Camilla Läckberg - The Ice Princess

She had drunk her coffee in a few greedy gulps and raised her cup to Patrik. He got up and fetched the pot and poured her some more. It seemed as though the habit of drinking coffee was what helped her keep a grip on reality.

‘Sometimes I think the silence was worse than the assaults. We never talked about it, not even inside these four walls, and only now do I understand what it must have done to him. Maybe he interpreted my silence as a reproach. That’s the only thing I can’t stand. That he might have thought I was blaming him for what happened. I never thought that, not even for a second, but I’ll never know now whether he knew that.’

For a second the façade looked as if it might crack, but then Vera straightened up and forced herself to go on. Patrik could only imagine what an enormous effort it took.

‘Over the years we found a sort of equilibrium. Even though life was miserable for both of us, we knew what we had and where we stood with each other. Naturally I knew that he still saw Alex occasionally and that they had some sort of strange attraction for one another, but I still believed that we could go on as we had always done. Then Anders told me that Alex wanted to expose what had happened to them. She wanted to clean all the old skeletons out of the closet, I think was what he said. He sounded almost indifferent when he mentioned it, but for me it felt like an electric shock. That would change everything. Nothing would be the same if Alex dragged up old secrets after so many years. What good would it do? And what would people say? Besides, even if Anders tried to pretend that it hadn’t affected him, I knew him better than that. I believe that he didn’t want her to make it public any more than I did. I know-knew, my son.’

‘So you went to visit her.’

‘Yes. I went there that Friday evening hoping to talk some sense into her. Make her understand that she couldn’t single-handedly make a decision that would affect us all.’

‘But she didn’t understand.’

Vera gave a bitter smile. ‘No, she didn’t.’

She had finished her second cup of coffee before Patrik had even finished half of his first one, but now she set the cup aside and folded her hands on the table.

‘I tried to appeal to her. I explained to her how difficult it would be for Anders if she made public what had happened, but she looked me straight in the eye and claimed I was only thinking of myself, not Anders. He would be glad if it finally came out, she said. He had never asked us to keep quiet, and she also told me that I, Nelly, Karl-Erik and Birgit hadn’t considered them when we decided to keep the whole thing secret. We were only interested in keeping our own reputations unsullied. Can you imagine such cheek!’

The rage that a moment before had been ignited in Vera’s eyes was extinguished just as quickly as it appeared and was replaced by an indifferent, dead look. She continued in a monotone.

‘Something burst inside me when I heard her make such an outrageous claim. When I had done everything with Anders’s best interests at heart. I could almost hear a click in my head, and I simply acted without thinking. I had my sleeping pills with me in my purse, and when she went into the kitchen I crumbled a few tablets into her cider glass. She had poured a glass of wine for me when I arrived. When she came back from the kitchen I pretended to accept what she’d said and offered to drink a toast as friends before I left. She seemed grateful for that and drank her cider to keep me company. After a while she fell asleep on the sofa. I hadn’t really thought out what I should do next. The sleeping pills were an impulse on the spur of the moment, but I got the idea that I would make it look like a suicide. I didn’t have enough sleeping pills to force a fatal dose into her. The only thing I could think of was to slit her wrists. I knew that many people did it in the bathtub, so it felt like a feasible idea.’

Her voice was toneless. It sounded as if she were relating a completely normal everyday event, not a murder.

‘I took off all her clothes. I thought I could probably carry her, since my arms are strong from all those years of cleaning, but it was impossible. Instead I had to drag her into the bathroom and manoeuvre her into the tub. Then I slit her arteries in both arms with a razor blade I found in the medicine cabinet. After cleaning the house once a week for several years, I was familiar with everything about it. I washed off the glass I drank out of, turned off the lights, locked the door and put the spare key back in its place.’

Patrik was shaken, but forced his voice to remain calm.

‘You understand that you’ll have to come with me now, don’t you? I won’t have to call for reinforcements, will I?’

‘No, you don’t have to do that. May I just gather up a few things to take with me?’

He nodded. ‘Yes, that will be fine.’

She got up. In the doorway she turned round.

‘How was I to know she was pregnant? Of course, she didn’t drink any wine, I thought of that, but I had no idea that was why. Maybe she only drank in moderation, or had to drive somewhere. How should I know? It was impossible for me to know, don’t you think?’

Her voice was pleading, and Patrik could only nod mutely. In time he would tell her that the child wasn’t Anders’s, but for the time being he didn’t want to disturb the balance of trust they had established. There were several more people she would have to tell her story to before they could close the case on Alexandra Wijkner for good. But something was bothering him. His intuition told him that Vera still hadn’t told him everything.

Later, when he got into the car he took out his copy of the letter that Anders had left behind, as his last message to the world. Slowly he read through what Anders had written, and once again Patrik felt how strong the pain was behind those words on the page.

The irony of my life has often struck me. How I have the ability to create beauty with my fingers and my eyes, while in everything else I’m only able to create ugliness and destruction. That’s why the last thing I’m going to do is destroy my paintings. To obtain some kind of consistency in my life. Better to be consistent and only leave shit behind than to appear to be a more complex person than I deserve .

Actually, I’m very simple. The only thing I ever wanted to do was to erase a few months and events from my life. I don’t think that would have been too much to ask. But perhaps I deserved what I got in life. Perhaps I had done something terrible in a previous life that made me have to pay the price in this one. Not that it really makes any difference. But if so it would have been nice to know what I was paying for .

Why am I now choosing this particular moment to leave a life that has been meaningless for so long, you may ask? Yes, go ahead and say it. Why does anyone do something at a certain point in time? Did I love Alex so much that life lost any and all meaning? That’s probably one of the explanations you’ll be grasping for. I don’t actually know if that would be entirely true. Death is a friend that I’ve lived with for a long time, but only now do I feel that I’m ready. Perhaps it was precisely the fact that Alex died that made my own freedom possible. She was always the unattainable one. It was impossible to make the slightest dent in her shell. The fact that she could die suddenly opened wide the possibility that 1 might go in the same way. I have long been packed and ready, all that remains is to climb aboard .

Forgive me, Mamma .

Anders

He had never managed to shake off the habit of getting up early, or in the middle of the night as some might say. It was something that in this case proved to be useful. Svea didn’t react when he got up at four a.m., but for safety’s sake he sneaked cautiously down the stairs with his clothes in his hand. Eilert dressed silently in the living room and then took out his suitcase which he had carefully hidden in the very back of the pantry. He had planned this for months, and nothing had been left to chance. Today was the first day of the rest of his life.