Håkan Nesser - Woman with Birthmark

Yes, that must be how things work, more or less.

There were two basket chairs in the room. Reinhart had already sat down on one of them and lit his pipe. The chief inspector sat on the other one and started to read.

It took him only a couple of minutes, and when he had finished, he read it once again. Then he looked at the clock and handed the letter to Reinhart without a word.

At my mother's interment there was only a single mourner. Me.

Time is short, and I shall express myself briefly. I don't need your understanding, but I want you to know who these men were, the men I have killed. My mother told me-a week before she died-about how I was conceived.

My father was four men. It was the night of May 29-30, 1965. She was seventeen years old, and a virgin. They raped her repeatedly for two hours in a student room in Maardam, and in order to stop her screaming they had stuffed one of the men's underpants into her mouth. One of the other men's tie was knotted around her mouth and the back of her neck. They also played music while I was being made. The same record, over and over again-afterward she found out what the tune was called, and bought it. I still have it.

Once they had finished impregnating my mother, they carried her out and dumped her in some bushes in a nearby park. One of my fathers said that she was a whore, and that he'd kill her if she told anybody what had happened.

My mother duly kept silent, but after two months she began to suspect that she was pregnant. After three, she was certain. She was still at school. She tried to kill me, using various tricks and methods she had heard about, but failed. I just wish she had managed it better.

She spoke to her mother, who didn't believe her.

She spoke to her father, who didn't believe her and gave her a good hiding.

She spoke to her clever elder sisters, who didn't believe her either, but advised her to have an abortion.

But it was too late. I wish it hadn't been.

My grandfather gave her a small sum of money in order to get rid of us, and I was born a long way away in Groenstadt. That's also where I grew up. My mother had found out my fathers' names, and was given some money by them when she threatened to expose them. When I was ten, she threatened them again, and received some more money, but that was all. They paid. They could afford it.

I knew from an early age that my mother was a whore, and I knew that I would become one as well. And the same applied to drinking and drug-taking

But I didn't know why things were as they were, not until she told me about my fathers shortly before she died.

My mother was forty-seven when she died. I am only thirty, but I've been whoring and taking drugs for so long that I look at least ten years older. I received my first clients before my fifteenth birthday.

In addition, I have the urge to kill inside me. I was told the facts in October, and when I got to know my fathers a bit later on, I made up my mind.

It was a good decision.

My mother's life was a torment. Torment and indignity.

So was my own. But it was good to understand, to understand at last. I could see the logic. What else could possibly be the outcome of a night of lovemaking like the one when my fathers brought me to life?

What life?

I am the ripe fruit that grew out of a gang bang. It is that same fruit that is now killing its fathers.

That is completing the circle.

To be sure, that sounds like a sort of dark poetry. In a different life I could have become a poet instead. I could have written and read-I had the ability inside me, but never had the opportunity.

When I have finished, nothing living involved in that night will have survived. We shall all be dead. That is the logical outcome.

My mother-who had my father's underpants stuffed into her mouth while the act of love took place-gave me the task, and in her name I have murdered them all. Doing so has given me great joy, more joy than anything else in my life. At no point have I felt any guilt or regret, and nobody will ever come and call me to account.

I am also pleased that my mother saved some of the money she extracted from my fathers. It has been a great help to me, and I like the thought that in this way they have paid for their own deaths.

I say again: it has given me great satisfaction to kill my own fathers. Very great satisfaction.

I have been very precise all the time, and want to continue in that way to the very end. I am writing for two reasons. In the first place, I want the real reasons to be known. In the second place, I need to gain time-that is also why I left a note at the inn as well. If you are reading this letter at the time I intended and am hoping for, I have achieved my aims.

At ten p.m. I shall be on the ferry that leaves Oostwerdingen and heads for the islands; but I shall not be on board when it calls at its first port.

I shall be carrying substantial weights that will drag me down to the bottom of the sea, where I hope the fish will soon have chewed away my tainted flesh.

I never want to come to the surface again. Not one single part of me.

Reinhart folded the sheets of paper and put them back into the envelope. Then he sat for some time without speaking while he lit his pipe, which had gone out.

“What is there to say?” he said eventually.

The chief inspector was leaning back in the chair and had closed his eyes.

“Nothing,” he said. “You don't need to say anything at all.”

“No signature.”

“No.”

“It's a quarter to one.”

Van Veeteren nodded. Sat up and lit a cigarette. Inhaled a few times. Stood up, walked across the room, and switched off the light.

“What's the first port of call?” he asked when he had sat down again.

“Arnholt, I think,” said Reinhart. “At around one.”

“Yes,” said Van Veeteren. “That sounds about right. Go out to the car and try to make contact with the ferry. They can search the ship when it docks. She might have changed her mind.”

“Do you think she did?” asked Reinhart.

“No,” said Van Veeteren. “But we must continue playing our roles to the very end.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” said Reinhart. “The show must go on.”

Then he went out and left the chief inspector alone in the darkness.

She locked the door, and almost immediately the ferry set off. Through the oval, convex porthole she could watch the harbor lights glide past before disappearing. This was her final extravagance: a single cabin up on B-deck. It had cost her more or less everything she had left; but this was no mere whim. This too was a necessity and a logical requirement. She needed to be alone in order to make the final preparations, and there was no other way of ensuring that.

She checked her watch: seven minutes past ten. She sat down on the bed and felt the newly laundered sheet and the warm, red blanket with the shipping line's logo. She unscrewed the bottle and threw the cap into the waste bin, then drank directly from the bottle. Half a liter of cognac. Four star. An inferior sort would have served the same purpose, of course, but there had been just enough money. Four-star cognac. Single cabin with a wine-red blanket and wall-to-wall carpet. The final extravagance, as mentioned.

She had two hours to spare; that was in accordance with her timetable. Calculated from the moment she had seen the police car on the road outside the inn. No matter how efficiently they worked-and hitherto they hadn't exactly displayed much in the way of proficiency-it would be impossible for them to trace her here before midnight. First of all there was the crime scene, and the chaos at the inn; then they would have to find Jelena Wal-gens, conduct a confusing conversation with her, and then drive back to Wahrhejm-she was convinced that this chief inspector wouldn't delegate anything of this nature to his subordinates. Then the telephone call to the ferry… No, anything less than two hours was out of the question.