The Gilded Cage

by Camilla Lackberg

  ‘We’ve found something that … there’s blood in the hall.’

  ‘Blood. Oh, dear God …’

  Faye stumbled and the policeman caught her and led her through the door. A white-clad forensics officer was crouched in the hall running some sort of instrument over the floor, where there was a patch of dark, congealed blood.

  ‘Julienne?’ she called out shrilly. ‘Julienne!’

  Jack was sitting on a chair in the kitchen. Two police officers were speaking to him calmly. When Jack caught sight of Faye he started to get up but the officers stopped him. He sank back onto the chair.

  ‘What’s happened?’ she cried. ‘Where is she, Jack? Where’s Julienne?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, sounding bewildered. ‘I woke up when the doorbell rang.’

  The policeman led her away.

  ‘We’re going to need something that belonged to your daughter.’

  Faye stared at him in confusion.

  ‘What do you mean? What for?’

  He led her gently but firmly away. She could hear footsteps and voices in the hall. More police officers had arrived.

  ‘For identification purposes,’ he said. ‘Just in case.’

  She let out a gasp, then nodded.

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Her toothbrush. Or a hairbrush?’

  Faye nodded. Pointed towards the bathroom. The policeman took out a bag, pulled on a pair of thin disposable gloves and led the way.

  ‘That’s hers.’

  He picked up the pink toothbrush with Elsa from Frozen on it and carefully put it in the bag. They got Julienne’s hairbrush from her room. That too was pink, with Elsa on the back.

  It had started to get dark outside the windows. Faye stood up when a policewoman came into the small room where she had been told to wait. She was tall and blonde. Her hair was pulled up in a ponytail, and she had a friendly but focused look on her face.

  ‘Is there any news?’

  The policewoman shook her head.

  ‘Please, sit down,’ she said, nodding towards the sofa. ‘My name is Yvonne Ingvarsson, I’m a police inspector.’

  Faye sat down and crossed her legs.

  ‘I’m going to have to ask you a few questions, and I’d like you to answer them as carefully as you can.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘We still haven’t found Julienne, but there are a number of things that we’re concerned about. Extremely concerned.’

  Faye closed her eyes and swallowed.

  ‘Is she … do you think something’s happened to her?’

  ‘We honestly don’t know. But the blood in the hall is definitely human. Forensics are comparing it to the DNA on her toothbrush and hairbrush.’

  ‘Oh, God … I …’

  ‘Your former husband, Jack, is unable to explain anything. His story doesn’t make sense, to put it bluntly. He claims he can’t remember what he was doing yesterday.’

  ‘But he couldn’t possibly have harmed Julienne. You’re wrong. Someone must have taken her, somehow. He loves her, there’s no reason why he’d …’

  ‘Who else could it be?’

  She fell silent. The policewoman leaned forward and put her hand on her knee.

  ‘According to his mobile phone and the satnav in his car, he went for a drive. At night.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He drove to Jönköping. And we’ve found traces of blood in the boot of his car. We’ll be comparing that with the blood found in the hall.’

  ‘Stop it … please, stop … I don’t want to know.’

  Faye shook her head.

  ‘You need to be strong now, Faye. I know it’s hard, but you’re going to have to help us if we’re to find Julienne.’

  She nodded slowly, and eventually looked up and met the policewoman’s gaze.

  ‘Our colleagues in Jönköping are examining the places Jack went last night. We’ve looked through both your computers, and I was wondering if you could explain what this is?’

  Yvonne leafed through the file she had been holding on her lap and pulled out a sheet of paper. It was the email Faye had sent to Ylva. Faye opened her mouth to speak but Yvonne got there first.

  ‘Is that you in the picture?’

  She put the sheet of paper in Faye’s hands. She cast a quick glance at it. Nodded.

  ‘Yes, that’s me.’

  ‘And you sent this to Jack’s partner, Ylva Lehndorf?’

  Faye nodded again.

