Per took off his jacket. ‘And you remember Jerry, my father?’
She nodded. ‘He was a bit different, a mixture of a teddy bear and a dirty old man … I never quite worked him out.’
‘I don’t think anybody did,’ said Per.
She led him into a neat little kitchen and put some coffee on.
‘So Jerry Morner is dead?’
‘He died a few days ago.’
‘And you want to know more about him?’
‘Yes … but I think I really want to know more about the people he worked with,’ said Per. ‘He had a colleague called Hans Bremer …’
‘Bremer, that’s right,’ said Ulrica. ‘He was the younger one, he organized everything. And took the pictures.’
She didn’t say any more; she just looked serious and seemed lost in thought, so Per asked, ‘How did you end up working with my father?’
Ulrica gave a mirthless laugh. ‘I don’t really know,’ she said. ‘I didn’t really do much thinking. You don’t when you’re nineteen, do you? You decide in a split second and just
‘Did you get a lot of money?’
‘Fifteen hundred, I think. That was a lot of money when you were nineteen … I would have had to work at least a week in a nursing home to earn that much.’
‘So how did you hear about the job?’
‘There was a small ad asking for photographic models in one of the evening papers. Lisa Wegner had seen it, and mentioned it to me and Petra Blomberg. It was obvious what it was all about … You had to send in nude pictures, so we took a few photos of each other and sent them off to Malmo. And a couple of weeks later I got a call from someone who said his name was Hans.’
‘Did he sound nice?’
‘Not bad,’ said Ulrica. ‘He talked about how cool it would be. So Petra and I went down to Ryd together on the train. We spent most of the time giggling – it was a bit like an adventure, like running away with the circus.’ She looked at Per and added, ‘But without a band.’
Then she went on: ‘When we came out of the station in Ryd there was another girl waiting there … She was much more provocatively dressed in tight jeans and a tight top, and she just glared at us. Then this guy Bremer came along in his car; he got out and smiled at us and said hello, and ushered us into the car. Sitting there in the back seat it all suddenly seemed much more serious; I stopped giggling, and when I looked at Petra she seemed really nervous.’
She looked down at the table.
‘So what did Bremer say then?’ Per asked.
‘He spent most of the time talking to the girl in the front seat; it was obvious she was an old hand and had been there several times before. Cindy or Lindy, he called her.’ Ulrica smiled tiredly. ‘I shouldn’t think that was her name … both Petra and I were given new names in the magazine. Petra was called Candy and I was Suzy.’
‘And the men were always called Markus Lukas, weren’t they?’
Ulrica nodded. ‘I suppose most things were fake in that industry … Anyway, we were driven out to the house – it felt as if we were deep in the forest – and as Bremer pulled up I realized that nobody knew where we were. That wasn’t a very good feeling … and the house was big and dark, with thick curtains at the windows on the ground floor. It smelled of detergent, but I remember thinking that was probably just covering up a whole load of disgusting smells that you would start to notice if you stayed around for too long.’
‘And Jerry, was he there?’
‘Yes, he was there. He said hello and brought some papers over for me and Petra. We both signed some kind of contract, it said something along the lines that we were doing this voluntarily and weren’t underage.’
‘Did they check your ages?’
‘No … Bremer asked how old we were when we rang up, I think, but nobody asked us for our passport or driving licence or anything like that.
‘I don’t know if it was so we could learn how things worked, but Petra and I were allowed to stay in the studio while Cindy/Lindy was being photographed, with Bremer egging her on. She sat on the bed stroking herself and undressing for the camera. It was ridiculous sometimes, what she was doing. Shy yet wanton at the same time, somehow … as if there was a war going on inside her.’
She lowered her gaze to the floor.
‘When I saw her I realized I could never make a career of this, or even do it again … I just wanted to go home, even at that stage. But I still had my own photo session to do; it was impossible to back out. I just had to do it … I was to be photographed on a sofa. So I had to walk into the bright light, and we made a start. You didn’t really have to move, just pose in different positions.’ She paused. ‘I was really nervous, but it was just routine for the others – all in a day’s work.’
‘Who was there?’ Per asked.
‘Bremer was standing between the spotlights; he was directing everything and telling me what to do, then there was a young lad who was the photographer, then this wiry, tattooed guy who was to do the shots on the sofa with me.’
‘So what was Jerry doing while all this was going on?’
‘Not much,’ said Ulrica. ‘He was probably standing to one side somewhere “adjusting his trousers” … that’s what we used to say about the dirty old men who hung about near our school.’
Per could imagine Jerry doing exactly that.
‘Then it was Petra’s turn. She was after me, with this other guy who was also called Markus Lukas.’
‘What do you remember about him?’
Ulrica thought about it.
‘He was taller and a bit older, much more muscular,’ she said. ‘Taller and quieter, a bit bored maybe … it was obvious this was just a job to him. At least my Markus Lukas chatted, made the odd joke and tried to get me to relax. And he told me his real name afterwards. It was Tobias … Tobias Jesslin, and he was from Malmo.’
Per made a mental note of the name. A Markus Lukas called Tobias – another real name among all the false ones.
‘Are you still in touch with Petra?’ he asked.
Ulrica looked horrified. ‘In touch?’ she said.
‘Have you got a number or an address? I’d really like to talk to her as well.’
‘Petra’s dead,’ said Ulrica.
Per looked at her in surprise.
‘She died at the beginning of the nineties. We’d lost touch by then, but I heard about it, and I saw the notice in the paper.’
‘How did she die?’
‘I think she was ill … It was just a rumour, but I think she had cancer.’
Per looked down into his coffee cup; that was a word he didn’t want to hear. ‘Very sad,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Ulrica, ‘and what happened to Madde was just as bad. Or even worse, actually.’
‘Madde?’
‘Madeleine Frick. She was another friend of mine from school. She moved to Stockholm after we left, but just a couple of years later she threw herself in front of a train.’
Per breathed in slowly and said quietly, ‘Did she work with my father as well?’
Ulrica nodded. ‘I think so … I never saw any pictures or films, of course, but when we met up that summer she told me she’d been out to Ryd and had done some filming too. “With the wiry guy or the tall one?” I asked her. “The tall one,” she said. I didn’t want to hear any more … that was the only time we talked about it.’
Per didn’t say anything. Of the four girls he had found who had filmed with Jerry, two were dead.
Suddenly a door flew open in the hallway.
