them and the baby. They were so filled with joy, in spite of the hopeless situation that they were in. As if nothing else mattered at that moment.’
Knutas listened with a growing sense of alarm. Vera Petrov had executed two people in cold blood. It sounded as if his closest colleague had actually allowed a double murderer to walk free. And she’d been lying the whole time, while he had worked so hard to solve the case, bringing in Interpol, trying to track down the killer. The hunt had gone on for months without success. The double murderer and her husband had disappeared without a trace. And here sat Karin, babbling about how happy they were to have a baby. It was one thing that she had betrayed him and the rest of her colleagues. But this was such a gross dereliction of duty that she’d never be able to work as a police officer again. She was going to end up in prison, maybe for several years. In all seriousness, he wondered whether Karin had gone mad.
Not noticing how upset her boss was, she went on: ‘Of course I had planned to arrest them and call for back-up as soon as the child was born. But something happened. I found myself enveloped in my own grief.’
Karin’s expression changed drastically, as if she were unbearably exposed. She looked pale, in spite of a slight suntan, and her eyes were more solemn than he’d ever seen them before. As if she were truly looking at him for the very first time. No longer hiding behind anything.
‘The thing is, I also had a baby once. I was only fifteen at the time, so that was twenty-five years ago.’
Knutas stared at his colleague in surprise.
‘Do you mean that you’re the mother of a twenty-five-year-old?’
‘Yes, that’s right. Although I haven’t seen my child since the day she was born.’ Karin’s lips quivered and her eyes filled with tears.
‘Come on. Let’s go,’ said Knutas, helping her up from the table.
He put his arm around Karin, who sobbed all the way back to the hotel. Knutas escorted her to her room, unlocking the door with the key card. He made her sit down on the bed and then put some pillows behind her back. He brought her some toilet paper so she could blow her nose and gave her a glass of water.
‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ she asked.
‘Go ahead.’
It was a non-smoking room, but what the hell.
Karin lit a cigarette, her hands shaking. Knutas pulled over the only chair in the room and set it next to the bed. He cursed the wine for making his head spin and tried to gather his thoughts. He’d never seen Karin look so weak. The room was only dimly lit, making shadows fall across her face. Suddenly she looked like a stranger, and he wondered how well he really knew her. Maybe their close friendship was merely an illusion. He sat there in silence, waiting, with his hands clasped on his lap. His palms were sweaty, but he didn’t care; he clasped them even tighter, as if his hands needed to support each other because of what he was about to hear. Karin’s voice shook when she finally began to speak.
‘Just after I turned fifteen, I was raped. I was out riding my horse in the woods. The horse fell and went lame, and I had to lead him back home. On the way I stopped at the riding teacher’s farm to ask if I could use the phone. He was married and had children, but he was home alone when I arrived. We put my horse in the stable and then I went inside the house with him. Instead of letting me use the phone, he raped me, right there in the living room. I remember staring up at the big family photo over the sofa when he forced his way inside me. It hurt terribly.’
Karin turned her head to look up at the ceiling, and the tears kept pouring down her pale cheeks. Her skin looked so thin, almost transparent. Knutas felt a shiver run down his back. He didn’t want to see the images that appeared in his mind; they made him feel sick to his stomach.
She took a deep breath and then went on.
‘When he was finished, he said that he’d make a lot of trouble for me if I ever told anyone. Then he let me use the phone. I was in shock. It seemed so unreal. I asked my father to come and get me. I was ashamed. I felt so dirty. I’m sure you’ve heard it all before. I got home, took care of the horse, and then showered. We had dinner and I went to bed early. All I wanted was to go to sleep. When I woke up the next morning, it was like it never happened. I tried to put the whole thing out of my mind. I thought that if I tried hard enough to pretend it was just a bad dream, then I might make it go away. That’s why I didn’t say anything, not to my parents or to anyone else. A few days later I ran into him at the post office. He smiled and said hello. As if nothing had happened. My legs buckled and I almost fainted. I was so scared of him that I nearly died. I almost wanted to die. I lost all interest in horseback riding, and my parents couldn’t understand it. I did poorly in school and kept mostly to myself. I started skipping classes, pretending to have a stomach ache or thinking up some other excuse.’
