Trapped, page 33
‘Or it’s about demonstrating power over life and death,’ said Vincent. ‘Although perhaps that’s the same thing. And I almost forgot about the Crusher. The box containing the assistant is crushed in a vice until it’s basically flat.’
‘Charming,’ said Christer. ‘I think we’re starting to get a very clear picture. That’s a lot of boxes to search for.’
‘Hmm, well it’s not quite that simple,’ said Vincent. ‘Not all illusions include boxes. In the case of the Impaler, the assistant is balanced on the tip of a sword while lying down. It looks like she’s hovering on the sword. Until she falls down onto it and the sword penetrates her body.’
‘This is killing me!’ said Julia. ‘I was kidding before, but you can’t get any more phallic than that!’
‘It might amuse you to know that this particular illusion is one magicians are quite happy doing themselves,’ Vincent said with a wry smile. ‘I’m not sure what conclusions you want to draw from that.’
The energy drink seemed to be having an impact because Bosse suddenly shook his whole body and then happily ran two laps around the table – to Mina’s obvious horror and Peder’s delight. When he passed Christer for a third lap, Christer grabbed him by the scruff of the neck.
‘Sit here, Bosse. Now,’ he said firmly.
The dog immediately obeyed, sitting down beside Christer and looking happily up at him.
Vincent couldn’t help wondering whether any of them had listened to a word of what he had said so far. Personally, he was still trying to digest the news about Daniel. But he supposed that they had become hardened in their work as police officers.
‘Impaler,’ said Peder. ‘Crusher, zigzag girl, origami box, sword box – they all sound much cooler in English than they ever will in Swedish. “Svärdslåda” doesn’t exactly have the same ring to it.’
‘Was that all you had to say about the illusions, Vincent?’ Julia asked him.
‘Not quite,’ he said, clearing his throat. ‘There are obviously also the illusions where death is only a danger if the magician fails. Like the “table of death”.’
He glanced at Peder, who looked almost childishly amused by the name of the illusion.
‘The magician is tied to a table and has to free himself before a big panel of swords falls down and skewers him. Or he has to get out of a straitjacket while hanging upside down – preferably attached to a rope that’s on fire – above something dangerous. And then there’s Houdini’s favourite: the water torture cell. That sees the breakout king wearing handcuffs and hanging upside down inside a water tank which is locked with a padlock on the outside. He has to get out before he drowns.’
‘I like that better,’ said Peder, carefully stacking the new empty can on top of the previous one. ‘The person overcoming impossible odds.’
Peder was talking far more quickly now. The triple dose of caffeine was beginning to take effect.
‘Exactly,’ said Vincent. ‘One of the reasons Houdini got so famous was that he was working in an era of economic hardship, when most people were worried about how to make ends meet. Up pops a short, Jewish man and not only challenges a shackled and claustrophobic setting – in his case quite literally – but also defeats it every single time. I think the positive message conveyed by Houdini’s tricks may have saved the mental health of many following the start of the Great Depression.’
‘Vincent, that was more information than I was expecting,’ said Julia. ‘Or could ever need. Or we have time for. But thank you. Please would you summarize it in an email, preferably more concisely? And don’t share that information with anyone outside this room: the press have already dubbed our perpetrator “the Houdini murderer”, the last thing I want is to encourage that sort of click-bait journalism.’ She looked down at her notes before continuing: ‘Could you also check with your contacts whether there is anything particular needed to build these illusions. A certain material, special hinges – try to come up with as many common denominators as you can. Then pass that information on to Peder, who can call around timberyards, wholesalers or whatever to check whether anyone has bought stuff that indicates they’re building an illusion. Mina, please check out Sweden’s Future and see whether they’re claiming responsibility for Daniel or whether they’re going to deny it.’
