They had gathered in the dining room in front of Oswald’s TV, which was already on, the sound muted. Now they just had to wait for the program to start. Alvin was the featured guest and would talk about ViaTerra. They’d even been permitted to dress in civilian clothes and everyone had dressed up a little in honour of the evening.
Sofia was sitting in the first row, next to Anna, who smelled like sweet perfume and was wearing large, dangly earrings. It was comical somehow, these moments of vanity in front of a television. As if Alvin would be able to see and smell them through the screen.
‘If you all had a little of Alvin’s ambition, we would get more done,’ Oswald said. ‘So take a lesson from this program.’
Just then, the segment began and Oswald signalled to Bosse to turn up the volume. It started off well. Alvin seemed to have an answer to every question. He used words like presence and tranquillity, which sounded a little odd coming from his mouth. But that was probably the whole point — that this boisterous guy had found peace on the island.
Sofia sneaked a look at Oswald. He was standing close to the TV, his arms crossed over his chest. He nodded approvingly now and then.
But then the magic spell was broken; something unexpected happened. The TV host took out a blank sheet of paper and held it up to Alvin.
‘So this is ViaTerra’s secret, what people pay hundreds of thousands of kronor for?’
Alvin didn’t know what to say. Then he started to giggle. He tried to speak, but he couldn’t stop laughing.
‘But it’s actually pretty cool,’ he said once he had collected himself. ‘It has to do with dreams. That you can achieve anything in life.’
Sofia squirmed anxiously and glanced at Oswald, whose face had clouded over. She sent up a silent prayer that the host would let this topic go, which, thank god, he did.
But then came the final question.
‘So what was the most memorable part of your time on Fog Island?’
Alvin considered this. He looked away from the cameras for a moment. Once again he had lost the thread, and when he opened his mouth all that came out were little mumbling sounds.
Come on! Sofia thought. It’s a simple question! Just answer and give us our happy ending.
At long last, a huge smile spread across his face.
‘I guess it was the chicks. They have a whole ton of hot girls who work there.’
The studio audience burst out laughing and Alvin joined in. The camera zoomed in on a couple of guys in the front row who were bent double and had tears in their eyes. The contrast between what was happening on screen and the suddenly subdued atmosphere in the dining room was so stark that Sofia felt a sinking feeling in her stomach. It’s probably not that bad, she told herself. Alvin is what he is.
But Oswald’s expression was dark. He walked over and turned off the TV. The show wasn’t even over.
An unbearable silence ensued.
Everyone was waiting for Oswald to say something, but he just moved to stand in front of the staff at one end of the front row, then slowly walked along the chairs until he had taken in every face. He passed Sofia and stopped in front of Anna.
‘You!’ he roared. ‘Stand up!’
Anna flew out of her seat so quickly that her chair overturned and was caught by Eskil, who was sitting behind her. She stood there with her dangly earrings, terrified, waiting for whatever Oswald was about to say, but he just moved on. He went past the guys in Bosse’s gang, past Mona, at whom he aimed a scornful look, and came to the next row, where he stopped in front of Mira, who had been Alvin’s personal advisor.
‘Definitely you!’ he said.
Mira just stared up at her from her chair.
‘Stand up!’ he shouted so loudly that someone in the back row squeaked in fear.
Mira flew up, suddenly so close to tears that her lip trembled.
Oswald moved on and Sofia realized what he was doing. He was picking out the most beautiful women, the ‘hot girls.’ Madeleine, of course, and Katarina. He stopped in front of Elvira, but then he shook his head.
‘You’re too young.’
Once he’d made his selection, twelve women were standing.
‘There they are,’ he said. ‘Might as well get started. I want to know everything they did with Alvin. Every last detail. Does everyone understand? Surely you’re not so stupid that you think he made this up? Seriously. None of you will go to bed until you’ve squeezed the truth out of them. This is so disgusting that I think I have to go vomit.’
He was just about to leave when he noticed Sofia. It was like she had been invisible to him before. He slowly approached her. At first she felt the impulse to stand, but she pressed her quivering legs into her chair.
He crouched down beside her and stared into her eyes. She stared right back. His face was right in front of hers. The whole room blurred out, leaving only his eyes, black as a coal mine in the dim light. The image was so sharp that she could see tiny red lines where blood vessels had burst in the whites around his irises. She wondered if that happened when a person was extremely angry. Sweat popped out on her palms. She didn’t understand why she was so nervous when she hadn’t done anything wrong.
‘I’ll deal with you later,’ he said at last.
Then Oswald stood up and walked down the aisle to the exit.
Bosse stood up and all eyes were drawn to him. He turned to Sofia for support, so she stood as well.