Her voice faded, and Knutas tried to digest this horrifying story. So this was the secret that Karin had kept buried all these years, the sorrow that he’d always known was there, and yet it was incomprehensible.
He glanced at her surreptitiously as she sat there on the bed, looking like a little girl. He felt guilty, as if he were intruding just by being in the room and listening. She didn’t look in his direction; her eyes were fixed on some invisible spot on the wall. Now and then sounds were audible from outside on the street, but they were of no significance. The only important thing was right here, inside the room – what Karin was saying, the words that Knutas had unknowingly been waiting to hear for so many years. She lit another cigarette.
‘Then the unthinkable happened. My periods stopped, my breasts felt tender, and I started throwing up in the morning. I continued to deny the situation. I just went on as usual, ignoring the trouble I was in. Eventually the nausea subsided, but my jeans were getting too tight. After a while I couldn’t hide my condition any longer. One morning when I went into the kitchen wearing my nightgown, my mother gave me a strange look. I remember opening the refrigerator and looking for something inside. She was standing next to the stove and I could feel her looking at my stomach. In a flash she was at my side, her hand on my belly. I’ll never forget the tone of her voice. It was ice cold, accusatory and filled with contempt – even hatred. “Are you pregnant?” she asked. I panicked. I’d been refusing to think about it for so long. She pulled up my nightgown to look at my breasts. “They’re twice the normal size. And just look at your stomach!”
‘I started sobbing as she showered me with questions. Pappa appeared, standing in the doorway as if frozen to the spot. Staring at me with horror, as if I were some sort of monster. Then I told them about the rape. Exactly how it happened. All the details. As I talked, I felt more and more ashamed. I was filled with nausea, as if I’d done something wrong. When I was finished, I just sat there, crying. And neither of my parents said a word. It felt like being inside an airless bubble. No one spoke. No one tried to comfort me. Mamma just left me there in the kitchen. And then Pappa followed her out.’
Karin fell silent. Knutas gently patted her arm.
‘Then what happened?’ he asked cautiously. ‘What happened next?’
Karin blew her nose and drank all the water in her glass.
‘What happened next?’ she said bitterly. ‘They refused to contact the police. They didn’t want to talk about it at all. Mamma took care of the practical arrangements. They decided that the child should be given up for adoption right after the birth. I agreed. I just wanted to get rid of it so I could go on with my life. Keep going to school. Keep being a teenager. I wanted everything to be the same, like it was before all this happened. I didn’t think of the baby as a real child; it was just something bad that had to go away. I managed to finish the school year, although my grades were terrible. In the autumn I gave birth to my baby. On the twenty-second of September.’
The tears were pouring out again, but Karin continued her story.
‘It was a girl. I was allowed to hold her for a short time after the birth. I could feel how warm she was, and how her heart beat against mine. Like a little bird. At that moment I regretted my decision. I wanted to keep her. In my mind I gave her the name Lydia. But all of a sudden they took her away from me, and I never saw her again.’
Her voice faded away. Karin sank back against the pillows, as if all strength had left her body.
‘But couldn’t you tell them that you’d changed your mind?’
‘What say did I have in the matter? Nothing. My parents told me that it was too late, that all the papers had been signed, even though later on I found out that wasn’t true. They lied to me.’
Karin closed her eyes.
‘I’ve never told this to anyone,’ she added faintly. ‘You’re the only person who knows.’
Knutas lit his pipe. A thick haze of smoke had settled over the small room. He was stunned, devastated by Karin’s story. The outrage he had initially felt when she confessed that she’d let Vera Petrov and Stefan Norrstrom escape was gone, at least for the time being. Right now he shared Karin’s suffering and was appalled at what she’d been forced to go through. He’d had no idea about any of this during all the years they had worked together. He
