Monday Afternoon

Once again Sjöberg was at his desk with a sandwich in front of him, and once again he had a hard time finishing his meagre lunch. Some constables were now in a car on their way to the city with a suspected serial killer in the back seat. A forty-four-year-old man who had never been convicted before, who had never been in trouble with the law, had never stood out in any way, but instead lived a quiet life in solitude in a little apartment on Kungsholmen. He had always paid his bills on time, never been in contact with the social services or mental health system, and yet he was being held as a suspect in no fewer than four sadistic murders.

This was astonishing. What could have happened to bring out such a dark side of him? The victims were people he most likely hadn’t seen since he was a child, a very young child at that.

When news of the arrest reached Sjöberg, after first arranging reinforcements for Westman, he called Sandén and Hamad in from Hallonbergen. They were still searching for the only person on the list who had not yet been located. By now they were presumably in their car, on the way back to the police station, preparing for the initial interrogation of Thomas Karlsson, who would be charged as a suspect in the murders. Sjöberg felt tense as he waited for the confrontation with Karlsson, and wondered how he would manage to handle Karlsson’s alleged fear and nervousness. Perhaps they ought to have a psychologist on hand? No, that sort of thing would have to wait. The main thing now was to prevent any further victims by ensuring that they had indeed arrested the guilty party.

The phone rang yet again – all morning he had been flooded with calls from colleagues involved in the investigation around the country, journalists wanting an update on the developments in the Vannerberg case, the prosecutor, the police chief and so on – but he answered dutifully anyway. It was Mia, his sister-in-law, who wanted to speak to him.

‘I’ve done some research, as we agreed, and now I have a little information that I think will interest you.’

Sjöberg had forgotten, in the general confusion after Petra Westman’s breathless voice had requested reinforcements, about having asked his sister-in-law for help. The idea of trying to form an impression of the atmosphere in Ingrid Olsson’s preschool class almost forty years earlier felt superfluous now.

‘Go on,’ he said politely. ‘We’ve arrested a suspect for the murders, but tell me anyway. I’ll be seeing him in a little while, so it might be good to have something a bit more concrete to go on.’

‘It’s not Thomas Karlsson you’ve arrested, by any chance?’

Sjöberg remained silent for a moment, but then said, ‘I can’t answer that.’

‘Of course you can, otherwise I can’t tell you what I’ve found out. And it will interest you, because I knew his name, right?’

‘Okay, okay,’ Sjöberg sighed. ‘Now tell me.’

‘I talked with that friend in Katrineholm I love to talk about childhood memories with. Just because he has such a good memory. He’s the same age as me and it turned out that his little brother, Staffan Eklund, was actually in that preschool class. My friend and his mother both remembered things from that time. On the other hand, his little brother didn’t remember a thing. The police had already been in contact with him, but he was completely blank.’

‘Get to the point, please,’ Sjöberg encouraged her impatiently.

‘Okay, here it is. At that time they lived in a pretty bad area. They were building a house and were going to move away from there as soon as the new house was finished, but for the time being little brother was in that preschool. There was evidently a crowd of really nasty kids and his mum was not at all happy about his playmates. They got into fights and misbehaved and two of the children, above all, distinguished themselves as real brats. Guess what their names were?’

‘No, tell me.’

‘Hans and Ann-Kristin.’

‘You don’t say …’

‘Hans and Ann-Kristin dominated that group of children completely and stirred up the others against a couple of poor things they put at the bottom of the pecking order. One of them was Thomas Karlsson, the other was a girl, and they both got beaten up every single day. And the whole class was in on it, Staffan too, to his mother’s great disappointment. Probably due to peer pressure, he couldn’t really see what was right and wrong. They did horrible things to those children, each worse than the last. Besides beating them black and blue, once they almost drowned one of them, they cut off their hair, ripped their clothes; they laid one of them in front of a car on the street. There were teeth knocked out, and serious mental abuse along with it. Can you imagine? They were only six years old!’

‘What kind of person do you become if you’re subjected to such things?’ Sjöberg asked.

‘In a small town like Katrineholm it works this way,’ Mia continued. ‘Once you’ve been labelled, it’s like it can’t be washed off. I imagine that the bullying wouldn’t have stopped; instead, it would have carried on into school and presumably after, in some form or other, until one day you move away. So it’s hard to rehabilitate yourself. Maybe these children started it, but then others would have taken over and carried on the pattern.’

‘Carina Ahonen then, where does she fit into the picture?’

