EARLIER IN THE EVENING when his mobile had pinged and a news flash had informed him that the missing boy had been found, Jan had made a decision. When he considered what his life would be like, the looming scandal and the subsequent prison sentence, he decided he needed to leave this sinking ship. He would take the cheap overnight ferry to the mainland, stay beneath the radar as best he could, and eventually make his way to a country without an extradition treaty with Sweden and start over there. That was the plan, and Gunilla, who had read selected excerpts of the serial on Jan’s advice, agreed with him fully.
The serial was a form of revenge—Jan understood that much. It wasn’t a very fair approach, since it circumvented the justice system and described what had happened from the supposed victim’s perspective before then condemning and smearing the reputation of the supposed perpetrator without any trial. A desperate, but also understandable, action for someone who considered herself to be a victim of a crime, one for which she had little chance of securing legal redress so long after the fact.
But if what was left of the serial wasn’t published, then the whole thing would be cast in an entirely different light. There would be no trial, no prison sentence, and no accusations of murder or kidnapping. The Hallin name wouldn’t be dragged through the mud, and Jan wouldn’t have to flee.
That was the straw to which he was clutching when, just after midnight, with the biggest suitcase he had been able to find in the basement, he stepped into the hospital lobby and headed towards the lifts.
The fact that Sandra felt that what she had been subjected to was straightforward rape was pretty clear, and Jan would have to compromise—admit that he was a rapist. It didn’t sound good; in fact it had a bad sound to it, when in reality it was just a single encounter that had gone off the rails. Jan didn’t consider himself a rapist, but he agreed that he had raped. Once. To lend credibility to his denials.
The author also seemed to think that the poor sod in the ravine had been the victim of a crime. Jan didn’t agree. Two cars had encountered each other on a road covered in black ice, and one of them had crashed into a ravine. The idea that it was solely Jan’s fault was impossible to prove now, and it wouldn’t have been possible to prove it at the time either. But Jan hadn’t been sober, Jan had left the scene, and Jan had failed to call emergency services. Those constituted his crimes—not that he had caused the death of another person. His guilt was down to the distorted legal system—for the accident itself he bore no guilt.
Sandra was reeling off unfair and misleading accusations against Jan, and he couldn’t allow that. This was the reason why he shortly thereafter stepped into the room where he had found out she and the boy were. He put the suitcase down outside the door, which he closed behind him. Then he sat down on a visitor’s chair that he positioned provocatively close to her curled-up body on the bed.