It was now two and a half days since she’d woken up and seen the photograph of herself on her phone and then realized, soon after, that her fringe had been cut off. Since then, she had been unable to think about anything else. Even though nothing else had happened. Absolutely nothing. The only thing that had changed was her.
She had gone from being one of the high achievers in the office to feeling completely debilitated, reduced to a disorganized ninny who couldn’t take three steps without anxiously looking over her shoulder.
She didn’t just sleep poorly. She didn’t sleep at all.
If she carried on like this, she would collapse. And over nothing worse than a shorn fringe and a measly picture on her phone. Was she really that feeble? Sure, someone had broken in to her flat and her phone. But the most likely scenario was, if she was being honest with herself, that that was the end of it. That it was over. That whoever it was had had their fun and was going to leave her alone from now on. And either way, the locks to her flat had been changed so they wouldn’t be able to get in if they wanted to.
So why couldn’t she just put it behind her and move on?
Like in boxercise class. Boxercise had actually worked significantly better than Bikram yoga, despite being insanely hard. She hadn’t thought of that damn picture once, for a whole hour. It was only in the shower afterwards that anxiety had come creeping back in, making her feel like someone was watching her. Her, the woman who always showered at the gym and had no problem being naked in front of others.
Apparently, that wasn’t possible any more, which is why she now pulled her coat on over her sweaty yoga clothes and hurried outside.
There were people everywhere. Just like every Friday afternoon, when people tried to sneak out of work early to get to the shops before the queues got too long. They were moving all over the place, cutting across the streets and bumping into one another. Everyone had longed for the weekend and now it was finally here. Now they were finally going to have those after-work drinks and throw those dinner parties. They were going to spend time together and solve the world’s problems over yet another bottle.
She had never liked weekends. They were a waste of time, just one long wait for Monday to roll around again. If she wanted to go out and have fun, she could do that any day of the week, and the last thing she wanted was to have to share her dance floor with wasted out-of-towners.
But on this particular Friday, she wished for nothing more than to be part of the crowd. Those normal things she’d always despised and done everything to get away from. Now she was standing here alone, not knowing how to get through the claustrophobic eternity stretching out ahead of her.
She’d left the car at home that morning because she preferred being with the commuting public on the Öresund train to being alone. But instead of disappearing into anonymity on her way to work, it had felt as though everyone was staring at her. As though any one of them could be the perpetrator. A brief smile or a fleeting look had been enough to make her break out in a cold sweat.
In the light of that experience, she now decided to skip the bus to the station and instead hurried over to the other side of the street and got into the back of a taxi, even though the driver was busy reading about that awful laundry room murder in Bjuv in the evening paper.
‘Are you free?’
‘Absolutely.’ The man shot her a smile in the rear-view mirror as he folded up his paper and turned the engine on.
‘I’m going to Stuvaregatan 7 in Helsingborg. Do you know where that is?’
‘No problem.’ The man pulled out and once again met her eyes in the mirror and smiled.
Why was he smiling so much? Was it simply because he’d just scored a ride from Landskrona all the way to Helsingborg? But this could hardly be the first time he’d driven that way today. If that was even what it was about? If this was even a taxi? There had been a sign on the roof. Hadn’t there? She’d been so stressed and had just wanted to get away from all the people. She couldn’t see a taximeter. And then that damn smile again.
It was him. Of course it was him. Who else could it be? She had fallen straight into his trap. He had obviously tailed her and sat outside waiting for her to come out of the yoga studio. But she’d come out earlier than he’d expected, which was why he’d been unprepared, reading the paper, when she got into the back seat.
Why hadn’t she just got on the bus like she’d planned? It was better to be surrounded by people, even if they did stare. She turned around and saw her bus pulling up to the stop. ‘I’m sorry, could you pull over, please?’
‘Pull over? Why? We’re still in Landskrona.’
‘I changed my mind. I want to get out.’
‘You can’t get out here,’ he said, slowing down for a red light. ‘Besides, the taximeter is already running, so it—’
‘Taximeter? I don’t see a taximeter.’ She pushed the door open before the car had even come to a full stop.
‘Hey, wait, you can’t just— Hey,’ the driver called out after her. But Molly was already narrowly escaping a collision with a Vespa that zipped by.
‘Look where you’re going,’ the man in black on the Vespa yelled after her as she hurried on, gesticulating wildly to catch the bus driver’s attention.
Out of the far corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of a car slamming its brakes to avoid her, tyres screeching. But she didn’t care. The only thing she wanted was to get as far away from that taxi as possible.
Having climbed aboard the bus, she found a free seat next to a woman playing Murder Snails on her phone, one of the few passengers who wasn’t staring at her. In a way, she could see where they were coming from. Her entrance had been anything but inconspicuous.
But enough was enough. She really wasn’t all that interesting. The more she thought about it, the more it irked her. What gave them the right to stare at her like a monkey in a cage? Who the fuck did they think they were? Fucking pricks.
