To someone who didn’t know what it normally looked like, it would probably have seemed neither odd nor unsettling. But she did know, and as she looked at it, she felt panic starting to build. Before long, the pressure around her chest was so tight she couldn’t breathe.
Her first thought was that it wasn’t her phone. But the chip in the top left corner from when she dropped it was there, and the home button glitched just like it had been doing over the past few weeks.
Everything was right.
Everything except the background picture.
It should have been a picture of Smilla, her brown and white Boston terrier who had died three years ago from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. But it wasn’t a picture of Smilla.
Instead, it was a picture of her.
A picture of her, sleeping in her own bed, wearing the exact same T-shirt she was wearing right now. Even the toothpaste stain from last night was there, which meant the picture had been taken in the past eight hours. So someone had broken into her flat.
Maybe it was just a technical malfunction. Or some new camera function she had accidentally activated when she went to bed. But no, the picture was taken from above. Someone must have been in her bedroom.
Was someone having her on? One of the many nocturnal guests she’d brought home over the past few years, who had made a copy of her keys? Though she had no idea how that could have happened without her noticing. Or was it a warning from someone at work that she’d been too ruthless there?
The questions bounced around like ping-pong balls. Granted, there were likely disgruntled people among the staff, but hard as she tried, she couldn’t think of anyone who’d be twisted enough to do something like this.
Then it struck her.
What if he was still in the flat. What if he was standing right outside her bedroom door, waiting for her. Or what if he was inside the…
She tried to regain her composure and convince herself she was just overreacting. But she couldn’t. Before she could dare to leave the bed, she would need something to defend herself with. Something other than her pillows and duvet. Maybe her bedside lamp. Though it was far from ideal, it was the only thing she could think of that was within reach.
As though she stood a chance of fending off some strange man. Who was she trying to fool? She, who froze when she saw a spider. Running over people in a meeting using factual arguments was one thing. Physical violence was something else entirely.
But what choice did she have? Did she have a choice at all?
She turned over as carefully and quietly as she could, grabbed the lamp with both hands and tugged. The two screws were ripped from their holes, pulling out white plaster dust that fell on to her black pillowcase. Then she unplugged it from the outlet, wrapped the cord around her left hand and grabbed the wall mount with her right before putting her feet down on the floor.
To the beat of her own pulse, she squatted down and peered under the bed. Apart from her scales and the box of sex toys on castors, there was nothing there, nor had she expected there to be. On the other hand, she still found it hard to believe someone had really taken a picture of her with her own phone.
She stood up, walked over to the cleaning cupboard on the left and threw the door open. But there was no one in there either. She swapped the lamp for the metal tube from the vacuum cleaner, then searched the wardrobes.
Whoever it was, he was not in her bedroom, which for some unknown reason felt like a relief. As though everything would be okay, so long as she stayed in there.
She did, in fact, have her phone and could call someone. Whoever that would be. Gittan, who used to be her best friend, hadn’t talked to her since the Christmas before last, when Molly had had enough of her nagging her about getting herself together and finding a man to move in with. She had no one to confide in at work either. That would be taken as a sign of weakness, and right now, weakness was the last thing she could afford to show.
Granted, she could call the police. But they were probably going to start by asking if the perpetrator was still in the flat. So she gave the bedroom door a little kick, and it opened without a sound.
In fact, the whole flat was very quiet. Unusually quiet, now she thought about it. It was as though the traffic on Järnvägsgatan a few blocks away had stopped, and the old man in the flat below hers had turned off his TV for the first time ever. All to underline the seriousness of the situation and set her even more on edge.
She stepped into the living room and looked around. The corner sofa by the window didn’t seem to have been moved. Nor the armchair, the bookcase or the dining table in the other corner. There wasn’t really anywhere for a person to hide, which was why she managed to muster the courage to move into the hallway and from there into the kitchen.
It, too, looked exactly like it had when she left it the previous evening. The dishes from her dinner were in the drying rack and the bag with rinsed-out plastic containers lay tied up on the floor, waiting for her to carry it down to the bins on her way to the car. She only really opened the pantry door to be thorough.
Then she turned on the lights in the bathroom and saw that yesterday’s knickers lay discarded in the middle of the floor and that the shower curtain around the bath was pulled closed. Had she left it that way or was someone lurking behind it?
She raised the vacuum tube, walked over and tore the curtain aside.
There was no one there.
Maybe she had accidentally snapped a selfie in her sleep after all. Somehow, that would be just like her. Since she got her new phone, which had a front-facing camera, she had taken so many selfies she had started receiving warnings about her memory running low. There must be a logical explanation, and she had probably blown everything out of proportion because she was nervous about her presentation to the board.
Her pulse was finally slowing down, and she could at last breathe a sigh of relief and put the vacuum tube down, pull off her T-shirt and step into the bath. Then she closed the shower curtain again, turned on the tap and waited until it had turned from freezing cold to a little bit too hot before switching the tap from bath to shower.
She loved that burning feeling on her skin and turned the heat up even higher. She could stand under that jet forever, and this morning she needed it more than she ever had. She felt her fear being rinsed away with each drop of water.
