by C S Duffy
‘That’s awful,’ Maddie said quietly, rubbing Lena’s arm.
‘I wasn’t close friends with her, but we both worked in the school library, and we talked a few times. She was a nice girl. Shy, but very sweet.’ Lena fell silent a moment. Maddie and I waited. ‘I never believed that Karin would go out at night without her medicine,’ she said finally. ‘She was so careful. She told me once it can be possible to feel an attack coming, and that if she began to feel a fuzzy or tingly feeling approaching she knew she had moments to get to her medicine in time. She practiced over and over, like a military drill. When she was found that morning on the path, she did not have any medication with her. At the time I just thought maybe I did not know her as well as I thought. Now I am not so sure.’
‘If the same person got her, they have been killing for what, fifteen years?’ Maddie said in horror.
‘And they must be connected to your school,’ I said. ‘A teacher?’
Lena got up and grabbed an old photograph album from a box on the bookshelf. ‘This album is from the year of that trip,’ she said, leafing through the pages. I looked over her shoulder, smiling at how everyone’s school photos look alike. These might feature taller and blonder people, but they were still the same gawky teenagers with shocking fashion choices as in my albums. ‘I think there are some photos from the trip —’
‘That’s Mia,’ I blurted, tapping the photo of a much younger Mia making a face at the camera.
‘Do you know Mia?’ said Lena in surprise. ‘She organised a fundraiser party in Karin’s memory. She was one of the cool kids, but she was the nicest one as I recall.’
‘Yeah, I know her,’ I muttered, turning the page. ‘And there she is with Krister. Can I borrow that one? They could use it for a wedding invitation or something.’
‘Mia and Krister are getting married?’ said Lena in surprise. ‘I never would have predicted they would be in touch even, how funny.’
‘Yeah. I don’t really know him all that well, but she is lovely.’
‘And what about Johan and Liv? Do you know them? Are they still together?’
33
The busses were off because of the snow so I had walked home. I quite enjoy walking through crazy weather like that, when it is so cold you feel your breath icy in your lungs, and snow coats your nose and mouth. I wasn’t frustrated or enraged or consumed with self loathing. I felt really quite content. Happy, even.
I was hungry, I remember that. I stopped at the hot dog stand on Södermalmstorg, and ate the hot, spicy treat walking up Katrinavägen. The air was thick and heavy with snow, the sky glowing the greyish pink of deepest winter. I could only just make out the shadowy hulks of ships in the harbour, and the city centre was invisible altogether, melted into the murk in the distance. I’d passed a handful of people along the way, but everyone was so wrapped up, scarves wound over noses, heads bent, braced against the worst of the icy wind, hands deep in pockets of enormous quilted coats. They barely looked human. With the thick snow muffling the sounds of the city, it was almost like being alone.
I’m not sure what made you catch my eye. At the time, I still had no idea what made me chose, I didn’t even wonder. I noticed you, and that was all that mattered.
We were at the top of the hill. You’d stopped in front of the vegetarian restaurant, and were reading the menu with a frown, even though I’m almost certain it closes in winter. It crossed my mind to tell you that, then I decided I didn’t care. I stood by the top of the staircase cut into the cliff that leads to Fotografiska below, my hands in my pockets, though I couldn’t feel the cold any more. Something was warming me from within. I must have already decided.
A huge cruise liner was gliding into the harbour, so gigantic that the top of it was level with my eye line, even though I stood on a cliff high above. It must have been around 6pm in that case, as that is the time the ships arrive from the Baltic States. That made sense, I had left work a little after five.
I watched it emerge with eerie silence from the shadowy fog, but my every cell, every atom was focussed on you. That’s the bit no one will ever understand. How amazing I feel. How dominant. The way my entire being zings with power, with awareness, with the very universe flooding through me.
The vikings used to believe that if they killed a warrior in battle they would consume his life force, and that enough kills, enough life forces attained, would make them immortal. Of course I don’t believe I am immortal, I’m not a child. But I know the force that floods through me with each kill. How I crave it with a ravenous urge that makes my blood itch. How I never feel more truly alive than when I take a life.
It frustrates me that I can never remember the moment it happens. One minute the certainty of what is about to happen illuminates me from within, and then it is over and everything goes dark. It’s as though when I switch the light off in you, something inside me dies too.
So you see, it’s not as though it isn’t hard on me.
Generally, I don’t even allow myself the thrill of watching the light in your eyes switch off. Once I did. Not you, I could barely make out your broken body in the darkness from so far above — though I did in your case get to hear screams and sirens. I think a car might have crashed into the central reservation, presumably trying to avoid you, though what on earth was the point after the fall you’d had? A few tire tracks would hardly have made a difference, the chaos was entirely unnecessary. Stadsgårdsleden was closed for hours, on a weekday evening, at the height of rush hour. Normally whatever happens next doesn’t particularly interest me, but I have to admit I had a giggle at that.
It was one of the others, I can’t even remember who now.
