Liv

by Mikaela Bley

  ‘No.’

  ‘Give it to me.’

  ‘No.’

  Alexandra clenched her hand and closed her eyes.

  ‘Hit me, then. Do it. I can see that you want to.’

  ‘Do what your mother says now, Bea. Give her your phone.’

  Alexandra looked at her husband with surprise.

  Furiously, Bea pulled the phone out of her pocket and gave it to Alexandra, who threw it in the sink and turned on the tap.

  ‘You’re not going to get a new phone. You are going to write a letter and apologise. Post an apology on Facebook and Instagram and whatever those things are called.’

  ‘Forget that! And how would I do that without a phone, do you think? Bitch!’

  Patrik looked at his daughter. ‘Are the accusations true?’

  ‘No, I just said that.’

  Patrik gave Alexandra a puzzled look.

  She tried to interpret what was going on in his head. ‘The school called and told me what had happened. Apparently, it was Max, Frida, and Matilda as well, and a few other girls. What will people say? The parents are considering filing a police report on this. You’re going to end up in jail if you keep carrying on the way you are. Do you understand what happens to you if you end up in prison or get convicted in Sweden? You’ll never be able to wash it away, you’ll never get a job, or even a mobile phone account.’ Alexandra stared at the phone under the running water in the sink and hoped that its whole history was draining away.

  ‘What do we really know about Frida and Matilda? Why haven’t I met them?’ Patrik asked, as if he was on another planet.

  ‘Because you can’t bring anyone home to this freaky family.’

  ‘Did they force you to do this?’ Patrik said.

  What kind of protective glasses did he have on? ‘Excuse me?’ Alexandra hissed. ‘How can you be so gullible?’

  ‘Did you do this, Bea?’

  ‘No. How many times do I have to answer that question? What is it you don’t understand?’

  ‘Are you completely crazy?’ Alexandra stood up. ‘A child is about to kill herself because of you, Bea, and this isn’t the first time we’ve had complaints about your behaviour. Now the teachers have called a meeting as apparently you’ve been up to a lot of shit recently.’

  ‘She wasn’t going to kill herself, that’s just a game that you dense parents fall for.’ Bea’s face and neck were completely red.

  ‘I’m ashamed. Do you hear me? I’m ashamed,’ said Alexandra. ‘Why are you doing this to us?’

  ‘Huh?’ Bea screamed so loud that her vocal cords failed her at last. ‘You are ashamed. What the hell do you think I am? Do you think I asked to live in this family, or what? Don’t you have any idea what they say about me, the talk that’s going around?’

  What did she mean by that? What did people know? ‘Are they taunting you?’ Alexandra tried to collect herself.

  ‘Taunting, is that a Polish word from the nineteenth century?’

  ‘Stop that!’ Patrik said.

  ‘And what do you suggest we do, Patrik?’ said Alexandra. ‘Ignore this and let Bea keep bullying the girl until she really does kill herself? Just so that we can keep living the way we do. How many people do you think you need to kill in the process?’

  ‘Now you stop!’ Patrik roared, and Alexandra recognised their daughter’s dark look in his. ‘What are you trying to insinuate?’

  Alexandra stopped herself from saying what she really wanted to say. ‘That our daughter has to accept the consequences. She should apologise to that girl.’

  ‘Not in this lifetime.’

  ‘Go to your room. Do you hear me? Go to your room!’

  ‘You fucking cunt!’ Bea screamed, running out of the kitchen.

  ‘Can we all take a little break and think about this?’ Mother-in-law Eva had suddenly come into the room. ‘There’s a lot going on now, for everyone, and we need to calm down. Especially you, Alexandra.’

  ‘Yes, you’ve got to calm down,’ said Patrik, staring at his wife.

  ‘Me? I’m the one who needs to calm down? Who is it, really, who’s made her like that?’ She fixed her eyes on him, but his gaze was stronger than hers, and she was forced to lower her eyes.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You heard her — she has to defend herself because of your choices in life.’ Alexandra felt very shaky.

