It was a long time ago. They had been maybe twelve or thirteen. She couldn’t remember whose idea it was, but between them they had decided to go to Copenhagen together. It was spring and both of them were bored and restless at school. They covered for each other when one of them cut class, which happened more and more frequently. Mona had given her permission, but her dad wouldn’t hear of it. She heard him describe Copenhagen as a den of sin and iniquity, a beast waiting to consume two very young girls who knew nothing about life. In the end Anna and Linda had gone anyway. Linda knew there would be trouble waiting for her when she returned, so, as a kind of advance revenge, she lifted a hundred kronor from her dad’s wallet before she left. They took the train to Malmö and the ferry to Copenhagen. To Linda it seemed like their first serious excursion into the adult world.
It had been breezy but sunny, a happy, giggly day. Anna won the rubber ducky at an amusement stand at the Tivoli, and at first all of their experiences were transparent, joyous ones. They had their freedom, their adventure. Invisible walls crumbled around them wherever they went. Then the image darkened. Something happened that day that was the first real blow to their friendship. We were sitting on a green bench, Linda remembered. Anna had been borrowing money from me all day because she was broke. She had to go to the bathroom and asked me to hold her purse. Somewhere in the background a Tivoli orchestra was playing. The trumpet was out of tune.
Linda was thinking of all this while she lay on the bathroom floor. The warmth from the heating system installed under the tile felt good against her back.
It was a green bench and a black bag. After all these years she couldn’t say what had made her open the purse. There had been two crisp hundred-kronor notes inside, not even crumpled or hidden inside a secret compartment. She had stared at the money and felt a stab of betrayal. She closed the purse and decided she wouldn’t say anything, but when Anna came back and asked if Linda would buy her a soda, something exploded inside her. They stood there shouting at each other. Linda had forgotten what Anna had said in her defense, but they had gone their separate ways and had sat apart on the return trip to Malmö. It took them a long time to start speaking to each other again. They never talked about what had happened in Copenhagen, but eventually they had managed to resume their friendship.
Linda sat up. There are lies at the heart of this, she thought. I’m sure Henrietta concealed something from me when I was there, and I know Anna is capable of lying. I discovered that in Copenhagen and I’ve found her out on later occasions as well. But with her at least I know her so well that I can tell when she’s telling the truth. The story she told me about seeing her father — or a doppelgänger — in Malmö is true. But what’s behind all this? What didn’t she tell me? Sometimes the part that’s left out is the biggest part of the lie.
Her cell phone rang. She knew it was her father. She got to her feet to steel herself in case he was still angry, but the tone of his voice only told her that he was tense and tired. Her father had more voices than other people, it seemed to her.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“In Anna’s apartment.”
He was silent. She could hear that he was still out in the forest. There were voices of people walking past, the scrape of walkietalkies, and a dog barking sharply.
“What are you doing there?” he asked after a while.
“I’m more afraid now than I was before.”
To her surprise he said:
“I know. That’s why I’m calling. I’m on my way over. I need to hear about this in more detail. There’s no reason for you to worry, of course, but I’m taking this matter seriously now.”
“How could I not worry? It’s not natural for her to be gone like this, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all along. If you don’t understand that, then you can’t possibly know why I’m afraid. Also, her phone line was busy, but then when I got here she wasn’t in. Someone was here, I’m sure of it.”
“I’ll get the full report when I get there. What’s the address?”
Linda gave it to him.
“How is it going?” she asked.
“I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Have you found the body?”
“Not yet. We haven’t found anything, least of all clues to what actually happened here. I’ll honk when I arrive.”
Linda bent over the bathroom sink and rinsed her mouth out. In order to freshen her breath she brushed her teeth with one of Anna’s toothbrushes. She was about to leave the bathroom when she impulsively opened the bathroom cabinet. She saw something that surprised her. This is just like leaving the journal behind, she thought.
From time to time Anna developed eczema on her throat. She had talked about it only a few weeks earlier when they were all over at Zeba’s place, talking about their dream vacations. Anna had said that the first thing she would pack was the prescription-strength cream that kept her eczema under control. Linda remembered her saying she only bought this cream one tube at a time in order to keep it as fresh as possible. And yet here it was, sitting among the other bottles and toothbrushes on the shelf. Anna had a thing about toothbrushes. Linda counted nineteen brushes in the cabinet, eleven of which had never been used. She looked at the cream again. Anna would never have left this behind, Linda thought. Not willingly. Neither this cream nor her diary. She closed the bathroom cabinet and left the bathroom. What could have happened? There were no signs that Anna had been removed by force, at least not from the apartment itself. Perhaps something had happened on the street. She could have been knocked over or forced into a car.
Linda stood by the window and waited for her father. She felt tired and cheated. Her time at the academy had in no way prepared her for what she had been through this day. She could never have imagined that she could one day find herself looking at a severed gray-haired female head and a pair of clasped hands cut off at the wrists.
Not simply clasped, she thought. Hands knit together in prayer before they were cut. She shook her head. What happened in those last moments, in the dramatic pause while the axe was lifted above those hands? What had Birgitta Medberg seen? Had she looked into another person’s eyes and understood what was about to happen? Or had she been spared that dreadful knowledge? Linda stared out at a streetlamp swaying in the wind. She sensed what must have happened: hands clasped together pleading for mercy. The executioner denies the plea. She must have known, Linda thought. She knew what was coming and she pleaded for her life.
Headlights suddenly lit up the side of the building. Her father honked his horn once, parked the car, then got out and looked around for the right entryway until he saw Linda in the window gesturing to him. She threw the keys down to the street and heard him come up the stairs. He’s going to wake up all the neighbors, she thought. I have a father who thunders his way through life like an infantry battalion. He was sweaty and tired, his clothes soaked through.
“Is there anything to eat?”