by C S Duffy
I followed her gaze and something cold and hard slithered through my guts. At the end of the road in front of us, yellow crime scene tape fluttered in the light breeze. Powerful lamps glowed a harsh silver, making the darkness around seem even deeper. Scene of Crime Officers in their other-worldly white suits tramped to and fro between a tent that covered one corner of Mariatorget, and the various police cars and vans that were blocking Sankt Paulsgatan.
'Let's go that way,' I said, turning around. 'We can cut up by the old railway bit.'
'You don't want to see what's going on?'
'No,' I replied firmly, breaking into a run.
The smell hit me as I yanked open the brass concertina door of the elevator at the landing outside Johan’s flat. Something spicy. That Moroccan stew he made in the fancy pot that looked like a tent and had a name I could never remember. My stomach was rumbling as I rummaged through my bag for my keys.
Leave it to Johan, I thought, feeling a little rush of affection tumble over me as I kicked off my shoes. The world may crumble around him, and he’ll still be frowning at the stove, precisely measuring all manner of fiery coloured spices over melt-in-your-mouth-meat. I padded into the kitchen, my toes feeling numb and swollen as they fizzed and burned with the surprise of being warm.
Sure enough, Johan was leaning over the terracotta pot as though the burbling liquid contained the answer to the meaning of life. I reached up on tip toes to kiss him on the cheek. He ruffled my hair absentmindedly, then held out a spoon as I reached for the bottle of red on the counter.
‘Is there enough turmeric in this?’ he asked, as I obediently swallowed.
‘I don’t have a clue which one turmeric is,’ I grinned, ‘but it tastes lovely if that helps.’
He shrugged. ‘I suppose it does.’
He turned the heat down, and accepted the wine I’d poured for him.
‘How are you?’ I asked, sitting at the kitchen table with my feet curled under me and watching him as he stirred the pot. There was that tightness to his jaw, his shoulders just a little too military straight, making him seem even taller than he actually was, which was pretty tall to begin with. His dirty blond hair was in its usual messy bun, a random curl yanked out where he must have wiped sweat from his forehead as he cooked.
‘You haven’t heard?’
Something in my stomach twisted. I took a sip of my wine. ‘My phone died earlier,’ I said. ‘Is it Krister?’ I asked. ‘Is he okay?’
Krister had been Johan’s best friend since the day they started school together at age seven. Krister and Mia had been together since they were in their mid twenties, until I discovered that she had murdered nine people, including Johan’s two girlfriends before me, Liv and Sanna.
Krister had seemed relieved to begin with, free from the control Mia had held over him all these years, but as the months went by he had retreated into himself. I kept reassuring Johan that it was just a stage in his healing process, but the truth was, the last time I’d seen Krister he’d looked like a ghost and I’d been worried.
‘I don’t know. He is not answering his phone,’ Johan said quietly. He dished out rice onto two shallow bowls and brought the stew to the table. ‘He never answers his phone any more.’
‘I’m sure he just needs space,’ I muttered lamely.
Johan nodded. ‘A murder victim has been found,’ he said. He started to eat, feigning casualness, but I could see his knuckles whiten as he clutched his fork.
Shit. Tiny daggers of horror zipped over me. The crime scene at Mariatorget. I should have realised. I’d managed to identify several of Mia’s victims, but I suspected there was many more. She was good at what she did.
‘She was posed standing up in the snow like some kind of statue. They think she was dead for one or two days before being found.'
'Two days? So not —'
‘Of course not Mia,’ Johan snapped. ‘This poor woman was murdered then posed like an ice sculpture by some kind of sick fuck. Of course not Mia,’ he repeated quietly. He sighed, leaned back in his chair, ran a hand through his hair. ‘I’m sorry. I did not mean to shout.’
‘What? Oh, it’s fine,’ I muttered, my mind racing. ‘Do they know how she died?’
He shook his head. ‘That’s the problem. Some reporter at the scene announced that there was no obvious fatal injury, no blood or bruises —’
‘So they’re saying it’s Mia.’
‘She would never do this.’