Silence descended on the room once again. Vincent guessed that everyone was thinking the same thing. Julia’s plan sounded hopeless. There was an idea playing hide and seek in his head, but as soon as he thought he had it pinned down, it hid again. There was something in what she’d said, something about building …
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said Julia. ‘It’s an extreme long shot. And it probably won’t get us anywhere. But with Daniel out of the picture and with Jonas Rask still at large, there’s really not much more we can do at the moment. And you’re good at finding needles in haystacks, Peder.’
Building.
Sains Bergander had said something about building too. About how you had to re-design the structures. Vincent suddenly realized what it meant. He had been trying to arrange to meet Sains again, ever since he’d photographed the box they’d found Robert in. But Sains hadn’t replied. And he had already said once that he didn’t know who had built Tuva’s sword box. But Vincent had asked about the wrong things. Sains knew more. Vincent pulled out his phone and dialled right away. He was met with a voicemail message. Sains’s phone was switched off. Fucking hell. He needed to get hold of Sains as quickly as possible.
77
Her panic increased more and more the closer to the flat they got. Merely being in a taxi – with a dog to boot – was the cause of enough anxiety to make Mina’s breathing quick and shallow. Vincent was sitting next to her, helping her to control her breathing. Bosse was at the very back of the estate car.
‘Breathe in and count to four,’ said Vincent, breathing with her. ‘Hold your breath for four. And now breathe out for four. Hold it again.’
They did a few rounds of breathing together. After a while, she could feel her blood oxygenating again and it was easier to think once the adrenaline wasn’t rushing uninhibited around her brain.
As they drove around the roundabout at Gullmarsplan she could almost feel her clean, bacteria-free oasis of a flat getting closer. Her refuge – the place where she could feel clean, at least for brief periods. Now that was over. Her home was going to be inescapably invaded by the particles, bacteria, microorganisms and all manner of unpleasantries that Bosse was carrying on his furry body.
‘Who does the dog actually belong to?’ Vincent queried. ‘Because I assume it’s not yours.’
She shook her head firmly.
‘A … friend … who ended up in hospital. I had to take care of it. Everything happened rather quickly.’
She paused. It grated to ask for help. It was a sign of weakness to be unable to cope on your own. Not being an unimpeachable fortress of self-sufficiency in every part of life. Asking for help was letting someone in. That was why she hadn’t asked any of her colleagues. Asking them for help would indicate a friendliness that didn’t exist. She didn’t eat dinner at any of their homes. She didn’t ask about their personal lives. Sometimes they told her about them anyway – it was as if they didn’t even notice how she never replied, never commented, and above all gave them nothing about herself in return. She knew what opening up might lead to. But now she had no choice.
‘Can … can you take Bosse?’ she said. ‘I could bake a cake for your kids as a thank you. Well, actually, I can’t. But I can get one delivered to you … ready-bought?’
Now it was Vincent’s turn to shake his head.
‘I would love to,’ he said. ‘I’m sure Bosse would love the woods outside my house. But Maria is allergic and, given how much this dog is shedding, that wouldn’t end well.’
That was the last thing Mina wanted to hear. She didn’t need to turn around to see the cloud of shedded hair coming off the dog. And there were probably lots of other things living in its fur. She screwed her eyes shut and shivered.
‘Don’t you have anyone else you can ask?’
She turned her head away.
‘It’s not as if I planned for this,’ she said quietly. ‘I didn’t suddenly decide one day to be alone. Work … Work is my family.’
Mina fell silent. She couldn’t work out what it was about Vincent that always made her say slightly more than she had intended to. Than she usually did say.
Once upon a time she’d had friends. She’d even had a family. But life events had lined themselves up like Dorothy’s yellow brick road to Oz, inexorably leading her in the only possible direction. One by one, she had pushed them away. Consciously or unconsciously, she didn’t know. But work was enough – she didn’t need anything else.
She shrugged and looked down at the carpet on the floor of the taxi.
‘Life seems to have passed me by. I don’t think I’ve ever had the feeling that I can control any of the things that happen to me …’
Vincent sat beside her in silence. She was grateful that he wasn’t saying anything.
