Broken Mirrors (ARC) Page 5

  'For example.'

  Wasn't there a sighting of her in Italy last week?'

  'That proved not to be credible,' Henrik replied stiffly. ‘We have consulted a profiler who specialises in the psychological make-up of people like Mia,' he continued, after a moment.

  I turned to look straight ahead at the headrest in front of me. There was a piece of duct tape holding one side of it together. I shuddered to think of who might have sat where I was now, slashing the back of the headrest.

  'She was of the opinion that Mia has no reason to hide any more. She controlled herself to kill so subtly for so long that it must have caused a great deal of strain for her.’

  ‘My heart bleeds.’

  Henrik smiled. ‘But now every person in the country knows her name. School children sing songs in the playground about her. We have been monitoring any so-called natural death in the area and there has not been one that raised even the slightest suspicion in all these months. This is not uncommon. Many killers go cold for months, even years, especially if they have been frightened by something. But, the profiler warned that it was only ever a pause. She predicted that Mia’s next kill or kills would be —’ He gestured vaguely.

  ‘Show-offy,’ I supplied, my heart hammering.

  I tried to picture Mia carrying Mattias's body, placing him on the bench, arranging him to her satisfaction, imagining my horror when I ran past and saw him.

  ‘This Jason Winslow, if he was a semi-professional basketball player, he would be a huge guy, wouldn’t he? And Mattias Eklund was no short-arse either. Any corpse is pretty heavy, but guys of that size would weigh a ton. Mia's not a delicate flower but I don't think any woman could easily carry them.’

  'That is true,' Henrik conceded. He nodded towards the bench, though we could barely see it any more. 'The killer kicked around the snow so there are no identifiable footprints, but there were no markings to indicate they staggered or dragged the body.'

  'So maybe it was a coincidence I found him,' I said finally. 'Loads of people run down here, there's a bus stop just there.'

  'Perhaps you should be careful anyway,' Henrik replied mildly. 'I will drive you home now.'

  10

  The flat was freezing when I got home, the cold seeping in through the walls themselves. I put on my beloved giraffe onesie, made a cup of tea and burrowed under the covers on my air mattress. I switched my lamp off and stared at the unrelenting blackness beyond the window.

  Was Mia out there? Watching me? Following me?

  I was so cold I felt my organs chill. I could picture them inside me, frosty and blue-tinged. A wave of sadness washed over me as I remembered Mattias Eklund, frozen on that bench. That poor kid. Had he died because Mia wanted revenge on me?

  Little tingles of horror danced on the back of my neck. I wasn’t to blame for Mia’s actions. Of course I knew that. But there was no getting away from the fact that it was me who stumbled across Sanna’s body. Mia had been safe until I came along.

  Johan had described how they heard me screaming that night and had scrabbled from the table, come running through the forest. He had thought I'd hurt myself, but she must have known, must have suspected at least, what I had found, why I screamed. What had she been thinking?

  I had taken on the investigation in the hopes of clearing Johan’s name. I’d asked questions and uncovered clues and poked sleeping bears that made life uncomfortable for her. And when life was uncomfortable for Mia, it became dangerous for the rest of us.

  A week or two ago, Johan had invited Krister and I over for dinner. As we ate, I'd told them a funny story about a little boy in my class who had taken to calling his parents by their first names for no apparent reason. A snack time, Sandra had refused him a third bowl of cereal and he'd dramatically thrown himself on the floor howling 'Karen would let me!' Johan and Krister had dutifully laughed. I stopped talking for a moment to take a bite, and the silence that descended was palpable.

  Later that evening Krister laced up his snow boots while I hugged Johan goodbye. I went to kiss him on the cheek, but at the last second he turned for my lips and we ended up in an awkward head smash. Krister was already out in the hallway, and Johan pulled me back into a tight hug that brought a lump to my throat. I could feel his breath warm on the back of my neck as he burrowed his face in my shoulder, the contours of his back so achingly familiar as I stood on tip toe to hold him close. Maybe I should just stay. What harm could it do? Maybe he needed company, maybe —

  'I guess you should go, before it gets too late,' he murmured into my hair.

