The Chosen

CONCLUSION: FRAGMENT III

It is time to remove the bodies. The child who is still alive has already been taken to Karolinska Hospital in Solna, but her mother refused to go with her.

‘She won’t need me until she comes round,’ was all she said when someone pointed out that there was room for her in the ambulance if she wanted to go with her daughter.

The inspector is in hell.

The air in the apartment is thin, lacking in oxygen, and he has to fight for every breath.

Eventually he goes over and opens the bedroom window.

The dead are placed on trolleys, ready to be wheeled out of the room.

Then at last the woman moves; until now she has remained standing by the doorway as if she has been turned to stone.

Slowly she walks over to her husband and looks at his lifeless body.

‘He will never come back,’ she says.

It is impossible to tell whether this is a question or a statement. The inspector decides to act as if it is the former.

‘No, he won’t.’

The inspector watches as the woman processes what he has just said. But what can he see in her face?

Relief?

Of course not. Why would she be relieved because her husband is dead?

Then she turns to the child.

‘I will miss you until the day I die,’ she says.

She bends down and kisses the child’s forehead, then she straightens up and moves back a step.

The scene is so upsetting that the inspector doesn’t know what to do with himself.

And he cannot take his eyes off the violin. Music can have a healing power, but the inspector isn’t sure it will be enough in this case. Particularly if the child who has been taken to hospital dies.

If that happens, it will all be over.

When the trolleys have been wheeled out, he goes over to the woman who has been robbed of her family. He doesn’t touch her, but stands close.

‘How can I help you?’ he says. ‘If there’s anything at all… I’ll do whatever you ask.’

Her gaze is fixed on something outside the bedroom window.

‘Thank you, but I don’t need anything.’

And so they stand there. All around them the CSIs work silently and with total concentration. You get the feeling that if they interrupted their task for just one second, they would burst into tears. The inspector feels as if he is walking on brittle glass. One false move and the ground will collapse beneath his feet.

During his entire career, he has never known a greater tragedy. Never.

But that is not the worst thing.

The worst thing is that he doesn’t understand what has happened. Why the Paper Boy came to this particular address and took fresh victims.

He daren’t ask. Not right now.

He doesn’t need to; she tells him anyway.

‘You’re wondering why he came here,’ she says.

‘Yes.’

‘It’s my fault.’

‘None of this is your fault.’

She nods slowly, and then he sees them. The tears. Welling up in her eyes and spilling over.

‘It’s my fault,’ she says again. ‘I have always known that I wouldn’t get away with what I did.’

He feels a spurt of anger, shakes his head.

‘What on earth do you think you’ve done, for God’s sake?’

But she doesn’t answer. She is not yet ready to share her secret.