The Gilded Cage

by Camilla Lackberg

  THE GILDED CAGE

  Translated from the Swedish by Neil Smith

  Camilla Lackberg

  Copyright

  Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

  Copyright © Camilla Lackberg 2019

  Published by agreement with Nordin Agency, Sweden

  Translation copyright © Neil Smith 2019

  Originally published in 2019 by Bokförlaget Forum, Sweden, as En bur av guld

  Cover design by Andrew Davis © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

  Cover photographs © Miguel Sobreira/PlainPicture

  Camilla Lackberg asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008283728

  Ebook Edition © April 2020 ISBN: 9780008283742

  Version: 2020-03-03

  Dedication

  For Christina

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  PART 1

  PART 2

  PART 3

  Keep Reading …

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Camilla Lackberg

  About the Publisher

  PART 1

  ‘Couldn’t she just be injured?’ Faye said.

  She looked down at the table, unable to meet their gaze.

  A brief moment of hesitation. Then a sympathetic voice.

  ‘There’s an awful lot of blood. From such a small body. But I don’t want to speculate until a medical officer has made an evaluation.’

  Faye nodded. Someone gave her a transparent plastic mug of water, she was shaking so much as she raised it to her lips that a few drops ran down her chin and dripped onto her blouse. The blonde policewoman with the kind blue eyes leaned forward and gave her a tissue to dry herself with.

  She wiped herself slowly. The water was going to leave nasty blotches on the silk blouse. Not that it mattered any more.

  ‘There’s no doubt, then? None at all?’

  The female police officer glanced at her colleague, then shook her head. She chose her words carefully:

  ‘Like I said, a doctor needs to reach a verdict based on the evidence at the crime scene. But as things stand, everything points towards the same explanation: that your ex-husband Jack has killed your daughter.’

  Faye closed her eyes and stifled a sob.

  Julienne was asleep at last. Her hair was spread out across the pink pillow. Her breathing was calm. Faye stroked her cheek, gently, so she wouldn’t wake her.

  Jack was coming home from his business trip to London that evening. Or was it Hamburg? Faye couldn’t remember. He’d be tired and stressed when he got home, but she’d make sure he managed to relax properly.

  She carefully closed the bedroom door, crept into the hall and checked that the front door was locked. Back in the kitchen she ran her hand along the worktop. Three metres of marble. Carrera, naturally. Unfortunately it was ridiculously impractical, the porous marble absorbed everything like a sponge and already had some ugly stains. But Jack had never even considered choosing something more practical. The kitchen in the apartment on Narvavägen had cost just shy of a million kronor, and absolutely no expense had been spared.

  Faye reached for a bottle of Amarone and put a wineglass on the counter. The glass touching the marble, the glug as the wine poured – these sounds were the essence of her evenings at home when Jack was away. She poured the wine carefully so there wouldn’t be another red-wine spatter on the white marble, and closed her eyes as she raised the glass to her lips.

  She dimmed the lighting, then went out into the hall where the black-and-white portraits of her, Julienne and Jack hung. They had been taken by Kate Gabor, the Crown Princess’s unofficial court photographer, who every year took a fresh set of enchanting photographs of the royal children playing in the autumn leaves in crisp white outfits. She and Jack had chosen to have their pictures taken in summer. They were standing by the shore in a relaxed, playful pose. Julienne between them, her fair hair lifted by the breeze. White clothes, obviously. She was wearing a simple cotton Armani dress, Jack a shirt and rolled-up trousers from Hugo Boss, and Julienne a lace dress from Stella McCartney’s children’s collection. They had had a row minutes before the pictures were taken. She couldn’t remember what it had been about, only that it had been her fault. But none of that was evident in the pictures.

  Faye went up the stairs. She hesitated outside the door to Jack’s study, then pushed it open. The room was situated in a tower, with views in every direction. A unique layout in a unique property, as the estate agent had put it when he showed them the apartment five years ago. She had been pregnant with Julienne at the time, her head full of bright hopes for the future.

  She loved the tower room. The space and all the light from the windows made her feel like she was flying. And now that it was dark outside, the arched walls enveloped her like a warm cocoon.

  She had chosen the décor herself, as she had with the rest of the apartment. She had picked the wallpaper, the bookcases, desk, the photographs and artworks on the walls. And Jack loved what she’d done. He never questioned her taste, and was always incredibly proud whenever guests asked for the number of their interior designer.

  In those moments, he let her shine.

  While all the other rooms were furnished in a contemporary style, light and airy, Jack’s study was more masculine. Heavier. She had put more effort into this room than Julienne’s nursery and the rest of the apartment together. Jack was going to spend so much time in here, taking important decisions that would affect their family’s future. The least she could do was to give him a refuge of his own up here, almost in the clouds.

