Dark Secrets Read online

  Sensitivity.

  The ability to listen.

  When it worked best, the woman believed she was seducing him. That was a feeling the rich men who flashed their Platinum Amex cards in the bar would never understand.

  Sebastian got a kick from steering the course of events, parrying, adjusting, and, eventually, if he had played his cards right, complementing it all with the physical pleasure. But with Clara Lundin it had just been too easy. Like a master chef in a five-star restaurant being asked to fry an egg. He had no opportunity to show what he could do. It was boring. It was just sex.

  On the way over he had decided to go for the sympathetic option, and when she opened the door he held out the bottle of wine.

  “I thought you might not want to be alone…”

  She had let him in and they had sat on the sofa, opened the bottle of wine, and he had listened to the same thing he had heard at lunchtime, only in a longer and more refined version in which her shortcomings as a parent received more attention. He had made the right noises and nodded in the right places, topped up her wineglass, carried on listening, and occasionally answered questions on police procedure, about the routine when a person was taken into custody, what might be expected to happen next, what the different degrees of suspicion meant, and so on. When at last she was unable to hold back the tears any longer, he had placed a consoling hand on her knee and sympathetically leaned closer. He almost felt a jolt run through her body. The silent sobbing stopped, and her breathing altered, grew heavier. She turned to Sebastian and looked into his eyes. Before he really had time to react, they were kissing.

  In the bedroom she had welcomed him with total abandonment. Afterward she wept, kissed him, and wanted him all over again. She fell asleep with as much skin contact as possible.

  She still had one arm resting on Sebastian’s chest and her head nestled in the hollow between his chin and shoulder when he woke up. Gently he extricated himself from her embrace and got out of bed. She didn’t wake up. He looked at her as he dressed quietly. As much as Sebastian was interested in the seduction phase, he was equally uninterested in prolonging the association beyond sex. What would that give him? Nothing but repetition. More of the same, but without the excitement. Utterly meaningless. He had left enough women after these one-night stands to know that this was a mutually shared view only on very rare occasions, and as far as Clara Lundin was concerned he was sure she expected some kind of continuation. Not just breakfast and small talk, but something more.

  Something real.

  So he left.

  A guilty conscience wasn’t normally part of Sebastian’s repertoire, but even he understood that things would be difficult for Clara Lundin when she woke up. He had realized how lonely she was earlier in the day when they were in the garden, and their encounter on the sofa had confirmed it. The way she pushed her lips against his, the way her hands clutched his head, the way she pressed her body against him. She was almost desperate for closeness. On every level, not only physically. After years of being rebuffed or having her feelings and thoughts ignored at best, or being shouted at and threatened at worst, she was starved of tenderness and consideration. She was like sand in the desert, simply sucking up anything resembling normal human kindness. His hand on her knee. Contact. A clear sign that she was desirable. It was like opening a floodgate of need.

  For skin.

  For closeness.

  For someone.

  That was the problem, Sebastian thought as he walked the short distance back to his parents’ house. It had been too easy, and she had been grateful. He could deal with most emotions when it came to his conquests, but gratitude always revolted him slightly. Hatred, contempt, sorrow—they were all better. Gratitude made it so obvious that everything happened on his terms. He knew that already, of course, but it was nicer if he could convince himself that the situation was somehow equal. Maintain the illusion. Gratitude broke it. Showed him up as the complete bastard he was.

  It was only a quarter to four in the morning when he got home, and he had absolutely no desire to go back to bed. So what should he do? Even though he didn’t really want to do it, and kept hoping that it would all sort itself out somehow, he realized that sooner or later he would have to tackle all the cupboards and drawers. Putting it off wasn’t going to make it any easier.

  He went into the garage and found some flattened removal boxes leaning against the wall in front of the old Opel. He took three of them and stopped when he was back in the house. Where to start? He decided on the former guest room and study. He dismissed the desk and the old office equipment, opened up one of the boxes, and started piling in books from the shelves covering one wall. They were a mixture of fiction, nonfiction, reference works, and textbooks. Everything went in. No doubt the same applied to the books as to the Opel in the garage: the secondhand value was zero. Once the first box was full he tried to close it. He couldn’t do it, but that would be some removal firm’s problem, thought Sebastian, dragging it over to the door with some difficulty. Then he opened up another box and carried on. By five o’clock he had fetched another four boxes from the garage and emptied virtually the entire shelving unit. There were only two shelves to go, over on the right-hand side. Full of photograph albums. Neatly labeled with the year and a note of the contents. Sebastian hesitated. After all, it was his parents’ so-called life sitting on those shelves. Should he just shove the whole lot into a cardboard box and send it off to the dump? Could he do that? He put off the decision; they had to come off the shelves anyway, but where they ended up could be determined at a later stage.

