Suddenly she got up, took down the album of old photographs, turned to the portrait of her grandmother. Elisabeth, that was her name. The eyes in the black-and-white picture were more intense than her own. She might have been anything between forty and fifty when it was taken. Had travelled twice as far as Liss into this impossible life.
Elisabeth got stuck. Tried to pull herself free. Never managed it. Elisabeth became Liss. Someone has to carry the darknesson, Mailin. You’ve always shed light all around you. I spread darkness. Everything I touch freezes.
She had to pee, tottered out unsteadily in her boots, pulled a jacket over her shoulders. Didn’t bother taking the torch. Could find her way around here blindfolded. The wind buffeted her as she rounded the corner. Tiny grains of ice that jabbed at her eyes and forced her to keep them closed. They melted against her skin and ran down her cheeks. She heard something, listened out. As though the wind had gone off with her steps and now threw the sounds of them back at her. She carried on, high-stepping through the deep snow, unhooked the latch on the outside toilet, fumbled her way to the closet, lifted the lid and sat down on the cold surface. The wet blast raced through the toilet, penetrating deep inside her.
Afterwards she stood still again for a long time, listening. The wind and that sound that wasn’t wind, approaching from somewhere close by. Not my footsteps in the snow, she thought. These footsteps are coming from behind. Two arms locked around her. It was as though she had been expecting it. She jerked in an attempt to free herself. One of the arms let go. At that instant, pain flaring down her throat. Like being bitten by a snake. It burnt, and the warmth spread out into her shoulder and chest.
– Stand still, he whispered in her ear. – Stand still and it’ll be all right.
She lay slumped on her back on the sofa. Imagined how the snow had forced its way into the room. She wasn’t cold. The blanket of snow wrapped around her was warm.
He was standing in the centre of the room, his back turned; must have put more wood on the fire because it was burning again. Without moving her leaden head, she followed his outline with her eyes. From the waist and up to the hair that hung dark and wet on the shoulders.
She managed to open her mouth, tried to find out what she had to do for her lips to shape sounds, things that could turn into words.
– What… have you done to me.
The echo of her words came rolling back at her. He didn’t turn round.
– A shot. It’ll do you good. You’ll feel good.
Viljam, she tried to say, Johannes Viljam, Jo. We’ll have a good time. Together.
She opened her eyes as far as she was able. Cold now. Dark in the room. Just a few glowing embers left in the fireplace. Couldn’t see him but knew he was there. Heard the sound of his breathing.
Her hands held fast in some way. Fastened together. She was lying in a corner of the sofa, naked. Her mouth felt swollen.
– Viljam.
She heard a noise from over by the table. That was where he was sitting. Still wearing his outdoor jacket, she could make out, the hood pulled down over the head now.
– I’m cold, she managed to say.
– It’s better to be cold. Things don’t hurt as much then. The cold is an anaesthetic.
The tone of his voice was different. Not different, but something that had been faintly present in it before was stronger now.
– Why did you give me that shot?
He turned towards her. – I like being together best this way. Calm and easy.
He tossed something on to the mantelpiece.
– I see from your call list that you haven’t rung anybody but me this evening. We’ve got plenty of time.
– Can you take off these handcuffs?
He made a clucking sound with his tongue. – This is the way it is now, he said, and sounded saddened. – You’d best get used to it. The way Mailin had to.
She closed her eyes. Still she managed to keep the thought at bay. The thought that it wasn’t Berger who had killed Mailin.
– You called me that morning. After she went missing. I could hear how upset you were.
He stood up, crossed the floor and stopped in front of her. She could just make out the lines of his jaw, the shadowed eye sockets.
– She shouldn’t have gone prying into that business with Ylva.
Liss twisted round. – Ylva? Is that someone you’re having a relationship with?
He shrugged his shoulders. – Used to have.
– Did Mailin find out?
– Yes, she did.
He stepped towards the fireplace, turned an almost unburnt log over and made it flare up again.
– There was an article about an unsolved murder in one of the magazines she subscribed to. It was only when she read about it that she began to see the connection. Before she was due to come out here that day, she sat searching on the net. Logged off when she heard me come home. Deleted the history. But I was able to restore it while she was in the bathroom. A load of old stuff about Ylva. She was reading it behind my back.
Liss struggled to compose her slowly drifting thoughts, couldn’t relate them to what Viljam was standing there and saying.
– It had been more than two years since I’d said anything about Ylva. That was during the first sessions in the office in Welhavens Street. And she still had her notes from those days on the CD, even though she’d promised to delete them. Delete everything that was said about Jacket.
Finally Liss got it: the printout she had found inside the sofa cover. The girl in Bergen was Ylva. There was something about her in the newspapers years ago. She’d been murdered.
– You were at work the day Mailin went missing, she whispered, because it still seemed possible that these thoughts did not belong together. – And then at home with my mother and Tage.
He came closer again.
– That’s what you think. What everyone thinks. But when she was supposed to be coming out here, the day before, she went to the post office to deposit some money. I followed. Waited for her in the car. She could have run off when she saw me there, but she got in. She had a whole pile of printouts about Ylva and what happened that time in Bergen in her bag. I’d interrupted her when I came home, and now she’d been to the post office and continued searching on the net. That’s why I came out here with her. I was with her when she was in pain.
– Was it here? Liss managed to say.
– Was what here?
– That you stabbed her in the eyes with a syringe.
– Not a syringe. The corkscrew. I had to screw it in.
He bent over her, his eyes just about visible. Liss’s body felt too heavy for her to move.
– Is that what you’re going to do to me?
He didn’t answer.
– Don’t you want me to see you?
– Shut up, he said, startling her. That new tone in his voice was darker now, pushing the familiar one away. She tried to put together something to say. Something that could stop what was about to happen, make it change direction.
– But Mailin left here again. She didn’t go missing until the next evening.
He laughed briefly. She didn’t see it, but she could hear the muted clucking sounds.
– Think it over while I make a quick trip to the shed. It wouldn’t surprise me if you worked it out. You know, you’re not all that slow. Just a shame you never learned how to use it.
She heard him open the outside door.
Is that when you wrote it in the book, Mailin, while he was out in the shed? You managed to get over to the fireplace and pick up a piece of charcoal. Maybe you couldn’t even see.
The stuff he’d injected her with came surging back, retreated, surged inwards again. Each time she became more and more sleepy. Let yourself flow on these waves, don’t want anything any more. I’ll look after you. An image appears in the darkness, Mailin naked and bound. She’s bleeding from the eyes. It mustn’t happen to you, Liss.