  Faye ran her hand across Jack’s desk with satisfaction. It was a Russian desk, she had bought it at an auction at Bukowski’s, and it had once belonged to Ingmar Bergman. Jack wasn’t much of a Bergman aficionado – action films with Jackie Chan or comedies starring Ben Stiller were more to his taste – but like her he preferred it when furniture came with a bit of history.

  When they showed guests round the apartment he always patted the top of the desk with the palm of his hand twice and said, as if in passing, that the fine piece of furniture had once stood in the world-famous director’s home. Faye smiled every time he did that, because their eyes usually met as he said it. It was one of the thousand things they shared in their lives. Those covert glances, all the meaningful and meaningless gestures that went to make up a relationship.

  She sank onto the chair behind the desk and spun it until she was facing the window. Snow was falling outside, turning to slush as it hit the street far below. When she leaned forward and looked down she saw a car strugg
ling through the dark February evening. The driver turned into Banérgatan, towards the city centre. For a moment she forgot what she was doing there, why she was sitting in Jack’s study. It was far too easy to drift away in the darkness and become hypnotized by the snowflakes pushing slowly through the blackness.

  Faye blinked, sat up straight and rotated the chair so she was facing the large screen of the Mac, then nudged the mouse and the screen came to life. She wondered what Jack had done with the mouse-mat she had given him at Christmas, the one with a photograph of her and Julienne. Instead he was using an ugly blue one from Nordea Bank, a Christmas gift to their private banking clients.

  She knew the password: Julienne2010. At least he didn’t have anything from Nordea as his background, and was still using the picture he had taken of her and Julienne in Marbella. They were lying at the water’s edge, Faye holding her daughter up towards the sky. They were both laughing, but Faye’s laughter was more sensed than seen as she lay on her back with her hair floating in the water. Julienne’s bright blue eyes were looking straight into the camera, right through the lens. Into Jack’s eyes, just as blue.

  Faye leaned closer, her eyes looking along her own tanned body, shiny with salt and water. Though only a few months had passed since she had given birth, she had been in better shape then than she was now. Her stomach was flat. Her arms thin. Her thighs slim and taut. Now, almost three years later, she weighed at least ten kilos more than she had done in Spain. Fifteen, maybe. She hadn’t dared weigh herself for a long time.

  She tore her eyes from her own image on the screen and opened the browser, clicked to bring up the history, and typed ‘porn’. Link after link appeared, sorted by date. She had no difficulty at all tracing Jack’s sexual fantasies in recent months. It was like a reference book covering his libido. Sexual Fantasies for Dummies.

  On 26 October he had watched two clips. ‘Russian teen gets slammed by big cock’ and ‘Skinny teen brutally hammered’. You could say what you liked about the porn branch, but the titles of the films were at least direct and to the point. No attempts to prettify or embellish, to lie about what was coming and what the person in front of the screen wanted to see. A straightforward dialogue, open and honest communication.

  Jack had looked at porn for as long as she had known him, and sometimes she looked herself, when she was on her own. She was scornful of friends who declared that their husbands would never dream of looking at porn. Talk about repression!

  Jack never used to let his consumption of porn influence their sex life. It had never been a matter of either/or. But now he no longer sought comfort from her, despite seeking satisfaction from ‘Skinny teen brutally hammered’.

  The knot in her stomach grew bigger with each clip she watched. The girls were young, skinny, submissive. Jack had always liked his women thin and young. It wasn’t him who had changed, it was her. And wasn’t that how most men wanted their women? In Östermalm there was no room for ageing and weight gain. At least not for women.

  In the past month Jack had watched one particular video seven or eight times. ‘Young petite schoolgirl brutally fucked by her teacher.’ Faye clicked play. A young schoolgirl in a short, checked skirt, white shirt, tie, socks and Pippi Longstocking pigtails appeared; it seemed she was struggling with her lessons, particularly biology. Informing her that they have arranged for extra tuition, her conscientious parents go out for the evening, leaving their daughter at home alone. The doorbell rings. A man in his forties, wearing a jacket with patches on the elbows and clutching a briefcase, is at the door. They go into a brightly lit kitchen. The girl gets her homework and opens her books. They go through the muscles of the body.

  ‘When I say a muscle, I want you to show me where on your body it is. Can you do that?’ the teacher asks in a deep voice.

  The girl opens her eyes wide, nods and pouts. She manages two muscles. When he says gluteus maximus, the buttock muscle, she pulls up her skirt, revealing the hem of her underpants, and points at the outside of her thigh. The teacher shakes his head with a smile.

  ‘Stand up and I’ll show you,’ he says.

  She pushes her chair back and stands up. He places his large hand behind her knee and moves it up her leg, under her skirt. He lifts her skirt higher and pulls her underwear aside. Pushes a finger inside. The girl groans. A perfect porn-groan. But with a trace of astonished innocence and guilt. An acknowledgement to the viewer that she knows she shouldn’t be doing this. That this is naughty. But she can’t help it. The temptation is too great for her to resist.

