The Final Word (14 page)

The proportions of the room seemed to change: it got narrower but seemed to stretch at the same time. The sound of the fan became more distant.

‘Does she ever say what you did?’

Annika’s voice echoed oddly inside her head, as if she had discovered herself telling a lie. ‘Mum says there was something wrong with me when I was born, that I’m brain-damaged. That I was born . . . bad.’ Her cheeks burned. It sounded so silly, as if she were making it up.

‘Bad? What does she mean by that?’

Annika shut her eyes, trying to disappear. ‘I don’t actually know,’ she whispered.

The fan hummed. When she opened her eyes again, the psychologist was looking at her intently. This was the sort of thing they liked, she felt sure, mothers who weren’t up to scratch.

‘You said it isn’t a secret that your mother doesn’t like you. What does she say to other people?’

Annika looked towards the window. It wouldn’t be long before forest fires broke out. If she was still at the paper she’d be sent as close to the flames as possible. ‘That I almost killed Birgitta when she was a baby.’

The psychologist adjusted her position, then rubbed her forehead. ‘Can you elaborate?’

‘Birgitta was in an incubator,’ Annika said. ‘She was born prematurely, and it was my fault.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I tripped on the front steps and cut my knee. My mother was so distressed by the accident that she started to get contractions and her waters broke.’

‘So your share of the responsibility was . . . what? That you tripped over? When you were two years old?’

Annika nodded. ‘Mum didn’t want me. She got pregnant and couldn’t go to art college.’

The air from the fan hit her again. Her hair flew up in front of her face and she pushed it back.

‘Would you like me to turn the fan off?’ the psychologist asked.

‘No, it’s okay.’

‘How would you describe your feelings towards your mother?’

Annika was breathing through her mouth now, and her eyes were stinging. ‘I don’t like it when she calls. I avoid her as much as I can.’

The psychologist wrote something down. ‘In psychology we generally talk of the “basic emotions”,’ she said. ‘The majority are negative – anger and fear, sorrow and shame, disgust and revulsion – but there are a few positive ones. Usually joy, curiosity and surprise. If you were to use some of those to describe how you feel about your mother, which ones would they be?’

Annika swallowed. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Does it feel uncomfortable to think about it?’

Did it? Was she feeling uncomfortable? What basic emotion was that?

She let the darkness fill her lungs and stomach. What did it consist of? Demands and accusations, reproachful eyes, clumsy fingers dropping things, the shouting:
Go away!
Her eyes filled and she took a deep breath to hold back the tears. ‘I’m ashamed,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t good enough, I was always doing things wrong. Mum was angry, and used to get so upset. I wish . . . I wish, well, that I could have been . . . better.’

‘No joy?’

Annika checked deep down in the darkness: was there anything light and joyful? Any peals of laughter, a smell of fresh baking? With Grandma, yes, and Dad.
Can you see the magpie? He’s got such beautiful feathers, all
shiny and blue, like a late summer’s night. Anyone who says they don’t like magpies has never really looked at them, not properly . . .

She shook her head. No, no joy, not with Mum. Longing: what sort of basic emotion could that be? Sadness, maybe? Unfairness? Maybe that was part of anger. She didn’t know. What a mess . . .

The psychologist wrote something on her pad, then flipped back a page and read in silence for a moment. ‘We talked last time about an accident, when your boyfriend died. Can you tell me some more about that?’

The air closed in around her. She didn’t want to go there.

‘He . . . fell into a blast furnace.’

‘A blast furnace?’

The fan roared.

‘At the ironworks, back home. It was abandoned by then, shut down, when it happened. They’ve put a discount outlet there now, in the old factory building.’

‘What happened?’

Annika was clinging to the arms of the chair, hard, hard, hard, to stop herself falling. ‘He was chasing me with a knife, and he killed my cat. I tried to defend myself, and he fell.’

‘Did he often do things like that? Chase you, threaten and hit you?’

You can’t leave me like this. What am I going to do without you? Annika, for fuck’s sake, I love you!

‘He . . . Yes, he used to . . .’

‘Is it hard to talk about it?’

The darkness closed around her. Her lungs were screaming, her hands burning, and she fell and fell and fell.

Nina steered the hire-car over a long bridge with wide arches. The Lule River shimmered below the concrete, almost a kilometre wide here at its mouth.

