HE WIPED UP THE coffee on the floor. The mug had survived. He just had to wash and dry it along with the other one, and put them in their place in the cabinet. He took one of the cookies and popped it into his mouth. He tossed the rest into the garbage bag and tied it closed. Although he would never return, it seemed important to leave the house clean and tidy. He turned off the refrigerator and freezer, unplugged the toaster and coffeemaker, then turned out the lights and left the kitchen. The other rooms were already prepared. All he had left to do was say goodbye.
He had lived there for nearly eighteen years. It was a good house, and for the most part he’d enjoyed it very much. But now the house had been sold; it was the end of an era. The new owners would take possession in early October, which would leave plenty of time for the police to finish their examination. He could already picture them presenting all the evidence he’d so carefully planted.
He turned up the volume of The Valkyrie, which would make a great soundtrack for their arrival, opened the front door and stepped outside. It had started to rain. So far it was still sprinkling gently, but he knew that it was supposed to get worse, so he opened his umbrella, locked the door, and left.
His car was parked a fourteen-minute walk away, where Köpingevägan crossed Malmögatan. He was in no rush, so he strolled at a leisurely pace. Everything had been going his way for the past few hours, and for the first time in several days his plan was right on schedule. The only thing that made him walk faster was the rain, which was starting to beat against his umbrella. The last thing he wanted was to get wet. He had a change of clothes in the car, but he had specifically chosen the ones he was wearing for tonight, and he wouldn’t have a chance to change before he was finished and on the boat.
He dropped his house key into the storm drain, and turned right onto Jönköpingsgatan, right near Tycho Brahe School. Whenever he found himself in the vicinity of his old secondary school, he started thinking about how he had graduated with a perfect 5.0 grade point average, the highest in his class, and was still forced to watch as the scholarship went to Claes Mällvik, who only had a 4.63. It still upset him to think about it. Everyone had been so overly conscious of how difficult life had been for Claes, and they’d given him the scholarship as a consolation prize.
He couldn’t deny that Jörgen and Glenn, not to mention Elsa and Camilla, had all been absolutely horrible to Claes in compulsory school, and they deserved what they got, but that didn’t change the fact that he had disliked Claes ever since they started the first grade. Claes had literally got all the attention.
It had probably been more or less involuntary back in compulsory school, but in their upper years Claes had learned to take advantage of it — no one laid a finger on him there. And yet he made sure everyone knew what a hard time he’d had, and reminded them how goddamn sorry they should feel for him. The scholarship ceremony had been the last straw — he had promised himself never to end up overshadowed by Claes again.
It was a promise that reaped consequences only a few weeks later. He had just been accepted to the engineering school at Lund University, and found out a day or two later that Claes would be going to Lund as well. He decided then and there to scrap his university plans and start his own business instead. His school-level engineering degree would have to do.
His idea had been to have a sort of inventor’s workshop, where he could build specially designed machines. He wasn’t flooded with orders at the start, but he’d been able to pay the rent. Once microprocessors took over on a large scale, he’d ploughed through all the books he could find on the subject and worked fifteen hours a day. He loved it. A few patents later — including one for a knife-sharpener that IKEA sold all over the world, as well as the feed device on most bottle-return machines — he was financially comfortable.
He realized later on that he’d never been as happy as during that time. Even Claes was out of the picture. He’d had no idea at the time that Claes would show up again a few years later, only to cause him such pain that just thinking about it brought everything vividly back to life. His only real problem back then had been the same one he’d struggled with throughout his youth.
The loneliness.
It started raining harder and he had to hold the umbrella with both hands to keep from getting wet. He took a left onto Malmögatan and could see his car. He glanced at his watch and calculated that he still had plenty of time. Everything was coming up roses for him, and he even had enough energy left over to laugh about the time he’d been so desperate to meet someone that he’d created a profile on an online dating site, which was so fucking pathetic.
He’d met a few different women, but it had never gone further than having coffee. Each time he’d had to swallow his humiliation when they made excuses about why they had to leave early. Those white lies were meant to spare him, but they only made things worse.
He’d had an especially hard time getting over one woman in particular. She hadn’t even bothered to come up with an excuse and just got up to use the bathroom in the middle of their conversation and never came back. He’d sat there waiting for forty-three minutes before he realized what was going on and had to pay the whole bill. Nowadays, he didn’t understand why he had taken it so hard, why he couldn’t just swallow his pride and move on.
He’d had to get closure, so he decided to contact the woman again and demand an apology. But she had blocked him, so he created an entirely new profile in which he presented himself as an art director at an ad agency and claimed to work as a model as well. He used a picture from an ad for Stenströms shirts. It didn’t take long to reconnect with the woman, and he got her to agree to meet him at Le Cardinal.
He made sure to arrive fifteen minutes early. He took a seat in an out-of-the-way spot at the bar that gave him a full view of the door; he watched as she came in, her eyes scanning the room for her date. He watched her in peace and quiet as she was shown to a table, ordered a glass of red wine, and looked at the clock. She grew more and more uncomfortable sitting alone, and told the waiter for the third time that she wasn’t ready to order dinner, only another glass of wine and a bowl of nuts. He enjoyed every second as if each one were a drop of fancy champagne that had just been rescued from an old shipwreck.
Fifty-eight minutes passed before she paid and left the restaurant, unaware that she was being followed. Her steps were brisk and irritated as she clip-clopped down to Knutpunkten and boarded a bus; he easily got a seat directly behind her. Like everyone else, she hadn’t noticed him. She got off at Adolfsberg and he kept his distance while he followed her to her building. Five minutes later, he went in and rang her doorbell.
He arrived at his car. The rain was so heavy that he didn’t collapse his umbrella until he was inside the vehicle. He placed it on the floor of the passenger seat and closed the door; then he turned the key in the ignition and let the car idle to clear away some of the fog.
It had taken her just over a minute to answer the door, but he remembered it as one of the longest minutes in his life. She gave him a quizzical look; he didn’t know whether it was because of his stubble or his anonymous face. She asked who he was and what he wanted; he reminded her of their little date.
She tried to close the door but he was quicker and forced his way through the crack. Then he raped her. He took her right there on the hallway rug — not because he wanted her, he just wanted to degrade her.
The way she had degraded him.
She reported him, of course, and he was called in for interrogation. They fingerprinted him and tried to force him to confess. He adamantly denied that there was ever any rape. He acknowledged they had absolutely had sex, and that maybe it got a little violent, but it was nothing she hadn’t consented to. Finally, after several days in jail, there was nothing they could do but let him go.
He programmed the address into his GPS, put the car in gear, and pulled out onto Malmögatan, heading for Södra Stenbocksgatan. In eighteen minutes he would arrive at the first home.