'Listen, you can't confess to something you haven't done!'
'What do you suggest then?'
'Can't you go there and… like, talk to them?'
'Same difference.'
'I don't get it. Why?'
'Surely you can see that? The police have already made up their minds. I am the murderer. They won't believe a thing I say.'
She put her head in her hands, speaking quietly to the ground in front of her.
'Worse, I can't hack being locked up.'
He sounded less convinced now.
'But you're just telling them what really happened.'
Then she told him about Jorgen Grundberg. About how her fingerprints got on to his keycard, about the wig and the Swiss army knife she'd left behind in the hotel room. About everything in her past that had combined to make her the prime suspect. Former patient in a mental hospital, homeless and without any kind of social network, she was so utterly perfect that the police must be rubbing their hands with glee. No question about her guilt.
Anyway, to have a chance of finally persuading them of her innocence, they would have to keep her under lock and key for the duration of the inquiry. That would drive her insane. She had been there before and knew what she was talking about.
'The murderer has got the idea too. I'm a perfect scapegoat for him. He even left a confession in my name after the Vastervik murder.'
He nodded gently.
'He did the same in Bollnas.'
'Was that where he struck last night?'
'The night before. I don't know where he was last night.'
She was slumped against the backrest of the bench. The night before last as well, while she was tucked up in the attic. Now they suspected her of four murders.
He stared at her.
'You didn't know, did you?'
She sighed.
'No. I didn't.'
Silence. He was thinking. The complications must be dawning on him.
‘I know. Let's go to my house and check everything they've written about you.' 'How do you mean?' 'We'll surf the net.'
Ah, the Internet. She had read about it in the papers, a fantastic new world she knew nothing about. She felt as doubtful about it as she did about being invited home by this helpful fifteen-year-old.
'Why would that be any good?'
'Maybe we'll find something that proves it couldn't have been you. I bet you haven't read everything they've written.' 'Right enough.' He got up. 'Let's go.'
What other option was there?
They crept through the hall. She felt like a thief and her heart was pounding. 'This way.'
They were outside a door in his flat. A metal sign had been stuck on it. It said: ENTER AT YOU OWN RISK. Fine. She wanted to go away anyway.
They had passed an open doorway to a spacious living room and then the closed door to his parents' bedroom. Patrik had put his finger to his lips as a signal to be quiet. His father was asleep in there. Then Patrik opened the door to his room and waved her on. All this was very awkward, but she followed to please him.
His room looked as if it had been in the path of a storm-force gale. The floor was practically invisible under a tidal wave of clothes, old comics, CD boxes and books. She dumped her rucksack in the middle of it all, looking quizzically at him.
'I know, I promised Mum to keep my room tidy. I just kind of forget.'
'Tell me about it.'
They were speaking in whispers.
He pushed a button on the PC and when it came alive with a little melody, she told him to turn it down. While the computer started up, she looked around the room. Apart from the desk, there was an unmade bed and a bookshelf. She pulled the cover over the bed to make the place look less messy.
When the screen on his desk had filled with symbols, he sat down to work. She wandered across to an apparently empty aquarium by the window, because something moved inside it.
'That's Batman, my Greek land-tortoise.'
Batman had crawled into a corner to munch on a lettuce leaf. He looked quite content, so the world must seem quite agreeable to his tiny mind. She felt momentarily envious.
Patrik was using the keypad to write something.
serial killer sibylla
He clicked, the computer started working and after a few seconds produced the results. 67 hits. He was smiling. 'Great.'
'What does it all mean?'
'We've got 67 pages to search for stuff about you and your manic killing spree.'
She was amazed at having become unwittingly a part of this strange world 'on-line' that she had been reading about. Patrik was already scrolling through what looked like pictures of newsprint.
'I'll print the lot and then we can read it when we like.'
It was all new and strange to her, but he seemed to know what he was doing. Already another machine on the table had started humming and spitting out paper. The print was on the side she couldn't see but she grabbed the first lot of papers and settled down on the bed. Meanwhile Patrik kept clicking and feeding more paper into the printer. The first sheet began with a robust headline.
Grand Hotel woman breaks the widow's peace
Lena Grundberg has curled up in the sofa in her comfy sitting room. She is meeting us at home in the house where she lived with her beloved husband Jorgen until less than a week ago. Last Thursday he was the first victim of a cold-blooded murder. The deranged killer from Grand Hotel is a 32-year-old woman, who so far has managed to disappear without trace in spite of a nation-wide police search. But only two days after the bestial murder at the Grand, the madwoman visited the grieving widow.
Lena could hardly keep her tears back as she tells us her story.
I'm so terribly afraid all the time, she confessed. This woman just rang the doorbell and then she told me a lot of lies about how she'd just lost her husband. I never understood what she wanted, but when I later saw the police reconstruction I recognised her face at once…
Sibylla stopped reading. What a pack of lies! The grieving widow couldn't hold back her tears. Is that so? Screw her.
By now there was a new pile of printouts. She grabbed the lot.
Anatomical knowledge is a common skill for slaughter killers.
The police are baffled by the case of the 32-year-old woman, who has been charged in her absence for several murders in which the victims was butchered. A study of all 'butchery' murders carried out in Sweden since the 1960s shows that the murderer typically belongs to occupational groups such as doctors, veterinarians, hunters and butchers. According to Sten Bergman, professor of Forensic Psychiatry, this is a consequence partly of the fact that these professionals have overcome the fear of dissection felt by most people and partly because they have the technical skills.
According to the police investigation of the 32-year-old woman's past, nothing in her background fits with these occupational statistics. Of course, more than just the mental and physical skills are required to turn a person into a potential killer of this kind. Above all, they often have a mental defect associated with low empathy and strong contempt for other people.
Severe mental illness with delusions is another likely precondition. For instance, it seems that in some cases the murderer cannot bear to separate from his or her victim, something that seems to be the case with the 32-year-old woman. In this frame of mind, the perpetrator feels that he or she must have a trophy as a memento of the dead person or of the act of killing. Such personalities believe that they are in control of life and death.
The woman's victims have been subjected to mutilations, which fit a pattern described as 'aggressive'. This is different from so-called passive butchery, carried out in order to conceal the nature of the crime or complicate later investigations. There is no evidence of this kind of precautionary approach in any of her murders. The woman's only intention has been to desecrate her victims. The police are still unwilling to disclose what she did or which body parts she had…