Her thoughts dissolved. Again, this void that threatened to consume her brain. This emptiness that returned to her at increasingly short intervals.
And then the pictures came rushing into her mind. Images of smooth objects, the menu button of her mobile, the face of her watch, the mirror in her dressing table, leaped forth and danced before her. Everything smooth that she had ever registered in her life jostled to find a place in her mind, a place where it would be recognized. And then, there it was. An object she had never used but which men had often produced from their pockets with pride when she had still been a child. A status symbol from an age long gone, to which her husband, too, had yielded. There it lay, the Ronson lighter with its little V, tossed into a packing case, perhaps so that she alone might find use for it. So that it might provoke her thoughts, or make for a final solution in what was left of her meager life.
If I could extract it and light it, everything would quickly find an end, she thought. And everything he owns would disappear with me.
Again, she smiled inside. The thought was so oddly life-giving. In burning everything, she would at least be making her own mark, planting a thorn in his life, which he would never, ever be able to remove. He would lose everything for which his crimes had been committed.
Retribution.
She held her breath and began again to scratch away at the cardboard, realizing at once how tough the material was. How unreasonably resilient. Scratching away tiny pieces at a time. Like a wasp consuming the surface of the table in the garden. She imagined paper dust descending through the air in front of her face. Tiny particles that together might make a hole, if only her fingers were strong enough. A hole through which the Ronson lighter might fall into her hand.
Eventually, when she had labored enough to dislodge the lighter only a few millimeters, her strength ebbed away.
She closed her eyes and pictured Benjamin for a moment. Bigger than he was now, talking, and nimble on his feet. A gorgeous little boy running to greet her. A fine leather ball in his hands and his eyes full of mischief. How she would have loved to have been there. For his first proper sentence. His first day at school. The first time he looked into her eyes and said she was the best mummy in all the world.
The emotion she felt may have been no more apparent than a slight moisture in the corner of her eye, but it was there. Emotion at the thought of Benjamin. Her little boy, who would now have to live without her.
Benjamin, who would have to live with…him.
NO! everything inside her screamed. But what was the use?
And yet the thought kept coming back, more and more insistent. He would be with Benjamin, and this thought would be the last thing on her mind when her heart finally succumbed.
She extended her fingers again. The nail of her middle digit found a shred, and she began to scrape, scratching with this one finger, until its nail broke. Her only tool denied her. And then she drifted into sleep, tormented by her realization.
The cries from outside came at the same time as the mobile again chimed in her back pocket. It sounded weaker now. Soon the battery would be spent. She knew the signs.
The voice belonged to Kenneth. Perhaps her husband was still in the house. Perhaps he would open the door. Perhaps Kenneth would know something was wrong. Perhaps…
Her fingers moved slightly. It was the only response she could muster.
But the front door did not open. The sounds of arguing never came. All she perceived was her mobile ringing, its tone becoming fainter. And then the lighter suddenly dislodged and came to rest against her thumb.
The slightest wrong movement and it would be lost to the darkness that surrounded her.
She tried to disregard Kenneth’s cries, to ignore the fact that the vibrations of the phone in her pocket were now growing weaker. And then, with the slightest twitch of a finger, the lighter lay in her hand.
Once she felt certain she had a proper hold, she twisted her wrist as far as she could. Perhaps only a centimeter, but enough to give her hope. Her ring finger and little finger were lifeless and numb, and yet she believed in her endeavor.
She pressed as hard as she could and heard the faint escape of gas as the valve opened. So very faint.
How could she ever press hard enough to make a spark?
She tried to channel all that remained of her strength into the extremity of her thumb. Into this last display of will to show the world how she had lived her final hours, and where she had died.
She pressed again. All the life inside her went into this one action. And like a shooting star in the night sky, the spark burst out in front of her in the darkness, igniting the gas and making everything bright.
She twisted her wrist the one free centimeter back toward the cardboard and allowed the flame to lick the sides of the packing case. Then she let go and watched the sliver of blue turn yellow and widen, wandering slowly upward and leaving behind it a blackened fan of soot for each centimeter’s advance. What for a moment had been aflame was then extinguished incrementally, like a trail of gunpowder leading nowhere.
After a moment, the weak flame reached the top of the box and died. Only a deep red glow remained. And then it, too, was gone.
She heard him call and knew it was over.
No more strength.
She closed her eyes and imagined Kenneth outside in front of the house. The brothers and sisters they could have given to Benjamin. A beautiful life.
She sniffed in the smell of smoke, and new images darted in her mind. Camps by the lake. Bonfires of Midsummer Eves in the company of older boys. The aromas of a farmers’ market in Vitrolles, the one time she and her brother had spent a camping holiday with their parents.
The smell of smoke seemed stronger now.
She opened her eyes to a yellow light dancing with blue above her.
And the next moment everything was in flames.
Burning.
She had heard that almost everyone who died in fires died from smoke inhalation, and that if a person wanted to save themselves they should crawl along the floor, underneath the smoke.
She wanted to die from smoke inhalation. It sounded like a merciful, painless death.
But the smoke was rising and she was unable to stand. The flames would consume her before the smoke. She would burn to death.
And then came the fear.
The final, definitive dread.
45
“There, Carl!” Assad indicated a smooth-rendered, sienna-colored building facing out on to Københavnsvej in the process of being done up.
WE’RE OPEN-SORRY ABOUT THE MESS! a banner read over the door. It didn’t look like an entrance.
“Turn down here toward the shopping center, and then to the right. We must go around the building site there,” instructed Assad, pointing in the direction of a dark, empty area amid new buildings.
They pulled onto a dimly lit car park next to the bowling alley and found a space. Carl got out and walked around. No fewer than three dark Mercedes were parked here, though none looked as if it had just been involved in an accident.
Carl wondered how long it might take to get a car repaired. Longer than this, surely? His thoughts darted to his service pistol, lying inside the gun locker at Police HQ. He probably ought to have brought it with him, but how could he have known when they left this morning? It had been a long and eventful day.
He looked up at the building.
Apart from a sign composed of a pair of enormous bowling pins, nothing at the rear of the pretentious building even remotely suggested the place might be a bowling alley.
The same was true when they went inside and found themselves in a stairwell filled with steel lockers. It was a bit like left luggage at a railway station. Otherwise, the walls were bare. An empty space with a couple of doors and no indication of where they might lead. Stairs going down, done out in the national colors of Sweden. The place was utterly devoid of life.