‘She seems to have been the one really pulling the strings. A sharp little doll who never used force herself, but who was the initiator of the mental terror. She was the one who decided who was good and who was bad, what was right and what was wrong. Everyone adored her, adults and children alike, but in reality she was the cheerleader and opinion-maker. In a negative sense.’

‘It sounds like we’re talking about a Mafia organization, not about six-year-old children,’ Sjöberg sighed.

‘People are always the same. The world runs on power and violence, at all levels.’

‘And Lise-Lott?’

‘A real ruffian. A stupid lackey with a great need for attention. I guess she behaved like most of the others, only more so.’

‘And Ingrid Olsson did nothing, I’m guessing?’

‘Exactly right,’ Mia answered. ‘Staffan’s mother tried to talk to her a number of times about the unpleasant atmosphere among the children, but she got nowhere. Ingrid Olsson thought her job was to watch over and stimulate the children during the time they were at preschool. There was no trouble on the preschool grounds and she could not control what the children said to each other. What happened outside the gates when they left was not her responsibility. The children and their parents had to manage on their own, she thought. Poor Thomas had no rights at all. At last, almost forty years later, I guess he decided to take matters into his own hands. What was he supposed to do?’

‘Nothing,’ said Sjöberg.

Thomas Karlsson was a man of normal build, somewhat below average height, with what might be called an ordinary appearance. He had brown hair, several weeks past due for a haircut, and was dressed in blue jeans and a blue cotton shirt. Sjöberg introduced himself and then sat down in the interrogation room to wait for Sandén, studying the suspect in silence. He did not seem to notice the scrutiny, but sat looking down at his hands. Nor did he appear particularly frightened or nervous, as Sjöberg had expected. Dejected, if anything. He had mournful blue eyes and his posture suggested resignation.

When Sandén stepped into the room he looked up, shifted a little in the uncomfortable chair and straightened up.

‘So your name is Thomas Karlsson,’ Sjöberg began. ‘This is Inspector Jens Sandén and we are here to question you about the murders of Hans Vannerberg, Ann-Kristin Widell, Lise-Lott Nilsson and Carina Ahonen Gustavsson. Do you know the people I’ve named?’

Thomas raised his head and looked him in the eyes for the first time.

‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘We went to the same preschool.’

‘Why did you murder them?’

When Sjöberg got no answer, he continued.

‘This is what’s called an initial interrogation. This is the first questioning that we have with a suspect immediately after the arrest. Later there will be more questioning, and then you have the right to have a lawyer or legal representative with you. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you admit that you are guilty of these crimes?’

Thomas hesitated for a moment, then answered.

‘No.’

‘Why do you think we’ve arrested you, then?’

‘Don’t know,’ Thomas replied.

‘What were you doing outside Ingrid Olsson’s house?’ Sjöberg asked.

‘I was afraid something would happen to her.’

‘Indeed?’ said Sjöberg. ‘But I’m not, because you’re sitting here with us, safely in custody. There won’t be any more murders. Are you sorry that your friends from preschool are dead?’

Thomas did not reply, but instead sat drumming his fingertips against each other. There was a knock on the door and Sandén went to open it. Westman waved him out into the corridor and their whispering voices could be heard, but not what they were saying.

‘That was a difficult time for you, so I hear,’ Sjöberg continued.

Thomas looked at him in bewilderment, without saying anything.

‘Preschool,’ said Sjöberg. ‘I’ve heard you didn’t have such a great time there. Can you tell me what they did to you?’

‘They hit me,’ said Thomas.

‘All children fight. It doesn’t sound all that bad.’

Thomas blushed. Sjöberg observed him in silence and Sandén came back into the room and whispered something in his ear.

‘But now you’ve been able to hit back,’ Sjöberg said quietly.

He saw the blood vessels on the man’s neck become visible. Perhaps there was an underlying rage festering below the insecure surface.

‘Tell us what you were doing at Ingrid Olsson’s on Monday evening two weeks ago, when Hans Vannerberg was murdered there.’

No answer. Sjöberg put on a cunning smile and continued in a silky voice.

‘We have positive evidence that you were there. We have found prints of your shoes in the garden, and soon we will have verified your fingerprints on the murder weapon. You’ve already lied to us once. You maintained that you were at home that evening, but we know you were on Åkerbärsvägen in Enskede. What were you doing there?’

Thomas’s face was now beetroot red, but he collected himself and answered the question.

‘I was following Hans Vannerberg.’

‘Okay then. You were following Hans Vannerberg. And then?’ Sjöberg smiled triumphantly.