The taxi was getting closer to her home and her pulse was beginning to race even more. Bosse barked from his spot in the boot and the driver scowled in the rear-view mirror. Mina put her hand to her breast. She felt captive. Stuck. She didn’t even have a last name, let alone a phone number, for Bosse’s masters. They only used first names at AA, and sometimes not even that. Kenneth. And his wife. That was all she had to go on. Deep down, she hoped they would already have looked her up, intending to fetch him. That Kenneth’s wife would have recovered and they’d be on their way home, eager to get their dog back. It would be easy for them to find her, she reasoned. They knew she was a police officer and that her name was Mina. It was an unusual name – she was the only policewoman in Stockholm with that first name. Perhaps they would be waiting for her at her front door? But no, when the taxi turned the corner and pulled over outside her address there was no one at the street door.
Perhaps the dolphin girl knew how Mina could get in touch with them, but how would she find her? All she knew about her was that her name was Anna.
The panic rose. Bosse barked and threw himself back and forth in the boot.
She got out of the car as quickly as she could.
‘I’ll take the taxi home,’ Vincent said.
‘What do I owe?’ she said, taking deep breaths of the warm, fresh air – as far into her lungs as she could.
‘This is on ShowLife Productions’ tab. Not that Umberto knows about it, but still.’
The taxi driver got out to open the boot and release Bosse. The dog leapt wildly and joyfully around Mina, who in turn desperately sought to parry his jumping so that he wouldn’t nuzzle her. His lead thrashed around him and the taxi driver pointedly picked up the handle with an acid expression and passed it to her. After a few seconds’ hesitation, she took it.
How stupid.
How incorrigibly stupid.
Since she had no choice but to suck it up, she tapped in the door code, opened it and entered the stairwell before climbing up to the flat as the taxi conveyed Vincent away. She slowly got out the keys from her pocket and fumbled with them in the lock until she heard the click that indicated the door could now be opened. There was still time to change her mind. To keep her bubble intact. But she had put pride above the sanctity of her home and now there was no going back. Mina pressed down the door handle. Bosse was right by her side, pressing his nose into the crack, and before she knew it the door was open wide enough for him to squeeze through.
It was like an explosion in the midst of the dazzling restraint. In a few seconds, he had made his way into the living room, the bedroom, the kitchen, the bathroom, sniffing everything, brushing against the surfaces, leaving hairs drifting in the air in his wake before slowly, slowly sailing down to the floor. Mina stared at a tuft of hair that had already caught on the side of the sofa. She had gone over the sofa with tape wrapped around her hand as recently as the day before yesterday to remove as many dust particles as possible. Now particles were the least of her worries.
She closed the door behind her. She felt tears stinging her eyes and panic made her breast rise and fall heavily. Bosse seemed to sense that something was wrong. He came running back, sat down in front of her as she stood there on the doormat and cocked his head to one side. Mina couldn’t bear the thought of things crawling out of him, of him crawling on her sofa, on her floor, on her bedspread, on her living room carpet, on her kitchen table, her bathroom floor, her shower, her fridge, her coffee maker, her clothes, her …
She opened the front door and threw herself out of the flat. Bosse followed through the open door. She closed it, sat down with her back to the door and took a firm grip of his lead. Her hands shaking, she retrieved her phone. Pride would have to be sacrificed on this occasion.
78
Vincent was marooned in the middle of the kitchen, his mobile phone in his hand. The call he’d just taken hadn’t been one he was expecting. He went into the living room while trying to sort out his thoughts.
‘Why the sad face?’ Maria said from the sofa. ‘Doesn’t Mina want to have phone sex with you anymore?’
She was munching through a bag of wine gums. Sweets were fine as long as they were vegan, according to Maria. Not that she was a vegan. But it was apparently healthier. He hadn’t had the heart to tell her that sugar came from a plant.