I reached over and squeezed his hand. ‘It sounds as though they don’t know what happened —’
‘I know, but Mia is not some —' He hesitated, started again. 'We don’t even know exactly what she —’
He stared at me with pleading eyes and a heavy coldness seeped through me. ‘Johan —’
‘What if someone else was there that day on the island? What if there was a mistake, what if Mia did not —’
‘There wasn’t,’ I said quietly. The pain in his eyes tore at me. ‘There was just the three of us. She attacked you. She killed all those people, Johan. Sanna. Liv. Your —’
He flinched, and I broke off. Just before she disappeared, Mia hinted at luring Johan’s father, in an alcoholic haze, to his death on the motorway that ran beneath the island. She had been seven years old.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. I held his hand in mine and stroked his fingers with my thumb. ‘But I don’t think it’s helpful to —’
‘I just think we cannot be certain of anything until she is found. Innocent until proven guilty, right?’ His face twisted into a bitter grin and my heart lurched for him. They had been friends for over twenty years. This was killing him.
'Of course, but just —' How could I tell him not to get his hopes up? ‘Has the counselling not helped you to recover any memories?’ I said. Mia had attacked Johan, but he had been concussed.
‘I remember finding Liv,’ he said, his voice dull. He took a shaky breath, toyed with a forkful of stew. ‘Then nothing until I woke up in hospital. Liv was her friend. It doesn't make sense.'
I reached over and took his hand in mine. 'No, it doesn't make sense. Nothing like that ever could. What Mia is — it's not supposed to make sense.'
'Maybe if I could remember her saying it —' He pulled his hand away, touched the hairline just above his temple. The scar where Mia had hit him with the blunt end of an axe glowed white. He caught me looking and moved his hand away.
The air takes on an odd quality in deepest winter. It’s simultaneously sharp with a bitter chill, and yet sort of thick, like an invisible fog. It’s as though the cold gives it form. You can feel yourself breathing in a physical thing that coats the back of your throat and makes your nostrils stick together.
It hadn’t actually snowed since yesterday morning, so most of the pavement I crossed on my way home was trampled into a treacherous hard sheet, packed several inches above the actual concrete. After skidding about eighteen times, I took to walking along the far edge, stamping through a thin crust of ice into the powdery snow beneath. My boots were quickly soaked through, but my neck would remained intact, so I considered the walk a success.
I never thought there could be such a thing as a flat smaller than Johan's, but I had found it. At least his has a separate sit-in kitchen and a sleeping alcove; mine was nothing but a single room with a teensy kitchenette I can barely stand in, never mind sit. The bathroom was so minuscule that washing my hair regularly left me with bruised elbows. Once, the morning after a night out with Maddie and Lena I had even sat on the toilet to shower and it had worked admirably well. It's a good thing I don't have a great deal of space to fill, because I don't have a great deal of stuff. Or even a deal of stuff.
The sum total of my possessions was more or less the couple of suitcases full of clothes and knickknacks I brought to live at Johan's, plus a blow up mattress Maddie and Lena lent me. As luck would have it, the mattress all but fills the living area of the flat, and the bed side table I fashioned out of a cardboard box only
sags and topples the lamp to the ground four or five times a night.
It wasn't not as weird as it sounds. I was simply being practical. The place was just a sublet while the woman who owns it worked, ironically enough, in London for a few months. By the time her secondment was over, Johan and I would be properly back on track, so buying a load of furniture would have been a waste of money and effort. I hadn't moved out, officially, I even still had a few things at Johan's. And we certainly hadn't broken up. It was just, breathing space.
I'd been insanely lucky to find it, in fact. There's this mad situation in Stockholm where there isn't really a private rental market. You can either be on a waiting list to rent from the city, but, as people take an almost weird amount of glee in telling you, the waiting list is about fifteen years long. So the only option is to semi-legally sublet from people who are working abroad or moving in with a partner, which means that opportunities to rent are like gold dust.
I'd sent out so many emails responding to ads that when I finally got the response saying I could have this place for a few months, I blinked at it for several seconds wondering if I was hallucinating. The fact that it was unfurnished explained why it hadn't been snapped up, but like most beggars, I had no other choice.
