The Shadow Woman
Page 36
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THE MACHINES ROARED AT ÖDEGÅRD. THEY FOUND THE CLOTHES beneath the concrete floor in the basement. Everyone tried to prepare themselves, mentally and otherwise.
When he drove between the cabin and the city, it was as if the world had lost all depth and become a shallow shroud of fog between life and death. Ödegård was death and the other was life. You could just make out the lights of the city, ten miles off through the drizzle of the gray morning, like urine on dirty snow.
He went upstairs to Beier once he’d read the message on his desk. It was the last time.
Winter drove home and parked the car in the garage. He walked over the hill and rang the doorbell. Nobody opened. It was like last time. He pressed it again, and the door clicked and he saw her eyes glimmering inside, down low. He hadn’t heard the wheelchair.
“You again,” she said.
“You’ll have to let me in this time.”
“Why should I do that?”
“It’s over now, Brigitta.”
“That makes it a bit less conclusive,” Beier had said.
“But it’s enough, isn’t it?” Winter had asked.
“Yes. Otherwise the test wouldn’t be so expensive and take so much time.”
“How many have they done?”
“Don’t ask me. Come back when they’ve set up a database. That could happen this year, by the way.”
She rolled ahead of him into the room that shook from the streetcars outside. It wasn’t a room to live in. Maybe she doesn’t, Winter thought. Live. She lives, but hardly a life.
“What was it you called me?”
“Your real name. Brigitta.”
“Never heard of it.”
“I said it’s over now. You don’t need to feel afraid anymore.”
She didn’t answer. Her face bore a faint shadow from the day.
“Do you hear me, Brigitta?”
“Why are you calling me that?”
“That’s your name.”
“I mean, why are you suddenly calling me Brigitta? What makes you think that—”
“I don’t just think it,” Winter said. “I know.”
“How?”
“It’s not the falsified documents identifying you as Greta Bremer,” he said. “They’re excellent forgeries.”
She nodded. He thought it looked as if she nodded.
“And your appearance. You couldn’t possibly be the fifty-five-year-old Brigitta Dellmar.”
“There, you see? I can barely move, after all.”
“I wanted to believe that you were Brigitta,” Winter said. “But it felt impossible. And I found nothing to support that theory.”
She now turned her face toward him for the first time.
“Well? How do you know then?”
Winter took a step closer and came up next to her in the wheelchair. He slowly reached out and plucked something from the pillow behind her back.
“This,” he said, and held up a strand of hair that may have been visible in the light of the window.
“What is that? My hair?”
“A strand of your hair,” Winter said. “Ever heard of DNA?”
“No.”
“You’ve never heard of DNA?”
“Sure.”
Winter let the strand of hair drop from his hand and sat down in one of the armchairs.
“You took a strand of hair the first time you were here,” she said. “You stood behind me while I was sitting here.”
“Yes. I saw an opportunity.”
“This damned wheelchair.”
“You are Brigitta Dellmar?”
“You already said I am.”
“I’d like to hear it from you.”
“Does it make any difference?”
“Yes.”
She rubbed her deformed legs.
“I am Brigitta Dellmar,” she said. “I am Brigitta Dellmar, but that doesn’t do anyone any good.”
“And Georg Bremer isn’t your brother.”
“He isn’t my brother.”
“Why did he tell us that you were his sister?”
“He thought that he could scare me. And I’ve passed for his sister all these years, without actually being it. I’ve had to play that role. It was their decision.” She looked straight at Winter. “But he couldn’t scare me.”
The telephone rang, and she lifted the receiver on the third ring and said yes and listened. She said, “Wait,” and turned to Winter. “Is this going to take long?”
Winter didn’t answer that insane question.
“I’ll call you back,” she said, and hung up.
“You called Bremer’s house two days ago,” Winter said.
“How do you know it was me?”
“Wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was me. I called him after he’d returned from the police, the last time.”
“Didn’t you realize that we’d see who had called him?”
“Maybe.”
“Why did you call him?”
“It was time for him to die. He had lived for too long. He killed my baby,” she said, and her face cracked in front of him. She slumped to the side in her wheelchair and lay as if dead, with her ruined visage facing downward. She turned a hundred years old in front of Winter. She said something, but it was muffled by the fabric and stuffing.
She sat up again, and Winter saw the tears smeared across her face.
