Authors: Erik Axl Sund
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #General, #Thrillers, #Suspense, #Crime
Sofia recognises the phrase. Karl Lundström had talked about the home of shadows during their first meeting in Huddinge. He had said it was a metaphor for a secret, forbidden place.
Everything is in the book I have with me. It’s about me and about you.
It says that I only desire what thousands, perhaps millions, have done before me and that means my actions are sanctioned by history. The impulses to the desires are not in my conscience, but in the collective interaction established by others. By others’ desires.
I am only doing what the others have done, and my conscience should feel clear. Yet my conscience still says something is wrong! I don’t understand!
Of course I could ask the Oracle of Delphi, Pythia, the woman who never lies.
Thanks to her, Socrates realised that a wise man knows he knows nothing. The ignorant man believes he knows something he doesn’t know, and is therefore doubly ignorant because he doesn’t understand that he doesn’t know! But I realise that I don’t know!
Does that mean I’m wise?
This is followed by several lines that are illegible, then a large, dark red stain that Sofia presumes is red wine. She looks up at Linnea again and raises a questioning eyebrow.
‘I know,’ the girl says. ‘It’s a bit weird – he was probably drunk.’
Just like Socrates, I’m a criminal accused of corrupting youth. But of course he was a pederast, and perhaps his accusers were right? The state praises its gods and the rest of us are accused of worshipping demons.
Socrates was just like me! Are we wrong? Everything is in this book! By the way, do you know what happened in Kristianstad when you were little? Viggo and Henrietta? It’s in this book!
Viggo and Henrietta Dürer, Sofia thinks. Annette Lundström mentioned the Dürers, and Viggo was in Linnea’s drawings.
Sofia recognises Karl Lundström’s ambivalent attitude to right and wrong from her conversation with him in Huddinge, and the pieces of the puzzle begin to fall into place. She continues reading, although the letter unsettles her.
The great sleep. And blindness. Annette is blind and Henrietta was blind, as befits girls from Sigtuna College.
She realises that Henrietta Dürer had been in the same class as Annette Lundström. She too had worn a pig’s mask, grunting and laughing. She had been called something different then, something common, Andersson, Johansson? But she had been one of them, masked and blind.
And she had married Viggo Dürer.
This is too much. Sofia feels her stomach clench.
Linnea interrupts her thoughts. ‘Dad said you understood him. I think he’s talking about someone like you in the letter, a Pythia, as he puts it … Mind you, he does sound very odd.’
‘What’s the book he’s referring to?’
Linnea sighs again. ‘I don’t know … He read so much. But he often talked about a book called
Pythia’s Instructions
.’
‘
Pythia’s Instructions
?’
‘Yes, although he never showed it to me.’
In less than a week she’s met two young women whose lives have been ruined by one and the same man. Even if Karl Lundström is dead, she’s going to see that his victims get justice.
What is weakness? Being a victim? A woman? Exploited?
No, weakness is not turning that to your advantage.
‘I can help you remember,’ she says.
Linnea looks at her. ‘Do you think so?’
‘I know so.’
Sofia opens her desk drawer and takes out the pictures that Linnea drew when she was five, nine and ten years old.
THE SWEDISH ORDER
of St Johannes has been active since the twelfth century, under the motto ‘In aid of the poor and the sick’. It is therefore providential that the caverns beneath St Johannes Church on Norrmalm in Stockholm should be used as a place of refuge for the impoverished and outcast.
The banner of the Order of St Johannes is depicted on the entrance to the cavern, an inverted knight’s coat of arms in the form of a white cross on a red background, put there by someone wanting to declare that anyone might feel safe here, no matter who they are. It is, however, not a logical act of providence but, rather, a mocking inversion of it when the message of safety occasionally doesn’t ring true, and in this instance a cry for help echoes between the walls down in the crypts.
Jeanette Kihlberg is woken by her phone at half past six in the morning, and Police Commissioner Dennis Billing orders her to get into the city as soon as possible, because a woman has been found murdered in the caverns below St Johannes Church.
