Stalker

65

When Erik parks the car beside the school where Olivia Toreby works as a teacher, Nelly hesitates with her hand on the door handle.

‘Do you want me to come?’ she asks. ‘Say what you think.’

‘I don’t know… no, maybe it would better if you wait here.’

‘So you can use your charm?’ she smiles.

‘Exactly!’

‘I’ll stay here with your dream woman,’ she says, pointing at the little monkey in the pink skirt, hanging from the ignition key.

Erik walks across the playground, asks a caretaker for Olivia Toreby, and he points her out.

Olivia is in her fifties, a thin woman with a pale, worn face. She’s standing with her arms folded, watching the children on the climbing frame. Now and then one of them calls out to her, or runs over wanting help with something.

‘Olivia? My name’s Erik Maria Bark, and I’m a doctor,’ Erik says, handing her his card.

‘A doctor,’ she repeats, putting the card in her pocket.

‘I need to talk to you about Rocky Kyrklund.’

Her thin face hardens for a moment, then reverts to neutral.

‘The police again,’ she says simply.

‘I’ve spoken to Rocky Kyrklund, and he-’

‘I’ve already said, I don’t know anyone of that name,’ Olivia interrupts.

‘I know,’ Erik says patiently. ‘But he talked about you.’

‘I’ve got no idea how he managed to get hold of my name.’

She looks at some children with skipping ropes round their necks, playing horses, and hurries over and puts the ropes round their waists instead.

‘I’m supposed to have finished work, really,’ she says when she returns to Erik.

‘Just give me a few minutes.’

‘Sorry, I have to get home and prepare appraisals for twenty-two children,’ she says, and starts to walk off towards the school building.

‘I believe Rocky Kyrklund was convicted of a murder he didn’t commit,’ Erik says, hurrying after her.

‘I’m sorry to hear that, but-’

‘He was a priest, but he was also addicted to heroin at the same time. He exploited the people around him…’

She stops in the shade in front of the steps and turns towards Erik.

‘He was utterly ruthless,’ she says in a toneless voice.

‘So I understand,’ Erik replies. ‘But he still doesn’t deserve to be convicted of a murder he didn’t commit.’

Olivia’s greying hair falls over her forehead and she blows it away.

‘Will anything bad happen to me if I lied to the police before?’

‘Only if you lied under oath in a court.’

‘Of course,’ she says, and her thin mouth quivers nervously.

They sit on the steps. Olivia looks down at her trainers, picks something off her jeans and clears her throat.

‘I was a different person then, and I don’t want to get mixed up in anything,’ she says quietly. ‘But it’s true, I did know him back then.’

‘He says you can give him an alibi.’

‘I can,’ she admits, and swallows hard.

‘Are you sure?’

She nods, her chin starts to tremble and she looks down again.

‘Nine years have passed,’ Erik says.

She tries to swallow the lump in her throat, rubs her top lip, then looks up with shiny eyes and swallows hard once more.

‘We were in the rectory in Rönninge… that’s where he lived,’ she says in an uneven voice.

‘We’re talking about the evening of April fifteenth,’ Erik reminds her.

‘Yes,’ she replies, and quickly brushes some tears from her cheeks.

‘How can you remember that?’

Her mouth starts to quiver and she bites her bottom lip to pull herself together before she answers.

‘We were on a bender together,’ she says in a whisper. ‘We started on the Friday, and… it was at its worst on Sunday night…’

‘You’re sure about the dates?’

She nods and loses control of her voice:

‘My little boy died in his cot on the fifteenth… I only found him the next day. It was sudden infant death syndrome – that was medically proven, it wasn’t my fault, but if he’d been with me then it might not have happened…’

‘I’m sorry to-’

‘Oh, God,’ she sobs, and gets to her feet.

Olivia turns away from the playground, wraps her arms tightly around herself, and forces herself to be quiet, to stop her grief pouring out. Erik tries to give her a handkerchief, but she doesn’t see it. She takes a few trembling breaths and wipes her tears away.

‘For years after that I just wanted to die,’ she says, swallowing hard again. ‘But I’ve never touched drugs since, I haven’t had sex with anyone… I must never get pregnant again, I don’t have the right, I… He took everything with him… I hate him for getting me to try heroin, I hate him for everything…’

They are interrupted by a ball rolling under the bench. A child comes running over to fetch it and Erik hands Olivia his handkerchief.

‘Don’t worry, Marcus,’ she says warmly to the little boy, who’s standing looking at her with the ball under his arm. ‘I just need to blow my nose.’

The child nods and runs off with the ball. Erik thinks about Rocky’s erratic memory. At some moments during his years at Karsudden he must have known that he had been wrongly convicted, because of Erik’s betrayal.

‘Olivia,’ Erik says quietly, ‘I appreciate that this isn’t easy, but are you prepared to swear on oath that you were with Rocky when the murder took place?’

‘Yes,’ she says, looking him in the eye.

Erik thanks her, and at that moment notices Nelly standing behind the climbing frame, watching them. He starts to walk back, and wonders if she’s going to report him when she finds out. Maybe he himself could file a report about a patient suffering harm while receiving treatment before she does.