Her phone number.
Her address.
An open invitation for ‘drop-in sex’ at night.
But Edith wasn’t done. With the sure movements of someone who pages through books every day, she spread a series of other documents before Sofia.
‘Here you are on a site called Sex4You, and here’s an entry on something called My own Venus. Some of these are only a few weeks old. Surely you understand that we can’t employ people who offer themselves up online. That wouldn’t be a good look for us.’
Sofia rested her elbows on Edith’s massive desk, buried her face in her hands, and began to cry. The tears poured out, unstoppable – this was all so horrible and unfair. Not only the fact that Edith had seen all of this, but that she actually believed it was Sofia’s doing. As if Sofia lived some sort of double life that had now come to light. Once a cult member, always a crazy person.
‘Sofia, dear, what is it? You’re not short of money, are you?’
Her voice thick, she managed to tell Edith about the harassment, the hacked email account, and the dildo that had been sent to her neighbour Alma. She looked up at Edith and saw that the suspicion in her eyes had been replaced by pity.
‘Good heavens, this is madness! I had no idea. But how come you didn’t realize it was going on? I mean, haven’t you received propositions or anything?’
‘I’ve changed emails like a dozen times in the last month. I got a little paranoid after my account was hacked the first time.’
‘And you haven’t had any… um… home visits?’
‘No, but that last blog is only a few days old. This is really starting to freak me out… it’s just sick!’
‘Oh Sofia, don’t worry. I’m sure this can be fixed.’
‘Who sent you all this stuff?’ Sofia asked.
‘I don’t know. An anonymous sender. No letter. Just an envelope with the folder inside.’
She picked up an envelope from the desk. ‘Postmarked in Lund.’
‘Please, I’ll fix this. I have a friend who knows all about computers, he can take down the blogs and track down whoever was behind it, I promise.’
‘He couldn’t be the one behind all this?’
A streak of doubt ran through her mind. Ellis? No, it couldn’t be – but now she wasn’t sure. He had been sort of overly helpful recently. Was he doing this to get closer to her? It seemed extremely unlikely, but she knew from experience that people you knew and trusted could suddenly transform into an unrecognizable version of themselves.
Edith’s voice drew her back to the room.
‘We thought you had broken off contact with that cult, and now this. It doesn’t look good, but if what you say is true, if the cult is behind this, we’ll support you. This sort of harassment is indefensible. You have to go to the police right away.’
It hadn’t even occurred to her to turn to the police, since her previous contact with them had been fruitless, but now it seemed like the obvious thing to do. She wondered if Wilgot Östling, the police chief who had been a member of ViaTerra and worshipped Oswald, had gotten his job back. If so, things didn’t look so good for her.
Edith pulled a tissue from a box and handed it to Sofia.
‘Like I said, I’m very happy with your work here. Take the rest of the day off. Go to the police and file a report. With any luck we can put this behind us. And take this with you, because it’s polluting my office.’ She handed the folder to Sofia.
‘But don’t I have to work today?’
‘I’ll cover for you the rest of the day. It’s more important for you to get this cleared up, or soon enough we won’t be able to keep you on here.’
This sounded like a threat to Sofia, and definitely discrimination, but she didn’t want to say anything. She just stood up, thanked Edith, and said she would take care of everything and be back to work the next day.
She took her time and walked to the police station. The air smelled like spring. She thought of how lovely springtime had been on Fog Island, and found herself missing the place – not the cult, but the untamed, barren scenery. Each memory brought a flood of emotions, and she tasked her brain with picking them out one by one, distracting herself from what had just happened. She didn’t want to start crying again – she was sick to death of being turned into a sobbing martyr.
‘Is Wilgot Östling still the county police commissioner?’ she asked the receptionist at the station.
‘No, he’s retired. Why?’
Hope rose inside her.
‘Just curious. I’d like to file a report about online harassment.’
