Thursday 26 November, 02.07
This isn’t the first time Molly Blom gets out of the jeep in the disabled parking space at Gällivare Airport; on the contrary, the sequence of events keeps repeating in an endless loop.
That was the last time she breathed fresh air.
She saw Berger from behind up ahead, on his way through the main entrance, and was about to run after him. Instead she heard a whistling sound and felt her head explode.
She drifted in and out of consciousness, bumping and bouncing, heard the sound of a car engine, saw nothing. She was lying in a space that was more tightly sealed than a car boot usually was, a claustrophobically enclosed space. Eventually she figured out she had been squashed inside a case, a trunk.
Then she realised that what she could smell was blood. Dried blood.
Jovana Malešević’s blood.
The realisation sent her back once more to the moment when she steps out of the jeep at Gällivare Airport and sees Berger ahead of her and gets ready to run after him.
Then she was sitting on a heavy metal chair, and everything was spinning around her in murky semi-darkness. Her head was pressed forward, down. She looked into a white enamel washbasin. Water ran through her hair into the basin. At first she thought it was blood mixed in the water, swirling down the plughole, but then she realised that it wasn’t the right colour. A towel was thrown over her head and her hair very roughly dried. Then her head was released, and she sat there with her hands and feet tied to the chair, and saw a brown-haired figure within a picture frame, saw the figure shadowed by someone in a black balaclava who was approaching fast. A pair of scissors cut the air. Then a hand was pressed over her eyes and the scissors dived into her hair, cutting furiously for a long, long time. Then the hand disappeared from her eyes. It took a while before she could see into the mirror in front of her again.
She looked at the gilded mirror, looked into her own eyes and eventually recognised her face. That was when she realised that the brown hair she had seen reflected in the mirror was actually hers.
And now it had been cut into a bob.
The figure in the balaclava was standing behind her and put the scissors down. A hand stroked her hair gently. Then something else erupted behind the balaclava. An inhuman roar echoed through the unknown room. A considerably larger figure in a matching black balaclava threw itself at the smaller one.
Then everything went black again.
She gets out of the jeep in the disabled parking space at Gällivare Airport. She sees Berger from behind, on his way through the main entrance, and is about to run after him. Then she hears a whistling sound.
She gets out of the jeep in the disabled parking space at Gällivare Airport. She sees Berger from behind, on his way through the main entrance, and is about to run after him.
Then she woke up.
She opened her eyes. The cold had already eaten its way into her. It took a little too long for her to understand why. She was naked, completely naked. The heavy metal chair seemed to be screwed to a concrete floor, a cellar floor from the look of it. The chill, mouldy smell assaulting her nose seemed very cellar-like. She tugged a little at her arms and legs; they were firmly fixed with cable ties.
There was total silence.
It was very nearly totally dark as well. A few metres away she could make out a sofa, and on the sofa she could make out a couple of figures.
Perhaps it was the sound that made her realise that everything was covered; it sounded like bare skin on plastic.
But she couldn’t see anything, could only vaguely detect movement. Then darkness again.
Then she wakes up again, senses two bodies on the sofa. Bodies without heads.
Until she realises that they’re wearing black balaclavas. She senses movement on the sofa. Snake-like, squirming. Nothing else.
Just darkness and silence. Then the smaller of the figures leans forward. Until it reaches something that resembles light. It’s a woman. Her upper body is bare, but she’s still wearing the balaclava. Then she disappears again.
It’s like a slow but insistent stroboscope.
Once again she senses movement on the sofa, but the movements seem to belong in a parallel universe. They don’t reach her, not really.
Then the woman leans forward again, into the weak light, into the spotlight. She slowly pulls off the balaclava, but it isn’t until Jessica Johnsson removes her blonde wig that Molly Blom recognises her.
The man leans forward too, pulls off his balaclava. Reine Danielsson has aged significantly since he was questioned in Orsa; Molly has only ever seen pictures of him as a young man. Anything childlike about his appearance back then is long gone, replaced by dark, furrowed experience. By unrelenting loneliness.
Then the pair lean back on the sofa again and are replaced by darkness. She’s in darkness now, immense darkness.
She hears the sound of the pair’s grotesque pantomime, senses naked skin on plastic, is struck by how ridiculous the whole charade is. The whole performance, which no one seems to be getting any pleasure from.
When her sight returns Reine is standing up. She sees herself, sees her naked bound body as if from a completely different part of the room.
Reine comes closer. Then she sees, right at the edge of the faint strip of light, a table. On the table is a large knife.
Darkness again. Receptive, deceptive darkness. Pain in her head. Spreading through her body. And this is only the start.
