Helene Tursten - The Torso

Jenny shrugged and said, “Don’t know. Think so.”

Contradictory thoughts were darting here and there in Irene’s brain, but before she had time to reach a decision, Katarina said, “Polo is in the process of becoming superpopular. You have to understand, Mamma. Jenny might be the next Nina in the Cardigans!”

Jenny blushed with delight at her sister’s praise. Irene hadn’t seen her this happy for a long time.

Now she realized: she had to let Jenny go to Borås.

Katarina continued enthusiastically, “Micke and I are driving there to listen to them. Then we’re going home to Micke’s to sleep there. It’s nearby.”

Irene could have informed Katarina that the distance from Micke’s parents’ house in Önnered to her own was barely a kilometer as the crow flies and only slightly longer if one used the asphalt roads. But she didn’t have the energy for that discussion. She had the feeling that she had lost something. And she knew what it was. Her daughters’ childhoods would never come back.

Mostly in order to have something to say, she asked, “Is Micke well now? And how does your neck feel?”

“Both of us are feeling much better. I’m allowed to start training lightly after midsummer. Real training and stuff. Not this stupid physical therapy I’m doing now. Just watch how I’m going to catch up! That Ida Bäck better not think she can keep her gold medal in the National Championships next year!”

Irene felt very proud of her daughters now. Each of them, in her own way, was a goal-oriented fighter.

Heavenly smells started emanating from the oven. Katarina was browning the beef patties. Irene felt hungry. She quickly set the table and put out a pitcher of ice water.

A calm whimper at knee height reminded her that it was high time for Sammie’s dinner. Two mugs of dry food mixed with the leftovers from yesterday’s beef sausage was a culinary treat, according to him. Irene stared at the dry brown pebbles, which looked suspiciously like rabbit droppings. Even though she loathed preparing food, she would never be tempted to eat dry dog food. Not even if it had been soaked in hot water.

THE POLICE movie was over just after midnight. Irene turned off the TV, stretched, and yawned. Goodness, how confused and messy it seemed to be at police stations in the USA. Large open office spaces where the desks stood close together, and every attempt at creating a close relationship was doomed to fail. Collared whores, drug dealers, and murderers walked past each other between the desks. In the middle of it all, cops stood and quarreled and fussed about their work problems. And everyone went around indoors armed. It would seem to be too easy for a suspect to pull a gun out of a holster amidst the general confusion.

Was it really like this? If that was the case, Irene felt sincerely sorry for her colleagues on the other side of the Atlantic.

She cleared away her coffee cup. Just as she had expected, Sammie came padding after her into the kitchen. It was high time for the last rounds of the night.

The rain had slowed to a drizzle. The air was fresh but still mild. Steam rising from the warm earth smelled good. The early summer foliage was at its most beautiful and everything breathed hope in the face of the oncoming summer. Judging from appearances, a student party was being held at a nearby house. Two skinny birches decorated with balloons stood on either side of the front door as a sign. A young man in a white shirt and dark pants stumbled through the open door. Heaving sounds could be heard by Irene and Sammie. The young man clung to the nearest birch for support and both he and the propped-up birch fell straight into the pool of vomit.

The future is ours, Irene thought.

Sammie became uneasy and whimpered when he saw the boy struggling with the birch tree. It didn’t get any better when, with loud curses, the boy swayed upright, grabbed the birch, and threw it down the steps. Sammie started barking heatedly. Of all strange behaviors, this took the cake! Personally, he loved trees and never fought them! He used them for their proper purpose. He demonstrated by lifting his leg toward a lilac bush.

Irene had to drag her furiously barking dog away by his leash. A lap around the soccer field would have to do. A wet dog wasn’t the nicest thing to have in bed and Irene knew that he would jump up as soon as she had fallen asleep. They should have dealt with that when he was a puppy, but it had been so charming when the chubby little dog, struggling, crawled into their bed.

Irene suddenly felt as though she was being watched. They were on the far side of the soccer field that bordered on woods. She looked around but couldn’t see anyone. The feeling wouldn’t go away.

Sammie didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary; he sniffed the ground as usual. The energetic wagging of his tail revealed that an unusually attractive female dog had passed by a little while ago.

Irene’s nervousness increased. Going home, the dog hesitated; someone was standing behind the trees, watching her. Sweat broke out over her entire body under the tight nylon rain jacket. Fear made her yell at Sammie, “Come on, you stupid dog!”

He was so perplexed that he followed without protest. She hadn’t been imagining things. When they began walking briskly, she heard a twig break. Someone had stepped on a dry branch. The young birches stood tightly together. It was impossible to see anything in the deep darkness between the trees. In a flash, she made up her mind. In a fake, hearty voice, she said to Sammie, “Now we’re going to run home to master!”

Bewildered by his mistress’s quick mood swing, he hesitantly started trotting, but pretty soon he got into the swing of things. He increased his speed and ran with the leash taut as a cable behind him.

While she ran, Irene fumbled with her house key. She held it, ready, in a tight grip inside her jacket pocket. As luck would have it, she had switched on the outside lighting when she went out. Even though her hand was shaking, she managed to get the key in the lock. She quickly pulled the dog inside, shut the door behind her, and locked it.

Without taking off her shoes she went straight through the house, checked that the patio door was locked, and switched on the outdoor lights facing the yard. Then she switched off all the lamps on the ground floor and checked the windows just in case, even though she knew that they were closed. Quietly, she crouched beneath a window, so that she couldn’t be seen from the outside. She peered out but didn’t see a single living creature. Only the light rain and the wind, setting the trees’ leaves in motion.

A thought struck her: the second floor. What if the girls had left a window ajar? With a pounding heart, she ran up the stairs. But she had worried for no reason; all of the windows were closed, including the ceiling window in the combined hall and TV room.

From Jenny’s room she could look out over the backyard, which was lit. None of the neighbors had their outdoor lights on. The yard was small and well illuminated by lighting from the patio and the streetlights on the other side of the sidewalk.

Her pulse reverted to a normal rhythm. Had there really been a person watching her from the stand of trees? She had definitely heard a twig break, but a deer or some other animal might have caused it.

Irene had always depended on her intuition and it had never let her down. She wasn’t afraid of the dark, but maybe a figment of her imagination had scared her this time. All of the talk about the murderer being close to her had naturally affected her. Isabell’s murder and the postcard that had come directly afterward had been directed at her, personally. The murderer must have thought that Irene was getting close to the truth of Marcus’s death far too quickly. He had killed Isabell as a warning, but maybe also to send up a smoke screen to complicate the investigation of the murders of Carmen Østergaard and Marcus Tosscander.