Some Kind of Peace (27 page)

“Although he himself is a horny loser who is screwing a subordinate, even though it’s against all the rules.”

“So what did you do?”

“I already told you. I said to him that I knew what he was doing. What I thought about it. And now I don’t have a job.”

“Did he fire you?”

“Of course he didn’t. I quit.”

“But… but why? It’s not your fault that he made a mistake.”

My hand is still resting against the rough cotton of her hoodie. Now and then, I press Charlotte’s arm consolingly.

“I couldn’t stay there after I said those things to him,” says Charlotte, shaking her head again, making damp, brown strands of hair dance around her face.

“But really, think about it, Charlotte, he’s the one who has done wrong. And just because you pointed that out—even if you were too direct—why does this mean that
you
have to give notice?”

“I know… I’m just a hopeless case…”

Now Charlotte is crying loudly, her face buried against her knees, emitting little sounds like a captured animal. I stroke her arm again and glance up at the clock: ten minutes left, time to wrap up.

“That’s not what I meant, Charlotte. I’m just saying that you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“That doesn’t matter anymore.” Charlotte’s voice is flat and nasal.

“Listen, I think that… perhaps it’s useful for you to actually allow yourself to lose control sometimes. You know, so much in your life is about control.”

Charlotte instantly freezes and in one second she turns into a block of ice.

“I don’t have a JOB. Don’t you get what I’m saying? And it’s
your
fault. You witch!”

I abruptly let go of her arm and stand up. Surprised at my own reaction, I am suddenly not sure who she is, this sobbing, red-faced woman in a tracksuit, sitting in front of me. Perhaps there is something about her I’ve missed. Perhaps I’ve opened a door to something dark and forbidden.

Charlotte jumps out of her chair and rushes toward me.

“Forgive me, I don’t know what got into me.
Forgive me. Forgive me
.”

She throws her thin but surprisingly strong arms around me and hugs me tight, real tight. As if I were her last straw. Maybe I am?

Her cheek is wet against my throat and I feel her breath on my neck. We remain standing there like a couple in a dance, frozen in midstep, in time and space.

It’s dark outside and I can see our image mirrored in the black window. I see the fragile child in Charlotte, see the sinewy, tree-climbing arms, the apple-picking arms, that are squeezing my body, but I also see something else in her eyes. Something that makes the hairs on my neck stand up.

Suddenly, with a surprisingly controlled, soft voice, Charlotte says, “Siri… am I going crazy?”

I see him every day at the practice, at the coffeemaker, by the copy machine, in the reception area. His gray-streaked hair and mandatory corduroy jacket—he seems to have one in every color. Sometimes I meet his gaze and cannot keep from wondering whether he can see it in my eyes.

The fear.

Sven, Aina, and I move around the clinic like a group of strangers. All painfully aware that nothing can return to the way it was before.

We don’t talk about what happened to Marianne and what has been happening to me. In order to stick together, to cope with the practice, the patients, and everything else, we have to keep silent. Not mention what we are all thinking. It’s simply too dangerous to talk about.

The emptiness Marianne has left behind is almost tangible. Her scent in the restroom, the neat little notes in my calendar. “
Anneli Asplund 12:00—remember to bring the needles!
” Her clothes in the small closet: pink crocheted sweaters, flowered scarves, all hanging on the padded clothes hangers in impeccable order. On the hanger at the far right is a little blue cloth bag filled with lavender. For the scent. So tidy, such focus on small details, so very Marianne.

I have a strong desire to see her, to hold her hand for a while. But Marianne cannot have visitors. She is still lying unconscious at the hospital. “No point visiting yet,” the nurse said when I called.

And at the practice, we continue our nervous avoidance, our worried dance through consultation rooms and corridors, our hands filled with papers and coffee cups, as if this makes us appear focused and professional.

Aina and I have talked about Sven. Neither of us really suspects him of being involved in Sara’s murder. Neither of us ever saw him even talk with Sara. But neither I nor Aina can ignore the facts. Sven is one of a few people who knew enough about Sara’s therapy to be able to credibly forge
her farewell letter, with all its references to my conversations with her. He knows where I live and even that I am in the habit of swimming every day between the rocks and the pier. He knows that Charlotte Mimer is my patient and has access to her address. Sven might very well have been able to send her the letter that warned her about me. But, most serious of all, there are his handwritten notes on Sara’s records in Marianne’s kitchen. And the photo. The photo of Sara on the cliffs. Did Sven take that, too?

I know that the police have questioned him. Many times. Markus does not want to go into what they have concluded but hints that it isn’t much. “It’s like interrogating a pinecone,” he said. “He sits there staring down at his damn Birkenstocks and doesn’t say a thing, I mean literally NOTHING of value.” Markus hints that even if they have no evidence against Sven, there are gaps in his alibi. Hours when he can’t explain where he was, when no one can remember whether they saw him, not even Birgitta, despite Sven’s claims that they were together.

