Something was tugging at her, from the park. She stood on the grass. It smelled even better from there. She could hear voices on all sides, just as by the water earlier. She closed her eyes and heard fragments of voices, splinters. It wasn't red and yellow inside her head now, more green, and perhaps just a touch of yellow. She opened her eyes again and set off across the lawn. People everywhere. Voices everywhere. She entered a group of trees and could see the street beyond them. Another twenty metres, perhaps.
She felt awake, wide awake, like in the morning after a good night's sleep and breakfast.
There was a rustling in the branches above her. The path was more like a grove. She could see street lamps everywhere. It was already getting light. The sky was bluer now than it had been an hour ago. It was only just gone 1.00. There was a rustling, a swishing. Cars, laughter. She was already wondering when the first taxi would come rolling down the street.
A rustling to her right, a shadow in the corner of her eye, perhaps. She heard something, a bird. A laugh on the other side. A bush moved in a sudden gust of wind.
She was out in the street now. Cars passing by.
She walked along the pavement, then turned back into the park to cut off the last corner before emerging on the other side. There would be people absolutely everywhere and she wasn't scared and there was no reason to be, either. The very thought almost made her laugh. Just a few more steps to go.
2
She had gone numb, lapsed into unconsciousness, come back to life. Reached home. The sun was already hot, it felt like mid-morning. She'd walked down the hill hiding her face, so that nobody would see what had happened to her, what she had DONE. What somebody else had done to her.
The room looked the same as before, but nothing would ever be the same as before.
She ripped off her clothes, RIPPED off her clothes, and flung everything into the washing machine without looking and switched it on. The sound of the water was comforting.
She stood under the shower and washed herself UNDER her skin, or so it seemed. She stood there for a long time, rubbing her body and destroying all the evidence while the washing machine tossed her clothes backwards and forwards, dissolving the evidence, backwards and forwards. There was nothing left by the time Detective Inspectors Fredrik Halders and Aneta Djanali from the local CID arrived an hour later; nothing when the forensic officers from the police station in Ernst Fontells Plats eventually tried to find something among the threads and fibres.
The officer in charge had sent them out, Detective Chief Inspector Erik Winter, who suspected serial rape every time a rape was reported. He'd been right on two previous occasions.
Aneta Djanali eyed the park, Slottsskogen, as they drove past – the girl had told her mother and father it had happened in the park, they knew that. Djanali noticed the dog. Not something to play with. Nothing was to be played with. Three uniformed police officers were hovering around the car park. There were about ten cars there.
'Do you think they're checking the cars?' asked Halders, who was driving.
'Not just now, from the looks of it.'
'You get this big show every time.'
'Show?'
'They go mad. Twenty-five coppers with their hands in their pockets, and the bastard could have run off and left his car behind, that could be it there in the middle. That green Mantra. Or that black Volvo.'
'There are three of them, not twenty-five.'
Djanali saw one of the officers take a notebook out of his pocket and start writing down the registration numbers.
'They're starting now.'
The Bielkes' house was set back from the road, within a walled garden. The sea glistened only a few hundred metres away. Halders could smell the salt, see the water, hear the gulls, see the sails, a couple of ferries, a catamaran, the oil storage tanks, three cranes in the abandoned wharf on the other side of the estuary. A horizon line.
The house must have been worth ten million, but he couldn't let that affect him. People had a right to more money than he had. It might be newly built. Inspired by Greek architecture. The thing looked like a whole Greek village.
He wiped the sweat from his brow, felt it on his back under his shirt. Aneta looked cool. Must be to do with genes or something. Black on the outside, cool on the inside.
'Right, then,' he said and rang the doorbell, which was a tiny button barely visible in the yellow-tinted plaster.
The door opened immediately, as if the man inside had been waiting for the bell. He was wearing shorts and a shirt, barefoot, sunburned, maybe fifty, glasses with thin frames, thinning hair longer at the back. Thin all over in fact, Halders thought. Red eyes. Scared eyes. Something had invaded his home.
Now reality was intruding for the second time: first a daughter who had been raped, then two plain-clothes police officers. The two always go together. Hadn't occurred to me before, Halders thought. We're the ones who do the chasing up, the good after the bad; but for him we're each as shitty as the other.