“I told him that he had killed my child. That I knew. He didn’t know I knew,” she said, and now she cried out, a soft wail that came from deep within and intensified. “He didn’t know that it was all my fault.” She fell silent and looked at Winter.
I can only wait, he thought.
She sat with her chin against her chest, then raised her head again.
“I told him that he had killed his own child. I said that!”
Winter was silent. A streetcar passed by outside without sound. The clock on the wall had stopped.
“I told him that he had killed his own child, that Helene was his child.” She looked straight at Winter. “There is nothing more heinous than killing another human being. What does it mean, then, to kill your own child?”
“You told him that Helene was his daughter?”
“Yes.”
“Was she? Was it true?”
“No.”
“But you said it to him?”
“I wanted him to suffer for what he had done. He hadn’t suffered. He doesn’t know what suffering is. He doesn’t know. He didn’t know.”
“What do you mean when you say that it’s all your fault?”
“She was my girl,” Brigitta Dellmar said now, lost in another time. “Helene was my girl. She wasn’t like anyone else. We were never like anyone else.”
“She is your girl,” Winter said.
“She’s had it so tough.” Brigitta Dellmar suddenly reached out and grabbed hold of Winter’s hands with hers. “She’s suffered, and it’s been all my fault, and in the end I couldn’t stop myself from telling her. I told her.”
“What did you tell her? That you were her mother?”
“What? That I...? She knew I was her mother. She knew that I was her mother.”
Winter felt her fingers grasp at his. Her grip was hot and cold, and he could feel her pulse.
“When did she find out?” Winter leaned forward. “When did she findo out ?”
“She’s always known. She’s always . . . Ever since she was a little girl.”
“But she was a foster child for many years,” Winter said. “She was alone when she came back here.”
“She knew,” Brigitta Dellmar said. “Inside she knew. When she came back here and was a big girl she found out again.”
Winter asked, and she told him everything. She had been wounded. They had kept her hidden, and then she had kept herself hidden away from the world for such a long time that she had ceased to exist. She didn’t know how many years. They had let her keep some of the money and created a new identity fo
r her and she had returned to Sweden, to her so-called brother. Ha-ha!
When the girl tried to make a life of her own, and bore a child, she was there. Suddenly she was there.
“Who is Jennie’s father?” Winter asked.
“Nobody knows.”
“Not even you?”
“It was as if she wanted me to be the last to know.”
“Why?”
She shrugged her shoulders. Winter’s breathing now started to return. The hairs on the back of his neck were damp with sweat.
“It was all my fault. I contacted her again. She had been having a difficult time connecting with other people, and now it became impossible. She turned in on herself more and more.”
“How often did you see each other?”
“Just occasionally. I helped her to get her memory back, and that was the death of her.”
“Excuse me?”
“Her memory. It caused her death.”
“How do you mean?”
“I told her things she didn’t know anymore. And things she never knew and yet thought a lot about. What happened.”
Winter nodded.
“Bremer murdered her father. He carried it out.”
“Her father?”
“Kim. My Kim.”
“Kim Andersen? You mean Kim Andersen? The one who was also known as Kim Møller?”
“Bremer murdered him.”
“You told Helene that?”
“I told her everything. I told her everything. And she went to see him. I knew where he was. She made several trips down there. In the end she knew enough that she told him. But he thought she was lying. He was sure that he was her father. I was afraid, terribly afraid. Helene seemed to be beside herself with fear when she found out what had happened to her father, Kim. That Bremer had murdered him. What had happened to her...” Brigitta Dellmar dropped her head forward. She seemed exhausted from having spoken for so long. “I wanted my money too, and it scared me, but I needed . . . Helene needed . . . We had a right to our money. And Jennie too.”
Winter breathed harder, steeled himself.
“Where’s Jennie?”
She looked at him, past him. Her gaze had melted away. “He could murder again. He did it.”
“He did it? He murdered Jennie?” Winter’s mouth was so damn dry he couldn’t hear whether he had uttered the words.
“He could do it again,” Brigitta Dellmar said. “He was crazy. He killed Oskar. Poor Oskar. That was also my fault. He must have done it.”
“Oskar? Oskar Jakobsson? Bremer killed Jakobsson?”
Winter couldn’t tell how much of her was actually there in the room with him. She had started to move her head back and forth.
