Trapped, page 36
‘May I?’
She nodded.
He opened the bag, first smelling it and then taking out the contents. A ball of hair. It was some of the hair that had been in Robert’s stomach. She had already labelled up the majority and sent it off to NFC for analysis, as per their procedures. But she knew they had a big backlog that was painfully slow – it would be at least another month before she got an answer. There was something about both this case and this boy that – unusually – made her want to find the answer faster than the Swedish forensic authorities were able to provide. Grandpa might be most passionate about his greenhouse in his sunset years, but during her career she had never met a sharper biologist. Or zoologist for that matter.
‘I think I know what it is. But I need to look at it under the microscope to be sure. Wait here. Drink your coffee. I’ll be back in a moment.’
Grandpa Mykolas got up and she noted that he grimaced with pain at the movement. Milda sipped her coffee while gazing out of the window. She loved Enskede. She had grown up in Bagarmossen, which was OK, but Enskede had an old-fashioned charm and grace that always felt homely and welcoming. Or perhaps it had nothing to do with the area and more to do with the fact that it was where Grandpa lived. Either way. The old rose bushes. The lilacs spreading their sweet scent all over the neighbourhood in the early summer. The children playing in the street the way that children used to play.
A stocky man walked by and she thought she recognized him as someone she had played with as a child, but she wasn’t certain. By the time she had raised her hand in greeting he had already passed by.
‘Well, there we have it!’
Grandpa returned with a satisfied expression and sat down on the chair opposite. Then the same grimace once again. Milda made a mental note to force the stubborn old man to go to the doctor soon.
‘Just as I thought. Genus neovison – vison comes from the French name for the animal.’
He paused for effect. She knew better than to hurry him. This was Grandpa’s moment in the limelight and he was enjoying every second of it. She had not the slightest intention of depriving him of that joy. She took another sip of coffee and looked at him expectantly.
‘This animal comes originally from North America – it belongs to the chordata phylum and is a vertebrate. Class mammalia, obviously. It grows to a length of thirty to forty-five centimetres, excluding the tail, which grows to around thirteen to twenty-three centimetres. The male weighs between 1 and 1.5 kilos, while the female weighs around 0.75 kilos. Those that have been bred can weigh more than those in the wild.’
Milda nodded. She thought she had a pretty good idea which animal it was. But she let her grandpa keep talking. He was in his element and his eyes were glittering happily.
‘This animal was previously placed in the same group as polecats, genus mustela, but genetic studies have indicated such great differences that it is now placed in a category of its own. This, my dear Milda, is hair from a mink!’
He triumphantly held up the clump of hair towards her. She nodded. She had already guessed as much.
‘Is it possible to determine where precisely this mink hair may have originated? Is there a species native to some location in Sweden?’
‘No, unfortunately not. There are two distinct types that we usually talk about: wild mink and bred mink that are kept on mink farms. Well, I’m sure you’re familiar with all the controversies around conditions on mink farms. But there’s no difference between the fur of wild and bred mink.’
‘I didn’t even think mink farms existed any longer, to be perfectly honest.’
Milda stood up and fetched the coffee pot from the kitchen counter to refill both their cups.
‘Oh, they still exist. I don’t know how many or where they are, but I’m sure that’s the kind of thing you can look up in the internet.’
Milda smiled slightly. Grandpa Mykolas was no cheerleader for modern technology and refused to learn the expressions properly.
‘Where are the wild ones found? In what sort of environment?’ she asked, taking her seat again.
Outside, a few kids had started a game of bandy and their happy yells were clearly audible through the kitchen window, which was ajar.
‘Mink like to stay close to water. Lakes, watercourses, wetlands. They live on fish, shrimp, frogs and other small animals.’
Milda nodded, mulling it over. Mink hair. In Robert’s stomach. What could it mean? What was the significance? Oh well … it wasn’t her job to find that out. She would hand over what she’d found and leave the others to do the rest.