‘Nothing. He went into the house and I waited outside, but he never came out, so I went home.’

‘Yes, that is a plausible explanation,’ said Sjöberg sarcastically. ‘But soon we will have identified the fingerprints on the murder weapon and what will you say then?’

Sjöberg received no answer, but the eyes he met were close to terrified. Sjöberg did not give up, but pressed on with another question.

‘Why did you follow him in the first place?’

‘I ran into him on the street. I was curious.’

‘And Ann-Kristin Widell, you just followed her too?’

This was taking a chance and Sjöberg knew it, but it hit the mark.

‘I went to see her.’

‘Just like that? On the evening of her murder?’

Thomas nodded in reply.

‘Curious about her too?’

‘Yes.’

Sjöberg could not believe his ears. Until now they had had no traces of Thomas Karlsson in Skärholmen and no witness reports, but he willingly admitted that he was there.

‘And what did you see then? Perhaps a savage murder? That you yourself committed?’

Thomas twisted his fingers nervously in his lap.

‘Visitors,’ he answered. ‘There were a lot of people who came to visit that evening.’

‘What kind of visitors were they? Murderers?’

After a moment’s hesitation, Thomas met Sjöberg’s gaze.

‘Customers,’ he said curtly, lowering his gaze again.

Sjöberg inspected the quiet man for a while without saying anything. Sandén, who until now had not opened his mouth, took over the questioning.

‘And then we have Lise-Lott Nilsson, what do you know about her?’

‘She’s dead.’

‘You didn’t by chance happen to be there too, when she was murdered?’

‘No. I read about it in the newspaper.’

‘You’re lying through your teeth,’ said Sandén, ‘and before long we will have identified your fingerprints at all four murder scenes. Then you can say whatever you like, but you can expect life imprisonment. Don’t you have anything reasonable to say to put an end to this meaningless interrogation?’

A shake of Thomas’s head was the only reply, whereupon Sjöberg declared the interview over and requested that Thomas Karlsson be transferred to the jail.

* * *

Thomas did not know where his sense of calm had come from, but in the car en route to the jail an unexpected feeling of security suddenly appeared. Even though he had just been sitting in a sterile interrogation room, held for a number of very serious crimes, there were people who cared and worried about him. The police officers saw him and took responsibility for him. They talked to him and they would see to it that he got to eat and sleep, that he had clean clothes and did no harm to himself. True, they despised him, but he was a person and he had aroused their interest. He felt like a small child being rocked in a secure embrace – no one could do him more harm than he did to himself. The contemptuous condescension and insinuating questions of the police gave him value. He was a significant person now.

But during the walk to the jail cell, where he would spend the hours until the lawyer arrived, something happened that made him reconsider. Thomas, in handcuffs, and the two constables escorting him were guided through the corridors of the Kronoberg prison by a burly guard. They passed a social room, where some young men sat playing cards. One of the men called out to the guard, wanting to know who was with him.

‘A new friend,’ the guard answered curtly, without stopping.

For just a fraction of a second Thomas met the young man’s gaze, but that was enough for things to go wrong. Before anyone realized what was happening, he threw himself forward and head-butted Thomas, making him fall to the floor. The guard, who was considerably larger than the assailant, overpowered him without difficulty, while both police officers brusquely hauled Thomas up from the floor, without taking into account that he was injured. Blood was gushing from his nose and down on to his clothes. When his head cleared, it occurred to him that, in their eyes, he was at least as dangerous as the man who had attacked him. He also realized that he would not cope well with being in prison. It would almost certainly be ten times worse than preschool.

* * *

Sjöberg left the interrogation room feeling dissatisfied. He could not get a handle on this peculiar man. He had made no effort to either defend or explain himself. Maybe he wanted to go to prison. Was he one of those criminals who wanted to show off and brag about his evil deeds? His story was very strange too. That he admitted following Hans Vannerberg to Ingrid Olsson’s house was one thing, since they had evidence that he had been there, but why did he admit that he had also gone to see Ann-Kristin Widell? And why didn’t he admit that he had done the same with Lise-Lott Nilsson and Carina Ahonen Gustavsson? The story didn’t make sense. Everything seemed clear, but Thomas Karlsson’s conduct in the interrogation room was puzzling.

‘A sick bastard,’ Sandén said, when they were sitting in Sjöberg’s office a few minutes later, each with a cup of coffee.

‘Do you think so?’ said Sjöberg.

‘Of course he’s sick, he’s killed four people.’

‘What if he hasn’t though? What if the fingerprints don’t match?’