Sven is a lot of things, but a murderer? But who could it be otherwise? Peter Carlsson? Could he be Sara’s secret friend? Could Sara have perceived him as middle aged? Nothing seems to add up. Peter has a set of psychological problems that perhaps makes him suspicious in this case, and he knows that Charlotte Mimer is my patient. But that’s where the similarities between him and the murderer end. He can’t possibly know where I live. Nor can he know about Sara’s and my conversations. Unless he was Sara’s secret boyfriend and she confided everything we talked about to him, but that doesn’t seem likely—the references in the farewell letter are far too accurate. The person who wrote that knew exactly what we had talked about and when. Dates and times, it’s all there.

Besides, and this worries me more than anything else, what motive would Peter Carlsson have, or Sven? Vijay had said
a perceived injustice
. I have, as far as I can recall, never met Peter before in my life. And Sven? Does he hate me because I am a successful woman? Do I personify what hobbled his career and made him stagnate at a little practice on Söder?
A woman hater
, married to one of the world’s most prominent researchers in gender studies?
An evil person?
I can’t believe it.

I think about the voice on the phone that evening when the police
caught me; I try to remember what it sounded like. It didn’t sound familiar. It definitely didn’t sound like Sven. Or Peter.

That leaves Aina and Marianne. Not even in all my most paranoid moments could I imagine that Aina or Marianne is involved in this. But who else has the knowledge? The knowledge of my conversations with Sara, information about where I live, Charlotte’s address? Who knows about my swims by the old crooked pier?

I am getting nowhere and it makes me insanely frustrated. There must be something… something I’ve forgotten. One crucial detail.

I try to analyze the problem from another angle: the motive.
The perceived injustice
. Is there some rejected lover, some passed-over colleague, or offended patient that I have repressed in my past? No matter how hard I try to remember, I can’t think of anyone. And then there is another problem, of course. Even if there was a person who, for some reason, wants to take revenge, how could he have access to all the information he needed to carry out the crime? Patient records, addresses… Another dead end.

Perhaps there is someone else who has access to the office and our patient records and notes. I made a list of all the outsiders who have been on the premises in the past six months and submitted it to Markus. It was depressingly short, consisting of only the cleaning company and the IT guy.

The cleaning company is a Greek family. I know them all personally and they clean during office hours, which makes it unlikely that they would be able to smuggle patient records out of the office. The computer technician’s name is Ronny and he is from Örkelljunga. I have only spoken with him on the phone and I have a very, very hard time believing he could be involved. I’m not even sure our patient records were in the office when he was last here.

This uncertainty creates a vacuum. A waiting period.

Calm before the storm.

Out of nowhere, he was suddenly standing there with his silly little dog on a leash. He was in his midthirties. Neatly dressed, everything he wore was from the best brands, discreet, and with style. Even though darkness had already started to settle over the bay, I could see how freshly scrubbed and together he looked, like a Christmas pig with plump, rosy cheeks and a round belly that bulged out over the black jeans. He probably had a wife who was fattening him up and two snot-nosed kids up in one of those vulgar McMansions a little farther east on the bay
.

“Um, excuse me, sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb,” the man began in a painfully nasal voice, “but…” He held back the little spotted dog who was growling, his ears drawn back and showing his teeth. “I was just wondering… I mean, I’ve seen you several times here on the cliffs when I was out walking with my dog. Do you live around here or something?”

The man’s question sounded like an accusation. I did not reply but instead sat up in the sleeping bag I had laid down under a pine tree by the edge of the cliffs for the evening
.

“Do you live in the house down there…? Because… uh… as far as I know a single woman lives there. Or…?”

The man’s voice petered out, he was noticeably nervous now. He stood there balancing on his toes, raising himself up and down with small, jerky motions. If he were smart, he would have left at this point, back into the darkness, disappearing forever, but he stood there sheepishly on the trail as if he was expecting some kind of reward for his behavior
.

“Does she know you’re sleeping here?”

I climbed out of the sleeping bag without answering and reached for the blue backpack I always have with me
.

“All I’m saying is… even if you don’t have anywhere else to go, this isn’t the best…”

I rooted around in my backpack among ropes, plastic bags, and masking
tape until I found it. My field knife has a broad, sharp blade of shiny-blue steel and is serrated along one side. With a practiced, imperceptible movement I hid it up my sleeve, stood up, and started slowly walking toward the self-righteous man with the silly little dog. The morality police on an evening walk
.

“This is not a camping site,” the man explained emphatically, as if he was trying to convince himself of what he had just said
.

“And I’m not a camper,” I replied, and with two quick leaps I was upon him, and he instinctively grabbed on to the tree behind him, as if seeking support
.

As a result, he was now perfectly positioned between the tree and my field knife
.

With a single motion I slit open his protruding belly, from the navel to the sternum. Something foul smelling and organic seeped out with a sigh as the man fell to the ground without a word, his back still resting against the large pine behind him
.

I tugged at the leash and pulled the growling little dog toward me to silence it. But the cut that wounded the dog in the neck also freed its collar, and with a stifled, wheezing bark, it disappeared into the night
.