ELLEN

3.00 P.M.

Instead of going home, Ellen drove to Culturum, the library in Nyköping, to use a computer. Her phone had died, and she figured she might as well take the opportunity to do a little research now while she was in town and didn’t have her mother hanging over her.

As she walked into the library, she started to feel nostalgic and realised that she probably hadn’t been there since she was in elementary school. It was strangely the same, and it almost felt as if she was about to sit down to start on one of all those school essays about death.

As luck would have it, Ellen was able to borrow a charger for her phone from the pleasant receptionist. The only computer available was one of the two drop-in computers, which you could only use for fifteen minutes, and which didn’t require a library card. Ellen sat down.

It was cool and pleasant. And quiet. When a chair was pulled out or someone coughed, it echoed between the bookshelves. All around her sat schoolchildren and retirees with their attention wholly focused on what they were occupied with. No one gave her any notice.

Ellen started going through her email. Still no reply from Agatha. She couldn’t help feeling slightly irritated as she knew that her colleague was always quick to respond, and she sensed how she must be being talked about at the office.

She surfed around on various news sites, but no one had written anything about Liv Lind being pregnant. It was presumably her first child, Ellen thought, based on the fact that she hadn’t seen kids’ pictures on Facebook — but she would check that out properly. Maybe Liv had been trying to have a child for a long time and this, considering her age, was her last chance. That cursed clock, always ticking … Ellen typed up the little information she had about the murder and listed her questions about whether Liv had children from before and who the father of this child was, and emailed it to herself.

Her inbox had over two thousand unread emails. It was impossible to go through them. The easiest thing was to delete them in one swoop. But before she marked all the emails to put them in the trash, she typed ‘Jimmy’ into the search field, even though she shouldn’t have.

Just over a year ago, she’d had a relationship with Jimmy. It was before he became her boss. At the time he was working at a competing TV channel. She’d never felt that strongly about anyone, and it had been the best time in her life. But one day, he’d just disappeared, stopped calling, and Ellen had been crushed and unable to understand what had happened. She’d cursed herself for finally having let someone get so close to her and having allowed them to convince her to expose herself and her history. After all, who would want to be with someone as dysfunctional as her? She should have known that it wasn’t going to be different this time, but she hadn’t been able to resist.

When Jimmy started at TV4 in May, she’d tried to convince herself that she’d moved on, but when he walked into the editorial office, everything flooded over her again. It got complicated, not just because he was her boss, but because they’d both had a hard time staying away from each other, even though she was scared to death that he would hurt her again.

Which he did.

Once again, he’d stormed into her life, and then disappeared. And she hadn’t understood a thing. When she’d confronted him at last, he’d told her that he had a little daughter with a woman he couldn’t leave.

It could never be him and Ellen.

However she twisted and turned it, she couldn’t understand. Didn’t want to understand. It hurt too much, and she was inconsolable. Since then, they hadn’t spoken, but not a day went by that she didn’t think about him.

In the search results, several emails from Jimmy showed up, but they were directed to the whole editorial team. Viewer numbers, shout-outs, and other nonsense.

She bit her lip.

She had to stop.

Time ticked on; in five minutes her allotted time for using the computer would be up.

She scrolled down the list of emails from Jimmy and was startled when she saw one with no subject, sent at the end of July. She clicked on it.

Thinking about you. Won’t you answer? I’m worried.

At first, she felt a tingling in her belly, then she read it again. And again. What did he really mean? He was thinking about her, but in what way? Was it perhaps just because he wanted to relieve his guilty conscience? But he’d sent it at one o’clock in the morning. Presumably, he’d been drunk. She read it one more time and tried to analyse every letter.

Ding. Your time is up. Thanks for visiting Culturum.

Ellen leant back in the chair and rocked on the back legs.

A gang of youths had gathered around a computer a little further away and were giggling loudly together at something on the screen. She couldn’t help eavesdropping and strained to hear what was so funny, but it was hard to make out. They looked like they were in high school: skinny, with too much make-up and colourful hair. They hadn’t yet learnt where the boundary for too much was.

Ellen picked up her phone and called Agatha, who answered straight away.

‘Ellen? Aren’t you on sick leave?’ Her voice sounded uncertain. As if they weren’t allowed to talk to each other.

Yes, you little bureaucrat … She could picture Agatha. Her colourful glasses, like an attempt to live up the little there was to be happy about in life. Even though she was the same age as Madonna, she looked twenty years older.

Ellen thought there probably weren’t many who missed her in the editorial office. Her TV4 colleagues had never liked her, or the world she came from. They thought she was born with a silver spoon in her mouth because her last name was Tamm and she grew up at Örelo Castle in Södermanland. She would never be able to gain the trust of the old guard. Even though Ellen had been in the newsroom for almost four years, they thought she was ‘new on the job’ and maintained that she still couldn’t handle the police department’s information and do a good job. Sometimes she wondered when, or if, she would ever be an ‘established’ journalist and co-worker. And now, when they’d found out about her twin sister and that she was mentally unstable (or whatever they were saying about her now), it would be even harder for her to fit in at Editorial.