‘No, I was just speaking to Ulrika,’ he said. ‘Your sister.’
‘I know who she is.’
Maria inserted one red and one green wine gum into her mouth. She thought it tasted better if you mixed colours.
‘She wants to meet,’ he said. ‘And discuss Rebecka. I think … it sounded as if she actually listened to me. About taking Rebecka to see someone.’
Maria scrunched up the bag with an aggressive rustle, but didn’t say anything.
‘She didn’t seem anywhere near as annoyed and dogmatic as she usually does,’ he continued. ‘Quite the contrary. I think she’s actually thought about this.’
‘I don’t like you seeing my sister,’ said Maria. ‘You know she’s not over you. She hasn’t even changed her last name from yours.’
He held out his hands in frustration. He should have realized this was coming.
‘The name is for Rebecka and Benjamin’s sake,’ he said. ‘You know that. And I have to see her now and then. After all, she is the mother of two of my three children. We need to be on the same page about certain things. I don’t want Rebecka and Benjamin to be treated differently. This particular thing happens to require written consent from both their mother and me to happen.’
Maria opened the bag again and inserted three wine gums into her mouth at once. He didn’t see which colours they were.
‘I still don’t like it,’ she said. ‘As the mother of one of your three children. So when are you meeting her?’
‘In a month. Busy lawyer and all that. And we’re meeting in town. Neutral ground. She’s going for dinner with a group of friends, so we’re meeting to talk before that.’
‘Oh really. Well, have fun then. I won’t be awake when you get home.’
‘We’re meeting at seven o’clock.’
Maria shrugged and began hunting for the TV remote control, which had disappeared between the cushions of the sofa. The conversation was apparently over.
Vincent sighed. Yet again a conversation with his wife had ended with him feeling that he had done something wrong without knowing what.
‘Are you happy?’ he suddenly asked.
It wasn’t planned; he didn’t know the words were going to come out of his mouth until he heard them himself. And then it was too late to take them back.
‘What did you say?’ Maria asked, somewhat absently.
She half turned her head towards him, but without taking her eyes from the TV where the opening credits for Married at First Sight were scrolling across the screen. He knew she was watching it on catch-up. She could pause it anytime if she really wanted to talk to him. But she chose to leave it running.
‘It was nothing,’ he said.
The truth was that he didn’t know what else to say.
79
Peder was on his way home when Mina called. But he turned the car around right away. Mina asking him for help was not a regular occurrence. And her asking for help with something personal had never happened so far as he could remember. It was like Halley’s comet returning after only thirty-five years. But he liked Mina. And he could hear the desperation in her voice. So no matter how much of a rush he was in to get home, Peder turned the car around. He’d never been to her home, but it was easy to find using the satnav.
‘Hi.’
Mina raised a feeble hand in a small wave as he got out of the car. She got up from the pavement, picked up the plastic carrier bag she’d been sitting on and walked determinedly towards him, firmly grasping Bosse’s lead. When the dog saw Peder, he jumped happily up and down with his tongue hanging out, which was like a big smile spreading across his face.
There was something about golden retrievers that filled Peder’s stomach with happy butterflies. They were so frank about everything in life. If he could be reborn as an animal and he had a choice, he would without hesitation come back as a golden retriever.
‘Thanks,’ said Mina, passing him the lead.
Peder merely nodded. He knew better than to make a big deal out of this.
‘Call me if the owners get in touch,’ he said, opening the back door of the car so that Bosse could jump in.
He could see that Mina’s gaze was glued to the dog in the back seat and that her hands were trembling slightly. He guessed what she was thinking. The dog hair didn’t bother him one bit. He’d long ago discounted the Volvo he and Anette shared as a sanitary vehicle. Neither of them was especially tidy, and since the triplets had arrived they had completely given up. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Bosse licking the seat where Molly had thrown up two days earlier. However, he realized it was best not to pass that information on to Mina.