‘Of course they’ll match. You don’t mean to say you’re in doubt?’

‘No,’ answered Sjöberg, ‘of course it’s him. But he behaved really strangely during the interrogation, in my opinion.’

‘In what way?’

‘He admits that he’s been at two of the murder scenes at the time of the murders, but not at the other two.’

‘Maybe he’s confused. Maybe he doesn’t know what he’s done.’

‘You don’t believe that,’ said Sjöberg dismissively. ‘On the one hand, he’s afraid and nervous, on the other, he does nothing to deny the accusations. Or even tell lies about mitigating circumstances.’

‘I guess he hasn’t found his “true self”,’ Sandén suggested.

‘No, apparently not,’ Sjöberg answered thoughtfully. ‘He had a difficult upbringing.’

‘Where’d you get that from?’ Sandén asked with surprise.

Sjöberg told him about his sister-in-law’s private surveillance and Sandén gestured that his lips were sealed.

‘Poor devil!’ he exclaimed when Sjöberg was done. ‘Makes you wonder how that poor girl has managed in life. If he turned out to be a serial killer, what might have become of her.’

‘Probably just a normal, peaceful person,’ thought Sjöberg. ‘Many children have a hard time, but strangely most of them turn out human anyway.’

Their conversation was interrupted when the phone on Sjöberg’s desk rang. It was Lennart Josefsson, the neighbour of Ingrid Olsson who had previously testified that two men passed by outside his window on Åkerbärsvägen the evening of the murder. This time he wanted to report that an unknown woman had passed by on the street outside several times that morning, finally entering Ingrid Olsson’s gate. Josefsson had also seen the arrest of Thomas Karlsson, and for that reason he had hesitated to call in about the strange woman for quite a while, but ultimately decided to do so. Sjöberg thanked him for the tip, but dismissed the whole thing as irrelevant to the investigation. It was probably only Margit Olofsson visiting Ingrid Olsson to make sure she was coping properly back in her own home.

The phone immediately rang again. This time it was Hansson at the forensic lab with the information that Thomas Karlsson’s fingerprints did not match any of those at the murder scenes. She had been able to determine that all the samples belonged to the same person, but this person was not Thomas Karlsson. This hit both policemen and the entire investigation like a cold shower. With the conversation with Lennart Josefsson fresh in his memory, Sjöberg immediately came to the conclusion that the two men who had been observed outside Ingrid Olsson’s house on the evening of the murder must have been Thomas Karlsson and an additional person who was in league with him.

During the following hours, while they waited for Thomas Karlsson’s lawyer to arrive at the police station, further reports came in from the forensics lab. None of the fingerprints taken from the people questioned from Ingrid Olsson’s old preschool class matched those at the four murder scenes.

* * *

Katarina had not yet taken off her coat. She was sitting on her suitcase in the hall, playing the scene over again in her mind. How many times she had done so she did not know, but one thing was certain: this was not what she had imagined. This was not the way it should end, alone again, misunderstood.

After wandering back and forth on the street for a while, she had finally gathered up her courage, and went through the gate and up to the house to ring the doorbell. Her heart was beating like a piston in her chest, but she was optimistic. All her hope rested on her old preschool teacher. Miss Ingrid was fond of children, so she must be fond of people. She would understand – console her and understand. Naturally everything would have been different if Ingrid had been at home when she had first sought her out, before everything that had happened in the past few weeks. Then, perhaps, Ingrid would have been able to stop her, put her on a better path. She could have helped her find the strength to forgive and go on. But she had not been home. Katarina kept the house under surveillance for days, but Ingrid had not shown up. So she had been forced to go to work, without Miss Ingrid’s approval. And for that reason there was a little seed of doubt inside her when the door opened.

‘Yes?’

How beautiful she was. She had cut her long hair and had a youthful short hairdo instead. Miss Ingrid looked enquiringly at her with clear eyes, behind a pair of glasses that suited her finely chiselled face. The wrinkles of age were well placed and gave her a distinguished expression.

‘My name is Katarina. Katarina Hallenius. You were my preschool teacher many years ago. I would really like to talk to you.’

Ingrid inspected her without saying anything.

‘May I come in for a moment?’ asked Katarina.

‘I don’t know. I’ve been ill and –’

‘I can help you. I’ve been looking forward to seeing you, Miss Ingrid.’

The gaze that met hers was a trifle sceptical, but that was not strange after so many years. She must get the chance to show who she was, so she took a step closer to the older woman. Ingrid took a step back and Katarina interpreted this as an invitation and entered the hall. Ingrid backed up a few more steps.

