The Ice Princess

pain was behind those words on the page.

6

The irony of my life has often struck me. How I have the ability to create beauty with my fingers and my eyes, while in everything else I’m only able to create ugliness and destruction. That’s why the last thing I’m going to do is destroy my paintings. To obtain some kind of consistency in my life. Better to be consistent and only leave shit behind than to appear to be a more complex person than I deserve.

Actually, I’m very simple. The only thing I ever wanted to do was to erase a few months and events from my life. I don’t think that would have been too much to ask. But perhaps I deserved what I got in life. Perhaps I had done something terrible in a previous life that made me have to pay the price in this one. Not that it really makes any difference. But if so it would have been nice to know what I was paying for.

Why am I now choosing this particular moment to leave a life that has been meaningless for so long, you may ask? Yes, go ahead and say it. Why does anyone do something at a certain point in time? Did I love Alex so much that life lost any and all meaning? That’s probably one of the explanations you’ll be grasping for. I don’t actually know if that would be entirely true. Death is a friend that I’ve lived with for a long time, but only now do I feel that I’m ready. Perhaps it was precisely the fact that Alex died that made my own freedom possible. She was always the unattainable one. It was impossible to make the slightest dent in her shell. The fact that she could die suddenly opened wide the possibility that 1 might go in the same way. I have long been packed and ready, all that remains is to climb aboard.

Forgive me, Mamma.

Anders

He had never managed to shake off the habit of getting up early, or in the middle of the night as some might say. It was something that in this case proved to be useful. Svea didn’t react when he got up at four a.m., but for safety’s sake he sneaked cautiously down the stairs with his clothes in his hand. Eilert dressed silently in the living room and then took out his suitcase which he had carefully hidden in the very back of the pantry. He had planned this for months, and nothing had been left to chance. Today was the first day of the rest of his life.

The car started on the first try despite the cold, and at twenty past four he left behind the house where he had lived for the past fifty years. He drove through a sleeping Fjallbacka and didn’t step hard on the gas before he passed the old mill and turned off towards Dingle. It was a good 125 miles to Goteborg and Landvetter Airport, and he could take it easy. The plane to Spain didn’t leave until around eight o’clock.

He was finally going to live his life the way he wanted to live it.

He had been planning this for a long time, for many years. The aches and pains got worse with each passing year, and so did the frustration over his life with Svea. Eilert thought he deserved better. On the Internet, he had found a little boarding-house in a small town on the Costa del Sol. A bit away from the beaches and the tourist area, so the price was reasonable. He had sent e-mails and checked that he could live there year-round if he wanted. In fact, the landlady would give him an even better price if he did. It had taken a long time to save up the money under Svea’s vigilant eye that watched everything he did, but finally he had succeeded. He reckoned that he could support himself for about two years on his present savings if he lived frugally, and after that he would simply have to find a way. Right now nothing could restrain his enthusiasm.

For the first time in fifty years he felt free, and he found himself giving the old Volvo a little extra gas out of sheer joy. He would leave the car in the long-term car park. Svea would find out where it was soon enough. Not that it mattered. She had never got a driving licence but used Eilert as unpaid chauffeur whenever she needed to drive anywhere. The only thing that weighed on his conscience a little was the children. On the other hand, they had always been more Svea’s children than his, and to his sorrow they had become just as petty and narrow- minded as she was. He was undoubtedly partly to blame, since he worked long hours and then found all sorts of excuses to stay away from home as much as possible. But he had still decided to send them a postcard from Landvetter to tell them that he had left of his own free will and that they didn’t have to worry. He also didn’t want them to instigate any big police hunt to find him.

The roads were empty as he drove along in the dark, and he didn’t even turn on the radio. He wanted to enjoy the silence instead. Now that his life was beginning.

‘I just have a hard time understanding it. I can’t believe that Vera would murder Alex so that she wouldn’t talk about assaults against her and Anders that took place over twenty-five years ago.’

Erica swirled her wine glass meditatively.

‘You should never underestimate the need not to make waves in a small town,’ said Patrik. ‘If the old story about the assaults were to come out, people would have a new reason to point their fingers. On the other hand I don’t believe Vera when she says that she did it for Anders’s sake. Maybe she’s right that Anders didn’t want everyone to know what happened to them. But I think it’s mostly Vera who couldn’t stand the thought of what people would be whispering behind her back. Especially if it got out that Anders wasn’t merely the victim of sexual assault as a child, but that his mother did nothing about it; in fact, she helped cover everything up. I think it was the shame that she couldn’t bear. She killed Alex on the spur of the moment when she realized that Alex wasn’t going to budge. Vera got an impulse, which she carried out in a methodical and cold-blooded way.’

‘How is she taking it now? Now that she’s been exposed, I mean?’

‘She’s surprisingly calm. I think she was immensely relieved when we told her that Anders wasn’t the father of the child, and so she hadn’t murdered her unborn grandchild after all. Now she doesn’t seem to care what happens to her. And why should she? Her son is dead, she has no friends, no life. Everything has been uncovered, and she has nothing more to lose. Only her freedom, and that doesn’t mean much to her right now, or so it seems.’

They were sitting in Patrik’s flat sharing a bottle of wine after having dinner together. Erica was enjoying the peace and quiet. She loved having Anna and the kids staying with her, but sometimes it was too much, and today had been one of those days. Patrik was tied up in the interrogation all day, but when he finished he came and collected her along with her little overnight bag. Now they were sitting curled up on the sofa like any hardworking older couple.

Erica closed her eyes. The moment was wonderful and frightening at the same time. Everything was so perfect, and yet she couldn’t help thinking that this might mean it would be all downhill from here. She didn’t even want to think about what would happen if she moved back to Stockholm. She and Anna had skirted the question of the house for several days; as if by tacit agreement, they had decided not to deal with it yet. And Erica believed that Anna was in no condition to make any big decisions, so she had let it lie.

But tonight she didn’t want to think about the future. Better not to think about tomorrow at all and instead try to enjoy the moment as much as she could. She pushed away all the gloomy thoughts.

‘I talked to the publishers today,’ she told Patrik. ‘I mentioned the book about Alex.’

‘So, what did they say?’ The eager look in Patrik’s eyes pleased her.

‘They thought the idea sounded brilliant and wanted me to send them the material I have right away. I still have to finish writing the book about Selma Lagerlof, but they gave me an extra month, so now I’ve promised to have the biography ready by September. I actually think I can manage to work on both of them at the same time. It’s been going fairly well so far.’

‘What did your publishers say about the legal aspect? Do they think there’s a risk of being sued by Alex’s family?’

‘The law on freedom of the press is quite clear. I have the right to write about her, even without their approval. But of course I hope that they’ll be supportive, after I have a chance to explain the project to them and what I envision for the book. I really don’t want to write a sensational story with no substance. I want to write about what actually happened and who Alex really was.’

‘And what about the market? Did they think there would be interest in this sort of book?’

Patrik’s eyes were gleaming. Erica was pleased that he was so enthusiastic on her behalf. He knew how much this book meant to her and wanted to share her interest.

‘We both think there should be quite a lot of interest. In the States, the demand for true-crime books is enormous. The biggest author in the genre, Ann Rule, sells millions of copies. Here in Sweden, it’s quite a new