I nod.
“Besides, this so-called farewell letter is nothing but a long finger pointed right at you. Sara’s finger, from the other side. And then the other letter to, what was her name? The anorexic, excuse me, the bulimic.”
I study Vijay in silence. He doesn’t know everything. I haven’t told him about the DUI. It’s just too embarrassing.
“I’d like to know,” I begin, “if this person hates me enough to kill, why not attack me directly? Kill me?”
“Ahh, that is an interesting question,” Vijay replies, smiling broadly.
He brings his index fingers together and leans back pensively in his chair.
“I think he wants you to suffer. The way he thinks he has suffered. He wants to see you shamed, deprived of all dignity, your position taken away from you. If he had killed you right off, he wouldn’t have achieved that, would he?”
“And now?” My voice is only a whisper.
“Yes, the risk is probably pretty great that the situation will escalate. He didn’t achieve what he wanted with Sara’s murder. I would be careful, Siri, very careful, if I were you.”
I sit, speechless, incapable of uttering anything as silence settles in the room. Through the small window I can see students, or perhaps teachers—it’s hard to tell the difference these days—leaning against the wall, smoking. A guy in a knit cap comes toward the small group of smokers. His T-shirt says INSTANT ASSHOLE—JUST ADD ALCOHOL. Students, I decide.
“Do I know him?”
“It’s possible. In any case, I’m pretty sure that you have some kind of relationship or connection to him.”
“How do you know that?”
“The letter contains information that not just anyone could have about you. Furthermore, the crime is extremely personal per se. It’s you, your person, he wants to get at.”
“Could he be a colleague of mine?”
Vijay shrugs. “I assume it’s a possibility.”
He must see how discouraged we feel, because he says, “Don’t lose hope now. Try to think, Siri, who could want to harm you? Combine that knowledge with what you know that I’m not aware of, that is, who could have had the opportunity to carry out the crime and have access to the information that it required. There, you have your perpetrator.”
“Vijay, what should I do?”
My voice fades away.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to ask Markus that.”
I look at Markus, but his gaze is lost in the distance, out the window and over toward the horizon.
We leave the office and walk back toward our car. Vijay accompanies us.
“Vijay, tell me, how do you cope with… all this? The death, all the evil you see?”
“Well, now, I don’t think about it in terms of good and evil. Besides, people would murder and torment each other just as much even if I didn’t exist. It doesn’t go away just because you close your eyes. As I see it, maybe I can make a difference. Maybe I can discover something that leads to a criminal being arrested, that prevents him or her from committing more crimes. That protects an innocent person. That’s enough for me. If I’ve saved one person, I’m satisfied.”
Vijay pauses and lights a cigarette.
“But I must admit it’s hard to talk with victims’ relatives. It gets under my skin, the realization of how… how fragile life is.”
He suddenly looks older, huddled up against the wind, with the cigarette in his hand. Deep creases run from his nose down toward the corners of his mouth. His mustache has streaks of gray in it and his shirt is a little tight around his belly. Why didn’t I notice before? Taken out of his context, the liberal academic environment, Vijay suddenly appears lost, like any man taking his first steps toward middle age. I feel a sudden tenderness for him as we say good-bye. This time the hug is longer and more intimate. I burrow my nose down in his flower-print shirt and take in the aroma of aftershave, cigarette smoke, and sweat.
“Take care of her,” Vijay says slowly, looking at Markus for a moment before he turns and goes back into the massive red-brown brick building.
Date: October 12
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Place: Green Room, the clinic
Patient: Charlotte Mimer
“Bloody hell!”
Charlotte is rocking back and forth, her slender arms around her knees, which are drawn up on the chair. Her hair is unwashed and plastered against her cheeks soaked with tears. Her glasses, which she doesn’t usually wear, are so fogged up I can’t see her eyes, and the obligatory suit has been replaced by a gray tracksuit.