They introduced themselves.
Kurt Bielke ushered them in. 'Jeanette is in her room.'
'Yes.' Halders glanced up the stairs. 'It won't take long. Then she can go to East General.'
'East General?'
'The hospital. Women's clinic.'
'I know what it is,' said Bielke, stroking his high forehead. 'But ... does she really have to go?' He turned to face Aneta Djanali. 'She says she doesn't want to.'
'It's important,' Djanali said. For numerous reasons, she thought to herself.
'Can we have a word with her now?' Halders asked.
'Yes ... Yes, of course,' said Bielke, gesturing towards the stairs. Then he just stood there, as if frozen, until his head moved once again. He wasn't looking at them. 'It's up there.'
They went up the stairs and came to a closed door. Djanali could hear the sounds of summer outside. A sea bird laughed out loud, and the laughter was followed by more. The birds drifted off over the bay. A dog barked. A car tooted. A child shouted out in a shrill voice.
Bielke knocked on the door. There was no answer, and he knocked again.
'Jeanette?'
They could hear a voice from inside, but no words.
'Jeanette? The po ... the police are here.'
Some word or other from inside again.
'Let's go in now,' Halders said.
'Shall I come as well?' Bielke asked.
'No,' said Halders, knocking on the door himself. He turned the handle, the door opened and they went in.
The girl was in her dressing gown, sitting on the bed. It was as dark as she could make it in the room, with the Venetian blinds closed. The bright light of the sun was trying to break through. It's as though the girl is trying to hide from it on one corner of the bed, thought Djanali. She's clinging to the wall. She's called Jeanette, not 'she'. She's got a name, but suddenly it has no meaning for anybody else; maybe not even for her now she's the victim.
Now it's my turn to speak.
Djanali introduced herself and Halders, who nodded, said nothing, sat down on the desk chair and observed her, gave her a friendly nod.
Half of Jeanette's face was hidden under the towel she'd wrapped round her head after her long shower. She was holding the collar of her dressing gown closed with a dainty hand. Djanali's eyes had grown used to the half-light in the room by now, and she contemplated the fragile skin on the girl's fingers. It seemed to be sodden.
She's been in the shower for hours. I'd have done the same.
Djanali asked a few brief questions, the simplest she could think of, to start off the first interview. The answers were even briefer, barely possible to comprehend. They had to move closer, but not too close. Jeanette spoke about the park. Yes, it had been late. No, early. Late and early. She'd been on her own. She'd walked there before. Lots of times, at night as well. Alone? Yes, alone at night as well.
This time she'd only just become alone. Or maybe it had been a few minutes. She'd been to two different places
and she said where they were and Halders noted them down. She spoke about the others who'd been there with her, for a short time at least. They'd been to a graduation party, just a little one. A quarter of the class. It was nearly a month since they finished their exams.
Djanali could see Jeanette's white cap on the chest of drawers under the window. She could imagine her joy at passing her exams, and earning the right to wear her white cap. It seemed luminescent in the darkness.
A little graduation party. Djanali shifted her gaze from the white cap to Jeanette's face. Nineteen years old. She would like to have asked her about boyfriends, but knew it was better to wait. The important thing now was basic questions about what had happened; when, how, when, how, when, how. Ask, listen, look. She'd done this often enough to know that the most important thing as an interrogator was to pin down what she called the incident behind the incident. Not just to take an account at face value. The victim's account. No, to start thinking about the difficult questions: Is that really true? Is that really what happened?
She asked Jeanette Bielke to tell her what impression she'd got of her attacker.
Suddenly Jeanette said she wanted to go to the hospital, she wanted to go now. Djanali knew that would come, or maybe ought to have come before now.
'Soon. Just one more question. One second only.'
'But I want to go NOW.'
'Can you tell us anything about this man?'
'I can't remember.'
'Was he tall?'
'He was big. Strong. Or maybe I didn't ... didn't dar ... want ... didn't dare to try and struggle. I did try at first ... but then I couldn't any more.'
She'd started to cry. She pulled at the towel and rubbed it over her eyes and it came loose and fell down and her wet hair became visible, stuck to her head as if by glue.
