The Crow Girl (83 page)

Her internal diary is full of uneventful pages that are largely empty. Days that have passed without making any memorable impression. Aeons of existence that have been nothing but waiting. Yes, she’s waited so long that time and waiting have become the same thing.

Then there are other days. The terrible moments that made her who she is. The years she spent growing up in Denmark are like a pair of red knickers in a machine full of white wash.

Madeleine puts her headphones on and plugs them into her phone. She lies back on the bunk and listens.

Joy Division. First the drums, then a pumping bass, a simple hook, and finally Ian Curtis’s monotonous voice.

The ship’s irregular rolling and swaying relaxes her and the drunk people making a noise outside her door feel comforting in their unpredictability. The unexpected doesn’t scare her. It’s security that makes her feel anxious.

The rain is lashing the cabin window, and it feels like Ian Curtis is singing just for her in his slurred voice.

Confusion in her eyes that says it all. She’s lost control.

The singer, just twenty-four years old and suffering from epilepsy, committed suicide by hanging himself. But she’s not going to commit suicide. That would mean losing, and letting them win.

And she gave away the secrets of her past, and said I’ve lost control again.

She thinks about the fact that the woman who once called herself her mother sometimes used to say she’d rather be called by her first name, seeing as she wasn’t actually Madeleine’s real mother. On other occasions it most definitely had to not get out that Madeleine was the family’s foster-daughter. It was just as arbitrary as it was humiliating.

But that’s not why she has to die.

If you stand in silence and look on while grown men abuse a young girl, you very quickly lose any claim to mercy for yourself. And if you take pleasure in watching naked, drugged young boys fighting in a pigpen, and don’t care when one of the boys dies, you deserve no forgiveness. Everyone who was involved has realised that, one way or another, she thinks, seeing their dead bodies in front of her.

Fury is growing inside her, and she rubs her temples hard. She knows it’s crazy of her to compare herself to Nemesis, the goddess of revenge, but that’s the self-image she has nurtured her whole life. A girl who arrives at school one day together with her tame lion. Someone to be frightened of, and someone you have to respect.

A few hours later, and halfway to Mariehamn, in the Åland Islands, she goes down the corridor towards the nightclub at the front of the ship. She mustn’t be too late, or too early.

Everything will soon be over, and she can move on and shape her own future without having the voices of the past screaming in her ear.

The bar is full of people, and Madeleine has to push her way through the tables. The music is loud, and on a small stage two women are performing in front of a karaoke machine. They’re singing badly out of tune, but the audience likes their provocative dancing and there’s a lot of whistling and clapping.

You’re like tame livestock, she thinks.

Charlotte is sitting alone at one of the tables by the big panoramic window.

The woman she never called her mother is dressed primly in a dark jacket, a black skirt and a pair of grey tights, and Madeleine thinks it looks like she’s dressed for a funeral.

Charlotte stares straight at her, and their eyes meet for the first time in a very long while.

‘So … We meet again after all these years,’ Charlotte says, screwing her eyes up. Studying her.

I hate you, I hate you, I hate you …

‘I was foolish enough to think that we were finished with each other,’ she goes on. ‘But when I found P-O I had a feeling that you might be back.’

Madeleine sits down opposite Charlotte and looks directly into the woman’s eyes without saying anything. She feels that she’d like to smile, but can’t get her lips to obey. She wants to reply, but doesn’t know what to say, and although she has spent years formulating her accusation speech, she is suddenly struck dumb.

Like a machine that’s run down.

‘The police asked about you, but I didn’t say anything.’ Charlotte chews each syllable several times, as if the words taste bitter and she wants to get rid of them as quickly as possible. Sometimes her mouth moves but nothing comes out, and it looks like she’s spasming. She’s squirming uncomfortably, picking at imaginary crumbs on the table, then takes a deep breath and lets out a heavy sigh. ‘What do you really want?’ she asks wearily, and Madeleine can see more than just cruelty in the soon-to-be-dead woman’s eyes. Behind Charlotte’s green irises she can detect a hint of genuine bemusement.

Does she not understand? Madeleine wonders.

No, that can’t be possible. She was there, after all. She stood by and watched.

On the other hand, ignorance and innocence are just other names for evil, she thinks.

