Another explosion from the direction of the manor. They were heading across the sound in the little motorboat. Edwin Björk was going fast. The prow whipped up the water, which flew up in sheets and spattered over them. Again and again the boat bounced on the waves, and they all nearly lost their footing.
‘Simon, what did you put in that bottle? That place is fucking burning down!’ Benjamin cried.
Simon scratched his head, puzzled.
‘It was me,’ Sofia said. ‘I poured petrol in the cellar. Everywhere. On the floor and the walls.’
She was still clinging to Benjamin, refusing to let go.
Simon shot her an odd look and Jacob stared, his mouth agape. All that was visible of Edwin Björk, in the wheelhouse, was the back of his neck.
‘What the fuck?’ Benjamin said. ‘Are you out of your mind?’
‘No, I’m not.’ Her eyes burned with tears of anger. ‘He beat me and raped me. That bastard was going to strangle me while he forced me into sex today. What the hell did you think he was doing with me in that cellar, playing Monopoly?’
She hadn’t quite boarded the boat. In some strange way, she was floating in the air. It still felt like tentacles from the cellar were trying to pull her back, but they were pried away one by one as they put distance between the boat and the island.
Benjamin held her away from him. He sniffled, close to tears.
‘Oh, fuck. Shit, shit. I didn’t know,’ he said.
They embraced again, mostly to avoid seeing each other cry. She pressed her face to his shirt and inhaled the scent of his sweat. Felt his heart pounding in his chest. Only when the heavy sky opened and they were drenched with raindrops that washed away their tears did she dare to let go and look at him again.
There should have been something strange between them – jealousy, some sort of scar, or at least an uncomfortable feeling of distance after the time they’d spent apart. But all she saw in front of her was Benjamin as he’d always been: big, calm, and safe. Drops of water clung to his eyelashes and a trickle found its way to the corner of his mouth.
‘That bastard is going to pay for this,’ he said. ‘We are sure as shit going to put him away.’
‘I don’t want sympathy,’ she mumbled. ‘I don’t want to talk about it yet. He was about to kick down the door when you arrived, just so you know.’
‘What if we killed him?’ Jacob wondered in horror.
‘We didn’t. Those walls are made of stone. The floor above is wood. The fire will spread upwards,’ Sofia said.
They heard Edwin Björk calling from the wheelhouse.
‘That’s true, what she said about how the manor was built. But I still hope he kicks the bucket.’
Simon and Jacob were sitting down now. Simon began to chuckle.
‘Jesus, Simon. Stop laughing like that, it’s creepy,’ Benjamin said. ‘He could pin everything on us. The guard saw us, after all.’
‘No, he can’t,’ Simon said.
‘Why not?’
‘We were never there. Sofia has a watertight alibi – Oswald made sure of that. Jacob ran away this morning and hid at Edwin’s. Elsa has been with him all day. Benjamin wasn’t on the ferry this morning, as Edwin knows. And I’m just a damn farmer who spends all his time poking around in the dirt. Inga Hermansson can attest to that.’
‘There is someone who knows I was there,’ Sofia said. ‘That pig Mattias, who I met in San Francisco. He’s got control of my email.’
‘He could confess to everything,’ Benjamin said.
‘He won’t,’ said Simon. ‘Surely you don’t think he’s going to admit to kidnapping Sofia and hacking her computer and all that. People like Mattias are just pawns in this game. He’s in a delicate position right now. He may be an idiotic Oswald clone, but he’s not that stupid. We’ll contact him when we get where we’re going. He’s going to be really useful.’
Benjamin gave a hoarse laugh.
‘Simon, you’re amazing! But Sofia, you have to report Oswald for rape,’ he said.
Sofia made a face. The very thought of standing in a courtroom again, face to face with Oswald’s snide smile, was so deeply repulsive that her knees felt weak.
‘No way am I doing that. He already raped Elvira, who was fourteen at the time, and all he got for that was the chance to rest up for eighteen months while he wrote his awful book. This will be better, with the whole fucking thing burning to the ground.’
They heard sirens and could spot flashing blue lights on the last bits of the island that were still visible. Sofia pressed the family history to her belly. It seemed like a miracle that she hadn’t dropped it during her escape. Part of her was still back in the cellar, her heart pounding; another part was full of an inner peace.
The sea stretched out before them. The rain had stopped. The damp air seemed to be breathing, stroking the heat away from her cheeks. The wind whispered in her hair, in the voice of Sigrid von Bärensten: That bastard is going to get what he deserves.
A plan began to take shape in her mind, a scenario that brought a tiny taste of triumph, although she couldn’t quite shake the feeling that Oswald would wriggle out of this again, as usual. But then she had a mind-boggling thought. The pieces fell into place. The doors opened wide. She felt herself break into a smile.
Of course it was that simple.
They had almost reached the harbour by now. She had to remind herself again and again that this was all real. The hard deck of the boat, Benjamin’s warm embrace, the dark sky above them. There was a lot left to do. She thought of how she would recover her email account and put the screws on Mattias; of how it would feel to see her parents again; of where she would get her hands on some clothes; of the fact that she really was starving.
And then she wondered how on earth it would be possible to be separated from Simon, who was sitting there looking at her so tenderly. A warm, loving feeling spread through her. Simon began to chuckle.
‘Damn, this was really fun!’
The fire was a ball of red against the sky on the other side of the sound. Like an early sunset.
It’s almost too bad that that beautiful old manor house is burning, she thought.
‘But of course, I wasn’t there,’ she mumbled quietly to herself.