CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
THE GIRL SAT QUIETLY, looking down at her bowl of yogurt and strawberries. She listened to the clinking of silverware against china as her mother and father ate breakfast.
“Would you please eat?”
Her mother looked at her imploringly, but the girl didn’t move.
“Are your dreams bothering you again?”
The girl swallowed, not daring to lift her gaze from the bowl.
“Yes,” she replied in a barely audible whisper.
“What did you dream about this time?”
Her mother tore a slice of bread in half and spread marmalade on it.
“A container,” she said. “It was...”
“No!”
Her father’s voice came from the other side of the table, loud, hard and cold as ice. His fists were clenched. His eyes were as hard and cold as his voice.
“That’s enough!”
He got up, pulled her from the chair and shoved her out of the kitchen.
“We don’t want to hear any more of your fantasies.”
The girl stumbled forward, struggling to keep ahead of him as he pushed her up the stairs. He was hurting her arm, her feet. She tried to wrench herself from his grasp just as he changed his grip and put his hand around her neck.
Then he let go, his hand recoiling as if he’d been stabbed. He looked at her in disgust.
“I told you to keep your neck covered all the time! Always!”
He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around.
“What did you do with the bandage?”
She felt him pull her hair aside, tearing at it, trying frantically to expose the nape of her neck. Heard his rapid breathing when he caught sight of her scars. He took a few steps back, aghast, as if he had seen something horrifying.
And he had...
Because her bandage had fallen off.
THERE! THE CAR appeared from around the corner.
Pim smiled nervously at Noi. They were standing in an alley, in the shadows of the light from the streetlamps. The asphalt was discolored by patches of dried piss. It smelled strong and rank, and the howling of stray dogs was drowned out by the rumbling highway.
Pim’s forehead was damp with sweat—not from the heat but from nerves. Her dark hair was plastered to the back of her neck, and the thin material of her T-shirt stuck to her back in creases. She didn’t know what awaited her and hadn’t had much time to think about it, either.
Everything had gone so quickly. Just two days ago, she had made up her mind. Noi had laughed, saying it was easy, it paid well and they’d be home again in five days.
Pim wiped her hand across her forehead and dried it on her jeans as she watched the slowly approaching car.
She smiled again, as if to convince herself that everything would be okay, everything would work out.
It was just this one time.
Just once. Then never again.
She picked up her suitcase. She’d been told to fill it with clothes for two weeks to make the fictitious vacation more convincing.
She looked at Noi, straightened her spine and pulled her shoulders back.
The car was almost there.
It drove toward them slowly and stopped. A tinted window rolled down, exposing the face of a man with close-cropped hair.
“Get in,” he said without taking his eyes from the road. Then he put the car in gear and prepared to leave.
Pim walked around the car, stopped and closed her eyes for a brief moment. Taking a deep breath, she opened the car door and got in.
* * *
Public prosecutor Jana Berzelius took a sip of water and reached across the pile of papers on the table. It was 10:00 p.m., and The Bishop’s Arms in Norrköping was packed.
A half hour earlier, she’d been in the company of her boss, Chief Public Prosecutor Torsten Granath who, after a long and successful day in court, had at least had the decency to take her to dinner at the Elite Grand Hotel.
He had spent the two-hour meal carrying on about his dog who, after various stomach ailments and bowel problems, had had to be put to sleep. Although Jana couldn’t have cared less, she had feigned interest when Torsten pulled out his phone to show pictures of the puppy years of the now-dead dog. She had nodded, tilting her head to one side and trying to look sympathetic.
To make the time pass more quickly, she had inventoried the other patrons. She’d had an unobstructed view of the door from their table near the window. No one came or went without her seeing. During Torsten’s monologue, she had observed twelve people: three foreign businessmen, two middle-aged women with shrill voices, a family of four, two older men and a teenager with big, curly hair.
After dinner, she and Torsten had moved to The Bishop’s Arms next door. He’d said the classic British interior reminded him of golfing in the county of Kent and that he always insisted on the same table. For Jana, the choice of pub was a minor irritation. She had shaken her boss’s hand with relief when he’d finally decided to call an end to the evening.
Yet she had lingered a bit longer.
Stuffing the papers into her briefcase, she drank the last of her water and was just about to get up when a man came in. Maybe it was his nervous gait that made her notice him. She followed him with her gaze as he walked