Yes I do — the little man with the glasses in Tantolunden Park. He was begging me to help him, to call an ambulance, to help him find his inhaler. Then he just stopped. He went quiet and simply stared at me, as it must have dawned on him that I was not there to help. That was interesting to watch. His eyes went dark and desperate, then nothing. Just, blank.
Dead, after all.
Perhaps I’m being obvious. I hate to be obvious. It was quite disappointing, to tell the truth. I never took the risk of hanging around again. It wasn’t worth it.
There was one I would have quite liked to have watched, of course. It would have been satisfying to see her struggle. To hear the gasping, choking, gurgling breaths as water filled her lungs and dragged her inexorably below. She wouldn’t have begged, though. She wouldn’t have given me the satisfaction. Besides, she would already have known I was never going to help her.
34
It’s not as though I hadn’t known, deep down, all along. Of course I had. Ever since I saw them at the Midsummer table as I slipped into the woods. The intimacy between them had been unmistakeable.
I just chose to mistake it.
Something must have happened to break them up, but it wasn’t over between them. We were just distractions, Sanna and I. No wonder Liv could barely bring herself to look at us.
Well, good to know. I’d book a flight in the morning. That was that, then. Sorted.
I tried to push aside the heavy, leaden pain, as I walked down the hill towards Johan’s old high school. Everywhere I looked I could see a teenaged Johan and Liv. Dawdling hand-in-hand outside the playing fields, snogging in front of the little corner shop, sitting on that wall overlooking the old railway tracks, dangling their feet as they made plans for their lives together.
Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t the fact they had been a couple. I hardly imagined Johan had been a virgin when we met, for Heaven’s sake. Of course he’d had a past.
Or at least, it wasn’t just that they had been a couple.
But he had lied. There were no two ways about that. I’d asked him about the history of his friends and he had chosen not to include the fact that he and Liv had once been in love. It had hardly slipped his mind. It was lying by omission. He had deliberately left me out in the cold.
Hot tears prickled at my eye
as I thought of her barging into his flat and pouring her heart out to him on the couch that night. Boy trouble, he’d told me. Too right she had boy trouble. The man she loved had moved some random from London into his flat. The idea of them discussing their relationship, talking about me, all the while I’d been right there and didn’t have a clue, made me want to scream.
Won’t that be a bit rubbish for her, spending the weekend with two couples? I’d asked Johan as we waited for Krister on the jetty at Midsummer. I’d been lying too.
I’d been pretending to be sympathetic about poor, single Liv, when really I’d been smug, thinking I was on the inside for once. But it had been me on the outside. It had been me spending the weekend with two couples. I should have bloody known.
The lump in my throat ached and I could feel a sob building as I reached the gates of the school. I couldn’t do this now, I thought with rising panic. I didn’t have time. I’d have to pencil a little cry into my diary for some other time.
‘Ellie?’
At the front door of the school, principal Josefin Beckmann held out her hand with a friendly smile. She must have been sixty at least, though her hair was blonde, piled in a thick ballet bun on top of her head. She was deeply tanned, the crinkles around her eyes suggesting a lifetime of laughter.
‘Thank you so much for meeting me,’ I said, shaking her hand.
She nodded and gestured for me to follow her along a long corridor bordered with lockers. That school smell of polish, school dinners and trainers pervaded the air, though the halls were deserted and our footsteps echoed.
‘There are some summer programs running,’ Josefin said as she opened the door of a cosy little office. ‘But today, everyone is outside enjoying the sunshine. I always think empty schools are a little spooky. What is a school without children?’
I took a seat on the little sofa she gestured to, stuffed against the back wall of her office beneath shelves heaving with box files and books. There were framed certificates and newspaper articles covering the wall next to me. I couldn’t read the headlines, but a quick glance at the photos suggested the clippings were celebrating former student triumphs. There was a cosy warmth to the room, with slightly tatty furniture and the prominent wall of pride. I could imagine finding sanctuary here as a teenager, I thought, pouring my heart out to Josefin Beckmann about exam worries or troubles at home. She was the sort of person who made everything better.
‘I appreciate your being willing to talk to me,’ I said.
‘It was many years ago, but I will do my best to help.’
‘As I explained over email, I am looking in to a series of accidental or otherwise natural deaths that have happened in this area over the past fifteen years or so.’
‘You don’t think they are accidents?’
‘I’m not certain yet. That’s what I’m trying to find out.’
She nodded and sat back in her chair, her fingertips pressed together as she thought.
‘How did the case of Karin Söderström come to your attention?’ she asked. ‘There was very little media about it. Because of her age, we were able to contain the story quite well. Her parents —’ She gave a sad sigh. ‘It was very difficult for them to take. She was an only child, absolutely adored, though remarkably unspoilt. I see her mother around from time to time. She still looks haunted.’
‘I discussed my story with a former student of yours, who is now a police officer. She remembered what happened to Karin and wondered if there could be a connection.’
Josefin nodded, then went quiet for a long moment, her expression troubled. ‘Karin was an extremely careful girl,’ she said. ‘She kept her medication in a little container that she wore around her neck. She once demonstrated to me how she had trained herself to automatically reach for the chain when she felt an attack coming on. She also kept an extra packet in a pocket or her backpack as back up.’