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘Because she was the one who took Jack away from me. I just wanted to …’

  ‘Are you and Jack currently in a relationship?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Have you and Jack slept with each other since you split up?’

  ‘Yes. But not since he discovered I sent this to Ylva. Since then … he hates me.’

  ‘According to Jack, your relationship has continued.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. He stormed into my office, shouting and yelling at me a few weeks ago. The security guards had to throw him out. But our row was about us, not Julienne, I know he’d never harm her.’ She shook her head.

  ‘Do you know what else we’re discovered? That you, via a foreign investment company, acquired a majority stake in Compare. The company Jack founded. And was fired from. Is Jack aware of that?’

  Faye drummed her fingers nervously on the table. The expression on Yvonne Ingvarsson’s face was hard to read.

  ‘You’re not under suspicion for anything,’ Yvonne went on. ‘But we need to know, so we can understand what’s happened.’

  Faye nodded slowly. ‘Jack left me for Ylva. I found them in our bedroom … All I wanted was for them to feel the same pain I felt. I was humiliated, I lost everything. Of course I wanted revenge. And I did everything I could to crush Jack. Not without good reason. And he hated me – again, not without good reason. But it had nothing to do with Julienne, so I don’t understand where she could be or why you think he’s done something to her.’

  She twisted her hands in her lap.

  Yvonne didn’t answer her question. Instead she said tentatively:

  ‘Those injuries on your face. How did you get them? Was it Jack?’

  Faye raised her hand to her cheek and flinched with pain. Then she nodded reluctantly.

  ‘Jack was supposed to look after Julienne while I went to Västerås for a business meeting. I wasn’t sure about it, I only did it for Julienne’s sake. Jack … he’s been so angry … He’s been sending me terrible text messages recently. Threatening me when he’s been drinking. That’s not like him. He was angry when he arrived, and that was when he hit me. But he calmed down after that. We talked and things seemed fine when I left. He’d never lay a finger on Julienne, he was just so angry with me, I must have said something that set him off. I’d never have left Julienne with him if I thought …’

  Faye’s voice broke.

  There was a knock on the door. A policeman came in and introduced himself. He asked to speak to his colleague and Yvonne went out into the corridor with him. A few minutes later she came back in. She was carrying a cup of coffee which she put down on the table in front of Faye.

  ‘Go on,’ she said.

  ‘Is there any news about Julienne? Have you found her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can’t you tell me? She’s my daughter!’

  The policewoman looked at Faye with a blank look in her eyes.

  ‘We don’t think Julienne could have survived losing the amount of blood that was found in the hall.’

  ‘Oh, God, so she’s hurt? She’s bleeding. My little girl’s bleeding, all alone somewhere?’ Faye cried.

  Yvonne Ingvarsson put one hand on Faye’s shoulder but said nothing. The unspoken thought echoed around the room.

  Instead of sleeping in her own apartment Faye used her spare keys to Kerstin’s flat and moved in there. The newspapers were running big articles on Julienne’s disappearance. The po
lice had tracked Jack’s car to an area of forest north of Jönköping. There was a small marina nearby. The following day they found traces of blood on one of the boats. But no body.

  In the papers Faye read that they were working on the theory that ‘the ex-husband and millionaire’, as they described Jack, barely concealing his identity, had dumped Julienne’s body in Lake Vättern. Divers had tried to find the body, but the area was far too large. Julienne was never found.

  A week later, with all the evidence pointing to Jack, and after the evening tabloids had found out from their police sources about the amount of blood found in the apartment, car and boat, they published Jack’s name. Crowds of reporters gathered outside his and Ylva’s villa on Lidingö.

  Yvonne Ingvarsson visited Faye and explained that they hadn’t given up hope of finding Julienne alive, but that most of the evidence suggested that she was dead. She was offered psychological support and the services of a priest. But Faye declined all offers of help. She locked herself away in Kerstin’s flat and watched as the gaggle of journalists outside the building diminished day by day. The cuts and bruises on her face had started to heal, and she tended to them scrupulously. She didn’t want to be left with ugly scars. The charges against Jack also included his assault on Faye.