She quickly scribbles a note to Johan and leaves it on the kitchen table along with a hundred-krona note, before quietly slipping out and getting in the car.
She calls Jens Hurtig. He’s already had a call from central command and should be there in fifteen minutes, traffic permitting. According to what Hurtig has heard, the atmosphere down in the caverns resembles a lynch mob, so they arrange to meet outside.
A lorry with a flat tyre in the Söderleden Tunnel means that the traffic is at a standstill. She realises she’s going to be late and calls Hurtig to tell him to go in before she gets there.
On the Central Bridge the traffic starts to move again.
There are three police vans, blue lights flashing, and a dozen officers are busy trying to secure the entrance to the caverns.
As Jeanette goes over towards Åhlund, she catches sight of Schwarz a bit further away in front of a heavy metal door. ‘How’s it going?’ She has to shout to make herself heard.
‘Total chaos.’ Åhlund throws his arms out. ‘We’ve emptied the whole place of people, almost fifty of them in total. As you can see …’ He gestures with his hand. ‘What the hell, they’ve got nowhere else to go, have they?’
‘Have you called the City Mission?’ Jeanette steps aside to let through an officer on his way to deal with one of the most aggressive protesters.
‘Of course, but they’re full and can’t help us right now.’
Åhlund waits for her to speak, and Jeanette thinks for a moment before going on.
‘OK. Order a local transport bus to come over here as soon as possible. They can warm up in there and we’ll be able to talk to any of them who’ve got anything to say. But I’m assuming most of them aren’t feeling too cooperative. They usually aren’t.’
Åhlund nods and pulls out his radio.
‘I’ll go down and see what’s happened. Hopefully it won’t be too long before they can go back inside.’
Jeanette goes over to the metal door, where Schwarz stops her and gives her a white breathing mask.
‘I think you’ll want this.’
He wrinkles his nose.
The stench really is unbearable, and Jeanette pulls the rubber bands behind her ears and checks that the mask is sitting tightly over her nose before she goes down into the darkness.
The large cavern is bathed in the sharp glow of floodlights, and there’s a rumble from the generator powering them.
Jeanette stops and looks out across the bizarre underground society.
A shanty town, like something out of the slums of Rio de Janeiro. Homes made out of rubbish and things found in the street. Some had been constructed with a fair degree of skill and an eye for aesthetics. Others were just childish dens. In spite of the muddle, there is a sense of order about the whole thing.
An underlying desire for structure.
Hurtig is standing some twenty metres away and waves her over. She makes her way carefully through the heaps of sleeping bags, bin bags, boxes and clothes. Beside one of the tents is a small shelf full of books. A paper sign says that the books are free to be borrowed, as long as they are brought back.
She knows that the prejudice about homeless people not being intellectual or interested in culture is unfounded. The step that leads down here is probably no greater than a bit of bad luck, some unpaid bills or a bout of depression.
Hurtig is standing by a tent made of large plastic bags. In front of the entrance hangs a shabby blue blanket, and she can see that there’s someone lying inside.
‘OK, what’s happened?’ Jeanette crouches down and tries to see into the tent.
‘The woman inside is named Fredrika Grünewald, known as the Duchess, seeing as she’s supposed to come from some noble family. We’re already checking that out.’
‘Good. What else?’
‘A few witnesses say a man called Börje came down here yesterday afternoon in the company of an unknown woman.’
‘Have we got hold of this Börje?’
‘No, not yet, but he’s something of a celebrity down here so it shouldn’t be difficult. We’ve put an alert out.’
‘Good, good.’ Jeanette moves closer to the opening of the tent.
‘She’s in a really terrible state. Her head has pretty much been severed from her neck.’
‘Knife?’ She stands up and straightens her back.
‘Don’t think so. We found this.’ Hurtig holds up a plastic bag containing a long steel wire. ‘This was probably the murder weapon.’
Jeanette nods. ‘And no one down here did it?’
‘I don’t think so. If she’d just been, well, beaten to death and then robbed, then maybe …’ Hurtig looks thoughtful. ‘But this is something different.’
