She turned off the TV, put the remote back on the table, and went to the door. There was another knock, harder this time. Her pulse quickened. She thought about hiding in the wardrobe, but opened the door after all. Outside was Corinne from the household unit, holding a big tray and staring wide-eyed at Sofia.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.
‘I was just about to ask you the same thing.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, Sofia. I thought you were in bed. Someone mentioned you were. I only came by to drop off food for Franz and to clean.’
‘Food? He eats in the office.’
‘Not that food. He’s ordered extra food, because he works out after lunch and dinner. Didn’t you know?’
Extra food? Two workouts a day? Sure, he had been out of the office an unusual amount lately, but she’d never asked where he was. Simon’s right, she thought. There’s something fishy going on.
She quickly recovered her wits.
‘You can put the food in the fridge, but I’ve already done the cleaning. I came to get something and it was a real pigsty in here. You people need to shape up.’
Corinne looked around the neat room in surprise.
‘Oh, right, I’m sorry. But I have been cleaning this room every day.’
‘You can’t tell to look at it. I’ve taken care of it now, so you can go.’
‘Okay. You won’t say anything to Franz, though, will you? I mean, that you didn’t think it was nice in here.’
‘No, I certainly won’t. He has more important things to worry about.’
Corinne placed a sandwich and a big smoothie of some sort in the fridge and aimed another baffled look Sofia’s way.
‘As long as you’re here,’ Sofia said, ‘I don’t have any clean uniforms. I don’t know who’s in charge of that now, but I can’t look like this when Franz gets home.’
‘Of course not. I’ll take care of it. We didn’t think you would be back on your feet so soon.’
‘But I am, as you can see.’
Corinne nodded and vanished.
Sofia waited for a while, then closed the door and locked it. She knew Oswald liked to record what he saw on the screens in the office. He liked showing Bosse short clips of the staff in humiliating situations. She’d learned to recognize the rough bursts of laughter that meant he had found something to save. Surely he did the same here in his room, and all she had to do was figure out how to use the remote.
She pressed different buttons until she found a registry that was just a column of letters. She selected the first one: B. The picture quality was incredibly sharp. It was Bosse, jerking off on a bed and moaning. Very loudly. She tried to turn down the volume but couldn’t figure out how at first. At last she found the right button.
Either he’s a perv, or he’s saving this as some sort of blackmail material, she thought. How illegal was it? Could he be thrown in jail just for this? She scrolled down to the letter S and steeled herself for what she was about to see, because she knew who S was. She was almost certain it would be a sex video starring her and Benjamin. But how often did we have the energy? she wondered. She found herself hesitating — she didn’t want to see Benjamin or hear his voice. But her curiosity got the best of her.
She left the volume low and selected the S.
She and Benjamin were under the covers, chatting. She didn’t even have to raise the volume to know what they were saying. She knew exactly when Oswald had recorded this. That moment in bed was still clear in her memory; they’d been like calves eager to get out into green pastures.
Oh god, he caught us red-handed!
Scattered memories suddenly became a cohesive whole. Benjamin with his pager in the middle of the night, his sheepish smile, the repeated ‘it’s not like you think.’
You idiot! Why didn’t you say anything?
Her fist flew to her mouth and she bit down to keep from crying as she pounded her other fist on the sofa. She threw herself back on the sofa, hitting her head against the wall with a thud. For a moment, she just stared at the ceiling as she tried to get her breathing back under control.
There was a crash in the corridor outside. She started, suddenly hyperaware that she was in Oswald’s room, on his sofa, with his whole system up and running. And he would soon be on his way home across the sound. She listened but didn’t hear anything else. She sat up on the sofa, selected the TV screen, and turned the volume back up to its original level. The remote went back on the coffee table, and she straightened the room until there were no traces of her left.
She looked out the window before leaving and found the yard bathed in golden sunshine. The fog has lifted, she thought. I’ll be damned, the fog has all but been wiped out.
*
Oswald looked surprised when he saw her behind the desk.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Working, sir.’
‘But you’ve had a shock.’
‘It passed.’
‘So quickly?’
‘It’s just that I realized a few things. No one forced Benjamin to dive like that, you know, head first. He betrayed us, plain and simple. So now I don’t want to talk about him anymore; I just want to work and finish the propositions.’
Oswald still looked surprised, but he nodded in satisfaction.
‘You do understand. Imagine that. I have to admit, I underestimated you.’
‘That’s okay.’
Her face was impassive, but she noticed some twitching in her legs. It spread up through her body, and she hoped he wouldn’t notice.
‘So,’ he said. ‘The propositions. They have to be ready in two weeks.’
‘I can manage it.’
‘Good. I’m really just here to make sure you’re okay,’ he said.
Liar!
‘I’m going to the mainland over the weekend to give a lecture for some big-shots. To drum up some more guests for the spring program.’
She racked her brains. What day was it? Thursday, she thought, or maybe Friday.
‘Maybe you can even finish your rough draft of the propositions before I get home?’
‘Of course. I can do that.’
She went back to work typing up the documents but felt him glancing at her now and then. They worked like that, in silence, all day. She printed out proposition after proposition and lined them up neatly on his desk. The hours crawled by as she waited for him to leave for the mainland; she hoped he would take the five o’clock ferry. But he stayed put. Each time he looked at her, she felt like her body was one big, teeming anthill and she became overly conscious of every move she made, how much she was blinking, and the way she was breathing.
At nine in the evening he stood up and yawned loudly.
‘I think I’ll go to bed. I’m taking the morning ferry.’
‘Okay, sir. I’ll handle everything here.’
