The other client had had an even closer relationship to Hala. They had been lovers.
Erland Madsen had taken detailed notes, and read that they had both got the same tattoo. Not their names, because that would have been dangerous if it had been discovered by the Taliban or anyone else with a strict faith. Instead they’d had the word “friend” tattooed on their bodies, something that would bind them together for the rest of their lives.
But none of this was the most important point of connection.
Madsen ran his finger down the page and found what he was looking for, just as he thought he’d remembered it: both Bohr and the other client had said that they had felt better after killing someone. At the bottom of the page he had made a note for future reference: NB! Dig deeper into this next time. What does “better after killing someone” mean?
Erland Madsen looked at his watch. He would have to take the notes home and read the rest after the children were asleep. He closed the folder and put a red rubber band around it. The band ended up running across the name written on the folder.
Kaja Solness.
43
Three months earlier
Erland Madsen snuck a glance at his watch. The hour was almost over. That was a shame, because even if it was only their second therapy session, there was no doubt that the client, Kaja Solness, was an interesting case. She was responsible for security in the Red Cross, a post that shouldn’t necessarily have exposed her to the traumas that triggered PTSD in soldiers. All the same, she had told him how she had experienced acts of war and the daily horrors that only soldiers on active duty usually experience, and that sooner or later end up damaging their psyche. It was interesting — but not unusual — that she didn’t seem to recognise that she had not only ended up in these dangerous situations, but that she herself had more or less consciously sought them out. It was also interesting that she hadn’t shown any symptoms of PTSD during her debriefing in Tallinn, but had taken the initiative to seek therapy herself. Most soldiers who came were referrals, they were more or less forced to have counselling. And most of them didn’t want to talk, some of them came straight out and said they thought therapy was for sissies, and became irritable when they realised Madsen couldn’t prescribe the sleeping pills they had come for. “I just want to sleep!” they said, unaware of how ill they actually were until the day they sat with their mouth over the end of the rifle and tears streaming down their cheeks. Those who refused to have therapy got their pills, of course, their antidepressants and sleeping tablets. But Madsen’s experience told him that what he was engaged in, trauma-based cognitive therapy, helped. It wasn’t the acute crisis therapy that had been so popular until research showed that it didn’t work at all, but long-term treatment in which the client worked through the trauma and gradually learned to tackle and live with their physical responses. Because believing that there was a quick fix, that you could heal those wounds overnight, was naive and, at worst, dangerous.
But that seemed to be what Kaja Solness was after. She wanted to talk about it. Quickly, and a lot. So quickly, and so much, that he’d had to try to slow her down. But it felt like she didn’t have time, she wanted answers straightaway.
“Anton was Swiss,” Kaja Solness said. “A doctor, working for the ICRC, the Swiss branch of the Red Cross. I was deeply in love with him. And he loved me. I thought he did, anyway.”
“Do you think you were wrong?” Madsen asked as he took notes.
“No. I don’t know. He left me. Well, ‘left’ probably isn’t the right word. When you work together in a war zone, it’s difficult to physically leave someone — we live and work in close proximity. But he told me he’d met someone else.” She let out a short laugh. “ ‘Met’ isn’t the right word either. Sonia was a nurse in the Red Cross. We literally ate, slept and worked together. She was also Swiss. Anton prefers beautiful women, so it goes without saying that she was beautiful. Intelligent. Perfect manners. From a good family. Switzerland’s still the sort of country where that kind of thing matters. But the worst thing was that she was nice. A genuinely likeable person who threw herself into her work with energy, courage and love. I used to hear her crying in her sleep on days when they’d had to deal with a lot of dead and serious injuries. And she was nice to me. She gave the impression that I was the one who was being nice to her. Merci vilmal, she used to say. I don’t know if that’s German, French or both, but she said it all the time. Thank you, thank you, thank you. As far as I know, she never knew that Anton and I had been together before she came into the picture. He was married, so we’d kept it quiet. And then it was Sonia’s turn to keep their relationship secret. Ironically, I was the only person she confided in. She was frustrated, said he’d promised to leave his wife, but that he kept putting it off. I listened and comforted her and hated her more and more. Not because she was a bad person, but because she was a good person. Don’t you think that’s odd, Madsen?”
Erland Madsen started slightly at the mention of his name. “Do you think it’s odd?” he asked.
“No,” Kaja Solness said, after thinking for a few moments. “It was Sonia — not Anton’s chronically ill, wealthy wife — who was standing between me and Anton. That makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“It sounds logical. Go on.”
“It was outside Basra. Have you ever been to Basra?”
“No.”
“The hottest city on earth, you have to drink or die, as the journalists in the hotel bar at the Sultan Palace used to say. At night, huge, carnivorous honey badgers would come in from the desert and roam the streets, eating whatever they could find. People were terrified of them; farmers outside the city said the badgers had started eating their cows. You can get great dates in Basra, though.”
“At least that’s something.”
“Well, we got called to a farm where some cows had trampled the badly maintained fence around a minefield. The farmer and his son had run after them to get them out. Afterwards we found out that they thought there were only anti-personnel mines there. They look like flowerpots with spikes sticking out of them, and are easy to see and avoid. But there were PROM-1s there as well, and they’re much harder to spot. And PROM-1s are also called Bouncing Betties.”
Madsen nodded. Most landmines hit their victims’ legs and groins, but these bounced up when you triggered them and exploded at chest height.
“Almost all the animals had emerged unscathed, I don’t know if that was by luck or instinct. The father had almost managed to get out of the minefield when he triggered a PROM-1 right next to the fence. It flew up and peppered him with shrapnel. But because these mines fly up, the shrapnel often hits people a long way away. The son had run thirty or forty metres into the minefield to rescue the last cow, but he still got hit by a piece of shrapnel. We’d managed to get the father out and were trying to save his life, but the boy was lying in the minefield screaming. Those screams were unbearable, but the sun was going down and we couldn’t go into a field of PROM-1s without metal detectors; we had to wait for backup. Then one of the ICRC’s vehicles turned up. Sonia jumped out. She heard the screams, ran over to me and asked what sort of mines they were. She put her hand on my arm the way she always did, and I saw she was wearing a ring that hadn’t been there before. An engagement ring. And I knew he’d done it, that Anton had finally left his wife. We were standing a little way from the others, and I told her there were anti-personnel mines. And as I took a breath and was about to say there were PROM-1s as well, she was already on her way into the minefield. I called after her, obviously not loud enough, the boy’s screams must have drowned me out.”