He stroked her back, praised her choice of top and said she looked radiant, even though she felt shattered.
The hours until they fell asleep passed in a haze. They drank wine, had a bite to eat, and a long, earnest talk about all that had happened, and then made passionate love until they decided it was time for some sleep.
Ellen relaxed in his arms and was almost dropping off as she whispered:
‘I’m so glad we met, Carl.’
She could feel his smile tickle the back of her neck.
‘I think exactly the same,’ he said.
Then his hand cupped her left breast, and he kissed her shoulder and said:
‘You truly give me all I need.’
PART II: Signs of Anger
FRIDAY
It was dark in the flat when Jelena came to. She opened her eyes and found she was lying on her back. One eye didn’t want to open at all. She just had time to wonder why that eye was so heavy before the wave of pain washed through her. Through her and crashing against her. Impossible to ward off, impossible to endure. It coursed through her body and made her shake. When she tried to turn in the bed, the sheet stuck to the skin of her back in the places where the blood had clotted and dried.
Jelena almost immediately abandoned her efforts not to cry. She knew the Man would not be at home. He never was after a Reprimand.
The tears could run freely down her cheeks.
If only he had let her speak, if only he had listened and not rushed straight at her.
Such fury.
Jelena had never seen anything like it.
How could he do this? she thought as she cried into the stained pillow.
That was a forbidden thought, really. She was not to question anything about the Man, those were their rules. If he reprimanded her, it was only for her own good. If she could not understand that, their relationship was doomed to be weakened and destroyed. How many times had he told her?
But still.
Jelena was a woman who had lost her faith in herself and those around her bit by bit. She was alone, and that was because she deserved to be. That was why she had become the person who felt grateful and cherished when someone like the Man wanted her.
But there was still a vestige of strength in her that the Man had not managed to wipe out. Nor had that been his intention: without strength, she could never become his ally in the war that lay ahead of them.
Lying naked on the bed, alone and abandoned with wounds all over her body, Jelena used that last drop of strength to dare to sample the salty taste of protest. When she was younger, in a time she and the Man had done everything to make her forget, her whole being had been one big protest. The Man took that out of her. The kind of protest she indulged in was to be condemned. He had told her that the very first time he picked her up in the car. But there were other kinds of protest. If she wanted to and dared to, he could help her move forward.
Jelena wanted nothing better.
But the road to perfection, which the Man claimed was imperative for the fight, was far longer and darker than Jelena had ever imagined. Long and painful. It nearly always hurt somewhere. It hurt most of all when he burned her. Though really that had only been a few times, and only right at the start of their relationship.
Now he had done it again.
Jelena was hot and feverish. Her chest hurt when she breathed and she had burns on more parts of her body than she dared to think of. The pain was driving her insane.
A desperate thought flashed through her mind.
I must get help, she thought. I must get help.
Summoning all her willpower she slipped off the edge of the bed and slowly began to crawl out of the room. Seeking help for her injuries was another infringement of the rules, but this time she was sure she would die if she didn’t get medical help.
The Man always came home sooner or later and helped her. But this time Jelena did not have time to wait for him. Her strength was draining away too quickly.
Got to get to the front door.
Somewhere inside her, the panic was growing. What would this betrayal mean for the relationship between her and the Man? What would be left of it, in fact, after she had gone behind his back?
Of course the Man would never accept her showing enough independence to leave the flat in her present state. He would come after her, and he would kill her.
Time, thought Jelena, as she kneeled up, trembling, and gripped the handle of the front door. I’ve got to think.
She struggled to raise her other hand so she could reach the lock. Unlock the door and open it. She remembered nothing more.
The door swung open and cold marble met Jelena’s face as she hit the floor.
Alex Recht began his working day by dispatching Fredrika to Uppsala to question Sara Sebastiansson’s former friend Maria Blomgren, who had been with her on the writing course in Umeå.
Then he sat behind his desk with a cup of coffee in his hand. Quiet and alone.
Later on, Alex would wonder just when had this case turned into a wild animal that paralysed his whole team by stubbornly and persistently choosing its own path. The case seemed to be living a life of its own, with the sole purpose of confusing the team and leading it astray.
Don’t you dare control me, came a whisper inside Alex. Don’t you dare tell me which way to go.
Alex sat stiffly at his desk. Although the night had only allowed him a few hours’ sleep, he felt full of energy. He also felt pure, livid anger. There was such insolence to the perpetrator’s whole plan. The hair was couriered to the child’s mother. The child was dumped in a car park outside a big hospital. Somebody even rang the hospital to make sure the child would be found. Without leaving a single trace behind them. Or at least nothing personal, like fingerprints.
‘But nobody on the planet is invisible, and nobody is infallible, that’s for sure,’ Alex muttered doggedly to himself as he lifted the receiver and dialled the forensics unit in Solna.
The pathologist who took Alex’s call sounded surprisingly young. In Alex’s world, skilled doctors were usually over fifty, so he always felt slightly anxious when he had to work with someone younger than that.
Despite his prejudices, he found the pathologist to be a very competent person who expressed himself in terms that even an ordinary police officer could understand.
That was good enough for Alex.
The pathologist up in Umeå had been right in her preliminary assessment. Lilian had died of poisoning, an overdose of insulin. The insulin had been injected directly into the body, high at the back of her neck.
Alex reluctantly found his anger now mixed with surprise.
‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ said the pathologist, sounding concerned. ‘But it’s an effective and – how shall I put it – clinical way of killing someone. And keeps the victim’s suffering to a minimum.’
‘Was she conscious when she was jabbed?’
‘Hard to say,’ the doctor said doubtfully. ‘I found traces of morphine in her, so presumably someone had tried to keep her calm. But I can’t swear she was unconscious when she was given the lethal injection.’
He went on:
‘It’s hard to say what the murderer hoped to gain by injecting the insulin straight into her skull, or the back of her neck. At that concentration it would have been lethal even if injected into an arm or leg.’
‘Do you think he’s a doctor? The murderer?’ Alex asked quietly.
‘Hardly,’ said the pathologist tersely. ‘I’d call the way the needle was used amateurish. And as I say: why did he initially try putting it straight in the girl’s head? It almost seems like some kind of symbolic act.’
Alex wondered at what he had just heard. Symbolic? How?
The cause of death seemed as bizarre as the rest of the case.