‘Benny, run and get pens and paper,’ he said. ‘So they can write down everything they did with Alvin.’
A laugh came from the far corner of the dining room; there stood Oswald, who hadn’t left after all.
‘What’s wrong with you? Write down what they did? I’ll show you how this is going to work.’
He came back and pulled out one of the tables that was lined up along the wall. He yanked and tugged, but waved Bosse off when he attempted to help. Then he placed one chair on either side of the table.
‘Sit down!’ he directed Bosse, pointing at one of the chairs.
Bosse hurried to take a seat.
‘Sofia, give me your notepad and pen.’
She handed them over and he placed them on the table in front of Bosse.
‘You take notes, Bosse. All the shit they’ve done must be put down on paper. Then they can sign their confessions. Mira, we’ll start with you. Come sit in the other chair.’
Mira trotted over to them and sat down. She was wearing a ruffled white blouse and her hair was piled on the top of her head. Like a Barbie doll under interrogation, Sofia thought.
Oswald waved at Sofia, and Bosse’s henchmen.
‘You stand here behind Bosse. If she dodges the question, just have at her.’
Oswald opened the interrogation.
‘What did you do with Alvin?’
Mira cleared her throat. ‘I, hmm, I didn’t do anything in particular. We joked around a little. But we never touched each other, I swear.’
Oswald banged his fist on the table.
‘Don’t lie!’ he shouted. ‘Out with it!’
Mira searched her memory. Sofia could see her thoughts now and then, as they flickered across her face like shadows. There was something she touched on but didn’t want to think about.
‘That!’ Oswald cried. ‘What were you thinking right then?’
Oswald chased the thought, which kept returning, faster now, and with such power that sweat began to bead on Mira’s forehead.
‘There! There!’
But she didn’t want to reveal her secret.
‘For Christ’s sake, answer me!’ Oswald said, banging the table again.
‘Well, um, there was this one time when we were talking about his program. His feet brushed mine under the table. They only brushed. But I think it was on purpose.’ Her cheeks turned red and her gaze flitted here and there.
‘Bullshit! I don’t want to know what he did, Mira. I want to know what you did.’
‘Well, I guess I rubbed a little too. We sort of rubbed our feet together. It was only for a minute.’
Oswald looked at them in triumph.
‘There you go! See what a pathological liar she is? I’m sure she had sex with him too. Go ahead, you can all ask questions as well. And don’t be kind to her. You’ll have to get tough, because people like her only respond to threats.’
Soon Mira was being bombarded with questions. As soon as she hesitated or seemed evasive, Bosse struck the table with his fist. Just as Oswald had done.
Bit by bit, the confession came out, and so did the tears. Yes, there had been hugs, yes, and touches. His hands under her shirt. And they had kissed the day before he left the island. No sex, she assured them, but Oswald seemed satisfied. He told her to stand up and turned to Benny.
‘Send her to Penance, but keep her under watch around the clock. Otherwise she might decide to run away.’
Benny nodded and swallowed, overwhelmed by Oswald’s presence.
‘Now that I think about it, I think you’ll have to create a special Penance for her,’ Oswald added. ‘Otherwise she might poison those already in it. Now do the same with all the others. I have more important things to take care of. But every confession must be signed before you can go to bed.’
It was six in the morning by the time they were finished. Things had progressed slowly at first, but later it seemed like some sort of virus trickled into the room and spread among the twelve accused. Maybe they were just tired of the shouting and threats, but they started confessing at a dizzying pace. ‘I flirted with him,’ ‘brushed by him,’ ‘winked at him.’ If someone hadn’t done anything at all, she could always confess to thinking about Alvin while masturbating and talk about it in great detail. Sofia was soon tired of hearing where and how they’d touched themselves, and she wondered if they were too stupid to realize what the consequences would be.
When they were finished, a whole pile of confessions lay before Bosse on the table.
Sofia looked at the women, who were lined up against the wall. She suddenly felt sorry for them. I must have a screw loose, she thought, because what they had done was completely scandalous. Yet something ached inside her. Maybe it was their nice clothes and their tears — it felt like they had just crushed these girls’ few minutes of joy about their brush with celebrity. A stolen glance or a gentle touch they could recall and use to warm themselves when life felt cold and lonely behind the barbed wire.
I’m turning into a bleeding heart, she thought. And that’s not a good thing at all.
‘What do we do now?’ Bosse asked, looking at Sofia and then at the line of twelve women.
‘You can go to bed,’ she told the staff; they were still sitting as if nailed to their chairs. A faint murmur spread through the group. She wasn’t sure if they were relieved to be done or disappointed that the show was over, but they strolled out of the dining room.