The receptionist, a young woman with enormous, round glasses that made her look like an insect, shrugged helplessly. A sort of ‘good luck’, hinting that Sofia’s report would never go anywhere. Sofia asked if there was a copy machine, because she wanted to attach the blog entries to her report. The receptionist’s sigh suggested that this was a great burden, but she took the document, disappeared into a room behind the reception area, and returned with a copy, which she handed to Sofia. An amused smile full of schadenfreude played on her lips.
Sofia filled in the complicated form, gave it to the receptionist, and hurried home – it was time to deal with Ellis. She wondered if she should have demanded to speak to a police officer and decided to go back the next day and do so.
Ellis was insulted and angry when she suggested he might have been involved.
‘What’s wrong with you? I almost ended up in jail last time. Why would I do something like that?’
‘I just wanted to be sure. It would have been awfully easy for you, if you wanted to do it.’
‘Get out! I can’t believe the thought even crossed your mind.’
‘Well, then, who could it be? The staff on Fog Island are all technophobes. Every last one. Even Oswald, for that matter – he always had to ask me for help with the simplest stuff. They must have hired someone. You know all about the inner circle of computer geniuses and secret societies. Can’t you ferret out who’s behind this? Maybe someone who has a connection to ViaTerra, a guest or one of Oswald’s contacts?’
‘Okay, I’ll make some discreet inquiries.’
‘Good, and then you have to take this shit down, because I just almost got fired. And I don’t want any visits from sex-crazed men tonight.’
After they hung up, she lay on her bed staring at the ceiling. The fear hadn’t reached her yet, because her brain was working overtime trying to come up with solutions and had shut out all emotions. She knew two things for certain. Ellis wasn’t the one who sent the letter to Edith, and she wasn’t going to get any help from the police. She had seen it in the eyes of the woman who took her report. A condescending attitude that said ‘you have no idea how busy we are, and how unimportant your problem is.’
She hesitated for a moment, but then she brought up Magnus Strid’s number on her phone. The voicemail picked up, so she left a message.
Strid called back almost immediately.
‘Hey there, Sofia Bauman, what have you done now?’
‘Yeah, that’s the million-dollar question.’
Strid seemed to have the ability to read Sofia’s mind, even from a distance. It had started on Fog Island when he’d asked if she truly liked working for ViaTerra. His eyes had bored into her soul even back then, and ever since, they seemed able to communicate without words.
Sofia began to tell him what was going on.
‘I have an idea,’ Strid interrupted her in the middle of a sentence. ‘I can write an article about you. A follow-up. “After the Cult”, we’ll call it, or maybe “Aftermath”. We’ll start with Oswald’s trial and move forward from there. It will be an exposé of what life is like for a defector. What do you say?’
‘Sure, but I don’t have any way to prove that they’re behind all this.’
‘Are you kidding? Who else would it be? Come on, Sofia, I thought you were a smart woman.’
‘It’s like, I promised myself to put everything behind me, a
nd yet I’m still pursuing this.’
‘Know what? One time, several years ago, when I had just returned home and was about to open the door to my apartment, someone came up behind me and put a gun to my head. Some bastard who told me I had to drop an investigation, something I was poking around in back then. It only took a split second, standing there with the mouth of a pistol against my skull, to swear to myself that I would give up investigative journalism if only I survived. It was a serious promise, to myself and to God, who I’ve never even believed in.’
‘What happened?’
‘He ran. Just turned tail and dashed off. Just an hour later I broke the promise to myself and God. I kept on reporting. I dug even deeper. And nothing happened. Not a damn thing.’
‘But weren’t you scared?’
‘Hell yes, but that’s part of the job. So what do you say?’
‘Let’s do it. Do you want to come down here, or should I come up to Stockholm?’
‘I’ll come down. We’ll get pictures in your apartment and at the library. I can probably get a whole spread. That should shut up that old bag at the library. And we’ll send the paper to Oswald: suggested reading.’