The care-home where Ingela Berglund lived was in a part of the city known as Björkskatan, ‘birch magpie’ (although the name had nothing to do with magpies or any other bird, according to the manager of the care-home:
skatan
was dialect for ‘headland’). She had to turn left when she reached the Hertsö roundabout, then follow the signs. Just to be sure, Nina had hired a car with a built-in satnav.

The bridge came to an end and she drove into the city, low brick buildings clad with panelling, gnarled deciduous trees with bright foliage. Off to the right, on the far side of a broad expanse of water, she could see a vast industrial area. She passed a warehouse by the harbour, a few brick buildings, and then she was out of the city centre. The housing became sparser, and the traffic around her melted away.

Sure enough, she reached a large roundabout with two different petrol stations, just as the manager had told her, and bore left towards Skurholmen. A couple of minutes later she reached the turning for Bensbyn and Björkskatan (perhaps Bensbyn was just as misleadingly named, and it wasn’t really a village of bones).

She rolled slowly past the houses. This was a side of Sweden she very rarely saw. Simple, well-kept homes, glassed-in balconies, neat lawns, playhouses and ornamental shrubs. This was where people lived with their families, in a country they were proud to call their own.

The satnav was flashing on the dashboard: she had reached her destination. She gazed out through the windscreen at what looked like a suburban shopping centre. There was a health centre clad in orange panels that also housed a chemist and a chiropractor’s clinic. She swung round and found an empty space in the car park, checked that her mobile was in her pocket, then switched off the engine and got out, locking the car behind her.

A cold, sharp wind was blowing that she hadn’t noticed inside the car. The sky was low and blue. She looked at the time – she was a bit early, but that couldn’t be helped.

The care-home was a two-storey, panel-clad building with geraniums in the windows. A sign saying WELCOME in ornate script was screwed to the front door. Nina rang the bell and heard it echo inside the building.

A woman of her own age opened the door. She was wearing jeans and sandals, holding a bunch of keys, and looked anything but welcoming.

‘Evelina Granqvist?’ Nina asked.

‘That’s right,’ the woman said. She was the manager. For the past four years she had had power of attorney for Ingela Berglund, and was her official trustee.

‘Nina Hoffman,’ Nina said, shaking the woman’s hand. ‘Sorry I’m a bit early, but there wasn’t any traffic.’

‘Come in,’ Evelina Granqvist said, and walked off towards what looked like a kitchen. Her movements were slightly jerky and abrupt, as though she was already finding the visit uncomfortable. ‘You can take your shoes off,’ she said, over her shoulder.

She spoke in a pronounced local accent, slow and melodic, a lot like the way Ivar Berglund talked.

Nina stood by the door and made a quick appraisal of the home. There were framed pictures on the walls, probably painted by the residents, and there was a large noticeboard with names, pictures and descriptions of various activities: ‘Sandra climbed to the top of Ormberget!’ and ‘Today Peter did some baking!’ Off to the left there was some sort of dayroom – she could hear people talking and laughing on television.

‘Do you want coffee?’ the manager asked, without looking at Nina. The question was probably so deeply embedded in local tradition that not even an unwelcome visit by a police officer from Stockholm could shake it.

‘Thanks. I’d love some,’ Nina said, taking her shoes off.

A man with Down’s syndrome poked his head out of the dayroom and looked at her.

‘Hello,’ Nina said. ‘My name’s Nina, what’s yours?’

‘Peter doesn’t talk,’ Evelina said, from the kitchen.

The man withdrew his head and shut the door. The voices from the television faded to a muffled murmur.

The hall floor was covered with pale linoleum. Nina’s
stockinged feet slid on the chilly surface. The kitchen looked like an ordinary kitchen in an ordinary house, not like that of an institution. Two mugs of coffee and a plate of cinnamon buns, probably the ones Peter had baked, waited on the table.

Evelina Granqvist closed the door behind her. ‘I thought I made myself clear yesterday,’ she said. ‘I’m opposed to the idea of you questioning Ingela. She can’t stand witness in a trial.’

Nina sat down at the table, picked up a bun and took a bite. ‘Naturally, you’re perfectly entitled to your opinion,’ she said.

‘I heard that you’ve requested to see Ingela’s medical records as well. What are you hoping to get from this? You can’t seriously think that she had anything to do with the things her brother is standing trial for?’