‘Thank you, that was a great help.’ She smiled at Grandpa. ‘So, what weird experiments do you have on the go in the greenhouse this year?’
Grandpa Mykolas’s face lit up. He carefully returned the hair to the bag, sealed it, and perched his elbows on the edge of the table, steepling his fingertips together.
‘Well! This year I thought I’d play around with hybrids a little and see whether you can combine two different variants of carrot. Chantenay with early Nantes seemed like it would produce a pleasant result. I also thought I’d try crossing two of my roses. I believe it may be possible to make something very beautiful by crossing Rugelda and Dream Sequence. That’s the one also known as Astrid Lindgren. Rugelda, as I’m sure you know, is a rugosa hybrid and Dream Sequence is a floribunda. So I think that …’
Milda watched him as he happily talked about his hybrids. Yet again she reminded herself to visit him more often. And to drag him along to the GP in Dalen – by force if necessary.
85
Vincent carried the two side plates of princess cake over to the table where Sains Bergander was waiting, balancing them carefully. One of the slices of cake tipped over as he set them down. He considered righting it but didn’t follow through. Instead, he went over to the coffee maker, which was on a table in the centre of the room.
‘How do you take it?’ he asked over his shoulder.
‘Black as my soul,’ Sains replied.
‘Well yes, considering you build crucifixes as a hobby, that seems apt,’ said Vincent, heading back to the table with two cups of coffee. ‘Thanks for taking the time to see me again. And sorry to pester you.’
He hadn’t called Mina yet. Hadn’t dared. So when it had turned out Sains was in town he’d leapt at the chance to see him and focus on something other than the book.
‘It’s my pleasure,’ said Sains. ‘Sorry I was hard to get hold of – I had a big order to finish. But at least you didn’t have to come up to Sundsvall again. I’m in town to help my brother with an illusion ahead of a TV appearance. We can’t quite get the size of the flames right.’
Vincent shook his head. Magicians.
He and Sains were at Vetekatten – the large cafe and bakery in Stockholm city centre. As usual, it was packed with tourists, which made it easier to talk undisturbed. Every magician knew that the best place to hide a secret was in plain sight.
He stared at the visible layers in the tipped-over slice of cake. The sponge base. Vanilla cream. Raspberry jam. Cream. Marzipan. Five layers. For fuck’s sake. And then there was icing sugar on the top.
He exhaled. The sugar made it six layers.
He recalled a lecture by the mathematician Eugenia Cheng, in which she used baking to explain category theory. She would no doubt have been able to transform the slice of cake into a mathematical theorem. Usually the thought would have amused him. Instead he was wondering what Robert had looked like in cross-section when he had been cut into three parts in the zigzag girl box. Layers of fat tissue and blood. Had it been reminiscent of princess cake? With his skin like marzipan? He pushed the cake away.
‘I would just as happily have come to yours,’ said Sains. ‘Although this is obviously very nice.’
‘No, this isn’t really a subject to discuss at home,’ said Vincent. ‘We’re better off like this. And I know you’re in a rush, so I’ll get straight to the point. Do you remember the illusion I showed you before? The sword box?’
‘The one that was built strangely,’ said Sains, nodding.
Sains took a fork, pressed it into his slice of cake and raised a substantial piece to his mouth. Layers of fat and blood. Vincent screwed up his eyes. Sains was clearly unaware of the press conference, despite it relating to his profession. The price of being a genius inventor was that Sains’s links to the surrounding world weren’t always the strongest.
‘What you don’t know,’ Vincent continued, ‘is that the box was used in a murder. And it gets worse. We’ve found another two victims murdered using what appear to be stage illusions.’
The piece of cake caught in Sains’s throat and he began to cough violently. Vincent hurried to fetch him a glass of water. He drank from it gratefully, setting down the empty glass and wiping his mouth thoroughly with a napkin, as if buying time to think.
‘What is it you’re telling me?’ he said. ‘Murder? For real? And who is “we”?’