‘But when she was found she didn’t have any medication on her?’
Josefin shook her head. ‘The principal at the time, my boss, insisted she must have forgotten in the excitement of sneaking out. She had left some skis by the back door in preparation, you see. It wasn’t an impulsive late night walk, she must have planned it. There was speculation that she intended to meet a boy.’
‘I was given the impression she was on the quiet side?’
‘She was. A very thoughtful, sensible girl.’ Josefin smiled sadly. ‘She told me once she found teenagers boring, that she couldn’t wait to be old enough to have friends who thought as she did, who would also enjoy talking about books and going to museums and classical concerts. I couldn’t stop thinking about that at her funeral. How she would forever be a teenager when it made her so unhappy.’
‘Presumably none of the boys admitted planning to meet her that night?’
‘No.’ Josefin shrugged, drummed her fingernails on the arm of the chair. ‘Some were questioned, but an investigation wasn’t really pursued. My feeling —’ She cut herself off, then sighed impatiently. ‘I will be honest with you. My feeling was that the verdict of ‘tragic accident’ was a little convenient for the school board. Of course no school wants to invite the examination and speculation of a scandal like that, we have the other children to think of.
‘But all the same, I do not believe that the matter was investigated thoroughly enough before it was closed. We questioned the students the following morning of course, and most said that they had all been in the common room watching TV all night, that no one had particularly noticed Karin or anyone else leaving. But we teachers were in a smaller room just across the hall, and I recall people walking back and forth along the corridors all evening. Most were slipping away to smoke or find beer, some to be alone with a favourite friend, perhaps. Typical things. We teachers just left them to their fun. But any one of them could have left that room to follow Karin.’
‘You seem certain it was another student?’
‘None of the teachers were absent for long enough. We got into quite a lively discussion about politics and sat up for much of the night, the entire group. No one left for any significant period. There were other staff in the cabin, but if you say this is a local matter then it must be either a student or teacher, which leaves a student.’
‘A sixteen year old, though? It seems incredible that someone so young could be capable of cold blooded murder.’
Josefin shrugged. ‘In my experience, if there is darkness in a person, it is already present in childhood. I have encountered a few students over the years that I felt afraid to send out in to the world. According to what the police told us, it was the cold that killed Karin Söderström in the end. An epileptic attack knocked her unconscious. The killer — if there was one — may have done nothing but keep her medication from her then leave her to die.’
‘What about footprints?’
‘It snowed heavily all night, so any prints were long gone by morning. We almost didn’t find her at all, she was buried so deeply, but luckily she had been wearing red mittens and one hand stuck just far enough out the snow to be visible. Her mother had knitted the mittens, and earlier that day I tried to persuade her to borrow some waterproof ski gloves. They were cream. If she had agreed, she might never have been found until spring.’ The older woman’s eyes filled up and she went quiet a moment, taking several shaky breaths.
‘Was there anyone Karin didn’t get on with, who might have followed her that night?’ I asked gently.
‘I don’t believe so. As I already said, Karin was a quiet girl, kept to herself mostly. The school held a memorial assembly, to allow students to share memories of her and grieve together, and the only things they could think of to say broke my heart. She lent me a pencil once. She gave up her seat on the bus so I could sit with my friend. She let me copy her biology homework. Some children are like that, of course, are barely a shadow in their school years then blossom into a content adult. I have no doubt Karin Söderström would have done so, but she never got the chance.’
‘Would you still have a list of the students who were on that trip?’
Josefin nodded. ‘I prepared one when I got your email.’
She handed me a sheet of neatly typed names from her desk. Icy chills danced over me as I read Johan, Liv, Mia, Krister. Of course they were all there.
‘Have you come across any of these people in your research?’ Josefin asked, searching my face. She hadn’t missed my reaction. ‘They would be in their early thirties or so now.’
‘I would have to check my notes, but one or two are familiar,’ I said, forcing a smile.
I looked up at the wall of framed clippings. ‘You take a lot of pride in your former students.’
‘I do, though this wall is also for inspiration. Many students now come and sit on that sofa where you are, feeling overwhelmed and anxious and afraid that they have already failed in life. I like to tell them stories of students who felt just as they did, then point to what they have achieved since.’ She got up and pointed to one of the larger clippings with a fond smile. I followed her gaze, and my heart flipped over.
‘Krister Larsson struggled desperately through his school years. He was very intelligent but failed several classes many times, and was almost expelled for fighting. But in the final year he knuckled down and ended up gaining one of the highest honors that Karolinska Institute awards for chemistry.’
‘Chemistry?’ I blurted.
Krister’s face filled my mind. Those cold, dark eyes staring at me without expression.
‘I believe he is now working on a drug that could cure heart disease,’ Josefin said. ‘If he succeeds, he may win a Nobel Prize.’
35
Mia said that she and Krister were together when Sanna disappeared, but he could have given her the pills earlier. Thoughts pierced my mind like daggers as I marched towards Götgatan. It was filled with pedestrians strolling on the cobblestones in the sunshine, a few bikes dinging warning bells as they weaved their wobbly way through the crowd.