  Jack hadn’t made any kind of confession. But the evidence against him was growing steadily stronger. The detectives had found the most macabre Google searches in his internet history. And threatening texts sent to Faye were traced to Jack’s mobile even though he’d deleted them. All of this was reported in the tabloids.

  The findings on his computer tightened the noose around Jack’s neck. He had investigated the depth of various Swedish lakes, downloaded maps of the area where he’d parked on the shore of Lake Vättern.

  A month after Julienne disappeared Faye put the apartment on the market and informed Revenge’s investors that she was planning to leave Sweden as soon as possible. She kept hold of 10 per cent of her shares, gave Kerstin another 5 per cent on top of what she already had, and invited the existing investors to buy the rest. Yvonne Ingvarsson tried to persuade her to wait at least until Jack’s trial was over before she moved, but Faye told her she couldn’t face it.

  ‘My life’s in ruins, no matter what sentence he gets. I took his business away from him and destroyed his relationship with Ylva. And he responded by killing our only child. There’s nothing left for me here.’

  ‘I do understand,’ Yvonne said. ‘You have to try to be strong. The pain will never disappear, but it will become easier to deal with over time.’

  She gave Faye a hug at the front door before buttoning her coat and walking out onto the landing.

  ‘Where are you moving to?’

  ‘I don’t really know. A long way away, anyway. Somewhere nobody knows me.’

  When Yvonne texted her to say that the DNA analysis of the blood found in the hall, in the boot of Jack’s car and on the boat matched the DNA on Julienne’s toothbrush and hairbrush, Faye sent a message consisting of the single word: ‘Thanks’. She had nothing more to say.

  Seven months had passed since Faye left Sweden. She gazed out across the green hills that rose up in front of the Mediterranean. She had a chilled frappé in front of her. Jack’s trial was over and the verdict was expected any day now. The media and Swedish public had already passed judgement: Jack Adelheim was the most hated man in Sweden. Naturally, Ylva had spoken out in Expressen, with Jack’s daughter in her arms and a plentiful stock of condemnations. He had evidently subjected her to psychological abuse throughout their relationship. Ylva garnered plenty of sympathy from the public. Faye couldn’t help laughing when she read about it.

  Faye had finally had the hated breast implants removed, and had put on ten kilos. But she was still exercising. She had never felt happier in her own skin.

  She looked at the screen again as she dipped a cantucci in a glass of dessert wine. The whole of Sweden had been following the sensational trial, and Faye could almost feel the country holding its breath from the terrace where she was sitting.

  She wasn’t worried. She had done her homework properly.

  The newsreader on Aftonbladet’s website was shuffling some papers as a veteran crime reporter frowned and pronounced sombrely that there was no doubt that Jack would be found guilty.

  Faye didn’t even bother to smile. She already knew she’d won. The aftermath was merely a formality. She was done.

  Julienne called to her from inside the house.

  Faye nudged her sunglasses and squinted.

  ‘What is it, darling?’

  ‘Can we go to the beach?’

  ‘In a little while. Mummy just needs to finish looking at this first.’

  Julienne appeared in the doorway. Her bare feet echoed on the terrace as she ran over to her. Suntanned and beautiful, her fair hair flying behind her.

  ‘Jack Adelheim found guilty of murdering his seven-year-old daughter.’

  Faye quickly closed her laptop as Julienne climbed up onto her.

  ‘What were you looking at?’

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ she said. ‘Shall we go to the beach, then?’

  ‘Do you think Kerstin would like to come?’

  ‘We’d better ask her.’

  Faye closed her eyes as Julienne hurried away. Her mind wandered back to those fateful days more than six months ago now.

  She hadn’t been afraid of the physical pain. It was nothing compared to the pain she had felt when she found the pictures of Julienne in the folder entitled ‘Household’. Her beloved daughter. Terrified. Confused. Naked.

