But the room didn’t look as deep as it should. Sara paced out the distance between the doors out on the landing, carefully placing her feet heel-to-toe as she walked. Twenty-three steps. Then she measured the distance from the door to the wall of the guest room. Five steps. And then she compared it with the distance in the bedroom. Twelve steps.
There were six steps missing.
She went to the bedroom wall and tapped on it. It didn’t sound like a very thick wall. Then she opened the right-hand wardrobe. Agneta’s clothes.
The left-hand wardrobe was Stellan’s.
Sara pulled all the clothes out and examined the wardrobe. Before long, she noticed that one wall could be pushed aside. When she peered behind the panel, she discovered a small space where a person would just have fitted at a pinch. Or a camera tripod. And just below the ceiling there was a hole in the wall through to the guest room.
The dark edge in the films was quite simply the part of the wall visible if the camera hadn’t been placed sufficiently close to the hole. Stellan had stood here and rolled the camera while his guests had had sex with very young girls. So that he could extort them. On behalf of a foreign power.
He’d clearly exploited the girls himself first, and then got them to have sex with others and filmed that, too.
Perhaps he wanted to break them mentally to make them obedient tools. Perhaps he got off on breaking them down.
Was that how he conducted his espionage? By offering influential rich men sex with young girls, he acquired power over them?
Disgusting Stellan. Stellan the swine.
Other than the fact that what she’d seen had made her question her entire childhood – all the hours spent in the magical white palace – Sara realised that there might well have been another reason for Stellan’s murder.
Revenge.
Every one of the girls who’d been filmed had cause for revenge. As well as their loved ones.
She needed help identifying the men, but some of the girls she would be able to find by herself. She retrieved the sisters’ yearbooks from high school. She looked through the photos she’d taken of the attacks, and leafed back and forth between different classes.
She got three hits.
Camilla Skagerborg, Carin Larsbo and Maria Jonsson.
Three ordinary high school girls. In their class photos, they looked happy. Then Sara looked them up in the yearbooks from sixth form.
Only Carin was still there.
She didn’t look happy. Anorexic, bags under her eyes and a gaze that almost seemed to be asking for forgiveness as it looked into the camera.
When Sara was done, she went down to the rec room and packed everything up again. It still smelled of vomit. That seemed fitting for the room, she thought to herself.
She checked that everything looked normal before she left.
Now she, too, had done the cleaning at the Bromans’ house, just like her mother. But she had at least been cleaning up her own mess.
35
The post-war outer Stockholm suburb of Vällingby: an ABC town. At the time of its inception, it had been a proud symbol of modern, progressive Sweden. In Sara’s eyes it was primarily a monument to lost happiness.
ABC stood for Arbete, Bostad, Centrum – jobs, homes and a town centre. It had everything, so they claimed. The buildings were modern, unlike the cramped conditions and low standards found in the clamorous inner city. When Vällingby was completed in the 1950s, the pride of the politicians, architects and developers involved had been boundless. This was how the Swedes were going to live from now on. A young, newly married Olof Palme moved to the area with his wife Lisbeth. This was the future – the optimistic, successful, efficient Sweden the country was to become.
Later on, Vällingby largely came to be associated with crime and high turnover of tenants, before simply becoming a suburb like all the others in the midst of the current housing shortage – the only marker of note being its far-flung location, away from the city centre.
Moving further out of the city was, in Sara’s eyes, failure. A capitulation that she’d transformed into victory when she’d made it out of Vällingby and into Stockholm’s old town. Her mother, however, had said goodbye to Bromma and settled in Vällingby for good. And she’d categorically rejected all offers of help in making up the deposit for a flat that was closer to town. Why did Sara want to force her out of her own home? Jane would ask each time it came up.
So this was where she still lived after thirty years – in a tall tower block with white and beige facades. The same building where Sara had spent the darkest years of her life.
She recalled the feeling of having been dragged away from the party, having missed the train that was thundering away into the future with all her old friends on board. The impossible task of finding herself in a grim suburb during her sensitive teenage years, when everyone at school was brimming with hormones – a rootless maelstrom of emotions following a lonely summer.
Jane had dragged Sara away just before the summer holidays, which had made the separation even more traumatic. She’d spent the whole winter longing for the summer, when she would finally get the sisters back to herself again. She had been about to open the door to paradise when Jane had pulled her down into hellfire.
The doorbell sounded like it always had done – but inside the flat her mother had changed things around, as she often did. The fact that her home was in a state of constant change was the only consistent thing about it. Right now, the hallway was painted a pale shade of yellowish green, with framed typefaces and black-and-white newspaper headlines on the wall – framed prints Sara assumed had been on sale in some framer’s. A grey pouffe was positioned under the coat rack, and at least half of the shoes there had evidently been acquired since the last time Sara had visited. Granted, it had been a few years, she realised now.
Jane came and met her in the hall. She was just as well dressed as ever. Sara had never seen her in comfy trousers at home. Shirt, blouse, gold bracelet and a small watch on a chain around her neck. She had a new haircut again – this time it was cut short, and her hair was carefully sprayed with her fringe combed back.
