‘I’m telling you that I have to get on that plane!’

‘I understand,’ said Gösta calmly. Then he turned to Martin. ‘Would you mind taking his baggage?’

Martin nodded but swore inwardly. He never got to do the fun stuff.

‘So it was Christian?’ Anna’s mouth fell open in surprise.

‘Yes – and no,’ said Erica. ‘I talked to Thorvald about it, and we’ll never know for sure. But by all indications, that’s what happened.’

‘Christian had a split personality? And his two selves didn’t know about each other?’ Anna sounded sceptical. She’d come right over when Erica phoned after returning from the boathouse. Patrik had to go back to the station, and Erica didn’t want to be alone. Her sister Anna was the only one she wanted to confide in about everything she’d found out.

‘Apparently. Thorvald suspected that Christian must have been schizophrenic. His disease also showed aspects of what’s called dissociative identity disorder. That was what caused the split in his personality. It can stem from an enormous amount of stress, as a way of dealing with reality. And Christian definitely had some terribly traumatic events in his past. First his mother’s death, and the week that he spent with her body. Then what, in my opinion, was outright child abuse, if not psychotic behaviour at the hands of Iréne Lissander. The way that Christian’s foster parents decided to ignore him after Alice was born must have felt like being abandoned all over again. And so he blamed the baby – he blamed Alice.’

‘And he tried to drown her?’ Anna placed a protective hand on her stomach.

‘Yes. Alice’s father saved her, but she suffered serious brain damage from oxygen deprivation. Mr Lissander decided to protect Christian by never speaking of what happened. He probably thought he was doing the boy a service, but I’m not sure he made the right decision. Imagine growing up knowing that you’d done something like that. The guilt must have been horrendous. The older Christian got, the more aware he became of what he’d done. And his feelings of guilt were probably even greater because Alice loved him.’

‘In spite of what he’d done to her.’

‘She never knew. Nobody knew, except for Ragnar Lissander and Christian.’

‘And then the rape.’

‘Yes. Then the rape,’ said Erica, and she felt her throat close up. She tallied up everything that had happened in Christian’s life, as if it were a mathematical problem that was finally solved. But in reality, it was a tragedy.

The phone rang and she answered.

‘Erica Falck. Yes? No. No, I have no comment. Don’t call me again.’ And she angrily slammed down the phone.

‘What was that all about?’ asked Anna.

‘A newspaper reporter. They wanted me to say something about Christian’s death. The vultures are circling again. And they don’t even know the whole story yet.’ She sighed. ‘Poor, poor Sanna.’

‘But when did Christian get sick?’ Anna was still looking confused, and Erica could understand why. She had asked tons of follow-up questions when she talked to Thorvald, and he had patiently tried to answer all of them.

‘His mother was schizophrenic, and it’s an inherited condition. It often surfaces during the teenage years, and that’s when Christian may have started to notice something was wrong without fully understanding it. A sense of anxiety, dreams, voices, visions – there are many different symptoms. Mr and Mrs Lissander probably never noticed, because he left home right about that time. Or rather, he was chased away.’

‘Chased away?’

‘Yes, that’s what it said in the letter that Christian left in the boathouse. The Lissanders assumed, without even investigating, that Christian was the one who had raped Alice. And he didn’t defend himself. Presumably he felt so guilty because he hadn’t intervened and protected her, that he thought he might as well have done it himself. But that’s just my own speculation,’ said Erica.

‘So they threw him out?’

‘Yes, and at the moment I can’t say how that might have affected his disease. But Patrik should look for some sort of medical case files. If Christian received any type of care or treatment when he arrived in Göteborg, there should be a record somewhere. It’s just a matter of finding it.’

Erica paused. It was so hard for her to comprehend everything that Christian must have gone through. And everything he had done.

‘Patrik thinks that the police will reopen the investigation into the murders of the woman that Christian was living with, and her little boy,’ she went on. ‘Considering everything that has now come to light.’

‘Do they think that Christian killed them too? But why?’

‘It’s highly likely that we’ll never know for sure whether he did it,’ said Erica. ‘Or why. If the other part of his personality – the Mermaid, or Alice, whatever you want to call her – was mad at the Christian part, maybe she couldn’t stand to see him happy. That’s Thorvald’s theory, anyway, and he may be right. Perhaps Christian’s happiness unleashed something. But as I said, I don’t think we’ll ever really know the answer.’

24

In reality she had nothing against either the child or the woman. She didn’t really mean them any harm. Yet she couldn’t allow them to continue to live. They did something that no one had ever done before. They made Christian happy.

He laughed often now. A carefree, hearty laugh that came from his stomach and bubbled upward. She hated that laugh. For her part, she was no longer able to laugh; she was empty and cold inside, dead. He had been dead too, but thanks to the woman and the child, he was now alive.

Sometimes he would watch them in secret. The woman carrying the child in her arms. They would dance, and he would smile when the child laughed. He was happy, but he didn’t deserve it. He’d taken everything from her, lowered her down into the water until her lungs felt like they would burst, until her brain took in no oxygen, and it was as if she were slowly extinguished while the water rose up to cover her face.

Yet in spite of it all she had loved him. He was everything for her. She didn’t care about the others, didn’t care about how they looked at him. For her, he was the nicest and handsomest person on earth. Her hero.

But he had betrayed her. Allowed them to take her, violate her, and hit her until the bones in her face were broken. He had allowed her to lie there, staring up at the starry sky with her legs apart. And then he had fled.

Now she no longer loved him, and no one else would be allowed to love him either. Just as he would not be allowed to love anyone. Not the way he loved the woman in the blue dress, and the child, who wasn’t even his.

He wasn’t at home right now. As usual, the door wasn’t locked. The woman was careless. He was always scolding her about it, telling her that she should lock the door, that they never knew who might try to get in.

Cautiously she pressed down on the handle and opened the door. She heard the woman humming in the kitchen. A splashing sound came from the bathroom. The child was sitting in the tub, which meant the woman would be going into the bathroom at any minute. She was careful about such things. Never leaving the child alone in the bath for very long.

She went into the bathroom. The boy’s face lit up like a sun when he saw her.

‘Shhh,’ she said, opening her eyes wide as if it were a game. The child laughed. As she listened for approaching footsteps, she went over to the tub and stared down at the naked child. It wasn’t the boy’s fault, but he made Christian happy. And that was something she couldn’t allow.

She took the child by the arms and lifted him up a bit so she could lay him down on his back in the tub. The boy was still laughing. Happy and secure in the belief that nothing bad could happen in the world. When the water closed over his face he stopped laughing and starting flailing his arms and legs about. But it wasn’t difficult to hold the child down. She simply put one hand on his chest and pressed lightly. The child flailed harder and harder until his movements began to taper off, and then he lay still.