She turned the shower off and dried herself quickly before stepping out of the bath. The mirror had fogged up as usual, and even though she knew she shouldn’t, she wiped the condensation off with her towel.
Suddenly, there was screaming, so loud it hurt her ears. It took her a moment to realize the scream was coming from her. It was instinctive and seemed never to want to end. At the same time, the fog was returning, making her reflection increasingly indistinct.
Even so, she could still clearly see that a large chunk of her fringe had been cut off.
2
It’s your fault…
The sound of the bullet, like an arrow whizzing through the air. A rushing sound preceded not by a bang but rather a vacuum that had been equalized. An innocuous, barely noticeable whoosh, like when you open a new tube of tennis balls.
All of this…
Matilda, his own daughter, only thirteen years old, who had clapped her hands to her stomach and stared at the dark red stain growing bigger and bigger on her top. Her uncomprehending eyes and ever stickier hands as she collapsed on the white rug.
Yours and no one else’s…
Everything had happened so horribly fast, yet Fabian Risk could still play the entire course of events frame by frame.
His hands, which had finally been able to hold the gun, aim and pull the trigger. The blood that had pumped out through the hole in the perpetrator’s forehead, along with the realization that it was all over. Too late. And finally, the words from his own son, which would haunt him forever.
That it was all his fault. His and no one else’s.
Nothing could have been more tr
ue.
The bullet that had taken Matilda’s life had come as a complete surprise, despite all the warnings. He had managed to miss them all and pushed on with his investigation into the identify-theft killers.
Now he was sitting here, in the first row, with Theodor on one side and Sonja on the other, dressed in the dark suit he hadn’t worn since a young Danish murder victim, Mette Louise Risgaard, was buried in Lellinge Church two years earlier. This time, it was his own daughter trapped under all the flowers in the coffin that looked too short.
But the guilt was the same.
His.
Next to him, Sonja was crying, and on the other side he could hear Theodor fighting back tears. He, for his part, felt nothing. It was as though the roller coaster of hope and despair he had been on over the past four weeks, sitting by Matilda’s bedside with Sonja, had used up all his feelings.
His daughter had been murdered right in front of him, but the only thing he could feel was the stress of not feeling anything. He couldn’t even hear what the priest was saying. The words stubbornly bounced around, blending together despite microphone and speakers.
‘You do know this is your fault, don’t you?’
The voice was so quiet it was impossible to pinpoint its origin. He turned to Theodor. ‘I’m sorry, what was that?’
‘Are you deaf? I said this is your fault!’ Theodor was speaking so loudly the priest faltered.
‘Theodor, not now,’ he finally managed. ‘We can talk about it later.’
‘What do you mean, later?’ That was Sonja, and now the whole congregation was listening. ‘It’s already too late. Don’t you get it? Our daughter doesn’t exist any more.’ She burst into tears.
‘Sonja, please…’ Fabian put his arms around her, but she slapped them away.
‘Theo’s right. This is all your fault!’
‘Exactly. So don’t try to blame us,’ a third voice piped up behind him.
He turned around and saw it was his boss, Astrid Tuvesson, who was sitting together with his colleagues Ingvar Molander, Klippan and Irene Lilja. He was just about to ask her why she was sticking her nose in, but was interrupted by the sound of the organ launching into the next hymn, which made the rest of the congregation stand up and start singing.
He didn’t have the energy to do anything but slump in his seat, letting his eyes rove across the people singing around him. Everyone except Molander, who, though he was standing up and moving his lips, was not singing. Rather, he looked like he was talking. Was he saying something to him?
Fabian pointed to himself. Molander nodded, leaned forward and whispered in his ear, ‘Drop it.’
‘Drop what?’ Fabian didn’t understand.
‘You’re never going to prove it anyway.’ Molander stuck his tongue out and pretended to hang himself, then he let out a raucous laugh that was drowned out by the howling feedback of the priest’s microphone.
The alarm penetrated deeper and deeper into Fabian’s subconscious. A beeping tinnitus note that eventually coaxed him into opening his eyes and realizing he wasn’t in a church at all, but in the hospital, in the room where he and Sonja had taken turns sitting with Matilda for the past month. The only thing he didn’t recognize was the dirty white curtain hiding the bed where she lay.
He could hear voices from the other side and got up out of the armchair, tore back the curtain and saw one of the three nurses pushing and turning the howling machine’s buttons. The other two stood on either side of the bed, checking Matilda’s pulse and eyes.
‘What happened?’ he said, but there was no reply. ‘Excuse me, could someone please tell me what the fuck’s going on?’
The shrill beeping stopped, leaving an oppressive silence in its wake. The three nurses exchanged looks; Fabian tried to gauge whether they had the situation under control.
Then Matilda coughed and opened her eyes. His darling daughter, who had been gone for an eternity, finally looked around the room with enquiring eyes. And then tears started trickling down his cheeks. It was as though they had been waiting for this, longing to burst forth.
‘Hi, Matilda. How are you feeling?’ one of the nurses said with a warm smile.
Matilda looked at them without speaking.
