by Hans Koppel
‘Sit up so I can see. All breasts are flat when you’re lying down.’
He sat her up and took a step back.
‘Off with your top. Your bra as well, no messing around.’
He looked from left to right and back, with the expression of a disappointed horse trader.
‘You’re too thin,’ he said eventually. ‘All the women round here are. You’ll need to put on a bit of weight. That might be difficult to begin with, with all the stress, but you’ll soon get used to it.’
He sat down on the bed.
‘Let me guess what you’re thinking. You’re trying to work out how you can get out of here, you’re thinking about how unfair it is that you’re being kept here against your will. You keep watching the screen, waiting for something to happen, a dramatic event that will end in your release. It’s natural.’ He sat down on the bed. ‘And believe me,’ he continued, ‘I don’t want to interfere with your dreams and fantasies. But the sooner you accept your situation, the easier it will be.’
He put his finger under her chin and lifted her head. She met his eyes, without reciprocating his smile.
‘You’re sick,’ she said.
The man shrugged.
‘If you did manage to escape, which I strongly doubt, I’d be in the headlines for weeks, of course I would. But, you see, when you’ve suffered misfortune and loss, life changes. Things that were once important become meaningless and what you thought of as nonsense before suddenly becomes an obsession.’
He patted her on the arm and stood up.
‘You’ll be grateful for the small things. It might be hard to imagine now, but I promise you, you’ll get there. And we’ll make the journey together.’
*
They ate the pizza straight from the box.
‘Don’t forget the salad,’ Mike nagged.
‘I don’t like pizza salad,’ Sanna complained.
Mike dropped it. He’d attempted an enticing Milk? as he set the table, but capitulated to the very clear reply: It’s Saturday.
Mike had cut Sanna’s pizza into smaller pieces and she ate while she looked at the DVD cover for The Parent Trap, a film about twins who’ve grown up not knowing about each other, one with the mother in England and the other with the father in the USA. After meeting at a summer camp, they switch places. When the father decides to marry a gold-digger, the twins set about stopping the plans.
The best kind of film, according to Sanna. Mike was forced to agree.
The grease dripped from Sanna’s pizza.
‘Here,’ Mike said, and handed her a piece of kitchen roll. ‘It’s dripping.’
Sanna took it and wiped herself awkwardly. Mike was about to give her a hand when he suddenly remembered his own father’s irritated comment: Can’t you feel that you’ve got sticky fingers?
‘Just wash your hands when you’re finished,’ he said, gently.
‘Okay.’
As usual, Mike was done before Sanna had even finished her first slice. He insisted that she have one more, which he put on to her plate. Then he put his glass and cutlery into the dishwasher and went out to throw the boxes straight in the bin.
Helsingborg local council had introduced an over-ambitious environmental project that involved all residents sorting their rubbish down to an atomic level. It was a minor science now with a dozen different plastic bins, which had in turn made the binmen so self-important and difficult that they refused to empty any bins that were not right at the edge of the pavement well before they did their rounds.
Mike ripped the boxes into small pieces and then stood for a while outside the house, breathing in the fresh air, completely unaware that his wife was not far away, watching him on a grainy TV screen, with tears in her eyes.
22
‘I take it that you’re not going to write about the case?’
Erik Bergman looked at Calle Collin in amusement. The meeting had been arranged by the wise woman with the big heart, and she had also reminded the crime reporter that Calle was the temp who some years earlier had said no to a job on the evening paper’s news desk, with the now infamous words: If I was interested in news, I would’ve gone to a newspaper.
‘Anders Egerbladh and I were in the same class,’ Calle said.
Erik Bergman nodded with interest.
‘And what was he like?’
‘An arse.’
‘Serial shagger was what I was told,’ Bergman said.
‘I’m sure, that too,’ Calle replied. ‘Though I can’t honestly say that I ever met him as an adult. Maybe he changed …’
Erik Bergman looked at him sceptically.
‘… became a good person,’ Calle said. ‘But I find that hard to believe.’
‘What is it that you want to know?’ Bergman asked.
‘I read your articles on the Internet,’ Calle explained, ‘and I may have got the wrong end of the stick, but I had a feeling that you knew more than you wrote.’
‘Why do you want to know?’
Calle shrugged and shook his head at the same time.
‘Curious. It sounds so dramatic: “The hammer murder”, “bestial”.’
‘In this case, they were the right words. We had a bit of a problem with the tag line. We played with The Murder on Fjällgatan or The Steps Murder, as we’d already used The Hammer Murder a few times before. But it was undeniably gruesome. As I said, Anders Egerbladh liked to put it around. There were some divorcees, but most of the women he met via the dating sites were married. I don’t know if he got a kick from it or whether married women use the Internet more. Whatever, it took half the police force to question all the spouses.’
‘And …?’
‘Nope, nothing. They went through all his phone records and email history and discovered that he’d arranged to meet a woman at Gondolen. Then she called at the last minute, presumably to ask him to come to her place instead. After the conversation, he left the restaurant, bought a bunch of flowers from the stall down by Slussen and walked up towards Fjällgatan.’