‘So nothing was stolen from her?’
‘No. Her purse is still here, containing almost two thousand kronor and a valid monthly travel card.’
‘OK. So what do you think?’
Hurtig shrugs. ‘Revenge, maybe. After killing her, the murderer smeared her with excrement. Mostly around the mouth.’
‘Oh, Jesus.’
‘Ivo’s going to check if it’s her own shit, but if we’re lucky it’ll be the murderer’s.’ Hurtig gestures towards the tent, where Ivo Andrić and a couple of his colleagues are busy putting the body inside a grey mortuary bag for transport to Solna.
The forensics team lift off the plastic acting as a tent, and now Jeanette can see the whole of the tragic little home. A small camping stove, a few tins, and a pile of clothes. Carefully she picks up a dress and notes that it’s Chanel. Hardly used.
She reads the labels on the unopened tins of food and sees that several of them have been imported. Mussels and goose liver pâté. Not the sort of thing you find in the Co-op.
What was Fredrika Grünewald doing down here? she thinks. She doesn’t seem to have been short of money. There has to be another reason. But what?
Jeanette looks around at her belongings. Something’s missing. She closes her eyes tightly, trying to clear her mind, then see the whole picture without any preconceptions.
What is it I’m not seeing? she thinks.
‘Jeanette.’ Ivo Andrić taps her on the shoulder. ‘One thing, before I go. It’s not human excrement on her face. It’s dog shit.’
And that’s when she sees it.
It isn’t something missing.
It’s something that shouldn’t be there.
DARE YOU TODAY
, then, you weak fucker? Dare you? Dare you?
No, you don’t dare! You don’t! You’re too weak!
You’re pathetic! It’s hardly surprising no one cares about you!
The shabby houses on Istedgade, the hotels, bars and sex shops lining the pavements, and she turns into a calmer side street, Viktoriagade. It’s hardly been a year since she was last here, and she remembers that the hotel is very close, right next door to a record shop.
A year ago she had chosen the hotel with great care. In Berlin she had lived on Bergmannstrasse in Kreuzberg, and the circle was closed when she arrived here. Viktoriagade had been a logical place to die.
As she opens the old wooden door to the reception area, she notes that the neon sign with the hotel’s name on it is still broken. Behind the desk sits the same bored man as last time. He gives her the keys and she pays with some crumpled notes she found in a biscuit tin in Viggo’s kitchen.
Altogether she has almost two thousand Danish kronor and over nine hundred Swedish. That’s enough for a few days. Maybe the music box she stole from Viggo will be worth a few hundred more.
Room number 7, where she tried to hang herself a year ago, is on the second floor.
As she goes up the creaking wooden stairs she wonders if the crack in the porcelain sink has been repaired yet. Before she made up her mind to hang herself she had thrown a bottle of perfume against the edge, and the porcelain had cracked all the way to the drain.
But after that everything was very undramatic.
The hook in the ceiling came loose and she woke up on the bathroom floor with the belt around her neck, a thick lip and part of her front tooth missing. She had wiped up the blood with a T-shirt.
Afterwards it was as if nothing had happened. The bathroom looked exactly the same, apart from the crack in the sink and the hole in the ceiling left by the hook. It had been an almost invisible, meaningless act.
She unlocks the door and goes into the room. Just as before, a narrow bed stands by the right-hand wall, there’s a wardrobe on the left and the window onto Viktoriagade is just as filthy as it was before. The room smells of smoke and mould and the door to the little bathroom is open.
She kicks off her shoes, tosses her rucksack on the bed and opens the window to air the room.
From outside she can hear the rumble of traffic and the barking of stray dogs.
Then she goes into the bathroom. The hole in the ceiling has been filled and the crack in the sink has been repaired with silicone and has become a dirty grey streak.
She shuts the bathroom door and lies down on the bed.
I don’t exist, she thinks, then laughs.
She gets her diary and a pen out of her bag and starts to write.
Copenhagen, 23 May
1988