  ‘She made a mistake.’

  ‘A mistake, how can you call it that?’

  ‘We know nothing about it yet. Right now, we have to try to look at this like two grown people.’

  ‘Ha, yes. Then maybe you can start taking a little responsibility.’

  ‘I’m not going to dignify that with a response, but I know that it’s tough being a teenager. Maybe she needs to see a psychologist to talk it out.’

  ‘A psychologist. She wouldn’t need therapy if we didn’t live like this.’

  ‘If it doesn’t suit you, then I guess you can just go back to Poland,’ said Eva. ‘Maybe it works there when you flare up the way you do.’

  Alexandra pretended not to hear her. ‘Bea needs to accept the consequences of her actions. She needs us. I can’t handle her by myself.’

  ‘Why are you saying that?’

  ‘Because you’re not here that often. I can’t understand how you can want to have more children. How would you have time for that — do you understand how much you’ve already left to me to deal with?’

  He raised his hand.

  She had gone too far and sank down on the chair across from her mother-in-law.

  ‘This is going to get even worse. I’m almost afraid of her. I don’t know what she’s capable of. Have you seen her look? It can go completely black. Sometimes, I wonder if she’s evil.’ She regretted saying that out loud, but the words just came out of her.

  ‘How can you say that about our Bea? She needs discipline, that’s all. We’ll take care of this. I’ll help you.’

  ‘Help me?’ She snorted and thought of all the mornings when she had to scream at Bea, force her off to school, worry about what she was up to during the day, and sometimes even at night.

  ‘Stop, you know what I mean. Don’t get me wrong here. I, we, are having a tough time at the moment. It’s clear that this has all affected Bea. She also lost a sibling.’

  He didn’t understand anything at all. How could he be so clueless? Bea had loathed the thought that she was going to have a sibling. Almost more than Alexandra did.

  ‘You get the children you deserve,’ Eva said, hammering the last nail in the coffin.

  Alexandra looked slowly about her, in the complete kitchen, in the perfect home. Everything was about to fall apart, and it was just going ahead, right in front of her eyes.

  ELLEN

  9.00 P.M.

  After many ifs and buts, Ellen managed to convince her mother to let her stay in Stockholm overnight by lying and saying that she would lose her job if she wasn’t present at the editorial meeting concerning the reorganisation early the next morning. As long as she met with Dr Hiralgo and showed progress, she might be able to keep her life and the Liv murder investigation separate without her parents reacting and complaining. She didn’t need to worry about her dad because he, as usual, was only putting in a guest performance and just pretending to care about her for a millisecond before returning his focus to his new, perfect family.

  Ellen had promised Liv’s sister that she wouldn’t film the meeting — that was the condition on which she’d agreed to meet. The most important thing was for Ellen to gain the sister’s trust, so she could hopefully arrange an interview later to tell Liv’s story and fate.

  She sat down at her desk, which was actually an old workbench from Örelo on which she had placed a sheet of glass. She would try to prepare for the meeting tomorrow and find out
as much as possible about Liv. Who was she? What had she done the day she was murdered, and the days before? What routines did she have?

  Ellen scratched down the questions on a loose piece of paper and realised that they resembled the questions Dr Hiralgo was trying to get answers to. She turned the paper over. Her stomach was growling. She’d eaten very little during the day and she looked at the clock. Soon, Philip would arrive — he had assured Margareta that he’d stay overnight to keep an eye on Ellen, like some kind of babysitter, and he had promised Ellen that they would plough through the entire ‘Shelf of Death’ together, so that she could hold herself in check. That’s a true friend, she thought, smiling to herself. Philip was the one who had christened the bookshelf in the living room, and he was scared to death of it in that overdramatic way that only Philip could be.