  For once I was grateful for Krister's silence as we rode the creaky lift down and I blinked back tears.

  ‘These murders demand attention,’ I had said to Henrik earlier this evening, when he pulled up outside the flat. 'The public places they are left out, the posing. There's nothing subtle about it. The killer is making a point.'

  Henrik nodded. ‘Yes, that is a good theory.’ He turned the engine off and stared blankly as the car fell into silence. I watched his reflection in the windscreen, noticing for the first time how exhausted he looked. He had a little furrow in his brow that made him look as though he were permanently frowning.

  ‘And if it's Mia, you think she could be making a point at me.’

  ‘It is possible she blames you for — disrupting her life.’

  ‘So you're saying I’ve got a serial killer willy waving at me,’ I muttered. I opened the car door and a blast of freezing air smacked me in the face. ‘Fucking brilliant.'

  But as the tea finally started to defrost my insides and I felt sleep begin to wash over me, I found myself thinking about an evening, back in the summer, when we had all gone out for dinner. Me, Johan, Mia, Krister and Liv. I remembered how couldn't get over how utterly flawless Mia's makeup was, and remained throughout the meal.

  There wasn't the tiniest clump of mascara on a single eyelash, her skin was porcelain-perfect, and her lipstick didn't smudge once. I should have known then, I thought with a rueful smile. Never trust a woman who can eat a burrito without mucking up her lipstick.

  While Krister fell into sullen silence, Liv barely concealed her disdain for me and I talked a load of nonsense at a mile a minute in a desperate ploy to cover up the awkwardness, Mia was the ultimate hostess. She told stories, she asked questions, she listened to the answers with encouraging nods and unwavering eye contact. Looking back now, I could see that she was too perfect. We all say daft things that come out wrong sometimes, snort when we laugh, struggle to conceal our boredom or tiredness, but not Mia. Mia was flawless precisely because she wasn't real. She was a consummate actress playing the part of a human being.

  And she had tremendous stamina for it. For well over a decade, she spent hours on end at social events, she lived with Krister, all the while keeping this secret. Never once did her mask slip, not even for an instant. Mia wasn’t your run-of-the-mill criminal whose very lack of impulse control would get her caught sooner or later. She was highly functional, highly intelligent, highly determined. She had existed fully in a double life, coldly, capably covering her tracks completely She wouldn't have abandoned the MO that had served her for so long for a piddly thing like almost getting caught.

  This killer, posing their victims in a showy display of ego, was a different beast. I was sure of it. It was risky, posing bodies in public like that. Foolhardy, even. Look at me, look what I did.

  I braced the cold to scuttle out of bed to brush my teeth, then snuggled back under the covers on the air mattress. I was wide awake. I turned onto my back and stared at the ceiling, criss crossed with shadows from the streetlights outside.

  Then a thought struck me.

  It was last summer, the night Mia and I had shared a bottle of wine at a basement bar near Johan's flat. I'd been there to stalk Gustav Lindström, Sanna's ex boyfriend, who I'd thought at the time could have been responsible for her murder. Mia killed him later that night.

  At some point during the evening, I'd to
ld her a story about a trip to New York, years back, with some friends. One of our group had just broken her engagement, so we took her away for the weekend over Valentine's day to take her mind off things. I'd suggested New York, picturing a hard-nosed city full of wisecracking, take no prisoners types who'd shout colourful abuse at us for crossing the road in the wrong place. It turns out, however, that Americans take Valentine's day rather seriously and we had arrived to find Manhattan basically draped in love hearts and glitter. In desperation, we took her to an ice hockey game, and she was caught on the giant kiss-cam screen, sobbing her heart out as the couple in the row in front of us snogged each other's faces off.

  'I should have known,' I'd grinned that night at the bar, shaking my head at the memory. 'Americans do have a go big or go home attitude to any holiday. I was in New Orleans once for Halloween, I'm not sure I've ever recovered.'