“Did Bremer kill Jakobsson?” Winter repeated.
“He must have. Oskar was still a threat. Just like Helene. Helene got in touch with Bremer, but I’m not sure exactly when. He must have regretted that he hadn’t—”
“Regretted what? What did he want to do? What did he regret?”
“She wanted to know. That was it. She just wanted to know. She wanted what she had a right to. She told me, but not much. Then it was too late.”
“What was too late?”
“I don’t know what happened,” Brigitta Dellmar said.
“Where is Jennie?” Winter asked again. “You’ve got to answer me.”
“Poor Oskar,” Brigitta Dellmar said. “He knew nothing. He was nice. They knew each other. Didn’t you know that? They were old acquaintances.”
“There were a lot of old acquaintances,” Winter said.
Bremer gave Jakobsson the money to pay the rent. Perhaps to make us think that it was Jakobsson. No. For some other reason. Maybe so that we would eventually find him and punish him for what he had done to the child he thought he was the father of.
“I didn’t have the courage myself,” she said. She was suddenly here again; her eyes had regained their sharpness. “I didn’t have the courage. I don’t have the courage. I have my own guilt. They know. They see.”
“Who are they?”
“You know.”
“We know and we don’t know. We can’t prove anything.”
“That’s how it’s always been,” she said. “No one is ever free.”
“Bremer is dead,” Winter said.
“He’s finally dead? Is it true?”
Winter realized that she didn’t know.
“We haven’t made it public yet,” he said. “But he’s gone. He hanged himself.”
“He listened to me,” she said.
“Where’s Jennie?” Winter asked yet again.
“I tried to protect her,” Brigitta Dellmar said. “I tried to protect her when I knew that Helene wanted to know everything.”
“Protect her? From whom?”
“From him. From everyone. I tried to protect her.” She looked at Winter. “She was also alone. She needed protecting.”
“Why didn’t you report that she was missing? You could have done it anonymously.”
“I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t know that she was gone?”
“Not at first. Not then. We had broken off contact then. I hadn’t seen her for a long time. It was like that with her. Suddenly she didn’t want anything to do with me. And of course I can understand that.” She looked at Winter, right into his eyes. “Maybe it’s all a dream,” she said. “A fairy tale.” She moved her damaged body. “Maybe it never happened. None of it.” She sat up. The telephone rang. “Let it ring,” she said. “Do you have a car? Can you carry me?”
She directed him south, down onto the Säröleden highway. They could see the sea. She didn’t say a word. Winter drove two miles, past Billdal. She gestured for him to take the next exit on the right.
The paved road soon gave way to dirt. Winter thought about Ödegård again, but the road here ran across coastal land. Seabirds took off in long lines. Feeling as if his breath was being thrust out of his lungs, he rolled down the car window. The smell of damp salt grew stronger in the air the closer they got to the sea.
She pointed to the left. The road narrowed. She made a call from his cell phone. The road turned into a glade. The clouds were suddenly gone, the sun distant yet still there. The house lay in a depression with a fence around it, and a man came up to the car when it pulled up in front of a robust gate. The man was armed. Brigitta Dellmar nodded. They drove into the yard, and Winter parked in front of the house. The sea’s presence was even stronger now, a murmuring in the mind, and the sun had begun to sink into it. Brigitta Dellmar sat still next to Winter in the car. She pointed to the west. Winter got out and took a few steps from the car, and she gestured again with her hand. She’s insane, he thought. I’m insane. The man stayed by the gate with his weapon, a machine gun, as Winter approached the gable end of the house. He walked up the slope and saw the fields open up toward the water. The sun was right in his eyes. He heard voices and cupped the palm of his hand over his eyes to see. The girl was on her way toward him from the sea. The woman was walking next to her. The girl was holding something. They came closer. The woman was blonde. They were twenty-five yards away. They drew closer. Winter saw only the contours of the woman’s face, outlined against the sun.
They stood before one another. Jennie was holding pebbles in her hand, and long strips that might be seaweed. Winter was blinded by the sun and the wetness in his eyes, by the salt that ran down his face. He squatted down in front of the girl. The woman remained standing there. She didn’t move. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again she was gone, as if dissolved into the haze. Winter cautiously reached out with his hand and touched the girl’s shoulder. It was like brushing against a little bird. She wasn’t afraid.
“Who are you?” she asked.
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