The Crow Girl (26 page)

‘I love you too,’ he says after a pause, but she can’t help thinking that he had been about to say something else.

In the mirror she can see the window he’s facing. His face is visible in the glass and it looks to her as if he’s crying. She thinks about how she felt just a few weeks ago. It feels like another world. Now he wants to have a child with her and everything is going to be different.

Then he lets go and looks at her again. Yes, he has been crying. But his whole face is lit up in a smile. ‘Do you know what I think we should do now?’

‘No … What should we do? You’ve been here hundreds of times, so you ought to know,’ she says, smiling back.

‘First we’ll have lunch in the hotel restaurant. The food’s excellent – at least it was when I was here last year. Then I’m going to take you somewhere. To a place that’s very special at this time of year.’

When it’s time for dessert he suddenly gets a mischievous look in his eye, and he excuses himself and goes over to the bar, where he leans over to give something to the man behind it. They exchange a few quiet words, then he returns to the table with a smile.

Suddenly the loudspeaker system begins to echo with the sound of a guitar and snare drum. Sofia recognises the song immediately, but can’t think where she first heard it.

‘Oh my God, Lasse! I love this song … how did you know?’

Then she remembers where she knows the music from.

A year or so ago. It had been in an Asian film she’d watched. She hadn’t been that impressed by the film, but couldn’t forget the song, which had been played over and over again.

By the time she got home she’d already forgotten what the film was called, but she remembers saying to Lasse that there was a song in it she liked. He had laughed at her when she tried to sing it to him, but evidently he had understood exactly what she meant.

‘Who’s singing? This is from that film … but you haven’t even seen it?’

He leans over. ‘No, but I’ve heard you sing it. Let’s drink a toast, then I’ll explain.’

He fills their glasses and goes on. ‘The girl in the song actually comes from the place we’re going to. And the record must have been in the cupboard under the stereo for at least ten years, but you’ve never wanted to listen all the way through on the few occasions you’ve let me play it. Old man’s music, you usually say. This is the last track on the album.’

They drink a toast, then Lasse just sits there quietly in front of her. She waits, deep in thought and listening to the lyrics. And soon she understands.

And the straightest dude I ever knew was standing right for me all the time … Oh, my Coney Island baby, now. I’m a Coney Island baby, now.

She sighs and leans back in her chair with a smile. ‘Coney Island? We’re going to Coney Island? In the middle of winter?’

‘Believe me, it’s a great place,’ he says, looking serious. ‘You’ll love it.’

She strokes the back of his hand. ‘Beaches, carousels, slushy snow, wind, and utterly deserted? Junkies and stray dogs? I’d love that? Who’s this idiot singing, anyway?’

They share a long kiss, then he tells her it’s Lou Reed.

‘Lou Reed? We haven’t got any Lou Reed albums …?’ she says uncertainly.

He smiles. ‘Don’t you remember the cover? Lou Reed in a suit and bow tie, his face half hidden under a black hat?’

She laughs. ‘Lasse, you’re teasing me. I know we haven’t got the album at home. I actually clean that cupboard from time to time, unlike certain other people.’

He looks bewildered. ‘But of course we’ve got the album, haven’t we?’

His doubt amuses her. ‘I’m absolutely certain we haven’t, and you’ve never played it for me. Not that it matters. What you just did makes up for your absent-mindedness.’

‘What I just did?’

‘Yes, getting the song played, silly.’ She laughs again. ‘You remembered that I liked it.’

He looks relieved, and the uncertainty vanishes from his face.

‘Right … Well, drink up, then!’

They clink glasses again, and she thinks about how much she loves him.

When she sang the song for him after she came home from the cinema, he showed no sign of recognising it. But he’d actually been waiting for the right moment to play it for her.

He had waited a whole year for the opportunity, he had waited, and he had remembered.

It’s only a detail, but it’s a detail that she takes very seriously. He cares about her, even if he never says so in so many words.

They spend the last day shopping and relaxing in the hotel room.

