Broken Mirrors (ARC) Read online

  ‘Come on Ellie, put some welly into it,’ shouted Maddie over the music. She’d barely broken a sweat while I was fairly sure I’d broken my soul. Luckily for her I was unable to form a response, but I gave her a look I liked to think spoke volumes, and she smiled sweetly.

  The instructor, a former cage fighter with a scarred face and cauliflower ears, held his baby son in a sling across his chest as he marched around the room yelling at people to go harder. The baby, wearing luminous green earphones, giggled delightedly at a woman slamming heavy battle ropes into the ground. The instructor blew his whistle again and announced a water break.

  ‘So is this Ola Andersson guy credible, do you think?’ Maddie asked as I slithered to the ground and squirted water over my face. 'Lena and I saw it on the news this morning.'

  'Who?'

  Maddie grabbed her phone, clicked to a news story and handed the phone to me. A guy with neatly combed, almost white blond hair and a little moustache that made him look a bit like a World War Two officer, was being led from a police car past a flurry of news cameras into a building. He stared into the lens as he passed by with a slight frown, as though he were mildly baffled by all the commotion. The headline identified him as Ola Andersson.

  'He's accusing his ex girlfriend of the ice statue murders. That's what they're calling them.'

  I clicked to play the video again, frowning as I tried to process it. 'He just walked into a police station and said 'I know who the killer is'?'

  Maddie nodded. 'Seems that way. Weird that there were already a bunch of photographers there, but no one seems sure if he called them or if it was a police leak or something.'

  I shook my head. The name Lotta Berglund flashed on the screen, accompanied by a photograph of a serious looking woman, her dark blonde hair tied neatly back. She wore wire-rimmed glasses and a plain white shirt and stared unwaveringly at the camera.

  'It's not clear whether or not it's credible?' I asked.

  Maddie shrugged. 'Lena said that the statement he made publicly was pretty vague, though he might have given more details to the police that are being kept secret, I guess.'

  'It's a helluva thing to accuse someone of if you're not certain.'

  ‘Yeah it's a weird one, that, isn’t it?’ said Maddie. A couple of guys at the next station were spending the break daring one another to deadlift the weight of a small car, or something.

  ‘Lena and I talked about it after we met Krister when we all had dinner that time. On the one hand, your partner is the person who knows you best, so if anyone would know it would be them. On the other, they're also the one the most invested in you being a good person and we all know denial is a powerful thing. So two things that have to be true cancel one another out. How could they possibly have known and how could they possibly not have known.’

  The instructor called out a five second warning and Maddie yanked me to my feet. I picked up the boxing pads for her turn with the punch-burpee routine, though withstanding her blows without falling over was as much as of a workout for me.

  ‘So, I guess,’ Maddie continued, not even out of breath, as she punched and nearly flung me against the wall, ‘for this guy to get to a place where he would betray his girlfriend completely like this, he must be beyond certain, right?'

  ‘Johan will be thrilled if it's true.'

  ‘Vatten!’ hollered the instructor. Water break.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Maddie took off the boxing gloves, wiped the slight sheen of sweat from her forehead with the back of her arm.

  'From what Henrik said last night, it sounded as though the police are at least considering the possibility that the cases are all linked,' I said slowly, trying to piece it all together in my mind. 'If Lotta Bergland is the killer, then he'll be hoping it means Mia is innocent altogether.'

  We walked to the next station, some torture-fest involving kettlebells.

  'You don't think that, do you? You saw her whack Johan over the head.'

  'I did, but he doesn't remember it.'

  'But he knows it happened.'

  ‘I don't know if he believes she is innocent exactly, as much as —' I shrugged, trying to find the words. 'It's like — you know when you've got to a place where you are over someone, but just in your head? You've thought it all through and realised that they aren't the person for you, you wouldn't even want them back — then something reminds you of them you burst into tears? Your head is there but your emotions haven't got the memo? I think it's something like that for Johan. He accepts on some intellectual level that it must be true, it's just not sunk in deep enough to stick.'