  The initial shock had been replaced by a fury that almost consumed her, but she held it inside her, knowing she would need it later. Her rage would crash upon Jack like an avalanche, there wouldn’t be anything left of him when she was finished.

  Lulling Jack into a sense of security had been simple, but doing all the other things she needed to do hadn’t been particularly difficult either. She only had to close her eyes and see Julienne’s naked body in front of her. Exposed. Defiled. By the person who should have been protecting her.

  She had taken some painkillers, then drained a litre of her own blood. That was twice the amount taken when you gave blood, but she had read that given the amount of blood a body contained, she could spare a litre of it.

  Kerstin had protested at first when she explained what she wanted to do, but after she saw the pictures of Julienne she agreed that no punishment was harsh enough for a man like Jack.

  Faye felt giddy, lightheaded, but kept going. She mustn’t pass out now.

  Kerstin and Julienne had gone on ahead of her. It had cost a lot to get hold of fake passports and arrange safe passage out of the country, but money can buy you anything. And Faye had plenty of money.

  When the doorbell rang Faye took a deep breath, then went to let Jack in. It was time to destroy him. He wondered where Julienne was, he was supposed to be babysitting her, after all, and she said that Julienne was on her way home. Three whiskies later she had managed to entice him into the bedroom with the promise of sex, but, just as she had hoped, he lost consciousness after a bit of clumsy fumbling inside her underpants.

  She looked at herself in the big bedroom mirror. She could hear Jack breathing deeply on the bed. She had given him a double dose, so nothing was going to wake him. And when he did, his memory would be hazy.

  She took a deep breath. Let the darkness pour forth, past all the barriers she had put in its way for so many years. She saw faces in the water. Heard the screams that rose shrilly towards the sky and made the gulls take off in fright. Saw the blood disperse in saltwater. White fingers clawing for something, anything, anyone.

  She saw Julienne again. Her frightened face.

  Faye hit her forehead against the steel bedstead as hard as she dared.

  Then she inspected her face clinically in the mirror. Would that be enough? She had cut her forehead and blood was gathering under her skin, she’d have a lot of bruises.


  Faye fetched the little life-saving dummy she had got hold of and laid it down in the hall. Then she poured the blood Kerstin had helped her to extract over the dummy, so that it spread out around the head and upper part of the torso. She hoped there was enough blood. She couldn’t have given more and still have the energy to do anything. The smell was nauseating and she felt dizzy and weak, but forced herself to carry on. She left the dummy on the floor while she got on with the final preparations, in the hope that it would start to congeal around the outline of the figure.

  She pulled on a pair of gloves and carefully took a zip-lock bag containing a pink toothbrush and hairbrush from her bag. They were both decorated with pictures of Elsa from Frozen. Julienne had removed them from the packaging herself and put them in the plastic bag, so that her fingerprints would be the only ones found on them.

  Faye began by brushing her hair. She and Julienne had the same honey-gold shade of blonde hair, the same length. She made sure to brush hard enough to pull plenty of strands out by the root. Then she carefully put the hairbrush down and picked up the toothbrush. She brushed her teeth and mouth thoroughly, pressing hard so the brush would splay and look well-used. She put the brush in the glass in the bathroom next to her own toothbrush. Then she went into Julienne’s bedroom and placed the hairbrush on her desk.

  After that she washed the whisky glass containing the sedative and refilled it with more whisky. She took the glass and bottle of whisky into the bedroom where Jack was still snoring loudly. Faye put the glass on the bedside table and laid the bottle down on its side next to the bed. The room really did reek of whisky.

  There wasn’t much else to do inside the apartment.

  Faye picked up Jack’s mobile and went outside to his car. She quickly tossed the dummy into the boot. It left traces of blood, just as she had been counting on.

  The rest was simply a matter of logistics. Driving Jack’s car to Lake Vättern and back. Smearing a bit of blood on one of the boats moored at a jetty. She washed the dummy and threw it in the water. There would be so much odd rubbish scattered across the bottom of the lake that no one would think to connect it to Julienne’s disappearance.