  Mia shrugged. 'I wouldn't know, I've never been.'

  'You've never been to the States, ever?'

  She shook her head. 'I don't like to fly. Krister and I take trains around Europe every summer. We thought about taking a cruise to New York sometime, but I've never bothered to get a passport. I will someday.'

  It was gone midnight, but Henrik answered on the first ring. 'Does Mia has a passport?'

  'What?'

  'Mia. She told me once she'd never got a passport. I remember it because I've never heard of anyone without a passport before. Was she lying?'

  I heard a few clicks of the keyboard on the other end, a muffled yawn. 'No,' he said after a few moments, 'she wasn't. There is no passport registered in her name.'

  'So she wasn't in Boston six years ago.'

  There was a silence as Henrik took this in. 'No, I suppose she was not.'

  We hung up, and before I could lose my nerve, I fired off an email to Kate, the publisher in London.

  Developing case here. I just found one of the victims. Different killer. Interested in a new story?

  Seconds later, the reply arrived. Sounds glorious. Hooray and indeed hurrah. '

  I was back in business.

  11

  It was summer. She and her little sister Lisbet were playing in the garden of their grandparents summer cottage, while the adults finished a bottle of wine after lunch.

  It was a beautiful day. If she were to close her eyes now, she could feel the sun on her face, the sting of sunburn on her shoulders and nose, the tug of the too-tight plaits Mamma insisted the girls wore their hair in at all times. She was seven years old and her dearest wish was to be able to wear her hair loose around her shoulders like a princess in a story book, but Mamma insisted it would get tangled and messy and she had no time for that.

  She was standing in the water at the bottom of the garden, feeling sand and rocks beneath her toes, waves lapping gently around her ankles. Even though she had won three swimming medals at school, neither she nor Lisbet were permitted to paddle without an adult nearby, in case a freak current washed them out to sea.

  She stepped further the water with a deliberate splash. Lisbet, playing nearby with a bucket and spade even though the beach was rocky so all you could do is fill the bucket with stones and tip them out again, gasped. Lisbet's eyes had widened and she had been about to say something, or worse, shout for Mamma.

  ‘I’m not going in deep, anyway.' She was annoyed with herself. She didn’t have to explain herself to her little sister. Lisbet was only four and didn’t know anything except how to tattle and whine when she didn’t get her way.

  It made her laugh to remember how excited she had been to meet her new little sister. Her grandparents had driven her up to the hospital in their new car which was mint green and enormous. Even sitting in the front seat in between them, she could hardly see over the top of the walnut dashboard, but she felt very important and she liked that.

  Then they arrived in the little room and Mamma was sat up in a narrow bed wearing the new peach dressing gown she had bought at PUB two weeks before. She didn’t look like Mamma. She looked sort of puffed up and deflated at the same time. Mamma gave a tired smile but looked distracted, which was worrying.

  Mamma held a squirming, mewling bundle in her arms.

  The new big sister peered over to have a look. At first, she thought it was a cat, which would have been interesting. She was incensed to learn, however, that this tiny red-faced thing was the little sister she had been so looking forward to. ‘I can’t play with that,’ she wailed, burying her face in Grandma’s skirts. All the adults had laughed, which just made her even angrier.

  Lisbet was now technically old enough to play with now, but she had never been forgiven for being such a disappointment.

  Every time she remembered Grandma telling her off as she dragged her down the hospital corridor away from Mamma, she would pinch Lisbet, sometimes hard enough to bruise her. Lisbet never told on her. She just gave her a wide-eyed stare full of hurt and shock, and didn’t even cry.

  Lisbet was pathetic.

  That summer, the big sister was determined to learn how to skip a stone across the surface of the water. One day back in spring, she had been walking with Pappa when they came across some boys skipping stones. She wanted to join in with them, but when she tried, her stone just plopped into the water and sank immediately. The boys had laughed and Pappa tried to comfort her and she hated all of them.

