They all sat around the kitchen table, which they’d moved to the centre of the living room. Magnus Strid, Benjamin, Chief Inspector Hildur Roos, and Sofia herself. Ellis was in the corner, trying to crack the password to Oswald’s folders. She still felt a shock of surprise each time she looked his way; she couldn’t believe he was there.
Hildur Roos was a tall, bony woman with snow-white skin and grey hair in a sloppy bun. Aside from her eyes, she was very plain, but her gaze penetrated like a laser, turning you inside out. Sofia hadn’t seen her blink yet.
Strid had contacted Roos and Ellis, and they simply showed up after the weekend.
The mood around the table was tense. They had just listened to Oswald’s recording and watched Sofia’s video clip of Oswald and Elvira.
Benjamin looked anxious, he was gnawing on his lower lip and avoiding Hildur Roos’s stern eyes. He shot angry glances at Ellis now and then. Benjamin had turned rather brown in the past few days; they’d been sunning themselves in the yard. His freckles had grown to a clump at the bridge of his nose. Sofia thought he looked like a schoolboy and wondered if he would ever grow up.
‘You’re not going to like what I have to say,’ Roos began. ‘But that recording is completely worthless.’
‘What?’ Magnus Strid couldn’t believe his ears.
‘Just as I said,’ Roos went on. ‘Oswald says it’s a novel, so he can basically say whatever he wants and we can’t do a thing about it.’
‘But he confessed to terrible crimes!’
‘Do you remember the man who confessed to eight murders and then went free?’ Roos asked.
‘Wallberg?’
‘Right. This is more or less the same situation. There’s no proof to link Oswald to the deaths or the fires. I did some research before coming up. Both cases are closed. His half-sister set the fire in Antibes, and the poor little girl in the barn on Fog Island was so badly burned that it was impossible to determine the cause of death.’
‘So the events he talks about really happened?´
Roos nodded.
‘But that doesn’t mean everything he says is true. As I’m sure you can appreciate, we must have tangible, irrefutable evidence to lock him up.’
All the air went out of Sofia.
‘Furthermore, Sofia joined the cult of her own free will,’ Roos went on. ‘And as far as I know she made no attempt to leave before she ran away.’
Hildur Roos spoke as if Sofia weren’t present, looking past her to Magnus Strid. Sofia’s temper flared before she had time to think.
‘Are you some sort of cult expert?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘You make it sound like you are when you talk, but you have no idea what it’s like. You think it’s so simple, do you? You just walk up to the gate and say “Bye, I’m leaving now!” and boom, they let you right out? But that’s not how it works. There’s a huge wall and an electric fence, and guards who will use force to stop you if you try to escape. And you have to perform slave labour on the property and eat nothing but rice and beans for months. Right now they’ve got people in a prison camp washing themselves with a garden hose and doing their business in chamber pots. Just because there was a flood in the guest quarters. Do you get it now? Because then maybe you can stop talking about me like I’m not here.’
‘Sofia . . .’ This was Benjamin, trying to calm her down.
‘You can just shut up. You won’t say anything anyway.’
Hildur Roos’s expression hadn’t changed in the least, but now she raised her eyebrows. Sofia glanced at Magnus Strid and saw an amused smile on his lips.
‘And now that we mention it, it’s not at all like you think when you arrive either,’ Sofia went on. ‘Everything is beautiful and super modern and everyone is so damn friendly, but then slowly everything changes. So slowly you hardly notice.’
Roos’s eyebrows returned to their normal position. ‘Are you finished?’
‘Sure, as long as you don’t tell me I need psychiatric help.’
‘No, that’s up to you to decide, but I was just going to say I think there is something we can do. If we manage to convict Oswald of child pornography and raping a minor, he’ll get a hefty prison sentence, and that’s what matters in the end, right?’
They waited for her to go on.
‘If Mr Hacker in the corner over there can open those folders and there’s child pornography in them, we’ll apprehend him. Although even that isn’t watertight, because you did in fact steal the contents of his computer, Sofia, and he could claim that you downloaded the images from elsewhere. So there’s really only one sure-fire way to put him away.’
‘What’s that?’ Strid asked eagerly.