‘What’s happened to you?’ asked Katarina.

‘I broke my hip. Old people …’

‘You’re not old,’ Katarina smiled. ‘But I can take care of you.’

She carefully closed the door behind her and set her suitcase down on the floor. Then she took an old photograph out of a compartment on the outside of the suitcase.

‘Look here!’ she said happily, placing herself close by her old teacher. ‘Here I am. Do you remember me now?’

She felt that Ingrid Olsson’s gaze was still directed towards her instead of the picture and gave her yet another smile.

‘Look!’

Ingrid did as she was told.

‘No, I must confess that I don’t recognize you. But I just can’t –’

‘Wait, I’ll help you,’ Katarina interrupted and fetched the stool, which she placed behind Ingrid. ‘Sit down.’

Katarina sat down across from her on her suitcase and, with some hesitation, Ingrid sat down too. She said nothing and still did not return the smile, so Katarina decided to start her story.

She told about Hans and Ann-Kristin and all the other children. She told about terror, mistreatment and loneliness and what life had been like after the difficult time at the preschool. Not for a moment did she blame her old teacher for all the terrible things she had been subjected to. Yet Ingrid made only one brief comment during Katarina’s hour-long monologue.

‘What happened outside the preschool was not my responsibility. In my classroom there was no fighting.’

Katarina tried to get her old teacher to understand that it was not just about hitting and kicking, but about the whole game. She had a hard time holding back the tears, and at one point placed her hand on Ingrid’s, but the teacher resolutely lifted it away with a pained expression.

Gradually, Katarina started to worry that she wouldn’t be able to get Miss Ingrid to take an interest in what she had to say. In a final, desperate attempt to get her to react, Katarina talked about what had driven her to kill Hans Vannerberg, and how after that she had also looked up Ann-Kristin, Lise-Lott and Carina Ahonen.

Ingrid sat stiff as a poker on the stool and observed her in silence, without changing her facial expression.

‘May I sleep here?’ asked Katarina, when the words came to an end. ‘I’m so terribly tired.’

‘No,’ said Miss Ingrid. ‘You may not.’

A long time had now passed since silence had fallen in the hall. The two women sat quietly, observing each other. The suitcase, whose only contents were a washbag, a couple of changes of clothes and a few diaries, started to be uncomfortable to sit on. Slowly, it occurred to Katarina that there was nothing for her here either. No warmth, no consolation. Her beloved preschool teacher did not remember her, and obviously had no interest in lightening her burden. Her indifference to Katarina’s life story was apparent. And indifference was a deadly sin.

* * *

Ingrid was lying on the sofa in the living room. Her wrists ached from the tightly pulled cord that rubbed against her bare skin, and the blood was pounding in her bruised fingers. Her feet were also tied together, but the pain in them was not as noticeable. It was very wet underneath her and she shivered quietly, lying there in the cooling urine.

‘I don’t intend to harm you,’ Katarina had said. ‘Just like you, I don’t intend to do anything. I do intend to let you lie here until you rot, in your own filth. You’ll get no food, no water and no medicine. I’m not going to torment you; the torment will come from yourself. Your hunger, your thirst, your bad conscience, your needs of one kind or another. I’m not going to provide for your needs. You’re your own responsibility, aren’t you? That’s how you see it, true?’

At first Ingrid was too dazed to take in what the woman was saying, but now hours had passed and she’d had plenty of time to think and listen. How long did it take to starve to death? That probably didn’t matter; the hunger would gradually disappear until at last only a great, unbearable thirst would remain. How long could you live without liquids? A week, two weeks? She still felt no hunger, but her mouth was completely dry, so dry that she found it difficult to speak. But right now it was the pain in her wrists and the unpleasant pounding of the pulse in her fingers that she was most aware of. It felt as if her hands were going to burst and she wished they would simply go numb.

At first she had not understood who the unpleasant woman was and what she wanted, but Katarina talked uninterruptedly for an hour and at last the words sank in. She was one of the children in the murdered Hans Vannerberg’s preschool class thirty-seven years earlier. She insisted that she had been badly treated by the other children and Ingrid’s own guilt in the whole thing rested on the fact that she, in her capacity as teacher, had taken no steps to stop the so-called bullying.

The woman was obviously completely out of her mind, but even so, Ingrid could not help feeling rather unjustly treated. She had always done her best at her job, been friendly and nice to the children, and she felt that the children had liked her. She worked hard for many years at the preschool, taught the children to sew and make things, sang with them and played games. Of course, they could be a little annoying at times, and bickered with each other, but when Ingrid had been present there were never any fights or other mistreatment of the type that Katarina described.