‘So it was a trap?’
‘Without a doubt. The woman doesn’t actually exist. She used a pay-as-you-go phone and all emails were sent from public computers around town. And the photos on the dating website were downloaded from a foreign blog.’
‘I got the impression, from what I’ve read, that the violence was more, well, what can I say, like a man?’
Erik Bergman nodded.
‘I think you’d do well in news,’ he said. ‘The police have worked on the assumption that the murder was carried out by a man, but that a woman was there to lure Anders Egerbladh to the right spot.’
‘And they don’t have any clues?’
‘No. The only thing they know for certain is that the murder was carried out with great force.’
23
When Mike went back into the house after he’d put the pizza boxes in the bin, he realised he was no longer in any doubt. He knew what he had to do.
He carefully pulled the door between the kitchen and the sitting room to, and dialled the number.
‘Kristina.’
‘Hi, Mum.’
Mike explained as briefly as he could that Ylva had been missing for more than twenty-four hours, and that none of her friends or the hospital or the police knew where she was.
‘Could something have happened?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Mike said. ‘But could you jump in a taxi and come over here, and stay until Ylva gets back?’
Twenty minutes later, Kristina arrived with a distressed expression. She said a quick and forced hello to Sanna before she joined her son in the kitchen. She had a thousand questions.
‘I don’t know, Mum,’ was Mike’s answer to each of them. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you think she …’
Mike held up his hands and closed his eyes in irritation.
‘Mum, I don’t know anything. Can you please just keep Sanna company while I phone the police?’
It was
too late. Sanna was already standing in the doorway.
‘Why are you phoning the police?’ she asked.
Mike went over to her, bent down and smiled, to stop himself from crying.
‘I don’t know where Mummy is.’
Sanna didn’t understand and looked at her grandmother, puzzled. As if she were a more reliable source of information than Daddy.
‘Has she disappeared?’
Mike answered for his mother.
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘She hasn’t disappeared. She has to be somewhere, of course. But she hasn’t phoned and I want to know where she is. There’s nothing to be frightened of. If you and Granny go and watch a film, then I can make some phone calls.’
‘But I want Mummy to come home.’
‘Mummy will come home,’ Kristina said. ‘That’s why Daddy has to make some phone calls. Come on, poppet, why don’t you and I go and watch a film.’
She held out her hand and Sanna started to cry. Mike scooped her up and held her tight.
‘There, there, sweetie, there’s no need to be frightened. Mummy will be home soon. There’s nothing to worry about. Mummy will be here soon.’
They sat round the kitchen table. Mike had offered them coffee, but the officers had declined, given that it was late. The policewoman asked for a glass of water. Kristina got her one and then stood leaning against the worktop like an observer. Sanna sat silently on her father’s knee and solemnly listened to the conversation.
The policewoman smiled at her. The man asked the questions and wrote down the answers.
‘Okay, let me summarise: your wife left work just after six o’clock yesterday evening and then disappeared?’
Mike nodded.
The policeman looked down at his notes and continued: ‘She said to her colleagues that she was going home. But she’d told you that she was going to go for a drink with her colleagues?’
The policeman put his pen down on the notepad and looked up at Mike without raising his head.
‘I know how it sounds, but that’s not the case. She said that she might go out for a glass of wine. She said that before she left in the morning.’
‘Does she often go out with her colleagues?’
‘They had a final proof. And that can take a while. She probably thought she wouldn’t be home in time for supper.’
‘So you got worried when she didn’t come home.’
Mike shook his head.
‘I assumed that she was out with her friends.’
‘Did you try to call her?’
‘Not until later, I didn’t want to …’
The policewoman folded her hands on the table in front of her and leaned forward with interest.
‘You didn’t want to what?’
‘Well, I thought that you have to be able to go out on your own sometimes, even when you’re married. We trust each other.’
‘So you didn’t think …?’
The woman chose not to finish the question, out of consideration to Sanna.
‘No,’ Mike replied.
There was a brief pause, which was long enough for Kristina to understand.
‘Sanna, darling, I think Daddy needs to talk to the police alone for a while. Let’s go and brush our teeth in the meantime, shall we?’
‘But I want to know too.’
Mike lifted Sanna down from his lap.
‘I’ll be there soon, sweetie.’
‘She’s my mummy,’ Sanna complained.
Mike and the police officers gave her an encouraging smile and waited until she had left the kitchen. They heard her continue to complain and her grandmother’s wise, calm answers through the door.
Mike leaned forward and looked from the man to the woman.
‘Ylva normally phones,’ Mike explained. ‘She always phones. Sometimes she comes home late, it has happened before. And of course we’ve had our problems, just like everyone else. But, and this is important, she always phones.’
‘Your problems,’ the policewoman probed. ‘Were you thinking of anything in particular?’
Mike controlled himself. He couldn’t afford to be rude.
‘No,’ he said.