‘To catch him red-handed. We’ll have to hope that poor girl is still up in the attic. If we find her, we’ve got him. And we have your video clip, of course, Sofia. And you also said there are cameras in the staff members’ private rooms. That’s illegal, of course. So there will have to be a raid.’
‘What do we do about the Dictaphone?’ Benjamin asked.
‘You’ll send it back to him.’
‘What?’
‘Yes. Mail it back with a note of apology from Sofia.’
‘Not on your life!’ Sofia said.
‘Okay, send it without a note then, but it has to go back, and soon. It will make things easier for us. I’ll send it from Stockholm so the package isn’t postmarked from here.’
‘So it was totally pointless for me to take it?’ Sofia asked, disappointed.
‘Not at all!’ Roos said. ‘At least now we know what a pig he is.’
‘I’ve got the folders open!’ Ellis cried.
They’d almost given up hope when Ellis first tackled the folders, mumbling that the files might be corrupt, but now he had made it in.
Everyone sprang from the table to stand behind Ellis and stare over his shoulder at the screen.
Images flashed by. Photos of a naked Elvira in various positions and degrees of exposure. And in these photos, her face was visible.
The pictures made Sofia feel dizzy and nauseated. She found herself back in the attic for a moment, suffering alongside Elvira. Benjamin groaned and covered his face with his hands. Magnus Strid shook his head and grimaced. Ellis just looked stupidly proud.
‘There you go,’ Roos said. ‘So we’ve got a plan. Are you all prepared to testify against him in court?’
Sofia and Benjamin nodded.
‘So what do we do now?’ Strid asked. ‘I assume you’ll inform me when you raid the place?’
‘Hardly. But there’s nothing to keep you from hanging out on Fog Island for a few days. We’ll be hard to miss when we come on the ferry.’
Strid nodded, satisfied.
‘What about Sofia and Benjamin?’
‘They can wait here. I’ll be in touch. But now I have to jump in the car and get back to Stockholm to deal with all of this.’
Benjamin cleared his throat.
‘Listen . . . It so happens that I’ve been declared dead. And now I’m wondering —’
Roos laughed.
‘You can rise from the dead once we’ve completed the raid. Magnus can write an article about it: “Dead man returns from the depths of the sea.”’
Was Benjamin blushing? Yes, a faint pink glow had spread across his cheeks and up to his forehead.
‘There’s one more thing,’ Sofia said. ‘Oswald’s mom still owns that cottage on the island. I don’t think she actually knows he’s alive.’
‘That has no bearing on this investigation,’ Roos said. ‘Whether or not he has a mother is immaterial. But if you want to contact her when this is all over, you’re free to do so. Although she’ll probably read about it in the media.’
‘What about my parents?’ Sofia asked. ‘When can I call them?’
‘I’ll contact them so they don’t have to worry. But for now, you two are only to do one thing.’
She aimed her X-ray eyes at Sofia and then Benjamin.
‘What’s that?’
‘Nothing. You are not to move a muscle until you hear from me.’
Roos began to gather her belongings. She handed Sofia an envelope; Sofia reluctantly put the Dictaphone inside and wrote the address of the manor on the front. Roos took the SIM card from Sofia and the thumb drive from Ellis.
‘Are you riding back with me?’ she asked Strid. He nodded, then approached Sofia and placed his hands on her shoulders.
‘You can be sure we will see each other again,’ he said with a wink. ‘You can always call —’
‘No!’ Roos interrupted. ‘No phone calls.’
Sofia noticed Ellis looking at her. She knew he wanted to stick around and talk. To make everything right.
‘You can stay the night if you want,’ she told him. ‘You can sleep on the sofa.’
‘That’s nice of you.’
‘Hardly. But without your help —’
‘It was nothing,’ he cut in. ‘After . . . Oh, let’s not talk about it.’
Roos was already on her way out, but she turned around to nail Ellis with her gaze.
‘And you — control yourself! No blogging or tweeting about this, do you understand?’
Ellis nodded and swallowed. Even he was reduced to nothing in her presence.
As Sofia watched Magnus Strid’s frame cross the lawn, she thought of their evening chat by the pond on Fog Island. It had been the loveliest summer night ever — not just the weather, but the mood among the group. Yet Strid had known even then that something was horribly wrong. She wondered how it felt to have such a nose for the truth.