Of course, she had no control over what happened after the children left the preschool. You have to draw the line somewhere, and in this case it was simple: the line was at the gate at noon, when the children’s day at the preschool was at an end.

‘You knew what was going on, you could have talked to the children,’ Katarina said.

Ingrid had no memory of any mistreatment, but in any case she answered, ‘I was a preschool teacher, not a therapist. Or a child psychologist, for that matter.’ But this did not go over well. After an unexpected outburst of complete madness, Katarina put her on the couch, hands and feet bound.

She had roared that Ingrid was a human being after all, and as such, you don’t just stand by and watch other people – children – destroy one another. Ingrid had not made any objection, but inside she knew that, in fact, this was the only way to survive. Even as a little girl, Ingrid had learned not to poke her nose in other people’s business. When her father resorted to clenched fists against her mother, she realized that it was best for all concerned if she stayed out of the way. It was a wicked and nasty world they lived in, but if everyone minded their own business, existence would be more tolerable. I am the forge of my own happiness, she thought, and you are yours, Katarina. Of course, she did not say this out loud, but she knew this was the way life worked.

The ache in her hands only increased and it was now beginning to feel unbearable.

‘Please, Katarina, can’t you loosen the cord a little?’ she begged pitifully. ‘It hurts so terribly.’

‘It hurts to live,’ Katarina replied with a smile. ‘You’re the forge of your own happiness, so make the best of the situation.’

The insane woman had read her thoughts and obviously had no intention of doing anything to relieve her torment. Ingrid felt the stealthy onset of hunger. Her interest in food had ceased long ago. Food simply had no taste any more, but even so, she felt hunger pangs like anyone else and would need to eat a little something so as not to become confused and nauseated. Now she was lying here completely helpless, hungry, thirsty and in severe pain, and it would only get worse. Katarina said she intended to live in her house until her time was up, until Ingrid’s time in the hourglass had run out.

There was no hope that anyone would come to visit, or even miss her. She was completely alone in the world, and she felt the tears streaming as she thought about that. She did not know when she had last cried – it must have been many years ago, perhaps when her sister passed away. Now she was alone, no husband, no children, no parents or siblings still alive. The few friends she had had over the years had grown old or disappeared, for one reason or another. She had left many of them behind, of course, in the move to Stockholm. It was hard to get old, hard to be alone. No one to talk to, no one to do things with, no one to come to her rescue in a situation like this.

* * *

Katarina was in the kitchen inspecting the contents of Ingrid Olsson’s freezer. It mostly contained bread, but also apples and plums parboiled in sugar, and sweetened berries. There were also some bags of homemade meatballs and casseroles. In the refrigerator there were large quantities of potatoes, and in the pantry she found rice and jars of preserves. She would not go hungry; there was food enough to last for weeks.

When she thought about how long this might take, she felt restless. On the one hand, she had an incentive to get the whole thing over with as quickly, and as painfully, as possible, but on the other hand, she knew that the longer it went on, the greater the torment would be for Miss Ingrid. The most important element here was prolonging it, magnifying the old woman’s certainty that it would end in death and the uncertainty of how long it would take. That had become the purpose of it all, that it would drag on and on, and that she herself would not take any action.

‘Set an example,’ she said to herself.

The choice of words was ridiculous because it was hardly worth setting an example for someone who would soon be dead, but even so that was what she would do. She was forced to hold back and not do anything rash that she would regret later.

She peeled some potatoes and put them in a saucepan, which she set on the stove. Then she rummaged around for an old cast-iron frying pan and put in a dollop of margarine. She watched as the margarine slowly melted, and as she shook the pan a little, it started sizzling. The bag of meatballs was rock hard, but by using a bread knife she was able to hack a few pieces loose, which she rolled down into the cooking fat. From the living room she thought she heard smothered sobs, which made her happy, even as the self-pitying and monotonous noise irritated her. There was a popping sound in the pan as the ice melted and a drop of boiling-hot margarine splashed up and hit her in the eye.

Before she knew what she was doing, she was out in the living room and found herself straddling the old woman. She struck her with clenched fists again and again on the face, after which she took hold of her grey hair with both hands and forcefully banged her head against the armrest. There was a crack somewhere inside the thin body below her and Ingrid screamed in pain.

‘Be quiet now, you old hag!’ Katarina screamed.

Ingrid winced and was silent.