  She stared at her collection. It was the only place in the apartment that was orderly. The books weren’t organised in alphabetical order, or by colour as some people did it. They were lined up according to crime, and all the titles were nonfiction. She’d had the bookshelf custom made. It covered the whole wall, all the way up to the ceiling. There was literature about various murders all around the world and far back in time. There were books about autopsy. Murders solved and unsolved. Conspiracies. Newspaper clippings. Everything about death that she’d collected during her life.

  She had quite a bit on her computer, too, but she’d printed out most of it and filed it in binders. It was now mostly video material on her hard disk.

  The high stepladder that took her up to the topmost shelves was leaning against the section for crimes against children.

  Ellen went up and moved the ladder to the left before she went over to the refrigerator.

  Which was empty.

  But it didn’t matter. Philip was bringing take-out kebab.

  There wasn’t any wine left, so it would have to be vodka and soda. It was the only thing left in the place. Philip had decided to stop drinking anyway. Ellen thought it would be interesting to see how long that would last. She remembered how close she herself had been to making the same decision earlier in the day, but that plan already felt distant.

  She set out the bottles on the cocktail table and mixed a drink. It had been a long time, and she was probably pouring far too much vodka and topping it with too little soda. She plopped in a few chunks of ice and tasted it. It was good. Quite alright.

  It felt strange to be home.

  She put on Spotify’s hit list on the highest volume and opened the windows. Looked down at Skeppsbron and out over the bay towards Skeppsholmen and Grand Hotel. Stockholm was glowing with happiness. Boats, people, and a clear blue sky. She wished she’d been part of it, but she found herself in a completely different place and felt that yet another summer had passed, yet another year. The passing of time squeezed her lungs. She coughed. Knocked back the drink and went to mix a new one. This time it was better, or else her taste buds had already been blunted.

  She glanced up at the wall above the couch. The photos of Lycke and Elsa were still hanging there beside each other. She hadn’t had it in her to take them down. She moved her eyes between the two small innocent girls. Two school photos, both with the same mottled grey background, even though they’d been taken twenty years apart. So cruelly unjust, it made her feel physical pain, in every little part of her body.

  All around Lycke’s photo, Ellen had put up pictures and documents she had collected in her search for the girl.

  She went up and took down the rubber eraser that was balanced on some pins. Smelt it. The scent of strawberry was still there.

  They had collected erasers, she and Elsa. Competed on who had the nicest and the most. One evening when Elsa was asleep, Ellen had slipped into Elsa’s room and destroyed all her erasers. Cut them in the middle and crumbled them into tiny, tiny pieces.

  Ellen took a pin and stuck it in her finger to make the memories disappear, and when they didn’t, she stuck herself again.

  Her finger was bleeding, but she left it as it was, rooted out the pad she had been given by Dr Hiralgo, and reluctantly wrote down the word eraser. The blood from her finger dripped onto the paper. Ellen looked at the letters: eraser. She tore out the page, crumpled it up, and went and flushed it down the toilet. Searched in the junk drawer in the kitchen and found a bandage.

  ‘Death, death, death,’ she repeated out loud to herself.

  Without thinking, she was back in front of the wall. Beside the photo of Elsa hung the necklace. A white water lily on a long silver chain. Grandmother had given them each a necklace.

  Ellen took it down from the wall and hung it around her neck.

  Elsa’s necklace had disappeared when she died. It was probably on the bottom somewhere, deep down in the mud.

  She thought about all the strange questions Dr Hiralgo had asked. Like what she was wearing the day Elsa disappeared. What had they played? The White Stone. She remembered that. They’d been watching the TV series.

  He had asked her if she had seen Elsa dead.

  At first, she answered yes, but when she’d thought about it she couldn’t remember it. Why would she have seen her sister dead?

  On the desk was the pile of old cases that she’d asked Agatha to find for her last spring. They all concerned children who had disappeared. At the top was the article about Elsa’s disappearance.

  Ellen sat down on the floor and flicked quickly through the pile, trying not to be drawn into anything. But a spread in Aftonbladet made her stop. There were aerial photos from Örelo and photos of Ellen’s family. Once upon a time it had been a simple thing to obtain passport photos.