I hate, hate, hate …

She shakes her head. ‘Yes, I’m back, and I think you know why.’

Charlotte’s eyes flicker. ‘I don’t understand what you –’

‘You understand well enough,’ Madeleine interrupts. ‘But before you do what you have to do, I want the answers to three questions.’

‘What three questions?’

‘First I want to know, what was I doing with you two?’ Madeleine asks, but assumes she’s seeking the impossible. Like asking for the meaning of life, the point of everything, or how much sorrow a human being can bear.

‘That’s easy,’ Charlotte replies, as if she hasn’t understood the true meaning of the question. ‘Your grandfather, Bengt Bergman, knew P-O through their work for a foundation, and together they decided that we should look after you when your mum went a bit crazy.’

She’s only scratching the surface, Madeleine thinks.

‘But you were always so obstinate, and we were forced to treat you harshly,’ Charlotte goes on.

Madeleine thinks about the men who came to her room at night. Remembers the pain and shame. Everything that formed a hard little ball inside her that gradually became a stone and that has since become part of her body.

She can’t answer, because she doesn’t understand the question, Madeleine thinks. But nor have any of the others she’s killed. When she asked them, they just stared at her stupidly, as if she were talking another language.

‘Who made the decision about my operation?’ Madeleine asks without commenting on what Charlotte has just said.

Charlotte looks at her coldly. ‘P-O and I did,’ she says. ‘Obviously after consulting doctors and psychologists. You used to fight and bite, and the other children were scared of you, so in the end we gave up. There really wasn’t any other option.’

Madeleine remembers how they got the voice in her head to shut up in Copenhagen, but since then she hasn’t been able to feel anything. Nothing at all.

After Copenhagen only ice cubes have any taste, and Madeleine realises that here too she’s reached a dead end. She’s never going to know why.

She has been searching for answers, and has killed those who couldn’t bring themselves to share the truth that then, now and forever after is conspicuous in its utter absence.

Just one question remains.

‘Did you know my real mum?’

Charlotte Silfverberg starts digging through her handbag and holds out a photograph. ‘This is your crazy mother,’ she snarls.

They go out on deck together. The rain has stopped and the sky is still. The Baltic night is blue with damp, and the dark sea is unsettled.

The rolling waves strike threateningly at the stern of the MS
Cinderella
with a powerful hiss, and the breaking seawater hits the hull with full force and throws up a thin cloud of mist that falls on the foredeck like gentle rain.

Charlotte is staring blankly ahead of her, and Madeleine knows that she has decided. She has made her choice.

There’s nothing more to say. Words are finished, and only action remains.

She sees Charlotte go over to the railing. The woman she has never called mother bends over and takes off her boots.

She climbs up onto the railing and throws herself into the darkness without a sound.

The MS
Cinderella
forges relentlessly ahead. Doesn’t even slow down.

What am I doing? Madeleine thinks, feeling pointlessness penetrate the wall of determination. Am I going to be free when they’re all gone at last?

No, she realises, and her clarity is a white page being turned in a dark room.

IT’S ALREADY LATE
morning and Jeanette is sitting at her desk with her eyes firmly fixed on a vent in the ceiling, but she’s not aware of what she’s looking at because her mind is busy thinking about Sofia Zetterlund.

After the trip to Hundudden, Jeanette had gone straight home, utterly wiped out. She had called Sofia just before midnight, but hadn’t got an answer, nor had Sofia replied to the two or three texts she’d sent after that.

As usual, she thinks, feeling very alone. It’s time for Sofia to take the initiative. Jeanette doesn’t want to be clingy, there’s nothing less attractive than that, and she’s not about to call again. Besides, Åke has phoned to remind her about lunch. They’ve agreed to meet at a restaurant down on Bergsgatan, even if she can’t honestly say that she’s looking forward to it.

Jeanette starts to play with a ballpoint pen as she glances at the piles of papers relating to the two dead women, Hannah Östlund and Jessica Friberg.

Her hopes of reopening the cases involving the fires at the Bergmans’ house and Dürer’s boat were dashed the moment Billing snorted at her and said she was a conspiracy theorist. Besides, according to him those cases had already been thoroughly investigated.

There’s a knock at the door, and Åhlund looks in. ‘Sorry,’ he says breathlessly. ‘I didn’t have time to get to the hotel yesterday, so I looked in this morning instead. Which turned out to be rather fortuitous.’

