Part 27 (2/2)

The garden is shady, but the white sky s.h.i.+mmers in the windowsill.

The camera moves backwards again when a woman dressed in her underwear comes into the room. She hangs a white towel with old hair-dye stains over the back of a chair, then stops and leans one hand against the wall.

'One minute left,' Adam says.

The room fills with soft light from the lamp in the ceiling. They can make out fingerprints on the mirror, and a slightly tilted framed poster from the Pica.s.so exhibition at Moderna Museet.

The camera moves to one side, and now they can both see a reddish-brown porcelain deer on the bedside table.

'The deer,' Margot pants, leaning towards the screen as her plait falls over her shoulder.

The snapped deer's head that Susanna Kern was clutching in her hand must have come from an ornament exactly like that one.

The woman in the bedroom is holding one hand to her mouth, and walks slowly over to the bedside table, opens the drawer and takes something out of it. Her face is more visible in the glow of the bedside lamp. She has pale eyebrows and a straight nose, but her eyes are hidden behind the reflection in her dark-framed gla.s.ses, and her mouth is relaxed. Her bra is red and worn, and her underpants white, with some sort of sanitary pad. She rubs something over one of her thighs and then takes out a small, white stick and presses it to her muscle.

'What's she doing?' Adam asks.

'That's an insulin injection.'

The woman holds a swab against her thigh and screws her eyes shut for a moment, then opens them again. She leans forward to put the syringe back in the drawer, and manages to catch the little deer, knocking it over. Small fragments fly up in the sharp lighting as the head snaps off and falls to the floor.

'What the h.e.l.l is this?' Adam whispers.

With a weary look on her face the woman bends over and picks up the porcelain head, puts it on the bedside table, then goes round the bed towards the steamed-up window. Something makes her stop and peer out, searching the darkness beyond.

The camera moves slowly backwards, and some leaves brush over the lens.

The woman looks worried. She puts out her hand, takes hold of the cord of the blinds and loosens the catch by tugging it to the side. The slats slide down, but end up crooked and she pulls the cord and lets them fall again, then gives up. Through the damaged blinds she can be seen turning back towards the room and scratching her right b.u.t.tock before the film suddenly comes to an end.

'OK, I'm a bit tired,' Adam says in an unsteady voice, and stands up. 'But this is crazy isn't it?'

'So what do we do? Watch the film again?'

Her phone buzzes on the desk, Margot turns it over and sees that it's one of the forensics team.

'What have you got?' Margot says as soon she answers.

'Same thing, impossible to trace either the film or the link.'

'So we're waiting for someone to find the body,' Margot says, and ends the call.

'She's maybe one metre seventy tall, weighs less than sixty kilos,' Adam says. 'Her hair is probably dark blonde when it's dry.'

'She's got type-1 diabetes, went to see the Pica.s.so exhibition last autumn, single, regularly colours her hair,' Margot adds in a monotone.

'Broken blinds,' Adam says, printing out a large colour picture where the whole of the woman's face is illuminated.

He goes over to the wall and pins the photograph up as high as he can. A solitary picture, no name, no location.

'Victim number three,' he says weakly.

To the left of the photograph are pictures of the first two victims, stills taken from the YouTube clips. The difference is that below those two first pictures are names and photographs of the murder scenes, as well as reports from the forensic a.n.a.lysis of the scenes and the post-mortems.

Maria Carlsson and Susanna Kern.

Multiple stab and knife-wounds to their faces, necks and chests, severing their aortas, lungs and hearts.

50.

Sandra Lundgren leaves the bedroom, and feels a s.h.i.+ver run down her spine, as if someone were watching her from behind.

She tightens the belt of her dressing-gown, which is so long it reaches the floor. Her medication leaves her feeling drowsy long into the day. She goes into the kitchen, opens the fridge and takes out the remains of the chocolate cake and puts it on the worktop.

She adjusts her gla.s.ses and her dressing-gown falls open again, uncovering her stomach and sagging underwear. She s.h.i.+vers, pulls the wide-bladed knife from the block, cuts a small slice of cake and puts it in her mouth without bothering to get a spoon.

She's started using Stefan's striped dressing-gown even though it actually makes her feel sad. But she likes the way it weighs upon her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, its drooping shoulders, the threads hanging off the sleeves.

Beside the candleholder on the drop-leaf table is the letter from Sdertrn University College. She looks at it again, even though she's already read it thirty times. She's on the reserve list for creative writing. Her mum helped her fill in the application. Back then she didn't feel up to doing it herself, but her mother knew how much it would mean to her to be accepted onto the course.

She cried in the spring when she was told she hadn't got a place. That was probably a bit of an overreaction. Nothing had really changed, after all. She would just carry on with her fourth term on the career-counselling programme instead.

She doesn't know how long the letter had been lying there among all the old post on the hall floor, but she's read it now, and it's sitting on the kitchen table.

She decides to phone her mum and tell her the news.

Sandra glances at the window and sees two men walking towards Vinterviken on the other side of the road. She lives on the ground floor, but still hasn't got used to the fact that people sometimes stop and look right in through her windows.

The wooden floor out in the hallway creaks. She thinks it sounds like a grown person trying to creep quietly.

Sandra dials the number as she sits down on one of the kitchen chairs. She holds the phone to her ear as the call goes through, pinching the corner of the letter.

'Hi, Mum, it's me,' she says.

'h.e.l.lo, darling, I was just going to call you ... Have you thought any more about this evening?'

'What?'

'About coming over for a meal.'

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