Although she was the one who wanted to end therapy, she called yesterday and asked to come back because she was feeling so bad. We booked her for an emergency appointment today.
“What happened?”
I lean toward her, pushing the box of Kleenex to her side of the table. She nods and hesitantly takes a tissue. The cold light of the fluorescent bulb and the room’s green walls are reflected in her pale face. She looks sick and haggard, cowering in my armchair.
“I told my boss straight to his face. That I knew he was screwing Sanna. That I thought he was a pathetic creep. That he ought to be happy that such a young, smart girl wants to sleep with him even though he is such a loser. I quit my job. Did I already say that?”
Charlotte takes off her glasses and rubs away the steam as she looks searchingly at me, as if I had the solution to her problems at my fingertips. But all I can do is nod encouragingly to get her to continue talking.
Through the wall I can hear Sven, who has kitchen duty this week, unloading the little dishwasher. All the silverware is being tossed resolutely with a clattering thud into a drawer, even though Aina and I are always nagging him to sort them properly.
“Did I say that I quit my job?”
I nod at her. She is still frenetically rubbing her eyeglasses against her speckled-gray sweatpants, as if trying to remove an invisible but intolerable stain.
I take a deep breath before speaking. “I think it’s best if you tell me what happened from the beginning. When did this happen?”
Charlotte blows her nose noisily in a paper tissue, and sets it on the table before she resumes rocking back and forth on the chair.
“It was… uh… the day before yesterday. We had a performance review, that is, he had a performance review with me.”
Charlotte grimaces and the tears rise again. I lean over and gently stroke her arm.
“Take your time. It’s okay.”
She shakes her head. “It’s not okay. I don’t have a job anymore.”
These words are just a whisper.
“Wait a moment. Let’s take it from the beginning. You had a performance review.”
“He had a performance review. With me.”
Charlotte, as usual, is careful to get the details correct, even in her distress. She sighs, slowly and dejectedly shaking her head. When she continues she speaks deliberately, with exaggerated clarity, articulating every word as if I were a child.
Or perhaps simply not very clever.
“And. He. Said. A. Lot. Of. Shit. That. Doesn’t. Make. Sense.”
“Like what?”
“That I wasn’t sufficiently proactive. That I have to learn to take ownership of my area of responsibility in a more proactive way. Uhh… There’s no point in explaining. You wouldn’t understand anyway…”
I feel a sting of irritation at being dismissed by my patient but let it pass without comment.
“He said I had to develop my leadership skills. That I wasn’t ready yet for a promotion. In brief: a lot of bullshit. It doesn’t make sense. It’s so unfair. I’ve given up… everything. And then that pretentious piece of shit stands there and criticizes me for no reason at all. When he himself… Although he himself…”
Charlotte sobs, unable to finish her sentence.
“Although he himself what? Tell me, Charlotte.”
Charlotte hesitates and massages her calf with one hand while she wipes away tears and blo
ws her nose with the other.
“Although he himself is a horny loser who is screwing a subordinate, even though it’s against all the rules.”
“So what did you do?”
“I already told you. I said to him that I knew what he was doing. What I thought about it. And now I don’t have a job.”
“Did he fire you?”
“Of course he didn’t. I quit.”
“But… but why? It’s not your fault that he made a mistake.”
My hand is still resting against the rough cotton of her hoodie. Now and then, I press Charlotte’s arm consolingly.
“I couldn’t stay there after I said those things to him,” says Charlotte, shaking her head again, making damp, brown strands of hair dance around her face.
“But really, think about it, Charlotte, he’s the one who has done wrong. And just because you pointed that out—even if you were too direct—why does this mean that you have to give notice?”
“I know… I’m just a hopeless case…”
Now Charlotte is crying loudly, her face buried against her knees, emitting little sounds like a captured animal. I stroke her arm again and glance up at the clock: ten minutes left, time to wrap up.
