Trapped, page 38
‘Don’t know, but it’s nice out,’ he said, avoiding a puddle. ‘What did you have in mind?’
‘I don’t know either,’ she said. ‘I didn’t even know whether you wanted to see me. But preferably away from the forest. Now that I’ve seen it.’
He suspected that Mina was doing her very best not to think about all the creepy crawlies that might be lurking beneath the trees and leaves. Probably best not to mention the anthill they had just passed.
‘Well, if we’re not going to work then maybe we … we could go to the cinema?’ he said, blurting out the first thing that came into his head.
She laughed and looked up at him with a wry smile. Definitely a smile this time.
‘The cinema? Like you do on a date?’
He blushed again. Bloody hell. He hadn’t thought it through that far.
‘No, of course not. Sorry. What do you like doing then?’
‘I like working out,’ she said. ‘And playing pool. I’m very good at pool. But I’d happily go to the cinema with you. It’s a long time since I saw a movie.’
She nudged him in the side with her elbow.
‘If Maria is going to be horrified, we might as well give her a reason.’
They took Mina’s car to the multiplex at Söderhallarna. He didn’t say much in the car; it was hard to talk when he was sitting beside her and couldn’t see her facial expression. This made for a quiet journey. When he paid using the parking app, he forced himself not to adjust the time until it was even instead of odd. He didn’t want to do anything that might seem too strange.
Inside the cinema, they bought tickets for a film that neither of them had heard of and headed into the foyer. Behind the counters there were glass cabinets filled with big cardboard tubs of popcorn. He went over to the nearest till but stopped himself. Should he buy soft drinks and snacks? Or shouldn’t he? Was that when it became a date? He wasn’t sure about the rules.
He turned to ask Mina and discovered that she was no longer beside him. She had stopped a few metres behind. Mina was standing there as if frozen to the floor, her gaze fixed on the tubs of popcorn. Her face was pale. Then her eyes flickered to the side, towards the drinks machines and the straws lying there in a messy heap. The dilated pupils and the tense jaw gave away the panic bubbling within her.
He was an idiot.
Any member of staff, and countless patrons, could have touched the popcorn in the open tubs. Hundreds of people with unwashed hands had rooted through those straws. Not to mention all the ones who had already sat in the same seats they were going to occupy, or the spilled drinks that would make the soles of their shoes sticky inside the auditorium. How could he have thought she would like this?
‘Mina,’ he said, touching her elbow gently. ‘Let’s go.’
She reacted with a shudder to being touched but continued staring at the popcorn cabinets.
‘But we’ve paid for the film,’ she said.
She began rubbing her hands together as if she were washing them. They had got dry and chapped again.
‘We can’t leave,’ she said, ‘when we’ve paid.’
‘Of course we can. We’ve paid to do what we want. Just because you’ve chosen your food doesn’t mean you actually have to eat it. You always have a choice. All parents are wrong.’
Gently grasping Mina’s elbow, he steered her out of the cinema. She began to breathe more easily as soon as they turned their backs on the foyer. They emerged into the labyrinth of restaurants adjacent to the cinema in Söderhallarna.
‘Sit down here,’ he said, pointing to the nearest cafe. ‘Order something to drink. You need it. I’ll be with you in a second.’
Without waiting for a reply, he ran out of Söderhallarna and into the supermarket next door, cursing his lack of consideration.
Three minutes later he was back. Mina was sitting at a table at the very back. There was a beer in his place. A Coke Zero in hers. It looked untouched.
‘Here,’ he said, passing across the sealed pack of straws he had just bought. ‘I’m guessing you don’t have any of your own with you today.’
Mina looked like she was about to burst into tears.
‘Sorry,’ she began. ‘I don’t want you to think I’m crazy. I’m trying, but it’s just so …’
If she began crying he didn’t know what he would do. There were five straws in the pack. There had been seven packs on the rack. Thirty-five in total. Mina was probably no more than thirty-three years old. The difference between thirty-five and thirty-three was two. One straw for each of them. That made two. He really didn’t want her to start crying.
