The palms of my hands are scraped and full of splinters. I pull them out, one by one, then look at the tall fence behind me.
Father would have been proud of me now. He was always so disappointed that I didn’t do well at school gymnastics – although my grade in religious studies did compensate, to some degree.
I begin walking towards the entrance on the narrow gravel path that runs across the lawn. The gravel crunches under my feet and I step to the side, walking through the soft, lush grass.
There are fruit trees around me and on my right I pass an abundant bed of red roses. The scent of the exquisitely shaped flowers lingers sweet and heavy in the muggy air.
When I get to the house I walk up the steps. I stop halfway.
There is a suitcase on the landing and the door is open.
I hesitate. Should I ring the bell or just sneak in?
What if the woman named Rachel has nothing to do with Samuel’s disappearance? If so, it would be incredibly embarrassing if I was caught sneaking into the home of Samuel’s employer and her disabled son. It might even be illegal.
And I can’t do anything illegal.
Besides: what if the man the police officer told me about is hiding in the house – the accomplice, the lion.
But then I think of Samuel, of how much I miss him. Of all that never was said and never done. Of how I am the only person searching for him right now, the only one he can trust.
You’d do anything for your child, anything and then more.
‘If I find you I promise I will give you your father back,’ I whisper to myself. ‘And I will become a better person.’
I think for a minute.
‘And lose two stone,’ I add.
I step into the hallway and pull the door behind me so that the wind won’t catch it and slam it shut. A second later it slides closed behind me with a low sigh, as if it were made out of metal.
My heart skips a beat. I freeze, mid-step and listen, but can’t hear anything. No footsteps approach. Nobody calls. No lion with sharp teeth jumps out.
I look around.
The hallway is like something straight out of an Arts and Crafts movement painting.
The walls are covered in blue wainscoting and an old-fashioned floral edging runs along them. Men’s clothes hang on hooks – hoodies, a parka and a thin down jacket. A small grey console table with trendily scuffed paint stands by the wall. On the table is a glass vase with fresh red roses.
Further down the hallway I see two black suitcases.
Someone just arrived or is just about to leave.
I take a few, probing steps, then I stop and take my shoes off. Through a doorway I see an empty hospital bed with a metal headboard. A couple of yards away there is a large metal frame. A blue harness with black straps and buckles hangs from the frame.
The harness sways slowly back and forth, as if someone recently gave it a little nudge.
Next to the bed there is a small table with a lone rose in a vase and a jar of some sort of cream. There is yet another suitcase on the floor. The walls are covered in pieces of tape, as if someone has taken down posters that had been put up there. On the floor next to the suitcase there is an old pair of football boots.
Jonas’s room?
But if that’s the case, where is he? Björn met him here less than an hour ago. And where is Rachel?
A slight scent of detergent and something else, chlorine maybe, tickles my nose. A squeaking sound comes from somewhere inside the house.
My heart skips again. Sweat streams down my forehead and between my breasts. My hands tremble so badly that I instinctively look around, afraid of unintentionally knocking something over.
The room seems to shrink and my field of vision narrows as fear grips my body. Invades every part of me until my legs no longer obey me and my arms hang down by my sides like weak-willed lumps of flesh. My hands and feet tingle and my mouth goes dry.
The fear is so strong that I am thrown back to childhood. To lonely, anxiety-filled hours with a monster lurking under my bed. To walks through dark wooded areas, where wolves were waiting in the bushes. And right then the words come out of my mouth on their own:
‘Dancing Queen’
‘Mamma Mia’
‘Chiquitita’
‘The Winner Takes It All’
My heart finds its rhythm and sensation returns to my limbs. The room regains its outlines.
‘Fernando’
‘Waterloo’
‘When I Kissed the Teacher’
I turn my head slightly and look straight ahead, into a living room where the sun flows in through large casement windows. One of the windows is open; it sways slowly in the light breeze.
That must have been where the squeak came from.
I shake my head at my own imagination. Inhale deeply and begin to walk towards the living room.
‘Head Over Heels’
‘Name of the Game’
My steps are calm now. Determined. They are steps that know what they want and will not budge for imaginary monsters. But the wide floorboards groan alarmingly under my weight and I am forced to stop.
I let my gaze wander across the room.
Outside the window the sea stretches lazily in the afternoon sun, doomed to forever strive for the heavens, but never reach beyond the horizon. White sofas and armchairs are positioned across the floor. There are bookshelves along the walls. Spines in all sizes and colours of the rainbow fill the shelves, but also photos and ornaments.
Next to a photo of a woman and a little boy there is a cobalt-blue glass bowl on a stem that reminds me of my old cake platter back home in Fruängen that I inherited from my grandmother.
I step closer.
There is a man’s watch with a canvas strap in the bowl, a mobile phone case with a hemp leaf pattern and . . .
And . . .
The window squeaks again and thumps as it swings open and hits a flowerpot. A warm gust of wind caresses my back and the hairs at the back of my neck stand on end.
I look at the blue bowl uncomprehendingly.
Next to the phone case there is a keychain. A tiny fish and an equally small plastic book dangle from the key ring.
That is Samuel’s key ring – I gave it to him myself. We ordered those for all the kids in the congregation’s youth programme. Of course it was cheap Chinese tat. But the important thing was what it meant – obviously the fish symbolised Christianity and the little book was the Bible, the holy scripture.