“That’s not what I meant, Charlotte. I’m just saying that you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“That doesn’t matter anymore.” Charlotte’s voice is flat and nasal.
“Listen, I think that… perhaps it’s useful for you to actually allow yourself to lose control sometimes. You know, so much in your life is about control.”
Charlotte instantly freezes and in one second she turns into a block of ice.
“I don’t have a JOB. Don’t you get what I’m saying? And it’s your fault. You witch!”
I abruptly let go of her arm and stand up. Surprised at my own reaction, I am suddenly not sure who she is, this sobbing, red-faced woman in a tracksuit, sitting in front of me. Perhaps there is something about her I’ve missed. Perhaps I’ve opened a door to something dark and forbidden.
Charlotte jumps out of her chair and rushes toward me.
“Forgive me, I don’t know what got into me. Forgive me. Forgive me.”
She throws her thin but surprisingly strong arms around me and hugs me tight, real tight. As if I were her last straw. Maybe I am?
Her cheek is wet against my throat and I feel her breath on my neck. We remain standing there like a couple in a dance, frozen in midstep, in time and space.
It’s dark outside and I can see our image mirrored in the black window. I see the fragile child in Charlotte, see the sinewy, tree-climbing arms, the apple-picking arms, that are squeezing my body, but I also see something else in her eyes. Something that makes the hairs on my neck stand up.
Suddenly, with a surprisingly controlled, soft voice, Charlotte says, “Siri… am I going crazy?”
I see him every day at the practice, at the coffeemaker, by the copy machine, in the reception area. His gray-streaked hair and mandatory corduroy jacket—he seems to have one in every color. Sometimes I meet his gaze and cannot keep from wondering whether he can see it in my eyes.
The fear.
Sven, Aina, and I move around the clinic like a group of strangers. All painfully aware that nothing can return to the way it was before.
We don’t talk about what happened to Marianne and what has been happening to me. In order to stick together, to cope with the practice, the patients, and everything else, we have to keep silent. Not mention what we are all thinking. It’s simply too dangerous to talk about.
The emptiness Marianne has left behind is almost tangible. Her scent in the restroom, the neat little notes in my calendar. “Anneli Asplund 12:00—remember to bring the needles!” Her clothes in the small closet: pink crocheted sweaters, flowered scarves, all hanging on the padded clothes hangers in impeccable order. On the hanger at the far right is a little blue cloth bag filled with lavender. For the scent. So tidy, such focus on small details, so very Marianne.
I have a strong desire to see her, to hold her hand for a while. But Marianne cannot have visitors. She is still lying unconscious at the hospital. “No point visiting yet,” the nurse said when I called.
And at the practice, we continue our nervous avoidance, our worried dance through consultation rooms and corridors, our hands filled with papers and coffee cups, as if this makes us appear focused and professional.
Aina and I have talked about Sven. Neither of us really suspects him of being involved in Sara’s murder. Neither of us ever saw him even talk with Sara. But neither I nor Aina can ignore the facts. Sven is one of a few people who knew enough about Sara’s therapy to be able to credibly forge her farewell letter, with all its references to my conversations with her. He knows where I live and even that I am in the habit of swimming every day between the rocks and the pier. He knows that Charlotte Mimer is my patient and has access to her address. Sven might very well have been able to send her the letter that warned her about me. But, most serious of all, there are his handwritten notes on Sara’s records in Marianne’s kitchen. And the photo. The photo of Sara on the cliffs. Did Sven take that, too?
I know that the police have questioned him. Many times. Markus does not want to go into what they have concluded but hints that it isn’t much. “It’s like interrogating a pinecone,” he said. “He sits there staring down at his damn Birkenstocks and doesn’t say a thing, I mean literally NOTHING of value.” Markus hints that even if they have no evidence against Sven, there are gaps in his alibi. Hours when he can’t explain where he was, when no one can remember whether they saw him, not even Birgitta, despite Sven’s claims that they were together.