Coney Island had been wonderful, just like he’d said.

During the flight home Sofia thinks about how long it had been since they had been able to relax like this. She feels like she’s just rediscovered a Lasse she knew was there, but hasn’t seen for several years.

Suddenly he’s back again, the Lasse she once fell in love with.

But back in Stockholm everything pales. After just a few weeks Sofia realises that, no matter how hard she may want to believe the opposite, he’s always going to pull the rug out from under her.

Just as suddenly as he came back to her, he disappears again.

They’re sitting at the breakfast table reading the paper.

‘Lasse?’

‘Mmm …’ He’s absorbed in his reading.

‘The pregnancy test …’

He doesn’t even look up from the paper.

‘It was negative.’

Now he looks up. Surprised.

‘What?’

‘I’m not pregnant, Lasse.’

He sits in silence for a few seconds. ‘Sorry, I’d forgotten about that …’ He smiles awkwardly and goes back to the paper.

His absent-mindedness is no longer so attractive.

‘Forgotten? You’ve forgotten what we talked about in New York?’

‘No, of course not.’ He looks tired. ‘I’ve just had a lot going on at work. I hardly know what day it is any more.’

The paper rustles.

He looks down at it, but she can see he isn’t reading. His eyes aren’t moving, and they don’t seem to be focused. He sighs and looks even more tired.

Their days in New York are starting to feel like indistinct memories of a dream. His closeness, the understanding between them, the day they spent at Coney Island, it’s all gone.

The dream has been replaced by a grey, predictable daily grind where she and Lasse walk past each other like shadows.

It’s obvious to her that he takes her for granted. And he’s also managed to forget the child they had decided to have together. She can’t understand it.

She can feel that she’s about to explode.

‘By the way, Sofia, there was something,’ he says, finally pushing the newspaper aside. ‘They called from Hamburg to say that things have got snarled up there. They need me to go down, and I couldn’t say no.’

He reaches for the juice, looking at her uncertainly, first pouring some for her, then himself.

‘You know Germans never rest. Not even over the holidays.’

She snaps.

‘For fuck’s sake! You’ve got to be kidding!’ she yells, and throws the newspaper at him. ‘You were away for Midsummer. You were away for Lucia. And now Christmas and New Year as well! This is ridiculous. You’re supposed to be the boss, for God’s sake! Surely there’s some way to delegate your damn work over public holidays?’

‘Please, Sofia, calm down.’

He holds his arms out and shakes his head.

She thinks she can detect a smirk. He doesn’t even take her seriously when she’s angry.

‘It’s not as easy as you’d think. If I turn my back, everything just collapses behind me. OK, the Germans are smart, but they’re not very independent. You know, they like rules and regulations, marching in straight lines.’

He laughs and tries to approach her with a smile. But she’s still furious.

‘It might not just be in Germany that things collapse behind your back when you aren’t there.’

He looks suddenly worried. ‘What do you mean, collapse? Has something happened?’

His reaction isn’t what she was expecting, and her anger dissipates slightly.

‘I don’t know what I meant, I’m just fucking angry and disappointed about being left on my own over another holiday.’

‘I realise that, but there’s not much I can do about it,’ he says, getting up and turning his back on her as he puts the breakfast things in the fridge. He feels a very long way away all of a sudden.

Later, while he’s in the shower, she does something she’s never done before in the ten years they’ve been together.

She goes into the hall and gets his work phone from his jacket pocket. The one he always has on silent when he’s at home and not working. She types in the pass code and clicks through to the list of dialled numbers.

The first four are German numbers, but the fifth has a Stockholm dialling code.

More German numbers. Then the same Stockholm number again.

She scrolls down and the same number reappears at regular intervals. She sees from the dates that he’s been calling someone in the Stockholm region several times a day.

She pulls up the unknown number and calls it, glancing at the bathroom door as she listens to it ring.

A soft woman’s voice answers.

‘Hello, darling! I thought you were going to be busy?’

Sofia ends the call.

She sits down at the kitchen table.