‘Matilda, you’re awake.’ Fabian pushed his way to the bed and took her hand. ‘You’re back. Do you understand? You survived.’ He turned to one of the nurses. ‘Right? She’s going to be fine, isn’t she?’
‘Absolutely,’ she said, to the nodded agreement of the other two. ‘All her stats look good.’
‘Did you hear that, Matilda? Everything looks good.’ He stroked her cheek, but she turned her face away. ‘Matilda, what’s the matter? Didn’t you hear? You’re going to be all right.’
Matilda shook her head and looked ready to burst into tears at any moment.
3
Police detective Irene Lilja could still feel her nether regions throbbing when she pulled on her helmet, straddled her newly serviced Ducati and roared away over the speed bumps of the suburban street. The make-up sex was the only reason she hadn’t left Hampus a long time ago. He was never more passionate and fiery, while at the same time tender and thoughtful, as after a fight.
But they fought too often. Whatever the subject, an argument was always simmering just beneath the surface. It made no difference that they were generally on the same page deep down; they always ended up each other’s polar opposites, though this particular fight had been about something she’d been mulling over for some time.
It wasn’t that Hampus was an alcoholic, but he had definitely dialled up his weekend drinking and those bloody cans of lager were well on their way to becoming a natural extension of his right arm whenever he wasn’t at work.
It went without saying that her bringing it up had triggered him instantly and, before long, she had been seeing red too. But it was only after she started emptying beer cans into the sink, one by one, that he had let his true colours show.
He had never hit her, but last night, for the first time, she had been afraid. The rage in his eyes when she had defied him and opened yet another can had made her give serious thought to leaving him once and for all.
The phone call had come just as she passed Kvidinge on her way to the Helsingborg police station. She had been looking forward to ten uninterrupted minutes with the wind and the Ducati as her only company. But when an eleven-year-old Syrian boy in Bjuv turned out to have disappeared without a trace on his way to school, she had no choice.
If only it had been a Swedish boy instead, she thought to herself as she passed a Prius that was insisting on staying just below the speed limit. Then she could have let the uniforms deal with it, certain the boy was simply cutting class to smoke cigarettes behind the bushes with a friend.
But ever since the brutal murder in their neighbouring municipality, Klippan, almost twenty years ago, racism and xenophobia had been on the rise. That time, neo-Nazi Pierre Ljunggren, sporting a swastika armband and carrying a butterfly knife, had spotted dark-skinned Gerard Gbeyo by chance, hunted him down and stabbed him to death in the middle of the street, completely unprovoked.
Obviously, neo-Nazis and right-wing extremists could be found in just about any part of the country, but the south was definitely the most afflicted. Local politicians could try as they might to gloss over the region’s racist reputation and talk it up as the greenest part of Sweden. The general sense was that it was more like Sweden’s brownest.
She couldn’t agree more, and when Hampus had surprised her on her birthday with a signed purchase agreement for a house, she had flown off the handle. Granted, the house was in Perstorp, not Klippan, but to her, the difference was negligible. The mere thought of moving to a small town where people walked around in knee socks, flew the local Scanian flag and felt growing immigration was the biggest single threat to national security set her on edge.
Besides, she had never wanted to buy a house, and the fact that Hampus tried to pass off the down payment as
a present for her only made her more pissed off. He had gone behind her back and shoved his own dream of a house with a garden down her throat.
Now, a year later, she was less negative about it, even though the red bungalow was still one of the ugliest houses she had ever seen. Hampus going berserk with the garden shears, making every last juniper bush look like a ball, a dash or, in a few badly botched cases, male sex organs, had done nothing to improve its appearance.
But the neighbours on their street were actually really nice, from her limited experience, and she had neither spotted any knee socks nor been forced to listen to any xenophobic nonsense. Perstorp was apparently one of the few municipalities that had seen a decrease in right-wing extremist activity in recent years. She didn’t know what the situation was in Bjuv, though it was likely no worse there than in Sjöbo, Trelleborg or Landskrona.
Even so, it was with a knot of worry in her stomach that she turned on to Gunnarstorpsvägen and parked the Ducati on the corner of Vintergatan, across the street from the white three-storey building.
Everything was quiet, apart from a man in tracksuit bottoms and a black hoodie who was standing by a lamp post, speaking Arabic into his phone while waiting for the dog he was holding by the lead to do its business. Further down the street, a gangly man who had pulled up his trousers far too high crossed at the pedestrian crossing and hurried past a young mother pushing a pram, probably on his way to Bjuv Mall, which would win first place in a competition to find Sweden’s most depressing place, hands down.
The stairwell was painted white and stippled in different colours, as though the painter had walked around flicking his brush at the walls. Probably to make it look just a little bit grimy even when it was freshly painted. There were about as many Swedish as foreign names on the board.
Moonif Ganem, as the boy was called, lived on the third floor with Aimar, Adena, Bassel, Jodee, Ranim, Rosarita and Nizar. At least, that’s what the multicoloured fuse beads on the door said.
After a few attempts at ringing the doorbell went unanswered, she opened the door and stepped into a hallway full of a chaotic jumble of shoes and clothes. The sound of agitated voices mixed with sobbing was coming from a room further in.
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