by Peter Mohlin
Matilda wiped her tears on the sleeve of her sweater and began to roll yet another cigarette. Her hands were trembling more than before. John asked if she needed help, but she shook her head.
“Won’t you tell me about Emelie?” he said. “Was it at the treatment center that you first met?”
“Yes.”
“And what was it like? Were you happy there?”
“Oh, we were deliriously happy. To be honest, we just wanted to get out of there, but I guess it was okay. If it hadn’t been for them, I would’ve left right away.”
“Them?”
“Emelie and that other girl—Kirsten. The whole place was stuffed with spoiled upper-class bitches, but those two were different. Especially Emelie. Her parents were more loaded than anyone else’s—but she didn’t talk about it. Actually, she bad-mouthed them. Said it was their fault she ended up there and stuff.”
“Why was it their fault?”
“I don’t know. She thought they’d deserted her. Families were allowed to visit on Sundays, but Emelie’s parents never came. She’d banned them from coming, she said. Her dad would call, but she hardly ever wanted to talk to him. I remember Robocop tried to get her to go easier on them, but she was a tough cookie.”
“Robocop?” John asked, guessing who she was referring to.
“Torsten. It was Emelie who started calling him that. He sounds like a robot,” Matilda laughed, dragging more smoke into her lungs. “She liked nicknames, Emelie did. When we were on our own, she used to call me Maja. She thought it suited me better.”
Silence followed and John waited a while before continuing.
“A few days after you were discharged from Björkbacken, you went to a place in Karlstad and got tattoos on your forearms. Why?”
Matilda put the cigarette down and her eyes filled with tears again. It was as if the question had touched on something that she long ago buried at the bottom of a mound of tragic memories.
“It was Emelie’s idea,” she said.
“So, it was her idea to tattoo a bucket list onto each of your arms?”
He stopped talking when he saw Matilda’s reaction to what he had said.
“It wasn’t a bucket list.”
Now it was John’s turn to be surprised. The witness statements from Magnus Aglin and Emelie’s parents correlated. According to them, Emelie had said the tattoo was a list of things she wanted to do before she died.
“If it wasn’t a bucket list, then what was it?” he said.
Matilda took a drag on her cigarette.
“It was an extra life.”
“Extra life?”
“Yeah.”
“Tell me a bit more,” he said, leaning over the table.
“There was fuck-all to do in the evenings in that place, so we were always up in the attic playing video games. You know, those things from the stone age—Zelda, Super Mario and the rest.”
John nodded. He remembered the old 8-bit games and the gray Nintendo console that you put cartridges into. He and Billy had been given a used one for Christmas.
“And what was the connection between the games and the tattoos?”
“Emelie used to say that it was unfair that it was only in Super Mario that you got an extra life. People like us needed it, she said. We had all attempted suicide before we got to Björkbacken. So we made a pact. Three extra lives—just like Mario.”
Matilda scratched a loose flake of skin off a pimple on her cheek, making it bleed. John saw no reason why she would make up the story about the tattoo. All things considered, it was no surprise that Emelie had lied to those around her. Her parents would’ve gone through the roof if they’d found out that she was keeping a list of her suicide attempts on her arm.
“So you all tattooed a tick into the first square because you had all already used up one life?” he said.
“Exactly. It was like a promise to each other. If you ended up so depressed that you wanted to end it all, you had to tattoo a tick into one of the boxes. Only after all the lives were used up would it be okay to, like, jump in front of a train.”
John thought back to the photo that had been posted on Emelie Bjurwall’s Facebook page and the pictures from Kirsten Winckler’s autopsy. Both girls had used up all their extra lives. The only difference was that Emelie’s last tick wasn’t tattooed—it had been carved right into her skin.
He tried to get a handle on the sequence of events. The first tick had been there right from the beginning, while the third had been added by Emelie herself—or the perpetrator—on the evening she disappeared. But the second tick—where had it come from? He asked Matilda, who for once didn’t have to think before answering.
“She added it in Stockholm the year after she was at Björkbacken. It was when she started at that dorky university and had the worst-ever makeover.”
“Makeover?”
“Yeah, you know, like on TV. At Björkbacken, she wore black jeans and edgy t-shirts. But when we got out … All she wore was expensive designer stuff. She looked like some crappy model and she said she was going to study. It was like she wanted to change herself and her life completely.”
Matilda stubbed out the cigarette but immediately began to gather the tobacco to roll the next one.
“And then?” said John.
“Studying was harder than she expected. She had to fight for every damn credit and during the autumn term I didn’t ever see her. I thought she didn’t want anything to do with me anymore. That I didn’t fit into her new life. But she got in touch around Christmas.”
“And how was she?”
“ Really down.”
“Why?”
“Because she’d screwed up almost every single test. I got the feeling she had really tried, but that it had all gone to shit anyway. Her dyslexia meant she struggled to keep up.”
“Emelie struggled to read and write?”