Vincent glanced around to make sure no one was looking at them following Sains’s coughing attack and then he took the photographs out of the folder.
‘I’m helping the police with an investigation,’ he said. ‘The details are secret, of course, although we’ve briefed the media about the case. It would appear we’re dealing with a complete madman. I mean, take a look at these pictures.’
He moved their coffee cups and the glass to make space and spread the photos across the table. He probably shouldn’t have enlarged them to A4 format. They were a little too visible to the other patrons. But the details needed to be clear. Sains put their pieces of cake on the adjacent table. He too had apparently lost his appetite.
‘Here’s the box with the swords,’ said Vincent, pointing. ‘These are the actual swords. I don’t know whether I showed them to you before. And here are four pictures showing the blade and the box for—’
‘The zigzag girl,’ said Sains. ‘Not hard to figure out what happened in that. Awful.’
‘Just seeing people getting into those boxes gives me claustrophobia,’ said Vincent. ‘I can’t begin to imagine how the boy they found inside it must have felt.’
Sains looked at him with a strange expression.
‘I think the crushing sensation would have been the last thing he thought about when being shut in the box. But you said there were three illusions – what’s the third?’
‘Bullet catch.’
‘Oh. Jesus Christ. Thank you for not bringing a photo of that.’
Sains looked at the photos, twisting and turning them. At first glance, the pictures might have depicted innocent stage props. But the boxes and blades, their mere existence, radiated evil. No one of sound mind would make something like that.
‘What do you want me to say?’ said Sains. ‘I haven’t got anything more to offer than you got last time.’
‘Perhaps not. But back then I was focusing on whether anyone had ordered a box or drawings from you or anyone else. I didn’t realize that the solution might be in the actual manufacture of the illusions. At the time we only had one box to go by, so all you could say then was that it was clumsily made. But now we have two. You did say that since it requires both great carpentry skills and a sound knowledge of magic, there are actually very few people who can build illusions.’
‘Yes, there aren’t many of us who have mastered both aspects,’ said Sains, nodding thoughtfully.
‘I may be wrong,’ said Vincent. ‘But I can imagine that everyone who builds something has their own personal style, that they leave their own mark on whatever they do. Or in this case, whatever they build. Even if they’re following a drawing, they’ll still “do their own thing”. Is that right?’
‘Their distinguishing mark.’ Sains nodded. ‘We refer to it as the person doing the building leaving their distinguishing mark.’
‘OK. We’ve already ascertained that these boxes haven’t been built by a pro. So perhaps they don’t have a professional distinguishing mark like a logo. But there may still be one. The two illusions in the photos were built by the same person. Can you see anything they share in common? Perhaps a detail only visible to you, something that may offer a clue as to who we are looking for? As you said, there aren’t many of you who are capable of this. Whose distinguishing mark appears in these boxes?’
A party of five passed their table – Dutch tourists, all wearing identical T-shirts with prints. Undoubtedly home-made with a slogan telling everyone that they were travelling around Europe. Vincent placed his hand over the pictures, but he wasn’t quick enough. A young woman had caught sight of them and stopped.
‘Oh my God!’ she said in perfect English. ‘Are you guys building magic tricks? Awesome!’
‘Thank you,’ said Sains, smiling. ‘Not many people would have recognized it.’
What was he playing at? Vincent wanted the woman to leave, but here was Sains engaging her in conversation. It wouldn’t surprise him if Sains offered her a slice of princess cake too. Before long they’d have the rest of the Dutch around the table in their identical tops.
‘Well, magic is for nerds,’ said the woman. ‘Got to go.’
She ran to catch up with her group, calling to Sains over her shoulder. ‘Us nerds need to stick together!’
Vincent crossed his arms and waited for the Dutch to leave.
‘Are you done?’ he said.
‘Sorry about that. But it’s a rarity to get praise from anyone under the age of fifty-five. By the way, are you going to eat your cake?’
Vincent shook his head. Sains retrieved both his own and Vincent’s slices, and gobbled up what was left.