Fifteen minutes later, she got on the Öresund train to Helsingborg, and when that proved to be no better, she decided to give people a taste of their own medicine. Meet their eyes and stare back until she’d won each battle. One by one, she would make them look away. Make them crawl back into their holes until no one dared to so much as glance at her out of the corners of their eyes.
She started with the old lady sitting diagonally across from her, and it took only a second or two to make her look away. The same was true of the young man sitting next to her. He looked down at his phone before she could even get started.
Why had she never thought of this before? Why walk around all worried, acting like the world was coming to an end when it was likely nothing was going to happen at all? That man in the car was probably a completely normal taxi driver who was entirely justified in wondering what on earth she was doing, and all the people staring were just rude idiots who could be put in their place with a simple glare. No, from now on, she was going to stop feeling afraid and reclaim her life.
By the time the train approached Helsingborg, she had defeated them all, except for a man in a baseball cap and T-shirt sitting further back. Maybe he’d figured out what she was doing and decided to engage. Or maybe it was just a pathetic attempt at flirting. Either way, she wasn’t going to give up.
Staring a complete stranger in the eyes was exhausting. It did more than make time slow to a crawl and each second last for a minor eternity. It made everything stop. Suddenly, she could see every detail of his face. The cluster of hairs on one cheek that he’d missed shaving. The dark brown snus stains on his front teeth when he smiled.
She didn’t like the way he kept smiling at her. As though this wasn’t hard for him in the slightest. As though he was in fact enjoying having her full attention. No, she didn’t care for it one bit, and she wouldn’t be surprised if he undid his fly and started masturbating.
Or maybe that was him.
She had been so busy trying to win, the thought hadn’t occurred to her until now.
&nb
sp; What if that was him. What if he was just sitting there, biding his time. Making sure he kept just the right amount of distance to avoid being noticed, but close enough to enjoy her descent into madness.
She looked out of the window. They were on their way into the tunnel, so they’d soon be arriving at Knutpunkten, where everyone would get off. The most important thing was to make sure she alighted before everyone else. So she got up and went over to the doors without succumbing to the urge to look over her shoulder.
The train slowed down. In a moment, the doors would open so she could dash across the platform, up through the departure hall and out the other side, then continue across Järnvägsgatan and in among the buildings, melting into the crowd.
She counted the seconds just to have something to do while she waited and heard someone come up right behind her. As the train came to a halt, she couldn’t stop herself turning around and looking straight into that brown smile.
Then the doors opened and she could finally hurl herself out and run away. No looking over her shoulder now. Just follow the plan, get up the escalators, through the concourse and out the other side. But running proved impossible. There were people everywhere. Travellers were pouring in from every direction. But there was nothing for it. She had to press on, push and shove and not care about the people shouting after her.
It was the same on Järnvägsgatan. People everywhere, people whose one purpose in life was to get in her way. And once more, she yielded to the instinct to look behind her as she stepped right out into the street.
Suddenly, someone grabbed her arm and yanked her backwards, away from the bike lane, thereby saving her from being run over by a cyclist in bright Lycra. She felt a sudden sting in her right buttock.
‘Careful, you’ll get run over,’ said a voice she thought she recognized. When she turned around, she saw a man in black she’d never seen before.
‘They don’t stop for anything around here.’
But how come she’d recognized his voice? They’d never met before. Or had they? Right, it was him, the man on the Vespa who had shouted at her when she crossed the street. He must have followed her all the way from Landskrona.
Without thinking, she kneed him in the crotch, wrenched free of his grasp and bolted across the bike lane and Järnvägsgatan. Cars were honking all around her, but she raced on up Präsgatan towards Bruksgatan, even though in her heart of hearts she knew it was pointless.
26
The house was located at the end of the road, bordering on billowing rapeseed fields that eventually turned into the vast forests, meadows and deep ravines of the Söderåsen wildlife reserve. But idyllic was the last word Lilja would have used to describe it. The whole place made her so uneasy she wanted to tell Klippan to turn around and drive as far as he could in the opposite direction.
Instead, she got out of the car and signalled for the two uniformed officers in the car behind them to block the road with their car.
‘I guess we really have to hope we’ve come to the right place now,’ Klippan said, checking the magazine of his gun.
‘This is the place.’ Lilja started walking towards the house, pushed the squeaky wrought-iron gate open with her foot and continued into the garden, where she spotted a car, barely covered by a tarp.
‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ Klippan walked over to the car and pulled off the tarp.
Inconceivably stupid as it seemed to park it in his own garden, that was clearly exactly what Assar Skanås had done. Because there it was. The orange Volvo he had escaped in after stabbing its driver.
Without a word, Lilja nodded for the two officers who had just joined them to circle around to the back of the house while she and Klippan proceeded towards the front door.
Normally, they would have rung the bell, and if no one opened, they would have engaged the services of a locksmith. This time, she had brought her own lock pick, to save time. But it wouldn’t be needed since she could see the door wasn’t, in fact, completely closed.