Bosse looked euphoric. A second wind had brought him out of exhaustion; his adrenaline had taken over.
‘This will be a new program,’ he said. ‘Penance squared, sort of. You’ll have to be really tough on them, Benny. Can you handle it?’
‘Definitely!’
She left Bosse and Benny in the dining room and glanced at the women one last time, sincerely grateful that she wasn’t standing against the wall with them.
*
When she arrived at the office, Oswald was already there. He was freshly shaven and looked well-rested. She placed the pile of confessions in front of him in the centre of his desk.
‘Most of them flirted with him. A few did worse things.’
‘I knew that already,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Almost a million TV viewers saw that crap, Sofia. Do you understand what a terrible betrayal this is?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘What about you, then? I saw Alvin checking you out in the library.’
‘I didn’t do anything with him.’
She stubbornly met his gaze and it felt really good. She was not about to confess to something she hadn’t done. He could shout and bluster all he wanted. It wouldn’t make a difference — she was too tired and numb to feel anything.
There was something else too, a defiance that had grown out of something she’d heard while Alvin was on the island. The quiet conversation she’d eavesdropped on made the night’s incidents seem unfair.
It had been late at night. Oswald had been in his room, hanging out with Alvin, and asked her to bring down some bottles of water. When she saw that the door was open, she stopped just outside. Maybe it was because she sensed that a private conversation was taking place, or maybe she was just curious.
‘But there’s nothing wrong with a little bondage, is there?’ she heard Alvin say.
‘Oh, that’s so passé after Fifty Shades and everything. Like Hans Scheike, whipping little girls with twigs. Instead imagine that you have a chick in front of you, hot as fuck, with a belt around her neck. You pull on it and the life goes out of her eyes, but then you give her life back again, all within a few seconds, while you — well, you know what I’m saying.’
No one said anything and she heard a faint, appreciative whistle. From Alvin, definitely.
Her mind raced as she stood there outside the door. Those were just fantasies, not something he actually did, he had the right to his sexual preferences, maybe he was just joking. Yet at that moment, she found her admiration for him had cooled.
She cleared her throat loudly before stepping into the room, but she couldn’t bring herself to make eye contact with the men. She hurried to put down the bottles and leave.
But now that she was standing right in front of him, she thought that what the girls had done was trivial compared to his fantasies.
‘Well, I suppose I have to trust you,’ he said.
She didn’t move, just kept looking him in the eye. It was a quiet battle she didn’t realize had begun. She couldn’t look away. His own gaze seemed odd, and suddenly her whole body went cold.
‘What are you staring at?’
‘Nothing, sir, I’m just tired.’
And that was no exaggeration. It felt like her legs were about to give way beneath her. She had a vision of resting her head on a soft pillow, and she couldn’t hold back a yawn.
Oswald looked at her in irritation.
‘Surely you don’t think you’re going to go to bed right now? The day has just begun.’
In that very moment, the realization struck her for the first time. It shot up from her belly like an electric jolt and flourished in her brain.
This was just the beginning.
Everything that had happened so far had been child’s play.
And life did not, in fact, have any rock bottom.
For the most part, people are weak and gullible.
There is one thing hardly anyone can resist: a little flattery.
And Emilie is no exception.
She is alone and restless in that big house.
Flattery is like a drug to her.
Though you have to be careful with it, because in large doses it becomes sickly sweet and hackneyed.
But I was born with the ability to make others feel important.
I slowly make progress with her. Offering help.
Laughing at her jokes. Listening when she talks. Listening when she complains. Listening when she rambles.
Looking enchanted, as if everything she says is incredibly meaningful.
Giving her little compliments.
Letting my self, my aura, surround her until she feels all warm.
Filling her cold emptiness with my energy. And it works.
‘I like having you here,’ she says one day. ‘Thanks for always being so helpful.’
‘I’m the one who should be thanking you,’ I say. ‘It feels like I’ve finally found my home.’
She begins to confide in me.
I’m allowed to move into the house, into my own room upstairs.
And one night, it happens — what I’ve been waiting for.
I’m sitting on the stairs, listening to them talk in the living room. It’s become a habit.
I keep an eye on them.
They can’t see me, but I can hear them.
‘I like Fredrik so much,’ she says. ‘I want him to stay with us.’
‘That won’t be easy,’ he says. ‘You know, the paperwork and everything.’
‘You can take care of it,’ she says. ‘You have contacts.’
I’ve heard enough. I’m satisfied. Everything is going as planned.
Just as I’m about to get up and go back to my room, I see her.
Bugeye.
She’s on the top step, staring at me. Her little fig-shaped ears are pricked.
I decide it’s time to deal with her. Fast.