Thea shakes her head. ‘That’s very kind of you, but I’m not hungry.’
Tanya looks disappointed. ‘OK – I’ll be in touch if we see anything else. Are you coming along this afternoon?’ She notices Thea’s hesitation. ‘The information meeting with the mining company in the community centre. Everybody’s going – it should be pretty lively.’
‘I’ll be there.’
‘Good – see you later then.’
Tanya walks away and a blond young man with his hair in a ponytail comes to meet her. He glances in Thea’s direction, nods and smiles.
Thea lets Emee spend a few minutes on the lawn in front of the pub before heading back to Tornaby to open the surgery. It’s quiet, with only a few patients. She’s still shaken by her visit to Arne, and has to force herself to tackle some admin.
As soon as she’s finished she takes out Elita’s case file. She reads the interviews with the children again, but none of them mentions Arne. As far as she can see, he doesn’t come up in the investigation at all, and yet she’s convinced he was there that night. Why else would he be so sure of Leo’s guilt?
Or could Arne have had something to do with Elita’s death? He was in his twenties when she died, a man with a job and a car, which could make him a possible father of the child she was expecting – but Thea can’t see the awkward young man in the photographs being with Elita Svart. Everything she’s heard about Arne from David and Dr Andersson suggests that he was a little odd. Would Elita really have fallen for him?
She turns to Elita’s letter, tries to read it with fresh eyes.
My name is Elita Svart. I am sixteen years old. I live deep in the forest outside Tornaby.
By the time you read this, I will already be dead.
She is still certain that the letter is not about death, but about change. Elita was on her way, ready to leave with her unborn child – but someone stopped her. Was it Arne?
She hears voices in the corridor, the outside door opening and closing. People arriving for the information meeting, presumably. She’s about to go and take a look when her phone rings. Unknown number.
‘Hi Jenny, it’s your father.’
The voice makes her inhale sharply. She locks the door, returns to her desk.
‘Hi.’
‘How are you?’
She doesn’t know what to say. The idea of her father calling her from prison to ask how she is seems so absurd that she’s having difficulty processing it. She’s kept away from him for so long, and now they’re making small talk on the phone.
‘Fine, thanks.’
‘Aren’t you going to ask how I am? Isn’t politeness the glue that holds society together, in spite of everything? Isn’t that what proves we’re human and . . .’
‘How are you, Leif?’ She closes her eyes, pinches the bridge of her nose.
‘I’m dying of lung cancer, how the fuck do you think I am?’ His laughter is interrupted by a fit of coughing. ‘How’s the reprieve petition going? Have you looked up what to do?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Not yet. What the fuck are you waiting for? Are you hoping I’ll die so that the problem will solve itself? In which case I can tell you that I’ve arranged an interview with a newspaper after the weekend. It’ll be a real sob story about a hardened criminal on his deathbed who regrets what he’s done. There might be a few lines about you too – my angry daughter who refuses to write my reprieve petition, when all I really want is for her to forgive me . . .’
‘Is it?’
‘What?’
‘Is that what you want? For me to forgive you? Is it important to you?’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘So the answer to the question is no?’
There is silence for a few seconds; she can almost hear him thinking on the other end of the line.
‘Just do as I ask, Jenny.’
The call ends abruptly, and she sits there with the phone in her hand, anger pounding behind her eyes. She massages one temple, trying to ease the pressure. In the end she opens the drugs cabinet and takes two painkillers. There are other options – stronger, more effective. For a brief moment she considers taking something else, something that will stop her mind from racing, just for a few hours.
She closes and locks the cabinet before the impulse becomes too hard to resist.
The hum of conversation from the corridor is louder now.
‘Stay here, sweetheart,’ she says to Emee. She hangs the BACK SOON sign on the door.
The hall is so full that people are standing along the walls. The double doors to the corridor are open, as are the windows. Thea stays in the background, craning her neck to see over those standing in the doorway.
Three men are sitting on the podium. One of them is Philippe. Behind them, on a white screen, a PowerPoint slide says: Nordic Vanadium. A mining company for the 2020s.
Thea stays for a while, listening to the presentation. The image on the screen changes, showing electric cars, forests, rivers, cheerful workers in hi-vis jackets and yellow hard hats. Key words are superimposed on the pictures: responsibility, humility, resource extraction, environmental awareness, switch to green technology.
It’s just a longer variation of what Philippe has already told her. They’re test drilling to see if the find is worth an investment in large-scale mining.
As Thea expected, the audience’s attitude is extremely negative, and the longer the presentation goes on, the more often it’s interrupted by angry comments.
Philippe’s two Swedish colleagues repeatedly stress that the project will bring job opportunities and generate tax revenue. They emphasise the same argument as Philippe: they will extract natural resources with minimum impact on the environment, they will restore the landscape when they’ve finished. The villagers, however, are not convinced.
‘You’re just coming here to plunder our resources,’ says a familiar voice from the front row. ‘You’ll take what you want, ruin our land and our waterways, then you’ll leave. We’ve seen it before.’
This elicits a long round of applause.
The men on the podium try to respond to Ingrid, but are drowned out by booing and more angry remarks. They do their best, but after a few minutes they thank the audience and end the meeting.
As soon as they step down, all three of them are surrounded by a group of irate villagers. They patiently answer questions for a few minutes, then begin to move towards the exit.
Philippe spots Thea, and his serious expression gives way to a smile.
‘Docteur Lind, how nice to see you here. Did we manage to convert you to our cause?’
Thea smiles and shakes her head. People push past behind Philippe, giving them both dirty looks.
‘How’s your hand?’
‘Better, thank you. When do you think the stitches can come out?’
‘Call in early next week – there’s no rush.’
‘Will do. Au revoir, docteur!’
He waves goodbye with his bandaged hand and disappears through the door with his colleagues.
Someone grabs Thea’s arm. It’s her mother-in-law.
‘Do you know him?’
‘He’s one of my patients.’
‘He’s a thief. The whole company is a collection of villains.’ Ingrid is white-faced; Thea has never seen her so agitated. ‘They want to destroy the whole area, fill it with huge, dusty open-cast mines. Trucks and excavators working day and night. He’s got no business here.’
‘I’m well aware of what he does, but I can’t refuse anyone medical treatment.’