Sven is a lot of things, but a murderer? But who could it be otherwise? Peter Carlsson? Could he be Sara’s secret friend? Could Sara have perceived him as middle aged? Nothing seems to add up. Peter has a set of psychological problems that perhaps makes him suspicious in this case, and he knows that Charlotte Mimer is my patient. But that’s where the similarities between him and the murderer end. He can’t possibly know where I live. Nor can he know about Sara’s and my conversations. Unless he was Sara’s secret boyfriend and she confided everything we talked about to him, but that doesn’t seem likely—the references in the farewell letter are far too accurate. The person who wrote that knew exactly what we had talked about and when. Dates and times, it’s all there.
Besides, and this worries me more than anything else, what motive would Peter Carlsson have, or Sven? Vijay had said a perceived injustice. I have, as far as I can recall, never met Peter before in my life. And Sven? Does he hate me because I am a successful woman? Do I personify what hobbled his career and made him stagnate at a little practice on Söder? A woman hater, married to one of the world’s most prominent researchers in gender studies? An evil person? I can’t believe it.
I think about the voice on the phone that evening when the police caught me; I try to remember what it sounded like. It didn’t sound familiar. It definitely didn’t sound like Sven. Or Peter.
That leaves Aina and Marianne. Not even in all my most paranoid moments could I imagine that Aina or Marianne is involved in this. But who else has the knowledge? The knowledge of my conversations with Sara, information about where I live, Charlotte’s address? Who knows about my swims by the old crooked pier?
I am getting nowhere and it makes me insanely frustrated. There must be something… something I’ve forgotten. One crucial detail.
I try to analyze the problem from another angle: the motive. The perceived injustice. Is there some rejected lover, some passed-over colleague, or offended patient that I have repressed in my past? No matter how hard I try to remember, I can’t think of anyone. And then there is another problem, of course. Even if there was a person who, for some reason, wants to take revenge, how could he have access to all the information he needed to carry out the crime? Patient records, addresses… Another dead end.
Perhaps there is someone else who has access to the office and our pa
tient records and notes. I made a list of all the outsiders who have been on the premises in the past six months and submitted it to Markus. It was depressingly short, consisting of only the cleaning company and the IT guy.
The cleaning company is a Greek family. I know them all personally and they clean during office hours, which makes it unlikely that they would be able to smuggle patient records out of the office. The computer technician’s name is Ronny and he is from Örkelljunga. I have only spoken with him on the phone and I have a very, very hard time believing he could be involved. I’m not even sure our patient records were in the office when he was last here.
This uncertainty creates a vacuum. A waiting period.
Calm before the storm.
Out of nowhere, he was suddenly standing there with his silly little dog on a leash. He was in his midthirties. Neatly dressed, everything he wore was from the best brands, discreet, and with style. Even though darkness had already started to settle over the bay, I could see how freshly scrubbed and together he looked, like a Christmas pig with plump, rosy cheeks and a round belly that bulged out over the black jeans. He probably had a wife who was fattening him up and two snot-nosed kids up in one of those vulgar McMansions a little farther east on the bay.
“Um, excuse me, sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb,” the man began in a painfully nasal voice, “but…” He held back the little spotted dog who was growling, his ears drawn back and showing his teeth. “I was just wondering… I mean, I’ve seen you several times here on the cliffs when I was out walking with my dog. Do you live around here or something?”
The man’s question sounded like an accusation. I did not reply but instead sat up in the sleeping bag I had laid down under a pine tree by the edge of the cliffs for the evening.
“Do you live in the house down there…? Because… uh… as far as I know a single woman lives there. Or…?”
The man’s voice petered out, he was noticeably nervous now. He stood there balancing on his toes, raising himself up and down with small, jerky motions. If he were smart, he would have left at this point, back into the darkness, disappearing forever, but he stood there sheepishly on the trail as if he was expecting some kind of reward for his behavior.
Some Kind of Peace: A Novel Page 18