  ‘I get that,' Maddie said thoughtfully. 'My family was pretty religious when I was a kid. Church every Sunday, grace before meals, prayers at bedtimes, the whole shebang. It was just what we did. As an adult, I haven’t been to church in years and I don’t really know what I believe any more, if anything. Lena always laughs if I describe myself as a Christian, but it would feel too weird to say otherwise, even though she’s not wrong it probably isn’t true any more. When you've believed in something for such a long time, it’s pretty tough to shake.’

  'Krister took back the statement he made about Mia,’ I said. ‘Johan told me this morning. He didn't know anything about the murders, but after the island, when Johan was in hospital, he made a statement that described their relationship in a way that could have added domestic violence to the potential charges against her. Not physical, but coercion and control. Then a few weeks ago he phoned up the police and retracted it.’

  ‘She’s put a lot of conditioning in. Poor guy must be spinning.’

  'I think they both are.'

  The instructor approached to yell at me but Maddie waved him away. The baby squealed over the music and the instructor roared at someone else to jobba.

  'What do you think?' she asked me again. 'About Mia.'

  'I heard her say it, Maddie. She confessed. She laughed at me. She attacked Johan. I saw it with my own two eyes.' I sighed, trying to find the words.

  'I don't have the history with her that Johan and Krister had, but I thought she was my friend. She was nice to me, I liked her. I never once suspected her. If anything,' I gave a slightly bitter smile, 'I'd have been less surprised if it turned out to be Liv. It's not as though I found out about her history with chemistry and the fact she was behind the rumours about Johan and went oh yes of course.

  'I still struggle to wrap my head around the Mia I thought I knew with how she was that day on the island. Then she was just gone. The cottage was the fire, I thought I had lost Johan — then the police arrived and she had disappeared into thin air.

  'Johan’s boat was found a couple of days later, it had drifted into a narrow causeway between another couple of islands and got stuck on some rocks. There was no sign of her, no fingerprints on the boat, no nothing. It's just so surreal it sometimes feels as though I dreamt the whole thing.'

  I took a shaky breath, thoughts tumbling around my brain. I kept picturing Mia wading into the water to greet me the first time I met her at Midsummer. Her arms were flung wide, her smile so open and welcoming. I remember the relief I felt that I had a friend, an ally. The night we shared a couple of bottles of wine at the bar with all the ping pong tables. Had she really hugged me goodbye then cold-bloodedly murdered Gustav Lindström an hour later?

  'She said I can't kill you, you're not one of the special ones. I heard her say those words. I'm sure I did. Then she talked about the man in the tunnel, Johan's dad.'

  'Those are the words you reported to the police?' Maddie asked.

  I nodded. 'You wouldn't say I can't kill you, unless you'd killed other people. Right?’

  'Definitely not,' Maddie said, but a flash of uncertainty in her eyes made my stomach twist up. She squeezed my hand, clearly struggling to find something to say to comfort me. I forced myself to say the next words.

  'What if I got it all wrong?’

  13

  The morning sun had vanished into a grey aft
ernoon twilight and I was freezing. I’d got home goodness knows how much earlier and had been about to hop in the shower when I decided to have the quickest peek at the news.

  Hours later, I was shivering in my now pretty manky gym clothes and my eyes were gritting from staring at the screen for so long. I was scouring every last corner of the internet for any mention of Lotta Berglund.

  I searched and researched and referenced and cross referenced, following link trails up blind alleyways and scanning more scientific papers than could possibly be good for a person. I deep dove through what appeared to be a cousin’s Instagram, screen-grabbing pictures of Lotta Berglund standing stiffly and unsmilingly at the edges of family photos. I skimmed years’ worth of Tweets from one of her her colleagues, scrolled through an open Facebook group relating to some scientific conference she had once attended. Pages and pages of my notebook filled with scribbles, notes and arrows, dates circled and places underlined.