  She got a pair of scissors and cut them out. Got some thumbtacks from the junk drawer and put the family photos up beside Elsa on the wall.

  What the hell am I up to?

  ELLEN

  9.30 P.M.

  Suddenly, there was a ringing sound. It took a few seconds before she understood that it was the entry phone, and she had to pull herself together before she buzzed up the lift.

  ‘How are you?’ Philip looked at her seriously as he came into the apartment.

  ‘Fine. And you?’ She turned away. ‘Did you bring the food with you?’

  ‘Ellen.’ He took hold of her arm and pulled her to him. Hugged her hard for a long time.

  After a while, she released herself. ‘Come on, let’s eat in the bay window.’

  As Ellen got out silverware, she saw Philip looking at the wall, but he didn’t say anything, and she was grateful for that.

  They ate their kebabs and talked about all sorts of things.

  It was wonderful to listen to Philip’s stories from Paradise Hotel and other work trips. Philip stuffed in the last of the kebab and had both hot and mild sauce around his mouth.

  Full and content, they looked out over the lukewarm night. The evening breeze had pulled in over Skeppsbron.

  ‘Tropical heat.’

  ‘Mm,’ said Ellen, swiping one of his organic cigarettes. ‘You know that these are even stronger than menthol,’ she said, lighting the smoke.

  ‘Oh, lay off, at least there aren’t any toxins in these. How nice that you’re wearing the necklace,’ he said, taking the water lily in his hand before letting it fall back again.

  Philip looked around the room. ‘Maybe you should reupholster the couch. Something colourful. For a fresh start. It’s too black and white in here, it could do with a little livening up. A hot-pink couch would be elegant.’

  Ellen breathed in the smoke, and it tore at her throat. ‘Speaking of pink,’ she said, ‘this morning, when I was about to get in the car …’

  ‘The Pink Mist.’

  Philip called her car ‘Pink Mist’, the term for blood spray after someone has been shot in the head. He thought it was macabre the way she was constantly drawn towards murder, and then drove around in blood
spray to boot. In reality, she had bought it to honour her sister, or to defy her family. Pink was Elsa’s colour.

  She told him about the tyres.

  ‘What the hell, Ellen? Can I please have a taste of your drink now, and don’t say anything about me quitting. I don’t like this. Who did this to you? Did you report it to the police?’

  ‘No, I can’t do that, then I definitely won’t be allowed to work, and Mum will have a fainting fit.’

  ‘Don’t be foolish now. How do you manage to get into these situations? How worried do I have to be?’ He’d almost finished her drink. ‘Did someone on the island do it?’

  Ellen coughed from the smoke. ‘Wouldn’t think so. All they do there is fuck, eat, and harvest.’

  Philip laughed. ‘My God, how judgemental. You’re worse than me.’

  ‘No, quite the contrary. It’d be liberating. I wish I could live like that. Why would one of them want to destroy my tyres? By the way, do you know who stopped by last night?’

  Philip shook his head.

  ‘Didrik.’

  ‘Didrik.’ He spat out the vodka. ‘Didrik Schlaug?’

  Ellen nodded. All three of them had been at Lundsberg; Philip knew very well who he was.

  ‘Did he finally get laid? What did your mother say?’

  ‘About us sleeping together? She doesn’t know anything about it, regardless of whether we did or not, she doesn’t know anything about the tyres, either, and it’s going to stay that way.’ She fixed a look on Philip, who had a bad habit of gossiping to her mother. Ellen knew it was because he cared about her, and deep down she appreciated it more than anything else. She didn’t know what she would have done without him.

  ‘I’ve never known anyone to be so smitten with someone as Didrik was with you. He would do absolutely anything for you. Like, more than Romeo did for Juliet.’

  She laughed. ‘Was that the best example you could think of?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Okay, yes, but with the single exception that I’m not Juliet, and his feelings are never going to be reciprocated.’ She shuddered just at the thought.