‘I see it like this,’ he said. ‘You’re the last person in the world who is going to catch the flu. That can’t be a bad thing.’
Mina smiled gratefully, opened the pack of straws and then inserted one into her fizzy drink. She looked at him gratefully and then inserted the other straw into his beer.
It wasn’t excessively late when Vincent got home, but the family were already asleep. Aston usually fell asleep from exhaustion around eight o’clock. Maria liked to go to bed no later than half past nine, and the teenagers crashed an hour or so later. Personally, his most creative spell was from ten at night until two in the morning, so coming home at midnight like this was optimal. There were still two hours left when he would be sharp and effective.
But not tonight. His head was still full of thoughts about Mina and everything they had talked about. He brushed his teeth and crept into the bedroom, taking care to avoid waking Maria. If she woke up she would demand to know why he had come home in the middle of the night in her most accusatory voice and he didn’t have the strength to defend himself.
He undressed without turning on any lights. Socks and underwear folded up on the floor: dirty laundry. Clothes that were still clean went on top of the bureau. Once his eyes had begun to adjust to the darkness he saw a shadow on Maria’s nightstand. Her stack of books. Just like his wife, he didn’t know much about how life worked. And just like his wife, he wasn’t going to learn it from books. The difference was, he knew that.
But he had started learning.
Mina had started teaching him.
88
Mora 1982
Jane was sitting on a chair in Ylva’s hallway. On the bureau beside her was the home telephone. She had her hand on the grey receiver but hadn’t lifted it from the cradle. To call home or not to call home? That was the question. She had been afraid that Mum would call every single day while she was staying with her friend, or even several times a day, to ask how she was doing and when she would be coming home. She had told Ylva’s parents that her mother could be a little bit manic and she had apologized in advance for what she thought was going to happen.
But Mum had handled herself surprisingly well. She had only called on the first day, and then just to check that Jane had arrived and that everything was OK. She hadn’t been in touch since, despite the fact that it must have been difficult for her to resist calling. But that was a good thing. Perhaps Mum had discovered that she was able to get by. Just as Jane was able to think backwards logically when reverse-engineering her brother’s tricks, so perhaps her mother had realized that it wasn’t Jane who had been keeping her going in spite of everything. Maybe moving out wouldn’t pose any problems after all.
Nevertheless, she was sitting there holding the receiver while her hand grew sweatier and sweatier against the grey plastic. Because something felt wrong. Very wrong. She couldn’t explain it – it wasn’t a rational feeling. She was probably being silly, letting her guilty conscience spook her. Really, she ought to have been happy rather than concerned about the fact that Mum wasn’t following her usual pattern.
And yet … the feeling told her that something wasn’t as it should be. Something back home. She threaded the telephone cable between her fingers. If she called and expressed her anxiety then Mum would ask her to come straight home. If she didn’t call, the knot in her stomach would keep bothering her.
She shifted the receiver into her other hand, wiped her sweaty palms on her trousers and dialled the number for home. It took a few seconds of spluttering and crackling in her ear before she was connected. Once it finally started ringing, the sound was as faint and fragile as if she had been placing a call to the other side of the world. After five rings someone picked up.
‘Boman. Hello?’
‘Hi, little brother! It’s Jane!’
Silence. She knew her little brother didn’t like talking on the phone. It would be up to her to guide the conversation.
‘How are you both doing?’ she said.
‘Good. Eating breakfast.’
She smiled to herself. Everything was fine. The knot in her stomach would have to be kicked into touch.
‘Let me guess,’ she said. ‘Mum’s toasted sandwiches, cut into triangles?’
‘Yes, without crusts. With sliced egg. You know that …’
‘Routines are important.’
‘… routines are important.’
They laughed at the same time.
‘Can I talk to Mum?’ she said. ‘If she’s done with your sarnies?’