But why are Samuel’s keys here, in the blue bowl, if he isn’t here anymore? I reach out to touch the key chain, as if it could help me understand what happened. As if the cheapest plastic might transmit some kind of hidden message.
Thud.
Instinctively I turn around. Expect to see the window hit the flowerpot again. But I am face to face with a woman.
She is dressed in jeans shorts and a thin, white blouse. Her dark, almost black hair, hangs over her shoulders. No, it doesn’t hang, it flows, like a river, down her shoulders, along the pale marble skin of her neck.
She is beautiful, very beautiful.
Beautiful in a way that I have never come close to being. And even as the panic comes roaring back, I register that we look alike – kind of like sisters, where one turned out beautiful and the other ugly.
Rachel.
‘Who are you and what are you doing in my house?’ she says in a shrill voice, squeezing hard an object that she is holding in her hand. I can’t see what it is, but it is small and when she moves it reflects the sunlight.
I open my mouth to answer but no words come out.
Rachel takes a step towards me and I step back, knocking my elbow into the blue bowl. It rocks a couple of times, but remains on the shelf.
‘Who are you?’ she screams.
‘I . . .’
My voice doesn’t carry.
I back a few steps out towards the hallway. Trip on the threshold and almost fall, but manage to grab on to the door frame at the last second. But my sweaty hands slide across the painted surface and I lose my balance again:
‘Honey Honey’
‘When All is Said and Done’
‘Samuel,’ I whisper. ‘I am Samuel’s mother. Where is he?’
Rachel begins to walk towards me and I keep backing into the hallway. I trip again and fall against the grey side table. The vase topples over with a crash. Glass shards and roses scatter across the floor like spillikins. Cold water runs down my calves.
‘Samuel quit,’ Rachel says.
‘No,’ I say. ‘I saw his keys. He has to be here.’
‘He quit,’ she says again, taking yet another step towards me. ‘He found another, more ambitious job. Just like the others.’
Rachel stops and for a second she looks endlessly sad. And the sadness somehow seems to take the edge off her anger, at least for a moment, so I decide to keep talking. Just talking.
When it comes down to it, that is what I am best at.
‘I miss him terribly,’ I say and to my surprise I hear that my voice carries.
She knits her brow and lets her eyes wander across the roses on the floor. Then she slowly shakes her head.
‘I know all about missing someone,’ she says after a short pause.
I nod and follow her gaze. Next to my foot there is a door stopper of wrought iron, shaped like a little lamb.
A thought crystallises. A thought so terrible that I almost don’t want to follow it all the way to the horrific conclusion.
I think of the poem. I look at the wrought-iron lamb.
And at that very moment the image of the self-satisfied pastor shows up in my mind again, but I also see one of the framed illustrations on the wall behind him in the congregation hall. It shows a lamb resting safely next to a giant lion.
The Lion of Judah.
The sacrificial lamb.
It is so ridiculously simple that I can’t believe I didn’t think of it earlier. Or that those clever police officers didn’t crack the riddle sooner.
‘It was you,’ I whisper. ‘You are both the lion and the lamb. The atonement and the battle, just like Jesus. There is no accomplice.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Rachel says, but she doesn’t look at me. Her eyes are fixed on the floor.
‘You assumed the right to play with God,’ I say.
In the same instant I realise my mistake:
‘Oh. Sorry. To play God, I mean.’
But my mistake completely passes Rachel by. There’s a twitch in one of her eyes and she is bracing herself against the wall with one hand.
‘I read the poem,’ I say. ‘Samuel wrote me a message on it. On the poem, that is. And put it in the car. My car. So that I found it.’
‘My partner is a writer—’ she begins.
‘You know your Bible,’ I interrupt. ‘Just like I do. The lion and the lamb are one and the same. They are both symbols of Jesus. The sacrificial lamb who died for our sake and the lion, the king, the messiah. They are Jesus in two different guises. That is how you see yourself, isn’t it? As God? And just like God you believe you have the right to take lives.’
‘I just want my son back,’ Rachel murmurs. ‘Just like you.’ She is crying now. Big tears roll down the pale cheeks and I see real grief and pain in her face. And in that instant yet another piece of the puzzle falls into place.
She didn’t choose the name Rachel just because it meant lamb.
I recall the words from the gospel of Matthew clearly, can almost hear Father’s voice as he reads out loud from his old well-worn Bible:
‘In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.’
Rachel raises her eyes, taking a few steps towards me. There is crackling and crunching as she walks across the broken glass with her bare feet, but her face is as expressionless as stone.
She leaves bloody footsteps as she walks across the wooden floorboards. They glisten in the sunlight that is making its way in from the living room.
‘Where is Samuel?’ I ask again, backing towards the front door. Feel with my hand for the doorknob and find it.
She shakes her head slowly.
‘He is gone,’ she whispers. ‘He is gone. Everyone is gone.’
‘No!’ I say with tears in my throat. ‘He isn’t gone, do you understand? You know where he is and you are going to tell me.’
The handle rests cold in my hand when I push it down, but it doesn’t move one inch.
I look around, search with my gaze for the keys, that have to be somewhere.
Rachel shakes her head slowly. A large puddle of blood has spread around one of her feet, but she doesn’t seem to notice.
‘Are you looking for this?’ she asks and holds up a bunch of keys.