“Yeah, she blamed it all on her poor genes. Apparently her old man has the same problem.”
Matilda laughed and rolled a new cigarette. She licked the paper with her tongue and reached for the lighter.
“Did her parents know how badly school was going?” said John.
“Christ, no. They thought their little princess was a model student. She lied right to their faces.”
“I see. And did you hang out during the spring term?”
“She came around a lot to the apartment where I was staying, and on the weekends she always slept over.”
“And it was then that she tattooed in the second tick?”
Matilda nodded slowly, brushing her hair away from her pale face.
“It all went downhill pretty fast. She stopped going to classes and didn’t bother with most of her exams. We partied pretty hard.”
“Did that include drugs as well?” John asked.
“Yeah, of course. I had a friend who could always get us good stuff. He would give it to you for free if you blew him or one of his buddies in the bathroom—we didn’t mind that. They were alright, at least most of them were.”
“ Didn’t Emelie have money to pay with?”
“Yeah, obviously. And sometimes she coughed up—but usually she didn’t.”
“So, you mean she preferred to prostitute herself instead of paying for drugs?”
“She wasn’t fucking prostituting herself. We hung out with the guys, they fixed us up with some stuff, and sometimes we had sex with them. I think she liked it. It was as if she …”
Matilda felt silent, seeming to disappear into her own thoughts.
“As if she … what?” John prompted.
“As if she wanted to get dirty, or something. These were totally different guys from the kind she usually hung out with. Not exactly mommy’s boys flashing daddy’s credit card around. You have to understand the pressure that chick was under. She was going to take over the whole company one day. Everyone at that college kissed her ass and she pretended she was Little Miss Perfect. But my friends didn’t have a fucking clue who she was. She usually to
ld them she worked in an AckWe store and complained about how bad the pay was. Typical Emelie sense of humor.”
Matilda shook her head and looked out the window.
“There was something about that transformation into a career girl that didn’t fit. She had always hated everything her mother stood for, and now all of a sudden she was trying to be exactly like her. It was so fucked up—I never really got her.”
John noticed Matilda hesitating, as if the memory of Emelie had made her remember a story she might not want to tell. He sat in silence and hoped she would keep talking.
“You know, sometimes we’d be in some bar drinking and suddenly she’d point out some disgusting bastard and ask what she’d get if she made out with him.”
“People she knew?”
“No, no. Always strangers. Then she’d go up to them and do it. And when she came back she’d just laugh and go back to drinking, as if nothing had happened. I thought it was cool back then, but I’ve thought about it since and it was actually really weird—I don’t understand why she did it.”
John could feel the picture of Emelie Bjurwall changing into something much darker and more destructive. She seemed to have been in a much worse state for far longer than anyone around her had been aware or had been willing to acknowledge.
“Was there anything in particular that made her get the second tattoo?” he asked.
“It was in the spring—just before Easter. She hadn’t been in touch for a week and wasn’t picking up my calls. Eventually, I went round to her place in Östermalm. She lived there in an apartment her parents had bought for her and …”
John saw the woman in front of him struggling to get the words out.
“And what, Matilda?” he said. “What happened?”
“She was lying on the bathroom floor when I got there. Everything stank of vomit and booze. I got her up and put her on the sofa. She was so miserable, she just cried and cried. After a while, she told me she totally fucked up a test the day before. She had tried to study but couldn’t. Afterward, she’d got drunk and decided to go to the party where her classmates were celebrating that night. She’d apparently lost it after some bitch talked shit about her behind her back. The cunt asked if Emelie had even managed to spell her own name right on the test.”
John could feel the cigarette smoke irritating his airways, and he really needed a break to get some fresh air. But he didn’t want to interrupt Matilda. He had the feeling she hadn’t talked about her friend even once in the last ten years.
“She just wanted to die,” she said. “I kept trying to cheer her up the best I could. I said we’d promised not to give up until all our extra lives were used up. I don’t remember how I convinced her, but that evening we took the underground to see a guy I knew who had tattoo equipment.”
“And he did Emelie’s second tick?”
“Yes,” Matilda replied, laughing. “While we were there, Emelie’s mother called. And what do you think Emelie did? She answered and told her the test had gone brilliantly.”
John struggled to respond to the laughter and managed to force a smile.
“Would you say that Emelie was addicted to drugs?”
“No, she wasn’t. She sometimes went for a long time without taking anything. She even said no sometimes when I’d gotten hold of some—the ungrateful cow.”
Matilda laughed again and put her hand to her mouth—the deep, mucous cough sounded as though it came from a patient in the late stages of lung cancer.
“Do you know anything about the third tick?” John asked.
“No.”
“But you know about the photo that was posted on Facebook the same night she disappeared?”
“Yeah, it was in the papers after.”
“Did anything happen that night that could’ve affected her so much that she carved the final tick into her arm?”
Matilda looked at him. “Are you sure it was Emelie who did it? She was killed. Maybe the murderer did it.”