Nina took another bite and studied the woman. Her arms were folded and her legs crossed in an obviously defensive posture. She looked challenged and affronted, possibly also sad and anxious. ‘I don’t think Ingela is mixed up in Ivar’s activities,’ Nina said. ‘Could I have some milk in my coffee, please?’

Evelina Granqvist’s jaw tensed, but she went to the fridge, and took out an open carton of milk.

‘Thanks,’ Nina said, and poured some into her mug. She took a sip. The coffee was now lukewarm and as grey as dishwater.

‘So why are you here?’ the manager asked.

Her arms were no longer folded.

‘Because Ingela matters,’ Nina said.

Evelina Granqvist’s eyes widened. Nina sat in silence, eating the bun, waiting for her opponent to speak.

‘How . . . What do you mean?’ the woman eventually asked.

Nina reached for a napkin and wiped sugar from the corners of her mouth. ‘The preliminary investigation into the crime that Ivar Berglund is standing trial for has been going on for more than a year. A dozen detectives have been involved, but no one has given any thought to Ingela.’

She stared at the manager, hoping that was true.

‘I’ve said no whenever they’ve asked to question her,’ Evelina Granqvist said stubbornly. ‘I’ve explained to them that it isn’t possible.’

‘That’s what I mean,’ Nina said. ‘No one made enough effort to talk to Ingela.’

‘She doesn’t know anything about what her brother has done.’

‘Now you’re thinking in exactly the same way as those detectives,’ Nina said. ‘You’re speaking for Ingela, as if you knew better than her.’

The manager folded her arms and crossed her legs again. ‘It’s for Ingela’s sake,’ she said. ‘I don’t want her to get upset.’

‘Your concern is understandable,’ Nina said.

‘I’ve got a good relationship with Ingela. She trusts me. Why should I allow you to see her?’

Nina straightened her back. ‘Everyone working on this
case has dismissed Ingela Berglund as stupid. I think that shows a lack of respect.’

The manager’s face took on an almost defiant look. ‘I don’t see why it’s so important,’ she said. ‘Nothing that man might have done is reason enough to upset Ingela.’

Nina looked at her intently. ‘The trial concerns the murder of a down-and-out in Nacka last year. The perpetrator tortured the victim, pulled his nails out, hung him naked in a tree above an anthill and smeared him with honey. The cause of death was asphyxiation, by a plastic bag. We’re going to look beneath every last little stone to find the killer, even if it means upsetting your routines.’

Evelina was staring at her.

‘Ivar Berglund is suspected of having committed other crimes,’ Nina went on. ‘We haven’t got enough evidence to charge him with them yet, but we’re linking him to the assault of a local politician, Ingemar Lerberg, in Saltsjöbaden last year. I don’t know if you read about the case in the papers?’

Evelina blinked several times. Perhaps she was searching her memory.

‘The perpetrator spread Ingemar Lerberg’s legs apart until the muscles ruptured. His hands were tied behind his back and he was strung up by his wrists, which meant that both his shoulders were dislocated. The soles of his feet were whipped, five of his ribs were broken, his jaw was smashed and one of his eyes was crushed. He’s still in a coma, a year later, with severe brain damage.
Unfortunately he’s still breathing by himself, so there’s no ventilator to switch off.’

The manager’s face was completely white. She gulped audibly and lowered her gaze.

‘Ingemar’s wife is missing, without trace, so it’s very likely that Ivar Berglund murdered her as well,’ Nina went on. ‘His three children are in a foster-home. No one visits him in his care-home. Not that it matters, because he probably doesn’t know what’s going on around him.’

Evelina Granqvist stood up and went over to the sink, poured herself a glass of water and drank it. Then she sat down again. ‘Ingela can’t stand witness in a courtroom,’ she said quietly. ‘That’s impossible. She has seizures when she gets stressed.’

‘It’s very unlikely that she’d ever be called as a witness,’ Nina said. ‘The trial is almost over. I’d just like to talk to her, ask her about their childhood.’

She found herself thinking about Peter, the young man who had baked the buns. Could Ingela talk?

Evelina Granqvist looked at her, her fingers wandering round her coffee mug. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘What life was like when Ingela was small, what Ivar was like. I don’t know how much she can communicate. Do you think she’d be able to answer a few questions about her childhood?’