‘This is taking too long, much too long! I don’t know if I can put up with your ugly mug much longer. So die already! Die, so we’re finished!’

It seemed like the old woman was on the verge of fainting. It was probably the broken hip that was so painful.

‘Say something!’ Katarina roared, continuing to shake her. ‘Don’t ignore me when I talk to you!’

‘You told me to be quiet,’ Ingrid whimpered, but her words were barely audible.

‘But now I’m telling you to answer. Have you broken your leg again, you bitch?’

Ingrid nodded, and Katarina saw that she was trying to articulate the words ‘hip bone’, but it disappeared somewhere in the darkness into which she was sinking. Katarina continued to shake her, but gave up at last when she noticed that the old teacher was now beyond reach.

She got down off the sofa, picked up the remote control on the table and turned on the TV. She flipped between channels for a while and found to her delight that the old lady had MTV. She used to watch MTV when she needed company, and now she sat for a while in front of Christina Aguilera and her well-built dancers, all moving in the same pattern in time with the music. The fury drained out of her as suddenly as it had come. She turned off the TV and went back into the kitchen, where she continued her food preparations.

* * *

When Ingrid opened her eyes again, Katarina was sitting in the armchair, eating.

‘Do you feel better now, after you’ve had some sleep?’ she asked in a calm, cool voice.

It was hard to believe this was the same person who a few minutes earlier had jumped on her in uncontrolled rage and hit and screamed at her. For the first time Ingrid felt the terror really take hold of her. Her imprisonment had happened at a leisurely pace and in a controlled way, and she had been more surprised than afraid. But now it turned out that behind the cold, calculating façade there was also a wild, hysterical person, beyond all reason. A person who presumably didn’t know herself what was waiting around the next corner.

‘You said you weren’t going to hurt me,’ said Ingrid quietly, trying not to rouse the dormant insanity back to life.

‘But I lied,’ Katarina answered with an ice-cold smile. ‘Can’t a person indulge in that occasionally? Life is full of surprises, and I guess that’s a good thing. Imagine how predictable existence would be otherwise, and how meaningless, if you already knew how everything would end. You promised that everyone would get to drive the green car, but that didn’t happen. I never did. I pushed and pushed for a whole year, hoping to get to drive it at least once, but I never did. You lie when it suits you, so maybe we don’t need to turn my statements inside out.’

‘What time is it?’ asked Ingrid.

Her tongue was sticking to her palate with every syllable. She really needed something to drink.

‘Oh, I don’t know. I don’t have a watch. I don’t care about time. This will take however long it takes, and that’s how it is with everything else too.’

‘Don’t you have a job?’ Ingrid asked. They might as well kill time by talking. When they talked she could concentrate on the conversation, and then she didn’t feel the pain as strongly.

‘No,’ Katarina answered. ‘This is my job – doing crazy things. Before, when I was in the hospital, I was in work therapy, but then they closed that down, so now I more or less do what I want.’

‘Where do you live?’

‘I live here with you, Miss Ingrid.’

‘But before? You must have lived somewhere?’

‘I live at home with my mum. If it suits me. In Hallonbergen. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes I live in a shelter on Lidingö. I do what I want.’

Ingrid looked at her for a long time, but Katarina took no notice of that. She seemed to be lost in her own thoughts now, looking dreamily out of the living room window into the November darkness. She was a good-looking girl. She was rather tall, straight-backed with a proud posture, and she had long, blonde hair. She was articulate, and her use of language made a reasonably educated impression. Did it really have to turn out this way, thought Ingrid, with a sudden flash of empathy. Then reality came back to her. She could hardly feel the pain in her hip any more, as long as she lay completely still, but her face ached, her stomach was crying out for something to eat, her mouth and throat for something to drink, and then her hands – the pain refused to go away. She needed to pee again. It had not yet dried completely from the last time before she had to go again. And on top of everything else, she felt humiliated, deprived of all pride and human dignity, reduced to a miserable little creature, lying there helpless, wetting herself.

* * *

Katarina ate her meatballs and potatoes in silence, and without noticing how they tasted. She was thinking about her mother, whom she had not seen since all this started. Her mother was old – even older than Miss Ingrid – and always had been. In photographs from before Katarina was born, she saw that her mother had always looked like an old lady. She wore peculiar hats and her stiff grey hair tied up in a bun at her neck. Even in pictures that must have been taken during the summer, she was unusually well wrapped up, with a warm coat, scarf and heavy winter shoes.

