The Shadow Woman

“Now let’s go out there and find Jennie,” he said.

46

WINTER READ THE TRANSCRIPT FROM THE CONVERSATION THE child psychologist had with Helene. The experienced psychologist, who was now deceased, had tried to find something in her memory that she didn’t want to-or was unable to-talk about. It made short and painful reading, and as in the film, it was clear that she had been traumatized.

The assessment didn’t reveal much either. There was a note about the girl’s need for conversational therapy at the psychiatric clinic-continuing into adulthood. What would happen then? Winter wondered. Wasn’t that when the nightmarish memories worsened?

They hadn’t found anything to indicate that Helene had had such conversations as an adult. There’d been no follow-up as she became older, other than a routine checkup a few years after the event. Winter made a note about the foster parents at the time.

He read: “When she reaches adulthood, she may become aware of the ordeal she shows clear signs of having experienced, but it’s possible that she will only be able to recall a few specific images.”

Winter considered the lonely woman living with her child in the apartment he had wandered around in, and where he’d felt such a powerful sense of fear. There were few memories there. The memories were sealed, like hatches.

Long-repressed memories could open into an abyss.

There were examples of patients who’d had memory lapses in the middle of conversations. Suddenly the patient could become someone else. Memory disorders could cause a patient to split the self into different identities, Winter had read.

“Consciousness wants to protect the person from the memory of unbearable experiences.” It was an awful sentence. What was going on in the mind of a person like that? Had Helene been like that? The cursory investigation into her fate hinted at it, but Winter couldn’t find anything conclusive.

It was raining again, pattering rhythmically against the windowpane. Winter looked for a moment at the childish drawings attached to the wall opposite him. They showed flags, windmills, men in beards driving cars. It was raining and the sun was shining. The sky is displaying different identities, he thought.

“Once they reach their thirties, people who have been subjected to severely traumatic experiences as children can gain increased awareness of their ongoing torment.” Yet another awful sentence. “Once awareness returned, these people could find themselves in another place.”

She didn’t know how she got here.

Different identities. He read the words again: “another place.”

Was it possible that had happened to Helene? Who, then, had taken care of her child?

It struck him now that they hadn’t established the time of the daughter’s disappearance. They didn’t know when Helene and Jennie had been seen together for the last time. Had the child disappeared before Helene? Had Helene been aware of who she was? Maybe she’d been confused for a long time. Was that possible?

He made a note that he should speak to Ester Bergman again.

Halders switched on his bathroom light and leaned in closer to the mirror. His hair had started to grow out on the sides and he decided to go to the barbershop over the weekend and let the machine trim it down again.

He thought about running a bath, but that felt like a lot of effort. He thought about going out and sitting down at Bolaget and ordering a beer, but it was so far away. He thought briefly about making himself something to eat, but he didn’t have the energy.

Damn it, he thought. I barely have the strength to go into the bedroom to lie down.

He thought about calling somebody, but he couldn’t think of anyone he wanted to speak to or who would want to listen. It would be Aneta in the case of the former.

He went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator and took a bottle of beer from the shelf in the door.

He sat down in front of the TV, with the remote in his hand. He debated whether to switch it on.

“We can’t hold Jakobsson any longer,” Ringmar said.

“I realize that,” Winter said. “It’s… Shit.”

“All he’s done is pay somebody else’s rent,” Ringmar said.

“We’ll have to keep him under surveillance.”

“After this, he’ll go to the liquor store and disappear for two weeks.”

“I think we can tie one of them to the weapon and the shoot-out,” Winter said.

“Excellent,” Birgersson said. “Bolander?”

“He’s not saying anything, of course, but he was there.”

“I still don’t understand why they did it. Unless it was yet another crazy display of power.”

“You might not be far off.”

“Or a reminder of power, though I guess that’s the same thing. In any case, it nearly cost us one of our officers.”

“Yes.”

“There’s been trouble down in Malmo again,” Birgersson said. “Seems those bastards were in the process of building up some scheme. There’s something really scary about this gang. Especially the control they have over their own.”

“It’s a little calmer in Denmark right now.”

“Speaking of which-I spoke to Wellman and he gave us the green light.”

“I’ll go as soon as I’ve read through a little more of the material they sent over,” Winter said.

Halders entered Winter’s office with the expression of someone pissed off as hell and yet at the same time a bit relieved.

“We can cross one of the leads off our list,” he said.

Winter was already standing. “Let’s hear it.”

“That marking on the tree. It was as I suspected. Did I mention that? Some punk kid put it up there.”

“Some punk kid?”

“The boys with the boat were, as you know, a little reluctant to help us out by remembering who they’d lent their boat to. There were quite a few of them.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay, okay. Two boys-younger than the ones with the boat-had borrowed it, and they’re the ones who put the marking on the tree.”

“Did they come in here and say so?”

“Like I said, we’ve worked our way through the list now. I spoke to one of them on the phone, and what he said sounded a little strange, so I went over to his school to chat with him. He was having one of his apparently innumerable free periods.”

“He confessed?”

“Came straight out with it. Said it was just a goof they got into their heads to do.”

“When did you find this out?”

“Just now, damn it. I know, it’s taken time to go through all this but it’s not like we didn’t have other things to-”

“Did we get round to checking whether there are any similar markings by any of the other lakes?”

“Yes. So far we haven’t found anything.”

“And he knew that we were looking for information about this?”

“He hadn’t seen it,” he said.