‘No, she can’t talk right now.’
‘Is it one … of those days?’ she said, lowering her voice. ‘Are you doing OK?’
‘No, it’s just that she’s not in here. I’m OK.’
So Mum was at least well enough to make breakfast. Well then. The worry had been nothing more than her guilty conscience. And as long as she didn’t talk to anyone other than her brother, her mother couldn’t ask her to come home again.
‘Weren’t you building some secret magic trick before I left?’ she said. ‘Mum said that maybe she was going to be involved in it somehow. Are you going to show it to me when I get home?’
There was silence on the other end of the line. She pressed the receiver to her ear to hear whether he was still there. The faint sound of breathing was audible. He was reluctant to discuss his secrets. That meant there was no magic left, as he always said. But there was no need for him to be so damn touchy.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Mum didn’t give anything away.’
‘I don’t want to talk any more now. I want to eat. The toasted sandwiches are getting cold.’
‘OK, little brother. See you in a week. My love to Mum.’
He hung up before she had finished. She untangled her fingers from the cable and put the receiver down. While they had been talking, she had felt as if everything was good. But now the worry returned. Her little brother had sounded weird towards the end. She ought to go home – to check that everything was OK.
‘Stop it, Jane,’ she said out loud to herself, with a shake of her head.
Her mother was the most manipulative person she had ever met. Mum was an expert at getting her claws right into people, until they no longer had any strength left. Those claws were apparently far deeper into Jane than she had realized. Without even doing anything, Mum had almost got her to go home. But not this time. This time Jane meant to win.
She picked up her swimming bag from the day before and went outside into the back garden. Ylva was lying on a blanket on the grass, reading a book.
‘Ylva,’ she said. ‘How about we head over to the pool?’
‘You’re sooo behind,’ said Ylva, getting up from the blanket.
She was already wearing her bikini.
‘Last one there has to jump off the seven-metre board!’ Jane yelled, accelerating towards the bicycles.
She had no intention of going home until she wanted to.
89
For perhaps the hundredth time, Ruben reached for the gear stick, only to discover that it wasn’t there. And for the hundredth time he regretted not taking his own Chevrolet Camaro. An automatic? What a load of crap! He wasn’t disabled or anything. But mink farms sounded like they involved mud, industrial dirt and balls of animal hair all over the place. That wasn’t something he intended to do to Ellinor – as he called his car. Whenever anyone asked about the name he would reference an old action movie starring Nicolas Cage. The real reason was Ruben’s own business.
Ellinor had just been in for a service and she was gleaming as if she were brand new under the tarpaulin in the underground car park. The neighbours that he shared the car park with couldn’t resist teasing him about the tarpaulin, but they could hardly talk given the filthy cars they owned. He had no intention of allowing particles of grease in the enclosed air of the underground car park to get anywhere near her white paintwork.
So he’d had to take a fleet car today. It also helped to have POLICE on the car’s livery when he turned up somewhere uninvited. He was quick to exploit the nervousness aroused by the car. But despite this, the day had been a complete waste of time. Just as he had suspected it might. He’d been to three mink farms so far and he was going to do a fourth before calling it a day.
At this stage, the idea was just to take a look around. To get a feeling for whether mink farms really were a place where you could hold people captive, and possibly even murder them, without being discovered. But the places he had visited hadn’t had a square inch to spare. There had been minks everywhere. Thousands of them, squashed into automated systems that allowed one person to look after a thousand minks. There had barely been space for the animals themselves, let alone a discreet but murderous carpenter’s workshop.
The final farm of the day was on the island of Lidön in the Norrtälje archipelago, which meant he had to take a ferry out to the island. As soon as he was aboard the boat, he switched off the engine and got out of the car. The wind caught his jacket and hair. He let it. The fresh air was badly needed. The smell on those farms had been, frankly, fucking awful. He knew that many people were agitated about the way the animals were treated – the mink industry was not a popular business among those who considered themselves informed. In a way he understood their point of view – what he had seen over the course of the day hadn’t exactly filled him with joy.