“Maybe. We don’t know how she got it. But assuming she carved it herself … Was there any reason for her to?”
“She’d been found out,” said Matilda, pointing her cigarette at him—as if she had just remembered something she hadn’t thought about earlier. “Like, on the morning of the party.”
“Found out?”
“Yeah. Her parents discovered her studies had gone down the toilet.”
“And how did Emelie take it?”
“Said she didn’t care, but I could see she was in crazy agony.”
“Enough to use up her last extra life?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. It seemed important to her mom that she went to this college,” said Matilda, spreading out her arms.
John imagined the pressure Emelie Bjurwall must have been under. Not daring to tell her parents about her failure at business school said it all. The heiress couldn’t show any cracks in the façade.
After trying to persuade Matilda Jacoby to share more memories of the evening, he saw she had nothing else to tell. He took her phone number and handed over his card.
“If you remember anything else—anything you think might be important—you have to call me.”
Matilda nodded and looked out of the window.
“How long are you staying this time?” he asked, getting up.
“Mister Hyde,” she said suddenly.
“Sorry, what?”
“The nickname. The person she was meeting that evening.”
“Mister Hyde?” John repeated.
“Yeah.”
“Like in the book?”
She looked at him blankly.
“I don’t know anything about any fucking book—that’s just what she called him.”
“Are you sure?”
“As sure as a junkie can be. But I stopped trusting myself a long time ago. You know, your head goes funny when you’ve been at it for as long as I have.”
John put his hand on her shoulder and thanked her. He headed for the door but stopped when he heard her get up from her chair.
“Two thousand kronor and I’ll let you do whatever you want to me.”
He turned around and saw her pull the thick sweater over her head and let it drop to the floor. Her bare torso looked anorexic and her thin arms were covered in scars and track marks. The silicone was the only thing not affected by the malnutrition, making her breasts look oddly out of proportion.
He was disgusted. Not by her, but by the men who paid to have sex with her.
“Fuck it,” she said apathetically, bending down for her sweater.
“Wait a second,” he said, going up to her.
He took hold of her left forearm and turned it to the light. Under the fading scars he could see three squares tattooed onto her skin in black ink. Each one contained a tick.
She looked at him and laughed.
“I ran out of extra lives long ago.”
38
Sissela surprised him by returning just after lunch. She only had a few phone calls scheduled for the afternoon and she might as well take them from home, she told him as she headed for her study.
Heimer wondered whether a guilty conscience brought his wife home this early. Nevertheless, he didn’t like it. During the daytime, the house was his domain and it felt as though she was invading his personal space. He would never rush unannounced into her office.
It didn’t matter that she was in the study with the door shut. The atmosphere changed somehow and he couldn’t get anything done. The wine bottles he bought in an online auction the week before were still on the kitchen counter waiting to be carried down to the wine cellar and sorted.
Then he heard her voice in the hall. At first, he thought she was talking to him but then he realized she was in the middle of a phone call. The steps got closer.
“Just a second.”
She turned the corner, put the phone down on the kitchen island, and gestured for him to come closer. “The police,” she mouthed, pointing at the phone. Out loud
, she said: “You’re on speaker.”
“Thanks—that’s great. Are you there too, Heimer?” said a voice from the phone.
Heimer didn’t recognize the voice. Someone other than Primer was speaking. The man had a subtle but easily identifiable accent. He sounded like an American.
“Of course, with whom am I speaking?”
“My name is Fredrik Adamsson and I work at County CID in Karlstad. I’m working on the investigation into Emelie’s death. I need to ask you and your wife a question, if that’s alright.”
Heimer looked at Sissela, who shrugged her shoulders. She didn’t seem to know what this was about either.
“I thought Bernt Primer was leading the investigation,” he said cautiously.
“There’s been a changing of the guard,” the detective replied in a neutral tone.
Heimer waited for it to continue, but when it didn’t, and Sissela didn’t object, he said: “Of course—we want to help the police as much as possible.”
The man who had introduced himself as Fredrik Adamsson said something, but the sound was cut off for a moment before returning.
“Sorry, we didn’t catch that last bit,” said Sissela.
“I’m in the car—the connection may be patchy,” the detective apologized. “So, this might be a strange question, but I wondered whether you know someone called Mister Hyde?”
Sissela looked at Heimer with her eyebrows raised. She was as surprised as he was.
“Hyde? As in Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde?” Heimer asked.
“Yes, I assume so.”
“Why are you asking?” said Sissela.
“The name has come up in the investigation,” said the detective. “Your daughter was supposedly in touch with someone called that. But you never heard her use the name?”
“No, I don’t think so,” said Sissela. “I mean, the kids had nicknames for each other. Magnus Aglin was called Mange and Emelie was sometimes called Emmy—even if I didn’t like it. But Mister Hyde—that sounds more like a joke.”
“Who said that Emelie knew someone by that name?” Heimer interjected.
“One of the girls who was at the party the night she went missing. But I agree it sounds a bit weird and she may be misremembering.”