‘And another after Iben?’
Steph gives a start.
‘You do remember Iben, don’t you?’ Laura continues. ‘The girl who burned to death because you asked Tomas to set fire to the dance hall? Because it was you who asked him, wasn’t it? Just as you asked him to set fire to Kent Rask’s barn and the accommodation block at Källegården, and to plant the petrol can in Jack’s apartment. All to pressure me into selling.’
Steph doesn’t answer, but there’s no need. Laura knows she’s right.
‘I don’t understand how you got him to do all that. After all, you’d only known each other for a few months before he burned down the dance hall. And why did he start the fire in the boathouse at Vintersjöholm last night?’
Steph looks away. Something in her expression and her body language has changed. It’s as if the thought of Tomas bothers her.
‘The boathouse was his own idea,’ she mumbles. ‘He did it to show that he was thinking of me.’
For a second something flickers behind the mask. Something familiar. And all at once there is another click in Laura’s mind, considerably louder this time.
‘The nymph,’ Tomas whispers in her ear, his voice cracking. She looks up at Hedda’s noticeboard. At the black swan’s feather.
A present from the nymph, a cygne noir.
What does it mean, Aunt Hedda?
That nothing is impossible, my little princess. Not even the impossible.
Hedda was right. Because the impossible is sitting right in front of her.
‘The troll on the other side of the lake,’ Laura says slowly. ‘Iben and I used to play that game when we were little. We fantasised about rowing across the water to steal his treasure so that we could live happily ever after. Because everything is so simple when you’re a child, isn’t it? All you need is some treasure, a castle and your best friend.’
Steph looks down at the floor.
‘But Milla never played that game,’ Laura goes on. ‘She’s never heard of the troll or his treasure.’
Steph raises her head, her eyes shining with tears. The colour is wrong, because she’s wearing contact lenses. So is the skin tone and hair colour. Steph is fair-skinned and blonde.
And yet she is a black swan.
The impossible that is possible, in spite of everything. That makes the whole world shift on its axis, so that from this moment on nothing will ever be the same again.
‘Iben,’ Laura says. ‘You can stop hiding now. I know it’s you.’
65
‘I presume this is all about your father.’
Laura is surprised at how calm she sounds. Her world has just imploded, everything she has believed for the past thirty years has been a lie. And yet her voice is steady, under control.
‘You want revenge for what he did. You want to take Källegården away from him.’
‘I don’t want to take it away!’ Steph’s eyes flash with rage. ‘I want to raze it to the ground. I don’t want a single stone left standing of his beloved ancestral home. I want to plant fir trees everywhere until all that’s left is a fucking Christmas tree plantation. And when the old man is on his deathbed, when the cancer has finally eaten its way through his black heart, I’m going to lean over him and tell him exactly who is responsible. The girl he’s wept crocodile tears over for the past thirty years.’
She leans back. Her expression has changed again; it’s much harder now.
‘I tried to put it all behind me. Jack managed to persuade me to let go, move on. I studied hard, got myself some decent qualifications, a good job. Built up my CV, married a rich man, stashed away plenty of money. But now and again I couldn’t help doing a little googling to see what was happening around Vintersjön. That was how I’d found out that they’d renamed the school after her. After me. As a way of honouring him!’ Steph spits out the last word. ‘That was when I decided I had to take my revenge, but it was a while before the right opportunity came up – the von Thurns bought the castle and started making plans for the area around the lake. At the same time, via a little discreet manipulation, I managed to get Jensen & Sons to invest in a golf course project which I then shut down. All that remained was to persuade Hedda to sell.’
‘But she refused.’
‘At first she wanted to sell to the council, but I called her one evening, disguised my voice, dropped a few hints about Källegården, told her that Tomas knew the truth. The thing is, I’d tried to tell Hedda what was going on a few days before the fire, but I just couldn’t do it.’
She pauses, takes a deep breath.
‘Anyway, Hedda contacted Tomas, just as I’d hoped. He’d always done what I asked him to do, ever since we were little, but it wasn’t until he started killing Ulf’s sheep that I realised there were no limits to what he was prepared to do for me.’
‘Like lying about the fire? Or at least not giving away the fact that it was you who’d asked him to start it?’
Steph nods. ‘Tomas loved me, and I loved him. He was the brother I should have had instead of those two apes.’
She gestures angrily in the direction of the yard, as if Christian and Fredrik were still out there.
‘And yet you made sure he ended up in jail.’
‘Not in jail. Tomas needed care, and that was what he got. Sooner or later he would have set fire to something else – a house, a school. People would have been killed or injured. He knew it too. Knew he needed to be locked up.’
It is Laura’s turn to lean forward.
‘So what actually happened that night?’
Steph shrugs.
‘Milla and I took Jack into the toilet behind the stage. While we were in there, Milla said she knew what Ulf was doing to me – she’d had a foster father who did the same thing. At first I was shocked, then incredibly relieved. At last there was someone who understood what I was going through. I’d only just plucked up the courage to tell Jack.’ She presses her lips together. ‘But then Milla suggested we should use the information to blackmail Ulf, get money out of him and split it between us. A few thousand each – that’s all my suffering was worth as far as she was concerned. When I refused, Milla said she’d do it off her own bat – she was leaving in a few days anyway. I realised what would happen. Ulf would know I’d told someone, and what he’d do to me afterwards didn’t bear thinking about.’
She pauses, clears her throat.
‘Both Jack and I begged her not to do it, but Milla just laughed at us. So we wrestled her to the floor, tried to shut her up, but she wouldn’t stop laughing. She was crazy. Jack lost it completely. He grabbed her by the throat. And suddenly she went quiet . . .’
Steph takes another sip of cold tea.
‘It was a pure accident, but of course we knew that we were completely fucked. After a few minutes I came up with a solution. Milla was about to turn eighteen, and already had a passport. We were about the same height, with the same colour hair and eyes. So we locked Milla’s body in the toilet, I put on her hoodie, glasses and jewellery, and we sneaked back to her cabin and put a few streaks in my hair. Then I asked Tomas to start the fire.’
She catches Laura’s eye, underlining the last sentence.
‘The bar,’ Laura says. ‘Who dropped the bar?’
‘Jack. He was afraid that one of you would open the door and see us heading for Milla’s cabin, realise it was me and not Milla. But then we forgot to tell Tomas to lift it up. No one was meant to get hurt, I swear. I stayed inside Milla’s cabin, and the police officer who questioned me later that night just glanced at my passport to confirm my identity. Jack gave Milla – or rather me – an alibi, and as soon as Tomas had confessed and the police were no longer interested in Milla, we took off.’