At the same time, if you wanted to complain about someone having a bad time of it, then there were quite a lot of people who needed help before you started caring about animals. If you wanted to help, then you had to pick how. You could become a cop and make a difference. Or you could be a leftist and demonstrate.
After fifteen minutes the ferry reached its destination and as he got back in the car the phone rang.
‘Ruben Höök,’ he said, answering on the car’s hands-free system.
‘Hi, Ruben, it’s Vincent. How are you getting on? I heard you were out following up a lead – something about a connection to mink farms?’
Vincent? Not exactly at the top of his list of likely callers. Mina must have blabbed. She seemed to think her wizard was doing a better job than the cops. She probably just wanted to get some. Wrapped in clingfilm. He laughed to himself at the image that popped up in his head.
‘If I’m honest this is a complete waste of time,’ he said, starting the engine. ‘I’m on the way to the last place now. I hope we don’t go out on field trips based on all the other contents of Robert’s stomach. We’ll have a lot of McDonald’s to check out if we do.’
The car shuddered as the ferry touched the quayside.
‘Why are you calling?’ he said, as the barrier rose to allow him to drive ashore.
‘I wanted to speak to you about something without anyone else on the team listening in.’
There were only two other cars on the ferry. He overtook them while checking the map on his phone. The mink farm wasn’t far from the ferry. He really wanted this day to end.
‘We don’t know each other,’ Vincent continued. ‘But I’ve observed you. Listened to how you talk. Your attitude towards women. How long ago did she leave you?’
Ruben whistled and pulled over onto the verge. The two cars he had just passed overtook him, honking in annoyance. Almost before he had stopped he’d begun digging in his pocket for his Airpods. This was too personal for someone to accidentally overhear. Admittedly it was only him in the car, but still …
‘What kind of bloody question is that?’ he said once he’d inserted the wireless headphones. ‘Firstly, I’ve no idea what you’re on about and secondly it’s way too personal. Who do you think you are?’
‘I don’t mean to pry,’ said Vincent. ‘But I recognize a broken heart when I see one. I’m saying this entirely objectively.’
He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t want to admit it – not to himself or to anyone else. But that goddamn mentalist was right, despite his total lack of social finesse. Ruben had no desire to think about it. Not now. Not later. Women weren’t to be trusted and that was that.
‘Sorry for being so direct,’ said Vincent, in a tone that was fortunately free of doughy sympathy. ‘But I don’t think you want anyone to talk to you in any other way. And I’d rather be wrong and castigated as an insensitive idiot than see you carry on feeling this bad. Assuming that I’m right and that you do.’
‘Sounds like you want to marry me,’ Ruben snorted, starting the car again. ‘Why do you care about how I feel? Surely no need for you to give a shit?’
He’d spotted the mink farm a little way off. There was probably a track to it from the road he was on now that would lead him to a car park in front of the main building. He’d be there in under a minute.
‘I don’t. Or rather, I …’
‘So you’re going to be my therapist then?’ he interrupted.
‘Not at all,’ said Vincent. ‘I don’t even want to know whether I’m right or not. But, Ruben … when you’re good, you’re good. That much I’ve grasped from your colleagues. This other thing, it seems to disturb you. Your abilities suffer.’
Ruben parked the police car and got out. At the other farms he had been able to hear the unmistakable sound of operations in full swing from the car park. Feeding systems, air conditioning, conveyor belts for transportation. Not to mention the actual animals themselves. All of that made noise. Here it was completely silent. He guessed the farm was mothballed. It was happening to more and more of them, so far as he understood. His guess also correlated with how abandoned the building looked. He could make out open water tens of metres behind the farm. It would have been almost peaceful, had it not been for the smell. It was even worse than at the other places. If there weren’t animals here, then there had been until recently. Of the places he had visited so far, this was the first that might at least theoretically fulfil the requirements of a secluded murder scene.