Sara followed Jane into the kitchen. No matter how proud she was of her smart living room, her mother preferred to spend time at the kitchen table. She poured her daughter a cup of coffee and leaned back against the kitchen counter, just like usual. Sara didn’t sit down this time, but remained standing. She looked at her mother for a while before speaking.
‘I’ve seen films,’ she said. ‘Of Stellan.’ Jane blinked and Sara guessed that her mother knew where she was going with this. ‘In which he’s raping young girls.’
Jane didn’t say anything.
‘Girls that were at school with us – me and Malin and Lotta. Young. Some of them were minors.’
‘Yes.’
‘And he got away with it. He’s never been reported?’
‘No.’
‘Didn’t anyone notice anything?’
‘Some probably suspected.’
‘But did nothing?’
Jane shook her head.
‘You didn’t do anything,’ said Sara.
‘Stellan and Agneta took me in when I fled. When I arrived with you in my belly, I was so young. And completely alone. I couldn’t go to the police. Who would they have believed? Sweden’s uncle, or a Polish refugee?’
‘But someone else could have reported him. You could have asked someone else to go.’
‘I was afraid I’d be deported. He knew lots of powerful people.’
‘Did you know that he filmed it? You could have taken one of the films and handed it in. You cleaned up – you knew where everything was.’
‘Now you’re talking like a police officer. I want to talk to a daughter.’
‘What do you mean by that? You mean that I should have some sort of understanding for what he did?’
‘No. But for what it was like for the rest of us.’
‘You mean the ones who kep
t quiet and let it carry on?’
‘I didn’t know for sure. I could only hope it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was.’
‘It was worse. Much worse. You should be grateful it didn’t happen to you.’
Sara looked at her mother, who averted her gaze. And at that moment, the insight hit her like a furious tsunami.
She stared at Jane.
‘He took you, too,’ she said. ‘He used you.’
Jane looked Sara in the eye, as if trying to calm and placate her daughter.
‘Only in the beginning. Then I got too old.’
‘In the beginning? When I was an infant? Did he rape you when you’d had me?’
‘The important thing was to protect you.’
‘Protect me? By letting me grow up with him?’
She was being tossed between feelings of boundless anger and helpless sympathy.
Which was worse – what had happened to Jane, or what could have happened to Sara? Or that Jane had let him do that to her?
But now Sara realised that was thinking like the enemy – blaming the victim. Just because Jane was allowed to live with him didn’t give him any right to her body.
‘As soon as he looked at you in that way, I left and took you with me,’ she said.
‘What?’
It was as if the words weren’t getting through. She could only stare at her mother. She was able to touch her hand, but that meant nothing compared with everything she wanted to say, all the questions she wanted to ask.
‘Was that why we moved?’
‘I could see it in his eyes. One day you were no longer a child. Not to him. You’d just turned thirteen and I saw the way he was looking at you. You had no idea. Couldn’t have known. But when he invited you into that shed, I knew that you were no longer safe. I wouldn’t be able to protect you if we stayed there. We had to leave.’
‘So that’s why it happened so suddenly?’
‘We moved right away. It was easier to find a flat back then. I called social services and said my boyfriend had thrown me out and that I was on my own with a teenage daughter. We got this flat the same day.’
‘Is that why you’ve never wanted to move?’
‘Apart from you, this flat is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever had. It saved our lives. Just think – it used to be possible to get a flat that quickly then, even if you were a single parent and unemployed.’
Sara was ashamed. For all the years of anger at her mother. For the way she’d punished her with silence and distance. She struggled to summon the words, but realised that she had to confess. Here and now.
‘I’ve always thought you were jealous of Stellan and Agneta,’ she said, looking her mother in the eye. ‘And that was why you were so short with them.’
Jane didn’t seem surprised, which Sara found heartbreaking.
‘A wolf can only bite you if it’s allowed to come close to you,’ said Jane.
Sara pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down. She didn’t know where to look.
Life could change so quickly. An unexpected death, overwhelming information, new insights. The big trauma in Sara’s life – the move from Bromma – was now suddenly her salvation. The idol she’d missed was a beast who had come close to consuming her too.
‘But what did it feel like for me to be round there so much?’
‘What could I do? They had so much that I couldn’t offer.’
‘But I’m your daughter. Didn’t you want me to mostly be with you?’
‘Is that how you feel with your own children?’
Sara didn’t know how to answer. She had clearly never understood her mother, and never tried to understand her.
‘Children do as they please,’ said Jane. ‘Trying to force love simply kills it.’
‘But surely you’ve always known that I love you?’
‘That doesn’t really matter. The important thing is that a mother loves her children.’
36
An echoing stairwell and pale blue doors, most of them with burglar alarm stickers.
Sara approached the door with the sign ‘A & J Holmberg’ on it, cracked the letterbox and got out the letter that bastard Holmberg had asked them to send to his PO box.