But instead of leaving the office he walked up to her desk and stared down at her for a moment. She gave a hesitant smile but when he didn’t say anything she went back to editing documents on the screen. From the corner of her eye she saw him walk around the desk and position himself behind her. His hands slid under her blazer and blouse and grasped her bare shoulders. He let one finger trail across the back of her neck and down her spine, causing her to jump. His hands moved back up and he grabbed the chair, which creaked as he leaned over her.
He placed a finger under her chin and forced her face up. A tendril of hair had escaped his ponytail and was brushing her cheek. His eyes looked hard in the cold light. He smelled like soap and aftershave — how could such a pig smell so good? It was probably part of his game.
She allowed her body to sink back into the chair as she tried not to breathe the air around him, but that made her dizzy. She forced herself to look innocent and stared back at him until he turned away.
‘I’m glad you’ve seen through Benjamin,’ he said. ‘You’re smarter than the rest of the idiots here.’
His face disappeared and she saw his back heading for the door, but then he stopped.
‘I hope for your own sake that you’re playing an open hand. You know there will be consequences otherwise.’
‘Of course I am.’
‘I have big plans for you, Sofia.’
She was about to ask what they were, but he was already out the door. He didn’t even close it behind him. For a long time she sat still, listening for his retreating steps. Her skin felt sticky and warm where he’d touched it. She wondered what was wrong with her — why did she let him touch her like that? A scene played out in her head: she screamed, kicked him, and clawed his face, but it only turned into a farce and didn’t get her anywhere. Except to Penance. A few minutes, and Bosse and his henchmen would arrive. Another six months, at least, mucking cow shit out of stalls, feeding pigs, and freezing at night.
I have to get out of here, she thought. If that meant she had to put up with his groping, so be it. Because she would get out, and she would rather suck him off than stay. In which case she would just have to go throw up in the toilet and keep working. If she didn’t escape soon she would lose her mind — this was her last chance.
She stopped working, because the very thought of editing any more of his drivel made her ill.
What would she say if she locked the door but he came back? Maybe that she wanted to work in peace and quiet. That she didn’t want anyone else to see the propositions. He had said they were secret, after all.
She locked the door and sat down at his computer. He had turned it off, so she had to wait as it rumbled its way through start-up and the screen lit up again.
She’d learned the password by sneaking peeks over his shoulder. Once inside, she scanned through his folders and documents.
At first everything seemed perfectly ordinary. Questionnaires from lectures. Financial documents she didn’t understand in the least. Emails he’d received from celebrities and saved. But then she found an unnamed folder — its icon told her it contained photos. She opened it and found a ton of pictures. After some searching, she found a way to display them as a slideshow.
When it started, she was astonished. Close-up images of a woman’s body, blurry in a lovely way, like they were shrouded in mist. A breast, a hand, the inside of a thigh, the outside of a vulva. They were exceptionally erotic without being pornographic, it was like they were spun cotton. There were upwards of a hundred pictures in the folder, but no face. No identity.
Yet she suspected, almost knew, who it was. There was something familiar about the pale body. Those little freckles under the breast.
Elvira! But how —?
There had to be more pictures. She feverishly searched the hard drive and eventually found a whole series of image folders, all created within the last month. But when she clicked on them, she received a message that they were locked and inaccessible. She sighed in disappointment — they were password-protected, and if she knew him it would not be easy to guess. She tried the password to the computer, but it didn’t work.
There’s only one option, she thought. Make a copy. Unless I can crack the password here and now.
Her next idea was so stupid and rash that she pushed it out of her mind several times. But it kept coming back, and her stomach tingled to think of it. She logged out, turned off the computer, and walked around the office a few times as she tried to let go of this completely insane plan, but it was no use. It was as if she’d already made up her mind. She only knew one person who knew everything about computers and then some. It seemed incredibly unlikely that he would help her, but at the same time he never turned down an opportunity to show off how goddamn smart he was.
She took her phone from her pocket and turned it on. She still remembered his number, and her fingers trembled a little as she sent the text.
Want to call it even? I need your help cracking the password on some computer files.
‘You have to imagine what will happen,’ I say. ‘You have to truly see the accident in your mind, like a hundred times. Until you’re totally sure. Understand?’
‘Not really,’ she says. ‘But I’ll try.’
‘Listen to me,’ I say. ‘Look at that big kerosene lantern in the corner. If it tips over, the kerosene will spill on the floor. It’ll splash all over. Can you picture that?’
She nods.
‘And what happens then, Sara? You’ll have to use your imagination for this part.’
She doesn’t speak as she looks inward. I go on.
‘Dad likes to work on the cars. He enjoys doing it. What if he brings a rag covered in petrol or diesel into the living room? By mistake, I mean. He places it on the bannister, and the fire spreads upward.’
‘But he wouldn’t do that, would he?’
‘You little idiot. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is what could happen.’
Her eyes finally light up. We talk through the plan.
Over and over.
So many times that I almost lose my voice, but now we’re on the same page.
She even comes up with ideas herself.
‘The guard has a night off this week,’ she says. ‘Dad is too lazy and cheap to find a replacement. He’s off Friday night, I think.’
‘There you go! You can think for yourself.’
‘And he drinks a whiskey sour each night before bed. If we put something in it he would get really tired . . .’
‘Right! Great! Now we’re cooking.’
It strikes me that she has never once expressed doubt or tried to back out. That scares me a little. I wonder if she’s going to flip out at the last minute and panic.
Whether there’s some sort of dam inside her that will burst when it’s time.
‘You’re sure you want to go through with this, right, Sara? It was your idea, after all.’
‘Of course I do. But you’ll help me, right, Fredrik?’
‘You know that already.’
‘And then what?’
‘Then it’ll just be you and me.’