Mike took over as soon as the police had left. It was the first time that Sanna had distanced herself from her grandmother and demonstrated that she wasn’t good enough.
Mike lay down beside his daughter, stroked her hair and comforted her as best he could. He was sure that Mummy would be home again soon, he said. He was sure that there hadn’t been an accident, because he’d spoken to the hospital several times. Mummy wasn’t hurt.
‘Are you going to get divorced?’
‘Why would we do that?’
‘Vera’s parents are getting divorced,’ Sanna told him. ‘Her daddy disappeared.’
‘I see. No, we’re going to stay together. At least, I hope we are.’
Sanna started to run her finger along the pattern in the wallpaper and fifteen minutes later she was asleep. Mike left the door wide open and went down to his mother in the kitchen.
‘I hope you’re not upset,’ he said.
‘No, no, no,’ she assured him, ‘it’s only natural.’
‘What’s the time?’
He looked at his watch and answered his own question.
‘Eleven.’
‘I’ll make some coffee,’ his mother said. ‘I’m sure we won’t sleep anyway.’
Mike sat at the kitchen table, his hands clenched, eyes staring ahead. His lips moved to form words, but there was no sound. Kristina poured two cups of coffee and sat down opposite him.
‘Will you stay with her after this?’ she asked.
He gave her a stern look.
‘Mother, we don’t know what’s happened.’
She turned away.
‘No. No, we don’t. That’s right.’
She tasted the coffee, put her cup down, and let silence fill the room.
‘Who have you spoken to?’ she asked, finally.
‘Nour.’
‘From Ylva’s work?’
‘Yes. Plus Anders and Ulrika, Björn and Grethe, Bengtsson.’
‘And no one knows anything?’
‘No.’
Kristina fidgeted, uncomfortable with the question she was about to ask.
‘What about you know who …?’
In a weak moment, Mike had told his mother of Ylva’s affair with Bill Åkerman, mainly because he had no one else to confide in. He had regretted it bitterly later and felt that his betrayal was almost worse than Ylva’s.
Mike looked his mother in the eye.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Nour phoned him. She hasn’t been there.’
Kristina changed tack.
‘Who else could you phone?’
‘I don’t want to ring anyone else. It’s bad enough as it is. And considering that I spoke to Bengtsson only two hours ago, it wouldn’t surprise me if everyone else already knows what’s happened.’
‘I was thinking more about her workplace.’
‘I’ve spoken to Nour,’ Mike said. ‘She’s her best friend.’
‘Exactly,’ his mother replied. ‘She’s Ylva’s best friend.’
‘Mum, stop. She should damn well have phoned. It’s not as if she’s scared of me.’
‘No, Lord only knows.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Kristina looked down at the table, ran her finger along the edge.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘That was a stupid thing to say. I apologise.’
Mike took a deep breath, held it in.
‘Mum, I need your support more than your help. Your support, Mum.’
24
Debt
Many victims are forced to work to pay off a debt. They have to pay for their journey, accommodation, bed, condoms, and a percentage to the perpetrator for his protection. This debt is naturally a construction. The victim will never be able to buy herself free. Her only option is to become unprofitable, which in practice is impossible as ther
e will always be preferences that need to be met, something that she is suitable for.
The man and the woman came in together. They flung open the door and didn’t bother to close it behind them. Ylva was lying on the bed, where she’d fallen asleep with her clothes on. It took a few seconds, a moment of confusion, before she realised that her dream wasn’t real, unlike the hell she now found herself in.
The man and the woman positioned themselves on either side of the bed. Ylva tried to get away from the man, and ended up by the woman. The woman was smaller than Ylva, but this was not about size. The woman hit her hard across the face with her open hand. At the same time, the man gripped Ylva’s ankles and pulled her over to him. Ylva fell on to her stomach, grabbed hold of the edge of the bed and struggled to resist him.
‘We’ll teach you to try to escape,’ the woman said, and unclenched her fingers.
The man pulled her towards him without any difficulty, got hold of her arms, hauled her up on to her knees and held her in front of him in a firm grip.
The woman climbed on to the bed behind her. She was surprisingly agile for her age and terrifyingly at ease with the violent situation. The woman kneeled in front of Ylva, who was breathing heavily, her eyes darting everywhere.
‘Look at me.’
Ylva looked up with uncertainty. Her hair was hanging down in her face and the woman gently pushed it to the side and tucked it behind her ears.
‘Stop panting.’
The woman spoke in a quiet voice, almost a whisper. Ylva gasped a few times more, the woman closed her eyes, smiled, and waited.
‘Can we talk now?’ the woman asked, so quietly that it was almost inaudible.
Ylva nodded weakly.
‘Good.’
The woman looked at her husband, who let go of Ylva’s arms.
‘It’s very simple,’ she continued in a patient tone, almost like a teacher. ‘You are here, and you know why.’
Ylva looked down.
‘Look at me.’
Ylva lifted her eyes. The woman smiled at her, raised her eyebrows.
‘You know why you are here.’
‘I …’
The woman softly put her finger on Ylva’s lips.