How Katarina had come about was still a deeply buried secret, and no father had ever been mentioned. Her mother raised her on her own, and was very particular about her daughter being clean and neat. That she should carry herself like a little lady and be polite and obedient. She had been too, but still her mother never seemed quite satisfied with her. When Katarina came home from preschool and school beaten up and with her clothes in tatters, she had been met only with curses. Her mother was loving in her own way. Her concern for Katarina took up most of her time, but signs of affection were lacking.

Instead, the time was devoted to her so-called upbringing and schoolwork. Katarina’s mother had been as different as you could get from the mothers in the storybooks at the library where her mother worked, and the mothers she saw in the courtyard where they lived. She was more like a kind of governess who sat alongside and studied everything Katarina did for the purpose of judging and evaluating. There had been hugs, at bedtime, but they were too hard and always given along with some admonition about doing better the next day. Katarina always fell asleep with a sense of failure, that she had done something wrong or incorrect that had to be atoned for. Still, she loved her mother. She loved her more than she had ever loved any other person.

These days her relationship with her mother was different. The transformation had happened almost imperceptibly, and Katarina had no idea what caused this disturbance in the balance of power. Perhaps it was simply old age that softened her mother’s temperament. Whatever it was, she always seemed happy to see her and made an effort to make Katarina feel welcome, even spoiled – something her mother had previously been terrified of – when she came home. Katarina lived with her mother, periodically, in the apartment in Hallonbergen they had moved to after leaving Katrineholm, before Katarina became a law student at the University of Stockholm. Her studies were interrupted almost before they began, when Katarina was stricken with anxiety, which was followed by one bout of depression after another. Finally, she was hospitalized and spent several years in a mental institution, to which she returned at more or less regular intervals.

She wondered what her mother would think if she found out what she had done. Katarina had always been careful to keep her mother in the dark about what happened at preschool and school, partly out of concern for her, partly because she suspected telling her about it would only have backfired. If the children were mean to Katarina, her mother would have assumed that it was self-inflicted, because Katarina had not followed one or other of her mother’s instructions. The consequences would have been worse than they already were, scolding and reprimands about what Katarina saw as the lesser problem: torn clothes, scratched knees and bruises. Katarina shuddered at the thought of how her mother would react if she found out that her nice little girl was a murderer. She would never survive such a thing. She already had a bad heart and such news would surely send her straight to her grave.

Yet she was doing it anyway. Even though she knew how the only person who ever cared about her would react, she did it. Her egotism and self-centeredness had got the upper hand, as her mother had always feared, and now she was busy doing the most forbidden things, simply to give her own life a little dignity and a measure of excitement – and maybe some enjoyment, too.

She shook off the thought with a little laugh and glanced over at the woman on the couch. Was she peeing again? Maybe she should have let her go to the bathroom, anyway; the stench in here would be unbearable if this dragged on. But the humiliation of a grown person peeing and shitting herself decided it. If the old lady was going to suffer, then she should do so properly, even if it created some inconvenience for her too.

She decided to investigate whether there was any alcohol in the house – she had not found any in the kitchen. She opened the door to the basement, turned on the light and went down a steep, narrow stairway that ended in a little hall. There were three doors. The first led to a storage area, containing an old bicycle and a clothes rack with old men’s and women’s clothes on hangers. The second door led to a small laundry room, with a washing machine, a dryer and an ironing board. The third door concealed a food cellar that was mainly used for jars of jam and preserves – it looked like Miss Ingrid made good use of the fruit the garden offered in autumn – but, more importantly, here she found a bottle of port wine and decided to open it.

Katarina went back upstairs and took a long-stemmed glass out of a kitchen cupboard. As she entered the living room she noticed the stench of urine coming from the couch. She turned on her heels with a contemptuous snort and cautiously cracked open the outside door before she pulled on winter boots and coat and went out. She closed the door quietly behind her and carefully walked down the steps and around the end of the house. Here she found a small white iron bench, shaded from the exterior lighting by the wall of the house. She sat down, enclosed in the dense November darkness, and an ice-cold breeze rushed past her face. It was completely quiet around her, and all she could hear was the distant roar of cars on Nynäsvägen.

She tore loose the foil from the bottle, unscrewed the lid and poured a generous dash. Then she brought the glass to her lips and took a deep gulp of the sweet wine. The strong liquid warmed her chest and clouds of steam came out of her mouth when she exhaled.

‘Cheers to us, Miss Ingrid,’ said Katarina. ‘And cheers to all of you, Hans, Ann-Kristin, Lise-Lott and Carina.’

She turned her eyes to the starless evening sky and raised her glass.