‘But first you broke into Källegården.’
Steph nods. ‘We needed money and I knew where Dad’ – she bites her lip – ‘where Ulf hid the cash that didn’t go through the books.’
‘And you took your mother’s jewellery.’
‘Yes. Ulf tormented my mother. Drove her crazy and had her locked up in an asylum. I couldn’t leave her jewellery with him.’
‘And Jack?’ Laura can’t help asking.
‘Jack loved me.’ The answer comes a little too quickly; Steph seems to notice it herself. ‘I understand now that he was Hedda’s son. He’d inherited her appetite for drugs and booze. Did you know she used to run a moonshine ring with Kent Rask?’
‘Yes, he told me.’
‘No doubt he also told you that Ulf forced her to stop, but do you know why she agreed? Not because she was afraid of either Ulf or the police – she was terrified of you finding out. Or your parents. She didn’t want them to stop you coming to visit. Her little princess.’
Hedda’s words sound poisonous on Steph’s lips.
‘I decided early on that I was going to change. Not make do with pretending to be Milla for a while until we’d managed to get out of the country – I wanted to become a completely different person. Someone who’d never been anywhere near Vintersjön, never lived at Källegården and been subjected to Ulf’s abuse. Someone who wasn’t a victim.’ Steph slowly shakes her head. ‘Do you have any idea how much work it takes to reinvent yourself, change absolutely everything? Not only your appearance, speech, gestures, the way you move, but also the way you think. I did all of that, and yet it wasn’t enough for Jack. Time doesn’t heal all wounds.’
Her tone is bitter now.
‘He never stopped pining for you. However much I changed, I was still damaged goods in Jack’s eyes, and the woman who’d made him a murderer. I couldn’t possibly compete with a perfect, snow-white little princess. So Jack sought refuge in the promised land of drugs, just like your aunt.’
She nods contemptuously in the direction of Hedda’s sagging sofa.
‘As time went on, the secrets poisoned our relationship almost as much as his addiction. I dumped him and married money a couple of times, as you already know. But Jack was my partner in crime, and I couldn’t risk him returning to Sweden, so I took care of him. Made sure he got what he needed.’
‘You mean the drugs he needed.’
Steph’s enigmatic expression probably means yes.
‘But then he decided to get clean, said he was going to sort out his life. I discovered that he’d been googling your name. It was only a matter of time before he got in touch, jeopardising everything I’d spent twenty-five years building up.’
Laura inhales sharply.
‘So you killed him?’
‘No. Jack decided to go for one last hit before he started his new life. I found him on the bathroom floor with the canula in his arm. He was fitting, foaming at the mouth.’
Laura tries not to picture him like that, but fails.
‘You didn’t bother calling an ambulance.’
‘Jack wasn’t himself anymore. You wouldn’t have recognised him. He’d been using on and off for over twenty years. He had hepatitis, he was as thin as a rake. Believe me, it was for the best.’
Laura closes her eyes. Sees eighteen-year-old Jack. His smile, his eyes. The thought that he no longer exists is unbearable.
‘It was you who deleted your voice from my phone,’ she says.
Steph nods. ‘It was easy. I’ve seen you enter the code a thousand times. I left the break-in at the police station to Tomas. I was a little worried about what that recording might lead to.’
‘But why? Peter and I could have used it to nail Ulf.’
‘A thirty-year-old recording of a dead girl’s voice? The statute of limitations is up on all the crimes Ulf committed against me. And besides, I’m the one who’s going to destroy Ulf. Destroy him completely, not with some kind of fucking half-measure that will end up with a shelved investigation.’
‘And Hedda? What happened after Tomas told her about Ulf?’
‘She agreed to sell to Vintersjöholm, just as I’d hoped – but then I made a mistake. I thought that if even you couldn’t see through my disguise, then no one else would be able to. So I came down here with Heinz one day. By that time Hedda was in more or less the same state as the house. It was upsetting. She was once almost like a mother to me.’
She paused, shook her head.
‘I’d underestimated Hedda; something during our meeting must have made her suspicious, because shortly after that she wrote to Tomas and asked him what he knew about me and Ulf. She started making excuses not to sign the contract, said she wanted to give the matter a little more thought. That was when I realised she’d seen right through me. I came back down and found her out on the pontoon.’
‘You pushed her into the water,’ Laura whispers.
‘Hedda was never going to sell Gärdsnäset.’
‘But you hoped you could manipulate me into doing so. After you’d killed Hedda.’
‘I hadn’t planned it. I tried to reason with her, make her understand, but she refused to listen.’
Steph looks away.
‘Do you know what the worst thing was? She begged me to forgive her, because she hadn’t understood what I was trying to tell her all those years ago, because she hadn’t protected me from Ulf. She’d been too preoccupied with you to see what was happening to me.’
Steph’s voice is pure steel, and Laura can’t bear to listen to another word. She covers her eyes with her hands, tries not to think of Hedda’s poor, damaged heart exploding in the cold water, but it’s no good.
She hears the sound of a chair scraping across the floor. The rustle of a pocket.
She lowers her hands, is about to ask another question when a searing pain strikes her back. An electrical whiplash that makes the scar contract in pain, then wraps the whole world in merciful darkness.
66
As soon as Laura regains consciousness, she is aware that the house is on fire. She doesn’t even need to register the smell, the heat, the crackling sound of the flames devouring all the flammable crap. Because she knows that this is the only logical conclusion for Steph. The only way she can win.
Steph, who has the same name as one of the two girls in the Goonies gang. It all seems so obvious now. The signs were there, but she didn’t see them, even though it’s her job. Because Steph was in her blind spot. Diagonally behind her, just out of sight.
Or maybe she just didn’t want to look in that direction, because she wanted a friend. Was that it? Whatever the reason, she made the same mistake as everyone else, thinking only white swans existed. Everyone except Hedda.
She is lying on the floor in her old room. The smoke is already thick below the ceiling, gradually pressing down, and within a minute or so she will be forced to inhale it, deep into her lungs. Her body is still aching from the electric shock, the scar feels distorted, as if it has rolled itself into a ball at the top of her spine.
Her hands and feet are bound with ties made of sacking, which will burn up and leave no trace. A tragic accident in a house that was a serious fire hazard, that’s how Steph has planned it all. But she’s forgotten one thing. This is Laura’s house, Laura’s old bedroom. She wriggles over to the walk-in closet, then kneels with her back towards the door. Rips off the crumbling piece of foam rubber Hedda stuck there long ago to protect her shins, then moves the sacking tie up and down over the sharp corner as fast as she can.