The air was thick with damp and mould; she could feel how each breath pulled things into her lungs that had no place there. They continued into the yellowish-brown hallway, covering each other with their guns.
The hallway turned into a dark passage with stained, dirty grey carpet and walls covered in fake wood panelling, framed embroideries and a collection of old rifles. The two doors on either side were closed, as was the door on the far side.
The first door on the left opened into a tidy bedroom, furnished with a single bed, a desk with two barbells and a book from the Nordic Resistance Movement entitled Handbook for Activists in the Resistance Movement.
The door opposite led into a kitchen with a small table for two. On it sat, among other things, a plate of spaghetti drenched in ketchup and a glass of milk. She dipped her index finger in the milk; it was still cool.
They moved on to the next door in silence. This bedroom was a mess. Bedding, tattered Barbie and My Little Pony magazines, an unopened Lego City box that, ironically, contained a building set for a prisoner transport, a jar of pink slime and a collection of Star Wars figures, along with some child-sized underwear.
Lilja turned to Klippan, who was standing right behind her. ‘You told me he doesn’t have children,’ she whispered and immediately realized what was going on.
‘He doesn’t.’
Klippan had clearly been correct in his assumption. Assar Skanås was not only a dyed-in-the-wool Nazi, he was a paedophile, too.
They returned to the corridor and continued to the next door, which had a sign on it depicting a peeing boy. Just like the other doors, this was closed but not locked. Unlike the other rooms, the light inside was clearly on.
On Lilja’s signal, they tore open the door and pushed into the empty bathroom, which didn’t look like it had been refurbished since the house was built.
But that was not what caught Lilja’s attention.
Nor was it the three-foot swastika on the wall next to the bath.
It was the faint sound of voices.
It sounded like children’s voices, two girls who had suddenly started talking to each other.
She turned to Klippan, who nodded for them to continue down the corridor. The further into the house they got, the more distinctly they could make out the voices. But they didn’t sound sad and there was no crying to be heard. On the contrary, they seemed excited and playful.
The corridor ended in a closed door with smoked glass panes through which you could only dimly make out what was happening on the other side. Lilja pushed the handle down. This door was locked, or maybe just stiff. She didn’t know and didn’t care; she raised her foot and kicked it in.
The sight that greeted her as she stormed into the living room with her gun at the ready was shocking, but with each throbbing of her pulse, her shock gave way to confusion. What she saw was two very young children, both girls, sitting naked on the floor, their legs spread wide, trying to put socks on their feet.
She had seen the same scene many times before. So many she’d lost count. When she was little, it had been one of her absolute favourite TV shows, and this particular episode, in which Madicken and her younger sister Lisabet sit naked on the floor getting dressed, she remembered as if she’d seen it yesterday.
Back then, neither she nor anyone else had raised an eyebrow at the nudity or indeed reacted to it in any way at all. It had seemed perfectly natural and completely unrelated to sexuality. Today, it was impossible to watch it without feeling like a paedophile, and there was talk of censoring it along with other, similar scenes in the Astrid Lindgren oeuvre.
But no one was watching. The TV was playing the DVD in front of an old red sofa that was as stained as the carpet in the passage. The coffee table was littered with a pile of Astrid Lindgren DVDs: Pippi Longstocking, Lotta on Troublemaker Street and Emil of Lönneberga – all of which contained nude scenes that would never have been included if the films had been made today.
‘Looks like y
ou were right,’ she said, as she scanned the room for other doors. ‘The motive’s paedophilia.’
‘Given that swastika out there, I’d say we were both right,’ replied Klippan, who was on his way over to an open bureau on which lay several document folders.
Had he seen them coming and made his escape? Was that why he’d left the house with the door unlocked and a film playing?
Through the glass back door, which was slightly ajar, she could see the two uniformed officers secure the garden behind the house.
‘Come and take a look at this,’ said Klippan, who had laid his gun down and put on his reading glasses. He handed her one of the documents from the folders, and as soon as she started reading, she realized why he found it so interesting.
… After an initial examination, the patient is judged to be psychologically deficient… clear paedophiliac characteristics… closed ward… medication and therapy… Claims to hear voices…. Mental illness…
It was excerpts from Assar Skanås’s medical records, and they seemed to indicate that he had been in and out of the closed psychiatric ward of Malmö Hospital for years.
… With his current medication and regular therapy, the patient’s level of awareness about his own mental state is deemed sufficiently high for him to successfully maintain equilibrium in his home environment…
The document was dated 8 June 2012, which suggested Assar Skanås had been discharged only five days before the events in Bjuv. Cutbacks and lack of beds and resources were likely the official explanation. Incompetence was the real one.
27
Apart from his first visit to Tivoli, this had without a doubt been the best day of his life. Even though it was several hours ago now, his adrenaline was still pumping. Not even in hindsight could he think of any way it could have gone better. Possibly it had taken the dice slightly longer than expected to pick its victim in the supermarket that morning. Other than that, everything had worked out beautifully.
Motive X Page 14