‘Anyway,’ he said between bites, ‘you’re right in that if these two boxes were built by someone I know, then I would see it. But I can’t see anything like that.’
Sains chewed thoughtfully.
‘Vincent, you’re overlooking one thing,’ he said, swallowing. ‘Even if it’s unusual for one person to have good skills in the realms of both illusions and carpentry, sufficiently unusual that we can all keep track of each other …’
Vincent understood what Sains was trying to get at. He wanted to slap his own forehead. How could he have been so stupid?
‘… it’s not in the slightest bit unusual for two people to each be good at one thing,’ he said, finishing Sains’s sentence for him. ‘A magician can do illusions. A carpenter can build.’
Vincent put his hands to his face, wanting to shut out the world for a bit.
‘There’s two of them,’ he said into the palms of his hands. ‘I’ve been thinking inside far too small a box. There’s not one murderer working alone. There are two people working together. Which explains why I’ve felt like there have been two personalities expressed in the murders. One a rational planner, the other emotionally violent. I’ve struggled to make it all add up to a homogenous profile of the murderer without success. Not surprisingly. There was never only one.’
He let his hands fall into his lap and looked at Sains, who was still staring at the photos.
‘Vincent,’ said Sains slowly, ‘a single person can act crazy. Commit irrational deeds of madness that are incomprehensible to everyone else but which seem perfectly reasonable to a sick mind. But two? Two people have to coordinate. Divide up the tasks between them …’
Sains pushed the pictures together with his fingertips as if they might infect him if he touched them too much and then he carefully put them back in the folder.
‘You’re not hunting a single madman,’ he said. ‘You’re hunting two monsters.’
‘Folie à deux,’ said Vincent slowly. ‘A psychosis, a madness shared by two people. And I can’t find them.’
He looked out through the window at the ordinary world where people were eating ice cream in the summer sun and didn’t have to think about brutal murders and indecipherable codes.
‘Because I wasn’t smart enough. The next life they take will be my fault. One person’s stupidity and two people’s madness. Folie à trois.’
86
She breathed in the nasal spray as deeply as she could. Then she steeled herself for the next step. She dreaded each time that she was forced – with only her willpower driving her on – to press the needle into her own skin. Julia had been advised to visualize the goal. And she tried every time. She closed her eyes. Saw a real-life baby in front of her. Didn’t matter whether it was a boy or girl. Fluffy baby hair. Fat thighs. Gurgling laughter that started a long way down its throat. She connected to her desire as hard as she could.
But it didn’t help. She was still scared of the injections.
Torkel could help her at home, but he could hardly leave his job in the middle of the day to come and give her her injections. Their injections, as the nurse so cheerfully put it. Julia wondered how the hell it could be their injections when it was her skin the needle went through. But it was just one of a thousand absurd things tied to the process they had been undergoing for the last couple of years.
She summoned up her courage again and pinched the skin at her waist, searching for a good spot, then tried to hold the needle still – no mean feat when her hand wouldn’t stop shaking.
A knock at the door made her jump and she almost jabbed herself by mistake. She placed the syringe and the nasal spray on the desk, where they’d be hidden behind a framed wedding photo of her and Torkel. Then she pulled down her shirt, tucked it into her waistband and went to open the door.
‘Hello. I hope I’m not disturbing you?’
Milda Hjort was standing outside. Julia weighed up her options. She needed to take the injection very soon. But Milda wasn’t usually long-winded. And she had no good reason to send her away. Plus it might be something important.
‘No, not at all,’ said Julia, stepping to one side.
She quickly glanced at her tidy desk. To her relief, the needle wasn’t visible behind the picture frame.
‘Take a seat.’
Julia gestured to her visitor’s chair, as if there were other options available.
She could hear how professional her voice sounded. Matter-of-fact. Completely divorced from the longing for children, from broken dreams and memories of dead foetuses emerging from her body straight into a metal bowl. Unviable, that was the word they’d used.