Sara had made sure not to seal it so that it would be easy for his wife to open it. Judging by their profiles on LinkedIn, she appeared to work from home sometimes. Hopefully today was just such a day.
Sara leaned forward and listened at the open letterbox. Yes, it sounded like someone was inside, typing at a keyboard. She pushed the letter through, let it go and left.
Now she felt a little better. When she emerged onto the street, the air was slightly easier to breathe.
It was too late to put Stellan away, but at least she could do something, she thought to herself as she headed for the car. By delivering the letter. She wanted to do this with every man they caught in future. All these men who thought they could just pay their fines and carry on like before.
Nothing was like before.
That feeling was very strong in Sara.
Just as she got into the car her mobile rang.
‘Nowak.’
‘Hello – it’s Mazzella. At City. I don’t know whether you remember, but we were seated next to each other at the Christmas dinner a few years ago.’
‘Of course I remember.’
Not.
‘I’ve got a question for you, if you don’t mind.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘Someone called Mia Hansson has reported a break-in.’
‘OK.’
Mia Hansson, alias Nikki X. This was not good.
‘Since nothing was stolen, I’m going to close the file, but I thought I recognised the woman in the photos.’
‘Photos?’
‘Yes. You see, this Hansson has CCTV in her home.’
Fuck. Shit. Hell.
‘I’m looking at the pictures now and the burglar looks just like you, Nowak. Very strange. Do you have any explanation? Do you know if you have a doppelgänger?’
‘No, I don’t have a doppelgänger. It’s me.’
‘Oh?’
Mazzella tried to sound surprised, but he was a bad actor.
‘I was there. But I didn’t break in. It wasn’t locked. I rang the bell and then I saw the door was ajar, and since this Mia has been threatened, I was worried that something had happened to her. So I went inside. But there was no one there, so I left again. She sells sex, as you know. And she has some pretty unpleasant customers.’
‘I can well imagine. So she had been threatened?’
‘Yes.’
‘By whom?’
‘Some dodgy customer.’
‘And she reported it.’
‘No, I heard it from a girl on the street. They usually keep an eye on each other.’
‘So the door was open and you went in because this Mia had been the subject of threats?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’ll have written a report on this?’
‘No, not yet.’
‘If there’s a threat against her, then we need to take it seriously. What if something happens to her?’
‘You’re right. I’ll deal with it.’
‘Good. And Nowak . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘That means you think I can close this file?’
‘Yes, definitely. And it might be best if Mia Hansson doesn’t find out that it was me. She might not understand, and we need the girls’ trust.’
‘Yes, I can imagine. Well, see you at the next Christmas dinner.’
‘Yes, definitely.’
And then they ended the call.
CCTV.
Fuck.
Just as long as he hadn’t told Lindblad. She would love this. The anxiety in Sara’s gut didn’t dissipate when she received an urgent text from Martin.
Where the hell are you? They’re about to come out of the school building!
37
The thronging crowd, the pent-up expe
ctations, the joy.
The feeling of community: we’re here together.
The asphalt outside Norra Real school was packed like a Tokyo subway train. Everyone was staring up at the steps and the large pair of doors. They were carrying placards with pictures of the graduating students, and balloons, their own yellowing peaked graduation caps and bottles of sparkling wine. The school council had hired a DJ with a massive sound system playing the kids’ selections as each class emerged.
There were so many people. Why were they so happy? Sara couldn’t make head nor tail of it. Sixth-form graduation just meant that this part of life was over. Was that something worth celebrating?
People everywhere, heat and smells. Too much perfume on some, bad breath on others, the stench of sweat from many. Cigarette smoke. The pong of mouths filled with chewing tobacco. Someone had farted covertly. Humankind was certainly not pretty when it came together in a flock.
Sara was physically present, but her thoughts were completely occupied by Stellan, Holmberg and Nikki X. She realised that she had to pull herself together. She’d almost missed her daughter’s big day, and suspected that Ebba was practically expecting her not to show up. After all these years of work and commitment to others, Sara was worried that Ebba didn’t expect her to prioritise her own daughter. And following their thawing in relations at Caffè Nero the day before, she really didn’t want to lose what she’d gained.
She’d managed to sort out a bloody placard, at any rate. Despite the stress. There were plenty of small businesses that made placards for graduation while you waited, and Sara had long ago picked a photo of Ebba as a baby and saved it on her mobile. All she’d had to do was email the place with the picture and caption. They sold balloons at extortionate rates, too. Sara had got the impression she wasn’t the only one cutting it fine.
So here they were, waiting for their daughter, who was going to tumble out of school and childhood. Running towards her parents when she was actually leaving them. For her, life began now.
What kind of world awaited her?
Sara felt as if it was her responsibility to fix everything that was wrong. To make Ebba’s journey easier than her own. She was proud of how much better a life she’d already been able to give her. At the same time, Sara couldn’t help but be slightly envious of her daughter. There was so much she wouldn’t have to do. And she couldn’t help feeling that both her kids were rather ungrateful. They had no idea how good they had it.
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