There was something else. Time after time he came back to Hoglund’s observation. There’s something blatant about the modus operandi. Both in terms of Eriksson’s death, impaled on sharpened bamboo stakes, and Runfeldt, who was strangled and left tied to a tree. I see something, he thought, I just haven’t managed to see through it. It was almost midnight when he turned off the light in his office. He stood there in the dark. It was still just a hunch, a vague fear deep inside his brain.
The killer would strike again. He seemed to have detected a signal as he worked at his desk. There was something incomplete about everything that had happened so far. What it was, he didn’t know.
But still he was sure.
CHAPTER 18
She waited until 2.30 a.m. From experience she knew that was when the fatigue would creep up on her. She thought back on all the nights when she had been at work. That’s how it always was. The greatest danger of dozing off was between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m.
She had been waiting in the linen-supply room since 9 p.m. Just as on her first visit, she had walked right in through the main entrance of the hospital. No-one had noticed her. A nurse in a hurry. No-one had noticed her because there was nothing unusual about her. She had considered disguising herself, maybe changing her hair. But that would have been an unnecessary caution. She’d had plenty of time to think as she’d sat in the linen room, the scent of newly washed and ironed sheets reminding her of childhood. She sat there in the dark until after midnight, and then she took out her torch, the one she always used at work, and read the last letter her mother had written to her. It was unfinished. But it was in this letter that her mother had begun to write about herself. About the events that lay behind her attempt to take her life. She could see that her mother had never got over her bitterness. I wander around the world like a ship without a captain, she wrote, forced to atone for someone else’s guilt. I thought that age would create enough distance, that the memories would grow dim, fade, and maybe finally vanish altogether. But now I see that won’t happen. Only with death can I put an end to it. And since I don’t want to die, not yet, I choose to remember.
The letter was dated the day before her mother had moved in with the French nuns, the day before shadows had detached themselves from the darkness and murdered her.
After she had read the letter she had turned off the torch. Everything had grown quiet. Someone had walked past in the hall only twice. The linen room was located in a wing that was only partly in use.
She had had plenty of time to think. There were now three free days entered in her timetable. She had some time and she was going to use it. Until now everything had gone the way it was supposed to. Women only made mistakes when they tried to think like men. She had known that for a long time, and in her view she had already proved it.
But there was something that bothered her, something that had thrown her timetable out of kilter. She had followed everything that had been written in the newspapers closely. She listened to the news on the radio and watched it on various TV channels. It was clear that the police didn’t understand a thing. And that had been her intention, not to leave any traces, to lead the dogs away from the trails they should be following. But now she was impatient with all this incompetence. The police were never going to solve the crimes. She was adding riddles to the story. In their minds the police would be looking for a male killer. She didn’t want it to be that way any longer.
She sat in the dark closet and devised a plan. She would make some minor changes. Nothing that would reveal her timetable, of course. But she would give the riddle a face.
At 2.30 a.m. she left the linen closet. The hall was deserted. She straightened her white uniform and headed for the stairs up to the maternity ward. She knew that there were usually only four people on duty. She had been there in the daytime, asking about a woman that she knew had already gone home with her baby. Over the nurse’s shoulder she could see in the log that all the rooms were occupied. She couldn’t imagine why women had babies at this time of year, when autumn was turning to winter. But then she knew that few women chose when to have their children, even now.
When she reached the glass doors of the maternity ward, she stopped and took a careful look at the nurses’ station. She held the door slightly ajar and heard no voices. That meant the midwives and nurses were busy. It would take her less than 15 seconds to reach the room of the woman she intended to visit. She probably wouldn’t run into anybody, but she had to be careful. She pulled the glove out of her pocket. She had sewn it herself and filled the fingers with lead, shaped to follow the contours of her knuckles. She put it on her right hand, opened the door, and quickly entered the ward. The nurses’ station was empty; there was a radio playing somewhere. She walked rapidly and soundlessly to the room, slipped inside and closed the door behind her.
Taking off her glove, she approached the woman lying in the bed; she was awake. She stuffed the glove in her pocket, the same pocket where she had put the letter from her mother. She sat down on the edge of the bed. The woman was very pale, and her belly pushed up the sheet. She took the woman’s hand.
“Have you decided?” she asked her.
The woman nodded. It didn’t surprise her, and yet she felt a sort of triumph. Even the women who were most cowed could be turned towards life again.
“Eugen Blomberg,” the woman said. “He lives in Lund. He’s a researcher at the university. I don’t know any better way to describe what he does.”
She patted the woman’s hand.
“I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry about a thing.”
“I hate that man,” she said.
“Yes,” said the woman sitting on the edge of the bed. “You hate him and you have every right to.”
“I would have killed him if I could.”
“I know. But you can’t. Think of your baby instead.”
She leaned forward and stroked the woman’s cheek. Then she got up and put on her glove. She had been in the room no more than two minutes. Carefully she pushed open the door. No-one was around. She walked back towards the exit.
Just as she was passing the station a woman came out. It was bad luck. The woman stared at her. It was an older woman, presumably one of the midwives.
She kept walking towards the exit doors. The woman yelled and started running after her. She walked faster. But the woman grabbed her left arm and asked who she was and what she was doing there. It was a shame that this woman had to interfere, she thought. She spun around and hit her with the glove. She didn’t want to hurt her badly, and so she took care not to hit her on the temple, which could be fatal. She struck her hard on one cheek — hard enough to knock her out. The woman groaned and fell to the floor.
She turned around to leave, but felt two hands gripping her leg. When she looked back she realised she hadn’t struck hard enough. At the same time she heard a door open somewhere in the distance. She was about to lose control of the situation. She yanked her leg away and bent down to deliver another blow. The woman scratched her in the face. Now she struck without worrying if it was too hard or not, right in the temple. The woman sank to the floor.
She fled through the glass doors, her cheek stinging where the midwife’s nails had torn her skin. No-one called after her. She wiped her face, and her white sleeve showed streaks of blood. She stuffed the glove in her pocket and took off her clogs so she could run faster. She wondered whether the hospital had an internal alarm system. But she got out without being caught. When she reached her car and looked at her face in the rear-view mirror, she saw that she had only a few scratches.