'He ... he'd tied me,' she said.
'Tied you?'
'Yes.'
'How?'
'Well, tied ... he had a noose round my ne ... round my neck. My arms ... then ...' She grasped hold of her throat.
Djanali could see it now, a red mark like a narrow line around her neck. Jesus Christ.
'It was like a dog lead,' Jeanette said. 'It didn't smell of dog, but it was like a dog lead.' She was looking straight at Djanali now. 'I could see it shining. I think so.'
'Shining?'
'It was shining round the collar. I think so. As if there were studs in it, or something.'
She gave a shudder, cleared her throat, then shuddered again. Djanali looked at Halders, who nodded.
'Just one last question, Jeanette. Did he say anything?'
'I don't remember much. I fainted. I think he said ... something.'
'What did he say?'
'I didn't hear what it was.'
'But you could hear words?'
'Yes.'
'You didn't hear what language?'
'It wasn't like a language.'
'What do you mean? Not like a language?'
'It was ... just sounds ... didn't mean anything. It was just something he ... something I couldn't understand.'
Djanali nodded, waited. Jeanette looked at her.
'He did it three times, or whatever. Repeated it. Or maybe it was just once. Just when he was ... when he ...'
The gulls were laughing outside the window again: they'd come back from the sea. A car engine started. A child shouted again. Jeanette rubbed hard at her hair with the towel. It was hot and stuffy in the room.
Djanali knew Jeanette had said all she was capable of saying just now, and that it was high time they got her to the hospital.
She could see Halders getting to his feet. It had all gone as usual. Rape. Report. First interview. Request for legal documentation. Car to the women's clinic.
This was real. Not just imagination.
Jeanette Bielke was being taken to the clinic: Aneta Djanali and Halders drove to the park where it had happened.
'What do you reckon about the description?'
Halders shrugged.
'Big. Strong. Dark coat. No special smell. Armed with some kind of noose. Made strange sounds. Or said something incomprehensible.'
'Could be any man in the street,' Halders said.
'Do you think she's reliable?'
'Yes.'
'I'd have liked to ask her more.'
'You got what information you could, for now.'
Djanali looked out at the summer. People weren't wearing much. Their faces were beaming, trying to outdo the sun. The sky was blue and cloudless. Everything was ice cream and lightweight clothing and an easy life. There was no headwind.
'Let's hope it isn't the beginning of something,' said Halders, looking at her. 'You know what I mean.'
'Don't say it.'
Halders thought about what Jeanette had said regarding the man's appearance, in so far as she could see anything. The rapist. They'd have to wait for the tests, but he was sure they were dealing with rape.
They could never be sure about appearances. Getting a description was the hardest thing. Never put your trust in a description, he'd said to anybody who cared to listen. None of it is necessarily related to the facts. The same person could vary between five foot ten and six foot three in a witness's eyes and memory. Everything could vary.
The previous year they'd had a madman running round and knocking people down from behind, no obvious pattern, just that he knocked them down and stole their money. But he did have a habit of introducing himself from the side, that was the nearest to a pattern: some greeting or other to get his victim's attention, then wham.
The victims all agreed on one thing: he'd reminded them of the hunchback of Notre Dame – stocky, hunchbacked, bald, dragged one foot.
When they eventually caught up with him, in the act, he turned out to be six foot two with thick, curly hair and could have landed the job of Mr Handsome in any soap opera you care to name.
It all depended on so much. What they saw. How dark it was. Where the light came from. Fear and terror. Most of all the terror.
He turned into the park and stopped the car. The uniforms weren't there any more. The scene was roped off, two forensic officers were crawling on the ground. There was a bunch of kids hanging round the far barrier, whispering and watching. Some adults came past and stopped, then walked on.
'Found anything?' Halders shouted. The scene-of-crime boys looked up, then down again, without answering. Halders heard a short bark, and saw the dog and its handler.
'Found anything?' he said to the handler.
'Zack picked up something over there, but it melted away into the wind.'
'Or up a tree,' said Halders, looking up.
'Were you there when we caught that bastard the other year who tried to hide up a tree?' the dog handler asked.
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