Maddie and Lena gave me their spare toaster which, let's face it, took care of most of my culinary needs. The weekend I moved in, I took an actual IKEA bus — which is a thing that exists and yes I was thrilled — out to the original IKEA and bought myself one cup, one spoon, one fork and so on, even including a little pot in case I decided to go wild and heat up some soup sometime.
I was quite fond of my weird little empty flat. Camping out in the middle of the city was an adventure. The perfect temporary solution.
I locked the door behind me and sat down on the floor to unlace my snow boots. My numb fingers slipped on the wet laces and my thumb jammed against one of the little metal thingies with a sharp shock of pain that brought tears to my eyes.
'Fuck it all to shit,' I shouted into the silence, then pressed my sore thumb to my mouth and leaned back against the wall.
3
‘How on earth do you handle this cold?’
Kate Taylor shook her head as our coffees were served. She was the sort of brassy blonde that could drink a rugby team under the table and used terms like ‘lovely jubbly’ without a hint of irony. I’d been terrified of her sort at school, but within seconds of our arrival she’d regaled me with such a gloriously lurid tale of her encounter with a handsome Swede the night before that I quite liked her.
‘Sorry darling, horrendously unprofessional,' she'd shrugged, 'but I was going to burst if I had to keep it in a moment longer, I’m still feeling the after shocks. They're awfully good at it, aren't they? Suppose one must keep warm somehow. What is it, minus fifty or something?’
‘Welcome to Sweden,’ I grinned, raising my coffee cup to hers.
She clinked and took a gulp, then grimaced. ‘Good god, that’ll put hairs on your chest. It’s like tar. Glorious.’
We were in one of the oldest coffee shops in the city, over in Östermalm. Its entrance was tucked away in a courtyard off a side street and it was spread over several small rooms on two floors, each decorated like a little old lady’s front room. We were sitting by a fireplace, in low, embroidered arm chairs, sipping from dainty china cups. If it hadn’t been for the graphic sex story I’d just heard, I’d have felt as though we were a couple of little girls playing at having a tea party.
‘I would say you get used to the cold,’ I said, ‘but I’d be lying. It hasn’t gone above zero in about six weeks, and I can’t remember the last time I was outside without having an ice cream headache from breathing. My boyfriend said that this year has been particularly harsh, but I’m beginning to understand why they all got a bit twitchy in September.’
‘This is your first winter in Sweden?’
I nodded. ‘I just moved over last —’ I hesitated, though Kate knew perfectly well what had happened last summer.
‘Quite, of course,’ said Kate, putting her coffee cup down and wiping some cake crumbs from her mouth. ‘Bother, have I ruined my lipstick? No matter,’ she continued when I shook my head, ‘I’m a complete wreck after last night in any case. Better sort myself out at the airport, bloody husband is picking me up at Heathrow.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘So. Your book.’
‘My book?’ I repeated dumbly.
Kate was from a small independent publisher in London. She had emailed me a couple of days ago to ask if we could meet when she was in Stockholm. My heart sank a bit. She appeared to have confused me with someone who had written a book.
‘The book you’re going to write for us,’ she clarified with a grin. ‘I’ve been reading your clippings, Ellie. They’re good. Properly good. True crime is all the rage, and a first hand account of an encounter with a serial killer will sell like the proverbial. Chuck in the Scandi noir angle and it is a bloody genius plan all round, if I do say so myself.’
‘But — but Mia hasn’t been caught. She hasn’t even been charged.’
‘Yes, why is that?’ Kate asked. ‘From what I’ve managed to read she’s bang to rights, is she not?’
I nodded slowly. ‘She is. As far as I’m concerned. I mean, I was right there, I heard her confess.’
‘Your boyfriend was there too, wasn’t he?’
My stomach gave a little twist. ‘He was quite badly injured so doesn’t have any clear memory of it.’
Kate pursed her lips. ‘But they found her lab on the island?’
Mia injected her victims with some sort of drug she had developed that caused instant catastrophic heart attacks.