She doesn’t want to know how the rest of the pain feels, she really doesn’t want to know.
She wakes up. Even though her every instinct is to open her eyes, she keeps them closed. Time passes, she tries to orientate herself in the room, in her own consciousness. Her nose is filled with the stench of mould, her body. She tries to understand what’s going on.
A woman’s voice says, ‘Eyelids aren’t just thin, they’re also revealing.’
She opens her eyes. Reine is standing in front of her. He’s holding a block of wood in his hand. Almost completely hidden behind him she sees Jessica leaning forward on the sofa, sees her head, her faintly smiling face, not much more. She goes on:
‘Three minutes and eight seconds have passed since you woke up. Was that long enough for you to work out where you are?’
‘I know where I am,’ Molly says, as calmly as she can.
‘And where is that?’
‘In the darkness,’ Molly says.
Jessica laughs loudly. It’s a warm, happy, bubbling laugh that doesn’t belong in this cellar.
None of this belongs together.
Jessica stands up and stretches.
‘If only you knew how right you are,’ she says.
She walks forward to stand beside Reine. They’re just a metre away from Molly, side by side. Two naked people.
Jessica leans forward and inspects Molly. She puts her hand under her chin and tilts her face from side to side, as if she were looking at it through a magnifying glass.
‘I thought your name was Eva Lundström for far too long,’ Jessica says. ‘It took quite some time to figure out that you’re really called Molly Blom.’
Then she straightens up and, without taking her eyes off Molly’s, says:
‘Reine. Hit her.’
Molly feels herself jerk as her head is knocked sideways, back and forth. Her whole body prepares for the pain.
‘We’ll make do with the upper arms for now,’ Jessica says. ‘Then you cut her.’
Molly isn’t going to close her eyes. She isn’t going to close her eyes.
She looks straight into Reine Danielsson’s eyes as he raises the block of wood, and she doesn’t take her eyes off him even when it slams into her upper arm. There’s definitely no pleasure in those eyes. More a peculiar lethargy. If she gets the chance, maybe she can use that to her advantage.
He hits her left arm, then her right arm, and she keeps her eyes on him the whole time, every moment. When the third blow strikes her left arm she feels numb, and the only sensation when it’s time for her right arm again is a strange dullness. Numbness. As if her body were shutting down.
Then Reine swaps the block of wood for the knife.
Molly sees it sink into her lower left arm. She sees the blood pour out. It feels like someone else’s blood.
Like someone else’s body.
Then Jessica is there, staring with those clinical eyes at the blood pumping out of the wound. And she holds up a test tube and removes the cork from it. She moves the test tube towards the arm, the flow of blood, and fills it. She holds it up against the weak red light and shakes it; the act looks professional.
Jessica is about to say something when the light goes out. The cellar is completely dark.
‘Not again,’ Jessica exclaims.
Reine mumbles something, Molly can’t make out the words. Jessica says:
‘I think there are more fuses. We talked about buying candles. Did we?’
‘No,’ Reine says.
It’s the first time Molly has heard his voice. It’s balanced, sounds almost veiled.
She knows she can work with that.
If she gets a chance.
‘Go up and replace the fuse,’ Jessica says.
Reine disappears.
Molly stares into the darkness and thinks about the absurdity of it. The absurdity of everything. But particularly the absurdity of listening to a serial killer having an everyday conversation. Perverse normality. Fuses blowing. Forgetting to buy candles.
It’s as if there were suddenly something like everyday life again.
And her arm hurts really badly.
‘Let’s call this a ceasefire,’ Jessica says.
Molly is aware of how heavy her breathing is. There’s nothing to say. And Jessica doesn’t say anything else.
As if she didn’t have anything to say.
Time passes. Then she hears footsteps on the stairs. Reine’s voice, saying, ‘It’s something else. The fuse hasn’t blown. I changed it anyway. It didn’t work.’
‘Damn,’ Jessica says somewhere in the darkness.
Molly wishes she could stem the flow of blood from her arm. But that’s impossible. She can’t move.
She hears things in the darkness. She hears the springs of the sofa, as if someone is sitting down. Then a small light goes on, the light from a mobile phone. She sees Jessica on the sofa, sees her push aside everything lying there and look at the test tube. Reine goes over to her with a trolley that was parked somewhere. There’s medical equipment on the trolley, laboratory equipment.
Molly tries to understand what she’s seeing.
But the only thing she understands is that she doesn’t understand anything.
And that she’s been granted a respite.
She closes her eyes and knows, knows that every minute works to her advantage. Because every minute she can stay alive, Sam Berger is getting closer.
She knows that.