  She threw a flat pebble with a flick of her wrist, and it hit the water — and then immediately sank. She stamped her foot. She must have the wrong kind of stones. Pappa had collected some flat ones for her to practice with that morning. He promised they were ideal for skipping, but obviously he lied or was too stupid to know which kind of stones were right for skipping. Probably both.

  She tried again with an even flatter stone. It hit the water, then — again! She’d done it. She had learned all by herself and she hadn’t even had to wait for useless Pappa who had probably forgotten he promised to help.

  ‘Well done!’ shouted Lisbet from where she perched on the beach behind her. ‘I knew you would do it eventually!’

  Eventually? She had only been trying for about five minutes. Not even that, two minutes at most. There was no eventually about it. How dare this snivelling little idiot who still wet herself sometimes lie that it took her a long time to learn how to do something as stupid and easy as skipping stones.

  She turned around with a smile. Lisbet grinned, then she must have seen something in her sister's eyes because her grin faded. She didn’t move, just sat there staring like a frightened animal. She knew what was going to happen.

  ‘Thank you, Lisbet,’ she called, knowing that her voice would carry up to where the adults sat on the porch. Then she raised her arm and threw the stone right at Lisbet’s head.

  It hardly hurt her. It was tiny. All that screaming for nothing.

  So there was a little bit of blood where it hit her eyebrow and Lisbet threw up and said she felt dizzy. She was fine. She was just crying because the adults were all fussing around her.

  Her parents and grandparents came rushing across the garden when Lisbet screamed. Too late, it occurred to her she should have run over to Lisbet too, pretended to be all concerned like they did. But she was annoyed at Lisbet for screaming and making a fuss.

  Later, she told Pappa she had been too frightened to move because she was afraid Lisbet was going to die. She heard him explaining this to Mamma when he thought she was asleep. Mamma seemed to be arguing with him. All the next day, Mamma kept stealing nasty little looks over at her elder daughter when she thought she wasn’t looking.

  So she was still standing in the water, far away from the little family group, when it happened. She saw it before she heard anything. Lisbet’s fat little arm pointing, her face accusing, the four adults turning to stare at her.

  ‘Of course I didn’t!’ she gasped. She wasn’t even sure if any of them had said anything out loud, but she could see the accusation in their eyes. Her bottom lip started to wobble and her eyes filled with tea
rs as she began to tremble with the horror, the injustice of all.

  Lisbet had pointed at her. For the first time in four whole years, Lisbet hadn’t just stared in mute shock. She had tried to get her into trouble.

  She was inconsolable. Pappa was the first to apologise, then her grandparents. Even Lisbet said she was sorry before Mamma did.

  But she wasn’t really upset by that point. She had just got quite used to crying and had forgotten to stop. She howled that she was sad and hurt, even after everyone apologised again, but she wasn’t really sad and hurt. She was angry.

  And, now, many years later, she was still angry. Lisbet died a long time ago. Mamma and Pappa went soon after her. Some people said they had died of broken hearts after burying their beautiful daughter so young. They didn’t say out loud, but she knew they meant her parents didn’t want to be left with the daughter who was distinctly un-beautiful, in every way. Her grandparents must have died at some point along the way, but she can’t particularly remember. Her anger never died though, she has just learned to channel it in different directions.

  12

  ‘Tre, två, ett… nu kör vi!’

  The instructor blew his whistle, turned up the pounding rap music and I punched Maddie. I’m sorry. I can’t explain what I’ve become either. I blame Sweden. All that strapping outdoorsy fit keenness is as catching as the clap.

  I'd just been leaving school that afternoon when Maddie texted, and suddenly enduring the horrors of some fight-bootcamp had seemed preferable to going straight home to think about serial killers. That said, whatever psychopath came up with the bright idea of forcing people to punch a boxing pad held by their partner then do untold number of burpees for the longest minute known to man I don’t know, but should I meet them I know where I’ll tell them where to stick their burpees.