‘Come in.’ Jeanette bites the end of the pen. ‘What do you mean, fortuitous?’

He sits down opposite her. ‘I spoke to the receptionist who saw Madeleine Duchamp when she checked in and out.’ He laughs. ‘If I’d gone yesterday evening I wouldn’t have seen him. But he was on duty today.’

‘And what did he say about Duchamp?’

Åhlund clears his throat. ‘A woman between twenty and thirty. Travelling alone, spoke poor English. Evidently they don’t keep copies of the personal details of EU citizens, but the receptionist remembered that the woman had dark hair in the picture on her driving licence.’

Dark hair, Jeanette thinks. ‘So he described her hair on her driving licence. I’m more interested in what she looked like in reality.’

Åhlund clears his throat again. ‘He said she was pretty, but seemed extremely shy. Wouldn’t look him in the eye, just stared down at the floor, and had her face hidden under a big woolly hat.’

Great, Jeanette thinks. Not much of a description. ‘Anything else? Tall, short?’

‘Average height, ordinary build. Considering that he’s a receptionist, I have to say he was very bad at remembering a face. But there was one thing that struck him.’

‘What’s that?’

‘He said the woman came down several times that evening to ask for ice cubes.’

‘Ice cubes?’

‘Yes, he thought it was a bit odd, and I’m inclined to agree with him.’

Jeanette smiles. ‘Me too. Well, our receptionist doesn’t sound like he could give much information to a police artist. What do you think?’

‘No, I’m afraid not. Seems like he saw too little of her. Which might be interesting in itself. I mean, she seems to have been careful to hide her appearance.’

Jeanette sighs. ‘Yes, it sounds like it. I wonder why. Well, that’ll have to do for now. Thanks.’

Åhlund disappears through the door again, and Jeanette decides to call Prosecutor Kenneth von Kwist.

The prosecutor sounds tired when Jeanette shares her suspicions that Viggo Dürer organised bribes for Annette Lundström and probably Ulrika Wendin. To Jeanette’s surprise, he isn’t as intractable as she had expected.

She sits and stares at the phone in bemusement. What’s happened to von Kwist? When the phone rings her mind is somewhere else altogether. She answers absent-mindedly, and the receptionist tells her that a Kristina Wendin wants to talk to her.

Wendin? she thinks, and perks up.

The woman introduces herself as Ulrika’s grandmother, and says she’s worried because her granddaughter hasn’t been in touch for several weeks.

‘Perhaps she’s gone away?’ Jeanette suggests. ‘Who knows, she might have saved up a bit of money and simply gone on holiday?’

The woman coughs drily. ‘Ulrika hasn’t got a job. Where would she get the money to go on holiday?’

‘Most people who go missing usually turn up within a few days. But that’s not to say we won’t take this seriously. Do you have keys to Ulrika’s home?’

‘Yes, I do,’ Kristina Wendin says.

‘OK, this is what we do,’ Jeanette concludes. ‘I’ll head out to Ulrika’s apartment this afternoon with one of my colleagues. Can you meet us there with the keys?’

Should I be worried? she thinks. No, not yet. Stay rational.

Worrying at such an early stage is just a waste of energy, seeing as she knows what usually happens. At best they might find something that could give them a clue as to where Ulrika is, and at worst they’ll find something to indicate that she disappeared against her will. But usually the result is somewhere in between. In other words, nothing. When the phone rings again she feels a tingle in her stomach and lets it ring a few times because she doesn’t want to seem too eager.

‘Jeanette Kihlberg, Stockholm police,’ she says with a smile on her lips, briefly forgetting Ulrika Wendin.

‘Good morning,’ Sofia Zetterlund says. ‘Have you got a moment?’

A moment? she thinks. I’ve got all the time in the world for you.

‘Good morning? It’s almost lunchtime.’ Jeanette laughs. ‘It’s lovely to hear from you, but I’m snowed under with work.’

She isn’t really lying. She looks at the mess on her desk. All the information they have on Hannah Östlund and Jessica Friberg is squeezed into about three hundred pages of A4 paper, a series of Polaroid pictures, a bouquet of yellow tulips and the forensics officer’s photographs of the two dead dogs in the basement.