  Lotta Berglund was a researcher in genetics at the Karolinska Institute, but a deeper dive search had revealed she had a similar degree in bio chemistry as Krister and Mia. I’d have to check with Krister whether he had ever come across her. I sat back, tapping my pen against my teeth as I thought. Science was by no means my thing, but I’d done as much research as I could over the past few months, and thought I had a sort of vague layman's grip on Krister and Mia’s world. As far as I could tell, Lotta Berglund had the necessary education to potentially develop the drug used in the murders.

  If I was to consider the possibility of being wrong about Mia — just for a moment, just for argument’s sake — then the pool of potential killers wasn’t huge. The drug narrowed the field significantly. The killer had either come up with or come across a substance unique enough that the police lab technicians had been working for months to identify it with no success. The killer had known what it was, known what it could do, and they had known how to administer it.

  When Krister and I had kept vigil together at Johan’s bedside after the island, Krister had been restless, unable to sit still or be silent for more than a moment or two. He seemed to get some comfort from focussing on the technical aspects of the murders. He talked for hours, as though addressing an invisible toxicology class, while Johan dozed and I tried desperately to follow information that far exceeded my B in GCSE chemistry.

  ‘It would have to be a drug that breaks down fairly quickly, but not too quickly. The effect must last long enough to kill the victim,’ Krister muttered as I stroked Johan’s hand and listened to him breathing. ‘Breaking down too slowly slowly would complicate the dosage, though that does not matter if the object is to kill a person.’ His voice was a low monotone. He frowned, as though flipping through an index in his brain. ‘It must be something similar to digitalis.’

  ‘Is Mia familiar with, uhh, that?’ I’d asked gently and he looked away.

  ‘It would need to be a large dose to work very quickly, ‘ he continued as though I hadn’t spoken. 'Not all the victims had a post mortem, but those that did came up clear other than any medication they were already taking.

  ‘So either it has a very fast degradation, or it is a substance difficult to find unless you are looking for it.’ He’d stroked his chin absentmindedly. I could hear his stubble scratching in the quiet hospital room. ‘Something derived from digitoxin, perhaps.’ He’d lapsed into silence and we had both watched Johan sleep for a while.

  Shivering now, I yanked the duvet from the air mattress and wrapped it around my shoulders. I had a thumping headache from staring at the screen in semi darkness for too long.

  I opened up Ola Andersson video Maddie had sent. He was speaking Swedish of course, so I only got the gist of what he was saying. I'd ask Johan or Lena for a translation at some point, but for now, I wasn't interested in the words.

  I muted the sound and maximised the screen, staring at his expression as he spoke. At one point he had looked directly at the camera, and I paused it there. He was standing dead on to the camera, his arms by his side, palms facing forward as he spoke in a gesture that struck me instinctively as open. He was of medium height, and with his neat hair and moustache struck me as the type my mum describes as a 'quiet little man.'

  ‘You could do worse than a quiet little man,’ she’d once told me as I sobbed my heart out over a break up with an aspiring actor who’d earnestly informed me that to take his career to the next level he needed a girlfriend who was infinitely more fabulous than me. ‘They might not set the world on fire, but they’ll be kind to you,’ she had added with a disapproving sniff.

  Was Ola Anderson kind, I wondered, as I unpaused the video and watched him begin to speak again.

  I’d read once, that body language tells are complex and subtle and vary from person to person, so the idea that everyone scratches their nose when they are lying, for example, is dubious. On the other hand, the same article suggested that our instincts are generally right. If a person’s stance and gestures strike us as truthful, then it's statistically likely to be the case.

  I leaned back against my bed as I watched the video and realised that my gut feeling was telling me he was genuine. Ola Andersson believed what he was saying. He believed that Lotta Berglund was the killer.

  Not Mia.

  I rubbed my temples, not entirely proud of the way my heart leapt at the thought. Mia innocent. Johan would be so thrilled, so relieved. Things might even get back to normal.

  Lotta Bergland had a Facebook page, but the only public posts I could see were shares of articles form scientific journals. There was a small handful of photos tagged of her, mostly from professional or family gatherings. In all of those, even when she happened to be positioned in the centre of the group, she was still somehow apart. Her hands were always clasped in front of her, and never once was she making physical contact with anyone on either side of her.