‘They did. But the problem is there isn’t any direct evidence that links the lab to any of the victims, not least because they still don’t know what it is she injects them with. There are no tests for drugs that don't officially exist.'
‘Quite the pickle,’ Kate murmured, chewing thoughtfully.
‘So it’s all circumstantial. She could claim she’s simply a keen amateur scientist— if they ever find her to question her, that is. That’s why they haven’t charged her. Under Swedish law, a person can’t be charged with a crime until they have been questioned.’
‘Of course, I read something about that. So she can’t be charged unless they find her.’
‘And she seems to have disappeared into thin air. There are ships are going in and out of Stockholm to the Baltic States and Russia all day long, or she could have got hold of a car, driven over the bridge to Denmark. She could be anywhere in the world by now.’
Kate took a sip of her coffee, mulling this over. It was toasty next to the fire and the small window to my right was steamed up, but my toes in my snow boots were still icy. Even as I objected, I couldn’t help the tiny flutter of excitement that had taken root in my stomach. Ellie James, author. I didn't hate the sound of that.
‘There’s still a story,’ Kate said finally, and my heart leapt about three feet in the air. ‘Even before she is caught. Perhaps her being still at large even gives it an extra frisson. She could strike again at any moment, after all. It could be something,’ she added, nodding firmly. ‘It definitely could. If you’re in.’
A little while later I sat on the bus watching the city trundle by. The sky was clear and the snow glowed pink in the afternoon twilight. I felt my phone buzz and looked down to see a text from Johan. I had the weirdest dream we moved to a desert island and had a squirrel for a pet. We should do that. I love you xx
I couldn't write a book about Mia. A cold, heavy feeling draped itself over me. Johan would never forgive me.
4
'Yeah, you know. Everything's fine. Not much to report.'
A few days later, I was sitting by the window of one of my favourite coffee shops, tucking into a cheese scone as I chatted to my mum on the phone. It had started to snow again that afternoon and fresh powder was dusted like icing sugar over the grey ice covering the cobblestones Outside, a guy in n
eon high-visibility gear struggled to control his bike over a patch of ice, and I wondered what possessed a person who is clearly concerned about safety to cycle down a steep hill in the snow.
'I just don't know what she's thinking getting a dog at her age,' my mum announced. 'I told her she'd regret it.'
Sue was my mum's neighbour, soul sister and favourite adversary. We'd lived next door to her since I was a baby, in a quiet little road of cramped terraced houses in Wandsworth. On the day we moved in mum drove up in her little Mini — a proper old school teeny one, not those giant ones they make now. I was in my car seat in the back and before Mum could even open the door, Sue poked her head in the passenger window and told her I was strapped in wrong. Mum was so stressed by all the packing and negotiating cramped little London roads with the moving van following close behind that she leaned over and punched Sue on the nose. Sue burst out laughing and announced she was babysitting me for the day so mum could unpack in peace.
'What's she even going to do with a dog?'
'I don't know,' I said, scraping the last of the cheese onto a bit of scone. 'Throw balls for it? Dress it up in little outfits? Whatever people do with dogs.'
'She'll regret it when it's raining and she's got to take it out.'
'I'm sure you'll be there to remind her,' I grinned. Mum sniffed. I could hear her banging around the kitchen as usual and I knew that the minute the dog arrived Mum would fall deeply in love with it and spoil it rotten forevermore.
I yawned. One of the many downsides of it getting full dark by mid afternoon is that your body clock starts feeling fairly confident it’s bedtime long before dinner. For the first couple of weeks of December when the darkness properly rolled in, I’d felt permanently groggy, almost jet lagged. I’m almost certain I dropped off for a few seconds and snored in a coffee shop at least once. I now understood why the light of summer is celebrated with such passion.
'And Johan? Is he alright?' I'd brought Johan home for Christmas and he and mum bonded over her precious collection of recipe books. She'd not been his biggest fan before, on account of him being the reason I no longer lived around the corner from her in South London. They'd debated the best way to get the perfect roast turkey for hours on end while I zonked out in front of Christmas telly, and now he was apparently her dream son-in-law.