Behind his back? Everything’s collapsing behind
my
back.

Lasse comes out with a towel wrapped around his waist. He smiles at her and goes into the bedroom to get dressed. When he’s done, she knows he’ll come in and make coffee.

She opens the fridge, takes out the carton of milk and empties it down the sink. Then she crumples up the empty packet and pushes it down into the rubbish bin.

He comes out into the kitchen.

‘If you want coffee you’ll have to go and get some milk. It’s all gone.’

‘OK, I’ll go to the shop and you can make the coffee in the meantime.’

When she hears the front door close she goes out into the hall and sees that he’s gone out without a coat. His jacket is still there.

She takes the mobile phone out again and sees that he’s got two missed calls.

Presumably the unknown woman has called back, but she daren’t look, because then the missed calls will disappear from the screen.

She finds her way to his messages instead, and opens the inbox.

Once she’s read the thirty or so text messages Lasse has exchanged with the unknown woman over the past few months, it feels like she’s just slammed into a wall.

A PASSAGE OF
sighs connects the Stockholm police headquarters with the city courts, through which people under arrest are led to their trials. It meanders through the tunnels belowground, and is said to have been the scene of several suicides.

Karl Lundström was currently in a coma, after he had tried to hang himself in his cell.

Jeanette Kihlberg realised that meant that the question of his guilt might never be cleared up properly.

The evening after the suicide attempt it was on the television news, and several of the usual suspects were lamenting the security failures within the criminal justice system. Even the psychologists got it in the neck for failing to identify that Lundström was a suicide risk.

Jeanette leaned back on her shabby office chair and looked out of the window.

At least she had done all she could.

Now she would have to call Ulrika Wendin and inform her that the situation had changed.

The girl didn’t sound surprised when Jeanette told her what had happened and explained that there wouldn’t be any new trial for as long as Karl Lundström was in a coma.

Åhlund and Schwarz had been given the job of finding out if Karl Lundström’s blue Volvo might be the same vehicle that had scraped a tree out in Svartsjölandet, but initial analysis didn’t seem to support that idea.

The colour of the paint didn’t match. Different shades of blue.

Outside the window the afternoon sun was blazing down.

Then the phone rang, with news of another body.

At roughly the same time that Karl Lundström had been knotting a sheet around his neck in Kronoberg Prison, another dead boy had been discovered in an attic on Södermalm.

THERE WASN’T ACTUALLY
much to suggest that the boy, who had been found in an attic in the Monument block close to Skanstull, was a victim of the same perpetrator as the earlier bodies.

Two empty holes showed where the eyes had once been, and you could just about make out what had once been his nose and lips. The whole face was covered with large, liquid-filled blisters, and there were only a few tufts of hair left.

The heavy iron door to the attic opened and Ivo Andrić walked in, together with the forensic medical officer, Rydén.

‘Hi, Rydén. Everything’s under control, I hope?’ Jeanette said, then turned towards Ivo Andrić. ‘So you’ve ended up here as well.’

‘Coincidence. Someone else is on holiday and I volunteered.’ Ivo Andrić scratched his head.

At first glance the blisters looked like burn injuries, but since the rest of the body was intact and the clothes showed no traces of either ash or soot, another explanation was most likely.

‘Looks like acid,’ Ivo Andrić said, and Rydén nodded in agreement.

The floor beneath the boy and the walls closest to him showed splash marks, and Rydén took out a swab and pressed it against one of the dried yellow stains. He sniffed the swab and looked thoughtful.

‘Off the top of my head this seems to be hydrochloric acid – fairly strong considering what happened when it hit his face. I wonder if whoever did this realised the risk they were taking? The chances of getting hurt in the process are pretty high.’

Ivo Andrić rubbed his chin. ‘That wall looks new.’ He pointed at the left-hand wall, and went on. ‘Builders often use some sort of acid. I believe they wash down the old brickwork so that the plaster sticks.’

‘That sounds plausible,’ Rydén said.

‘Do we know who he is?’ Jeanette turned to face them.