  So she isn't the life and soul of the party, I thought, staring at her solemn face. That wasn't exactly hard evidence she is a serial killer.

  I noticed that the date on the photo was nearly four years ago. Lotta posted so seldom that I had scrolled back years without realising. I clicked to scroll a little further, and then I saw it.

  Six and a half years ago.

  Hej då sverige! Goodbye Sweden.

  A picture of an American flag.

  14

  What nobody understands is that I do not chose this. It is incredible that anyone would imagine I would want to live like this, isolated, miserable, alone. This was done to me.

  All I want, all I ever wanted, was to be free to do the things that make me happy. I don't understand what's so wrong about that. Everyone else gets to live the life they want to. I see them all the time. Friends laughing over beers at a sidewalk bar, couples holding hands across a table, their heads bent close and intimate, children screaming as they roll around in fresh snow. All those people get to smile and laugh and take pleasure in being alive: why not me?

  My mother used to explain that I wasn’t different, I was special. ‘You’re not like other kids, you're better than all of them,’ she would whisper, stroking my hair as I fell asleep. 'You'll see. You're going to do great things and then everybody will finally know what you are.'

  The problem is that there is no value in being special when the world rewards the unspecial. All those idiots I see every day, laughing and holding hands and screaming in the snow are are the basic, standard issue population. Minimum viable people. Humans level one.

  I once had a teacher who didn't grade us in the regular way with A, B or C, but by a system she made up. Excellent. Promising. Ordinary. Fail. The people who populate the world are Ordinary. Most days I can barely tell them apart, and yet they have what I don’t. They are rewarded for their dullness.

  Sometimes, I let myself imagine the world as it should be. A society ruled by survival of the fittest, in which only the truly deserving obtained money, prestige, a mate. Not those who were born rich and attractive, but those who have original
thoughts, who dare to live outside the prescriptions of society.

  The mass produced humans wouldn’t know what hit them.

  All those square-jawed guys and neat little women with their ponytails and gleaming sneakers. Their suburban houses and fluffy children and bouncing dogs would evaporate overnight, and they would be wandering around dazed, heartsick, lonely. Wondering how they could have had everything and it was just taken away for no reason.

  Then they would know how I feel, and I would laugh and laugh and laugh.

  15

  The temperature had risen sharply overnight and the whole world was grey, the city dripping as though it needed a hanky. I sloshed my way through ankle-deep slush, feeling the icy water seep through my boots. I felt as though I’d tramped for miles and my feet were throbbing as well as being freezing and wet. As I stepped into the toasty little café with its inviting smell of coffee and cinnamon, I decided I would stay there for a hot drink regardless.

  The initial payment for the book proposal I had submitted to Kate had come through. It wasn't a fortune, but it was enough for Sandra and I to mutually agree that nursery school teaching was not my life's work. The next chunk of money would be dependent on the first draft of the book itself, and I was trying not to focus on the chasm between now and then.

  I had spent the morning slogging my way through filthy melting snow around St Eriksplan, peeking into every coffee shop that Ola Andersson regularly checked in to. From what I had been able to tell from his Facebook page, he was some kind of developer. He worked on a freelance basis, coding apps for Stockholm’s many digital start-ups, and it seemed to be his habit to hunker down for the day in one of four coffee shops. He always checked in by lunchtime, so my plan was simple. I would do a circuit of them all every morning until I found him.

  I was in my fourth coffee shop on the third day. I ordered a hot chocolate with real whipped cream and marshmallows for the sugar hit to end all sugar hits, then I turned around and spotted him. The main area that opened onto the street was bright and lively, filled with a large group of students talking Italian, a group of dads trying to control a swarm of toddlers long enough to chug their coffee, and what seemed to be some kind of brainstorming session punctuated by much laughing and gasping. To the left of the counter, past the toilets, was a little back room that seemed to be designated as an office area.