Nothing else happened that night. No one came to her door. When she googled the blog the cult had posted, it was gone. Her apartment was perfectly quiet. It wasn’t an entirely comfortable silence, but it was enough to let her fall asleep.
She didn’t dream about Oswald that night.
18
Simon couldn’t stop thinking about the dog. For once he had trouble concentrating on his tasks in the greenhouses. He was awfully curious – if it was one of those game dogs, he wouldn’t be able to spy on the cult members anymore. It would be too dangerous.
In the moments he wasn’t dwelling on the dog, his thoughts turned to Sofia. He hadn’t heard from her for a few days, which was par for the course. But this time, for no real reason, he suspected something was wrong. It was just a gut feeling, but it was the same as when Daniel had disappeared. He had been worried about Sofia ever since the trial – how hastily she and Benjamin had brushed off Oswald. As if it were all over. Simon had known people like Oswald before. They weren’t apt to allow themselves to be humiliated without consequences. Something was up. The staff, back on the property. The dog. Elvira, looking so sad. But how could he warn Sofia without scaring the daylights out of her? Typically, Simon’s troubles receded as soon as he got his hands into the dirt. But today not even that was enough.
After dinner he went to his little cottage and took the shotgun from the wardrobe. He’d used it to hunt hares and pheasants on the farm in Småland. There it had been so natural to go out and shoot your supper, but these days he didn’t even have any ammunition. The shotgun had stood there unused, but now it would be of help. If someone discovered him sneaking around the manor, he could say he was out hunting. It wasn’t hunting season, but the dummies at ViaTerra were clueless about that sort of thing. He was sure of it.
He changed into his warmest winter overalls and thickest coat, then went to the greenhouse for a knife to carry in his pocket. He’d seen a movie once where a guy slit the throat of a German shepherd that was attacking him. In self-defence. Then he headed for the manor. It took just over half an hour of brisk walking to get there. The village was on the southern end of the island; the manor on the northern point. He took the car road along the coast this evening; the air was chilly and bracing. The view from the road was dazzlingly beautiful all year round. The cliffs at the side of the road plunged straight into the sea. It was a little breezy, but it wasn’t enough to whip up waves, so the water just seethed and hissed with white foam. The sun was setting, but all you could see from the road was the red glow of the sky.
Simon walked fast. He stuffed his hands into his roomy coat pockets. The road was deserted; no cars, not a soul in sight. He turned off at the gravel road to the manor and slipped into the forest when he was almost at the gate. It was almost pitch black now, but he had walked this path so many times that his legs moved of their own accord. He had timed his trip well – he could hear the murmur of voices within the walls, almost time for assembly. So it was seven o’clock. If he was lucky, they would have brought the dog along.
He didn’t dare enter the gate as he didn’t want to be discovered on the property. If they found him here in the woods, he could say he was out hunting, but that lie wouldn’t hold up if they caught him on ViaTerra property. Instead he lifted the birch that was still resting against the wall, thrust his knife into its trunk, and used it as a handle. He climbed up and grabbed the edge of the wall. It occurred to him that it would look ridiculous if his head suddenly popped up behind the barbed wire, but no one noticed him. The yard was bathed in the glow of the floodlights. The staff were lined up, backs straight and tense, almost as it had looked back when Oswald was there. His eyes swept the group. He saw a few faces he recognized, but no Elvira.
Madeleine and Bosse were standing in front of the staff, but neither had begun to speak. He searched in vain for the dog and wondered if they kept it in a doghouse – and at that moment, he saw it. It was lying down, head on its paws, on the lawn nearby. And it was huge. Simon had to stifle a laugh. This whole situation was absurd – the fact that he was there spying; the fact that the staff thought they were so clever, getting a guard dog. It was a giant, shaggy Saint Bernard, and it looked old, tired, and fat. Simon grinned to himself. Those idiots couldn’t do anything right.
