I whispered in her ear as I held her by the throat.
Keep quiet about this, girl, or the devil will get you.
Shame comes before love.
Over the years other people’s shame has been my best ally. It was easiest and nicest when I had the girls in the house, God knows how excited I got, hearing my creaking footsteps at night when I was on the way to their room.
They were always full of anticipation.
Lying awake, waiting for me, for my lovely, long, dextrous fingers, for my wonderful presence.
I was always careful.
Pulling the covers from their bodies.
Caressing their young white glassy skin.
My own flesh and blood or someone else’s, it never mattered. I gave my love to all the girls who came my way.
You’re awake now, little girl, my beautiful summer angel.
We’re here now, in the final room, and she shall see me do this first.
I’ve hammered four big nails into the floor and tied you to them. And you can see in my direction now.
I’m sitting beside my dad on his sofa.
I’ve got my mask on, so my face lacks definition, I’m wearing my white spiders’ legs, holding the necklace of rabbit claws to his cheeks and I’m scratching and he’s screaming, the old man, but there isn’t really much life in him.
You’re looking away.
LOOK FOR FUCK’S SAKE.
And you look.
She’s naked and the mask is on again.
Her head is aching, but Tove can see the scene clearly, understands that she’s in a grotty flat, God knows where, and that a woman, naked, is sitting next to her dad and hurting him.
Why?
And she screams at me to look, but I don’t want to see this and she scratches his face again and he screams.
She gets up.
Her thin white surgical gloves are glowing in the weak light.
I can’t get up.
There’s a smell of bleach, the sort Mum uses to get rid of stains.
Mum, Dad. You have to hurry.
I can hear her in another room, drawers being opened, she’s looking for something, and the man tries to scream, but she’s put a rag in his mouth, just like mine.
Neither of us can move.
Neither of us can escape.
The knife.
The old kitchen knife that Elisabeth and I fantasised about stabbing him with, he’s still got it, the rough knife with the Bakelite handle.
I pull it from the block on the worktop.
Hold it. Think what a shame it was about Sofia Freden. I saw her when she was working in the cafe at Tinnis last summer, and she used to move the same way you used to, Elisabeth, and with her I thought that if I do everything quickly and in one place then maybe I can achieve what I want through speed and shock tactics, like an explosion or a powerful chemical reaction. I scratched and cut her with the claws, the first one I did that to, but it didn’t mean anything. Rabbits are only animals, their love is meaningless.
I scrubbed her in the park. Worked fast.
But she just went limp in my arms when I pressed my hands around her neck.
She died without you coming back.
But, dear sister, you should know that I have never doubted. I know what I have to do now.
Just watch while you’re waiting.
Then come to me with love. You should know that I miss you.
She has a knife in her hand.
Tove sees the blade glint and she screams NOW LOOK as she sits down next to the man on the sofa that Tove thinks must be her father.
She holds the knife in the air.
Screams.
THIS IS NOTHING.
Then she stabs the knife into the man’s chest and stomach over and over again and his irises disappear into his head, his eyes go white and his whole body shakes and she stabs the knife into him over and over again and the blood sort of seeps out from the gap between his brown top and grey trousers.
He’s still now.
And I’m terrified, but I couldn’t be more present.
She takes one of his hands, Mum.
And then the knife again, she saws and cuts and the fingers fall off onto the floor, one by one by one, the blood, Mum, the blood.
Fingerless hands on the fabric of the sofa.
She’s done now.
Turns towards me, Mum.
I yank strain scream cry.
But nothing happens.
If you’re on your way, you need to hurry now.
69
Finspang.
The time is now a quarter past six, and the streets of the industrial community are still empty, Zeke takes a short cut the wrong way around a roundabout and comes close to running over a bleary-eyed paperboy.
The centre.
Grey buildings, a hotdog kiosk, trees shrinking away from the sun, the flowerbeds not as well tended here as in Linkoping, but there’s still a feeling of summer idyll, as if the industrial town had come to terms with its transformation into a sleepwalker’s hideaway.
But something is happening.
‘Turn here,’ Malin shouts and her mobile rings, she knows it’s Sven Sjoman again, he’s called her mobile ten times, and tried them over the radio, but we’re doing this on our own.
‘Stop.’
And Zeke brakes hard and they throw the doors open and pour out of the car. Malin runs towards the building where Sture Folkman lives, pulling her pistol from the holster under her jacket, Zeke hot on her heels with his gun in his hand, Janne shadowing them, crouching, as if he were expecting enemy fire from the windows of the white block of flats.
They creep up the stairs.
Press close to the wall.
Malin puts her ear to the door, making a hushing sign, finger to her mouth, listening for any sounds from inside the flat.