‘How are you doing?’ Agatha asked.

‘Fine, thanks.’ She didn’t want to give Agatha’s fire any extra oxygen. ‘And you?’

‘Fine, I guess. A lot of work. We’re short-staffed and a lot of these summer interns don’t know what they’re doing.’

‘Do you have anyone covering the Stentuna murder?’

‘Yes, or we’re doing the best we can. There’s quite a lot of attention on the fatal assault on Sveavägen.’

‘The Stentuna murder is a fatal assault too.’

‘Yes, I know, but as I said, aren’t you on sick leave?’

It was the tone of voice that Ellen dreaded, the reason she didn’t tell her story to anyone. How was she going to manage the image they had of her now? Before Lycke disappeared, no one at the editorial office had known that Ellen had a twin sister who drowned. If she’d only spoken up in time about Elsa being missing, perhaps she’d be alive today. Ellen couldn’t bear to see the change in the way people looked at her once they knew about her past, and she could hear the judgement in Agatha’s voice. Everyone who knew kept their distance.

‘Did you check the licence plate that I emailed you about?’

‘No, I didn’t, I didn’t know …’

‘What information do you have?’

‘About the murder, you mean? Unfortunately, not much. We did a phone interview with the police, but there doesn’t seem to be much more, or else they’ve put the lid on it — it’s Leif who’s the most informed. Wait, let me see … yep, exactly. This is what they say: We never comment on findings or confiscation, says Börje Swahn. The police’s hunt for the suspected murderer is in full swing. It will intensify during today. Yeah, that’s about it. Maybe Internet knows more.’

They called anyone who worked with TV4’s website ‘Internet’. They were so young, modern, and interchangeable that the older guard didn’t even bother to learn their names.

‘Do you know something, or what?’ Agatha asked.

‘Yes. I’m down here, and I’ve got a bit to go on. If you send a photographer down, I can cover the case from here.’

‘I don’t know, Ellen. You’ll have to check that with Jimmy.’

That was the last thing she was going to do.

‘I have to hang up now,’ said Agatha, leaving Ellen with an uneasy feeling in her body.

Again, the teenage girls caught her attention with their outcries and laughter. They were talking louder and louder.

‘I can’t believe you did that. You could’ve died.’

‘Look how close you are!’

‘I dare you!’ they said in chorus, high-fiving each other.

Ellen saw the librarian send an irritated look in their direction and didn’t understand why he didn’t shush them. Didn’t he dare? Or was it just easier not to?

The girls kept on. ‘That’s so sick. You have to post it. Everyone has to do it, otherwise …’ They laughed and all talked at the same time.

‘Post the other video now, before we have to leave.’

‘Hey! Are you chickening out, or what? It’s a joke. Send — now! She deserves it.’

Ellen started to understand what they were up to and went over to them.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Nothing. Who are you?’ the girl with panda make-up and pink hair asked.

The dark-haired girl who was sitting in front of the screen turned around and stared at Ellen.

‘What’s your name?’ Ellen asked, realising in the same moment that it was the girl she’d almost run into up in Östra Villastaden.

‘Would you please chill out.’ She rolled her eyes.

‘Why are you so arrogant?’ Ellen didn’t get it.

‘Bea, tell her your name then!’ said the girl with pink hair.

‘Amen. Oh, you just said her name.’ They laughed. Everyone except Bea.

‘I’m sorry I almost ran into you earlier. Are you okay?’ Ellen held out her hand to greet her properly.

Bea stared at the hand, and Ellen didn’t really know how she should handle the situation to regain some form of respect from the girls. When she’d been that age, she never would have dared to treat an adult like this, but she couldn’t actually decide if that was good or bad. She was starting to understand why the librarian had held back. Just as she was about to take her hand back, Bea spat on it.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ Ellen yelled, feeling a strong instinct to give the girl a slap.

‘It’s not okay to snoop around.’ Bea shrugged before turning back to the screen.

‘I’m not snooping, but it sounded like you were up to some nasty stuff.’ She discreetly wiped her hand on her top.

‘I recognise you. Aren’t you a blogger or something?’ one of the girls asked.

‘No, I work as a reporter at TV4. I hope you aren’t being cruel to each other on the internet. Are you thinking about the fact that someone is sitting on the other end now and probably feeling terribly sad?’

‘Get lost. Did we ask for your opinion?’

‘No, but if you don’t stop now, I’m going to report you.’ Ellen got out her phone and took a picture of them.

What pigs, she thought as she left.