  He pushes his finger in and out a few times. Then bends her over the table and fucks her. She screams, groans, claws at the table. Begs for more. The whole thing reaches a climax when he tells her to put on her glasses – they have fallen off somewhere along the way – before he ejaculates in her face. Her face contorted with pleasure, her mouth half-open, the schoolgirl receives his semen.

  Porn films had to be the clearest indication of just how highly men valued their semen. It was bestowed upon breathless, reverential women with their mouths half-open, always half-open, as if it were a precious gift.

  Faye put the computer back in sleep-mode with a couple of clicks of the mouse on the ugly Nordea mat. If that was what Jack wanted, that was what he would get.

  She pushed the chair back from the desk, and it creaked reluctantly as she stood up. It was pitch-black outside now. The light snow had stopped falling. She picked up her wineglass and left the room.

  Faye had everything she needed in her walk-in closet. She looked at the time. Half past nine. Jack’s plane was about to land, soon he’d be sitting in a taxi. Naturally, he used Arlanda’s VIP service, so it wouldn’t take him long to get out of the airport.

  She had a quick shower and shaved off the light stubble that had grown out above her genitals. She washed herself thoroughly, then put make-up on, not the way she usually did, but a bit carelessly, like someone with less experience. She rubbed in plenty of blusher, used far too much mascara, and, as the icing on the cake, applied some bubblegum-pink lipstick she found at the bottom of her make-up box – probably given to her in a goodie-bag at some event.

  Jack wouldn’t be getting her – not Faye, his wife, the mother of his child – but someone younger and more innocent, someone untouched. That was what he needed.

  She picked out one of Jack’s thin grey ties and knotted it carelessly round her neck. She put on a pair of the reading glasses he was ashamed to wear in public and always hid when they had visitors. Rectangular, black, Dolce & Gabbana. Faye looked at the result in the mirror. She looked ten years younger. Almost like the person she had been when she left Fjällbacka.

  She was no one’s wife. No one’s mother. It was perfect.

  Faye crept into Julienne’s room to get one of her exercise books and a pink pencil. She froze when Julienne murmured in her sleep. Was she going to wake up? No, she was soon breathing calmly again.

  She went into the kitchen to pour herself some more wine but stopped and pulled out a box of Julienne’s plastic mugs instead. She filled a large Hello Kitty beaker with red wine, one with a lid and a straw. Perfect.

  When the key turned in the front door she was sitting looking through The Economist, which Jack insisted on leaving out on the coffee table. She was the only person in the family who actually read it.

  Jack put his case on the floor, took off his shoes and inserted the cedar-wood blocks that kept his soft, handmade Italian leather shoes in shape. Faye sat still. Unlike her usual discreet lip-gloss from Lancôme, the pink lipstick felt sticky and smelled faintly synthetic.

  Jack opened the fridge carefully. He hadn’t spotted her yet. He was moving quietly, probably thought she and Julienne were both asleep.

  She watched him from the gloom of the living room. Like a stranger looking through a window, she was able to observe her husband without his knowledge. Jack was always on the alert otherwise. Now, when he thought no one could see him, he moved differently. He was relaxe
d, almost careless. His usually upright frame was slouching, only slightly, but enough for someone who knew him as well as she did to appreciate the difference. His face was smoother, without the permanent worry line that was always there these days, even on the social occasions that were closely intertwined with his career, with their life, where the laughter and chink of glasses could be transformed into a multimillion-kronor deal the following day.

  She remembered what Jack was like as a young man, when they first met. That cheeky look in his eyes, his happy laugh, hands that couldn’t stop touching her, that couldn’t get enough of her.

  The light in the fridge lit up his face and she couldn’t take her eyes off him. She loved him. Loved his broad back. Loved his big hands, which were raising a carton of juice to his lips. Soon they would be on her, in her. Dear God, how she longed for that.

  Maybe that longing made her body move, because he suddenly turned his face towards the polished oven door and saw her reflection. He started and spun round, his hand clutching the carton of juice, halfway to his mouth.

  He put it down on the island unit.

  ‘Are you still up?’ he said, surprised. The line between his neatly shaped eyebrows was back.

  Faye didn’t answer, she just got to her feet and took a few steps towards him. His eyes roamed across her body. It had been a long time since he had looked at her that way.

  ‘Come here,’ she said softly, in a high voice.

  Jack closed the fridge door and the kitchen receded into darkness again. But the lights of the city outside were bright enough for them to see each other. He walked round the island unit, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and leaned forward to kiss her. But she turned her face aside and pushed him down onto a chair. She was in charge now. When he reached out one hand towards her skirt she batted it away, only to place it behind her knee a moment later. She pulled her skirt up so that he could see her lace underwear, hoping he would recognize it, hoping he would see how similar it was. To hers. The young girl. The innocent student.