are.
The girl in the picture can’t be more than twelve or thirteen. She’s standing against a wall, naked, her hands bound high over her head. She’s in profile, but I recognize the man pressed up against her body, a whip in his hand. He’s younger in the picture, but it’s definitely him.
This is so huge, so timely, that I almost forget to breathe.
I just stand there, listening to Lily’s gasping breaths behind me.
Whoever left the pictures there was careless, idiotic.
But they’re a windfall for me.
There was a hard rap on the door. The room was pitch black, as usual, but she could tell instinctively that it was still night-time. The lights came on gradually and Madeleine, who was sitting up in bed, became visible. The clock on the wall read twenty past four. There was another rap, impatient and frantic.
‘Assembly in the dining room in ten minutes! Wear jeans!’
It was Bosse’s voice. Angry and harsh. Sofia thought something must have happened — an accident or emergency of some sort. She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep, but it couldn’t have been more than a couple of hours — she had lain awake for a long time brooding about Ellis and the blog.
Elvira was also awake by that point, and she looked terrified, the blanket drawn up to her chin.
‘What’s going on?’
‘I don’t know,’ Madeleine said. ‘But we have to get dressed and run down to the dining room.’
They staggered around the room, pulling on jeans and whatever they could find in the dresser drawers.
‘Do you have any idea what it might be?’ Sofia tried again.
‘No, but Franz was up late. I probably shouldn’t have gone to bed.’
Just about everyone else was already there when they arrived in the dining room. They were lined up in their usual way, with tired, pale faces, messy hair, and anxious eyes. The dining room was cold and damp. They could hear rain pattering against the windowpanes.
Oswald was standing before them. He was wearing his usual outfit: black jeans and a T-shirt, and he had almost certainly not been to bed. But he didn’t look tired, only terribly angry.
He read the blog!
The thought hit her like the flick of a whip. It had to be. He had been surfing online; he had come across the disgusting blog and read the whole thing. She couldn’t think of any other reason he might gather them at four in the morning.
A few stragglers came through the door and Oswald stared at them in annoyance.
‘Is everyone here?’ Bosse asked.
Bosse walked around, inspecting the lines, counting and mumbling until he could declare that everyone was present except Katarina, the gardener.
‘She’s sick; she has a fever,’ he said. ‘So I didn’t wake her up.’
‘I said I wanted to speak to the entire staff,’ Oswald said. ‘So I’ll wait for her.’
He crossed his arms over his chest.
Bosse hurried off and an awkward silence followed. No one wanted to talk. Everyone stared straight ahead, avoiding each other’s eyes and, above all, trying not to stare at Oswald. The silence was cold as ice.
At last a panting Bosse returned with Katarina in tow. She looked terrible: she was sweaty, her eyes were feverish, and she was so pale that her skin took on a green tinge in the cold light. She was still wearing her nightgown and slippers.
‘I was working late tonight while the rest of you were snoozing,’ Oswald began. ‘And on my way home I peeked in here to see how the renovations are coming along. Come on, I’ll show you how it looks.’
He marched out of the dining room with the staff trailing him, and they headed down the corridor to the part of the building being renovated. The shorter staff members tried to crane their necks to see over the crowd, and there were bottlenecks at the doorways. Oswald didn’t say anything; he only walked around pointing at various boards, tools strewn about, piles of sawdust, safety glasses on the floor, and cans of paint that hadn’t even been sealed up for the night. Then he walked around, showing them the rooms. All twenty of them. There wasn’t a single finished room in sight. Sofia was flooded with relief even in the midst of her misery. It wasn’t the blog after all. Plus, she wasn’t responsible for this mess.
‘You have been working on this bloody project for three months,’ said Oswald. ‘Now I’m going to show you what happens when you make such a mess of things.’
He strode out into the courtyard and everyone followed. They were almost immediately drenched by the cold, incessant rain. Sofia snuck an anxious glance at Katarina, who was coughing behind her. Oswald led them past the small barn to a wooded area.
Anchored to the moss under a few pines was a large white tent. Oswald pulled the zipper down and showed them inside. There were sleeping bags, pillows, and blankets all in a pile, as well as several suitcases. Sofia, who had stuck close to Oswald, managed to poke her head through the opening. A heavy odour of mould and sweaty feet struck her.
‘This is where your household unit lives,’ Oswald said. ‘There is no room for them in the main building. Pleasant, isn’t it? This is how they are living, like pigs, on my property.’
He didn’t say anything for a long time. The situation was absurd, bordering on comical. The rain fell harder, trickling into Oswald’s eyes and mouth and forcing him to blink and swallow again and again. The only sound that could be heard through the roaring downpour was Katarina’s rattling cough.
Maybe he felt ridiculous, drenched as he was and with his voice drowned out by the rain, because he just shook his head and said, ‘I don’t want anything more to do with you. Not a single one of you bastards. Go back to the mainland, run home to mommy and daddy. Get a job you can handle. You don’t belong here.’
Then he marched back into the main building.
The whole staff stood there, at a loss, terrified and soaking wet.
Bosse broke the silence: ‘Assembly in the dining room!’
*
Back inside, a small group congregated in one corner, whispering to each other: Bosse, Madeleine, and Benny and Sten, who were two peas in a pod. The pair could often be spotted riding around the property on their motorcycles or sitting in the booth at the front gate. They were large and obstinate but quite dull; they matched her idea of a typical guard perfectly. At first she thought they were cut out for the job, but now she wondered if it was such a good idea for them to be involved in decision-making.
She considered joining the little group to prove that she cared, but decided to hold off. She wanted to avoid taking responsibility for the renovation project at all costs.
Bosse hopped