His courage returned. He decided to sneak through the gate after all, so he opened it up with his key, quietly, gently, and went to stand behind the big oak.
The assembly had begun by now. Madeleine was speaking, and Simon could hear most of what she said. It was as if she were burning with fresh passion. Her voice was strong and piercing and her gestures sweeping but firm. The tiny, delicate girl Simon remembered her to be was gone. Now she had a force-field, an aura, that seemed to envelop the entire staff. The lighting even created a halo around her head, and her breath rose in an impressive column of condensation as she proclaimed directives at the group.
Simon knew at once that she was Oswald’s mouthpiece. In some peculiar way, Oswald was there in Madeleine’s body, telling off the staff, just like usual. This is the moment she’s been waiting for, he thought, the chance to become Oswald’s stand-in. He didn’t even want to think about what life was like for the poor bastards all lined up in rows.
Simon’s suspicions were confirmed as he listened to her words. They were all ‘Franz says…’ and ‘Franz wants this and that done.’ Franz, Franz, Franz.
Then she spoke about new rules, and punishments for bad behaviour that would soon take effect. They sounded even worse than the punishments Oswald had come up with in the past. Rice and beans, hard labour as a penalty, and compensatory projects. And from now on the staff would have to jump in the icy waters of the sea after certain transgressions.
This is unbelievable, Simon thought. This was what almost did them in last time. What Oswald had to defend in court. The scandals that made a whole year’s worth of fodder for the media. Yet they were acting as if nothing had happened.
At that moment, it dawned on Simon that ViaTerra really had been resurrected. That the poor bastards lined up on the lawn would go through the same hell he had been through not so long ago. And that some who had already gone through that hell were still standing there in line, nodding eagerly.
Simon mused that it took a lot more than a media scandal and a trial to eradicate a cult, and that Oswald was still very much a presence there. His physical absence made no difference whatsoever.
Madeleine’s sermon had turned into a droning hum in his mind, but then she said something that made his ears prick up. She was picking on Benny, who had apparently looked bored while she was speaking.
‘You have no right to stand here and slack off,’ she said. ‘Franz said the Sofia Bauman project is our highest priority right now.’
Benny was startled.
‘We�
�ve got it under control,’ he said.
‘You’d better. Franz wants a report. You aren’t to go to bed until it’s on my desk.’
With these words, she ended the assembly. The staff scattered. Simon lingered.
Then he did something he’d never done before. He sent a text to Sofia while he was still within the walls of the manor.
19
Sofia didn’t see Simon’s text until a few days after he sent it. She typically read texts right away, but these past few days had been chaotic. She had basically crashed each night as soon as she got home.
First there were the preparations for Magnus Strid’s visit. He wanted her to retrieve a few documents from Oswald’s trial, and to arrange for permission to photograph Sofia at the library. This in and of itself had a positive effect, because Edith Bergman was absolutely ecstatic to hear that Dagens Nyheter would be doing a feature on Sofia. She even looked a little ashamed; she must have been truly thankful she hadn’t fired Sofia the other day.
Then there was the police; Sofia had become extremely annoyed with them and visited daily. The first time, she had been brushed off by the girl at the reception desk, who had said no officers had time to talk to her right then. The next day, Sofia refused to leave before speaking with someone. She waited for two hours; she and the receptionist had glared at each other the whole time. The officer who finally interviewed her was in his twenties and had shifty eyes. His Adam’s apple bobbed when he spoke, to the extent that Sofia had trouble taking her eyes from it. But he didn’t notice her gaze, because he spent most of his time staring out the window. Once she had finished telling him her story, and had shown him the printouts of the blog, he didn’t say anything for a moment.
‘Okay, so what do you want us to do?’ he said at last.
‘Well, that’s up to you to figure out. I came here looking for help.’
The officer scratched his head. By now it was clear to Sofia that he had never dealt with an online hate crime before.
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