there.

When she sees that he’s still freezing, she pulls him closer and hugs him tight. His hair tickles her nose and she giggles.

‘You don’t have to go swimming if you don’t dare …’

The bascule bridge opens, and soon a little wooden boat with its lanterns lit glides past, followed by a larger racing boat with its cab covered.

They lie entwined on the jetty as the boats pass. She thinks how empty it will be when autumn comes and he will no longer be there with her.

He lies there quietly curled up beside her.

‘What are you thinking?’ she asks.

He looks up at her and she can see him smiling.

‘How much fun it’s going to be moving to Skåne.’

She turns utterly cold.

‘My cousin lives in Helsingborg and we’ll be able to play nearly every day. He’s got a really long car track and he’s going to give me one of his cars. Maybe a Ponsack Farburg.’

She can feel her body starting to go limp, almost paralysed. Does he want to move to Skåne?

She thinks that they’re going to take him away from her and she thinks about how she’s going to disappear out of his life.

She looks at him. He’s lying beside her gazing dreamily up at the sky.

There’s a shadow over his face, like a bird’s wing.

She wants to get up, but it’s as if someone’s got an iron grip on her arms and chest.

Where can I go? she thinks, terrified. She wants to erase everything he’s said, and she wants to take him away from there.

Back to her home.

Then something happens.

Her vision blurs and she feels she’s about to be sick.

And it sounds like a crow is crying directly into her ears.

She looks up in horror and right in front of her is his laughing face.

No, it’s not him, it’s his dad’s eyes and his disgusting wet lips laughing at her scornfully. And now the crow is inside her head, and black wings are flapping over her eyes. Every muscle in her body tenses, and, terrified, she tries to protect herself.

Crow Girl grabs hold of his hair, so hard that big clumps come out.

She hits him.

In the head, in the face, on his body. Blood pours from his ears and nose and in his eyes she sees first only fear, but then something else as well.

Deep in his eyes he doesn’t understand what’s happening.

Crow Girl hits and hits, and when he’s no longer moving her blows get weaker.

She’s crying as she bends over him. He doesn’t make a sound, just lies there staring at her. There’s no expression in his eyes, but they’re moving, and he keeps blinking. He’s breathing fast and his throat is rattling.

She feels giddy, and her body is heavy.

As if in a fog she gets up, walks off the jetty and fetches a large stone from the riverbank. Her vision is spinning as she goes back to him with the stone.

When it hits his head it sounds like when you stamp on an apple.

‘It isn’t me,’ she says. Then she lets his body sink into the water.

‘Now you’ve got to swim …’

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.

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.’

‘I don’t understand –’

‘What don’t you understand? Everything suggests that Karl Lundström is the culprit. He’s still in a coma, and even if he does wake up it won’t be possible to prosecute him. According to his doctors he’s suffered extensive brain damage. He’s going to be a vegetable. And as far as the victims are concerned, well, two of these unidentified … yes, how can I put it?’ He searches for the right phrase.

‘“Children”, perhaps?’ Jeanette suggests, feeling that she hasn’t got the energy to hold back her pent-up anger.

‘Perhaps not that. But if they hadn’t been here illegally, then –’

‘– the situation would have been different,’ Jeanette finishes, before going on: ‘And then we’d have put fifty detectives on the case instead of what we’ve got. Me and Hurtig, with a bit of help from Schwarz and Åhlund. Is that what you mean?’