  Sebastian had cleared more than half, starting with the top shelf and getting as far as WINTER/SPRING 1992—INNSBRUCK, when his hand touched something concealed behind the thick albums. A box. He grasped for it, got hold of it, and took it down. It was a shoe box; small, pale blue, with a sun in the middle of the lid. For children’s shoes, presumably. But it was an odd place to keep shoes. Sebastian sat down on the bed and opened the box with a certain amount of expectant curiosity. It wasn’t even half full. A sex toy from the infancy of sex toys, neatly sealed up in its original box, which was covered in pencil drawings from something that might have been the Kama Sutra. A safety deposit box key and some letters. Sebastian picked up the letters. Three of them. Two were addressed to his mother. A woman’s handwriting. The third was from his mother to someone called Anna Eriksson in Hägersten. Returned to sender, address unknown was stamped on the envelope. More than thirty years ago, judging by the postmarks. From Hägersten and Västerås. The box seemed to contain things his mother didn’t want the rest of the world to know about. Obviously important enough to keep, but in secret. What had she done? Who were they from? A lover? A brief, amorous adventure away from home and his father? Sebastian opened the first letter.

  Dear Fru Bergman,

  I don’t know if I am sending this letter to the right person. My name is Anna Eriksson, and I need to get in touch with your son, Sebastian Bergman. He taught Psychology at the Stockholm University, and I met him there. I have tried to get in touch with him via the university, but he doesn’t teach there anymore and they don’t have his new address. I spoke to some of his colleagues, who told me he had moved to the USA, but I can’t find anyone who knows where he’s living over there. Eventually someone told me he came from Västerås, and that his mother’s name was Esther. I found you in the phone book and hope I am writing to the correct person, and that you can help me get in touch with Sebastian. If you are not Sebastian Bergman’s mother, my apologies for bothering you. But whether you are or not, could you please let me know? I really do need to get in touch with Sebastian, and to know whether I have sent this letter to the right place.

  With best wishes,

  Anna Eriksson

  Then there was an address. Sebastian gave the matter some thought. Anna Eriksson. The autumn after he moved to the USA. The name didn’t ring a bell, but perhaps that was hardly surprising. It was thirty years ago, and t
he number of women who had passed through his life while he was at the university was considerable. He had been given a one-year post in the Psychology Department the year after he had graduated with top grades. He had been at least twenty years younger than his colleagues and had felt like a puppy in a room full of dinosaur skeletons. If he really made an effort he might be able to remember at least the name of someone he’d slept with, but probably not. No Anna sprang to mind, anyway. Perhaps the next letter would make things clearer.

  Dear Fru Bergman,

  Thank you for your speedy and kind reply, and I apologize for writing and bothering you again. I understand that it must feel strange to give out your son’s address to a total stranger writing to you out of the blue, but I really MUST get in touch with Sebastian very soon. It doesn’t really feel right to be telling you this, but I think I have to so that you will understand how vital it is. I am carrying Sebastian’s child, and I have to get in touch with him. So if you know where he is, please, please tell me. As you will understand, this is extremely important to me.

  There was more, something about moving house and writing again, but Sebastian didn’t get any further. He just kept reading the same sentence over and over again. He had a child. Or, at least, he might have. A son or daughter. He might be a father again. Maybe. Maybe. A brief realization that his life could suddenly have been completely different almost made him faint. He leaned forward with his head between his knees and breathed deeply. His thoughts were in turmoil. A child. Did she get rid of it? Or was it still alive?

  He tried desperately to remember who Anna was. Put a face to the name. But no memories surfaced. He was finding it difficult to concentrate. He took a deep breath in order to focus his visual memory. Still nothing. The conflicting emotions of happiness and shock were overshadowed for a moment by a sudden surge of anger. He might have a child, and his mother had never said a word. The familiar feeling that she had let him down washed over him. Twisted and turned in his stomach. To think he had begun to want to forgive her. Or, at least, had hoped to find some peace in the internal battle he constantly waged with her. That feeling was gone. The battle would always be there now. For the rest of his life, he realized.

  He had to find out more. He had to remember who Anna Eriksson was. He got up. Walked around the room. Recalled the last letter—there had been three letters in the box. Perhaps it contained more pieces of the puzzle. He picked it up. His mother’s rounded handwriting on the envelope; for a second he wanted to throw it away. Disappear and never look back. Leave this secret and bury it where it had already been preserved for so long. But his hesitation was soon replaced by action—anything else was unthinkable—and with trembling hands Sebastian carefully took the letter out of the envelope. It was his mother’s handwriting, her sentence construction, her words. At first he didn’t understand what he was reading; his brain was too overloaded.

  Dear Anna,

  The reason I didn’t give you Sebastian’s address in the USA is not because you are a stranger but because, as I wrote in my last letter, we do not know where Sebastian is living. We have no contact whatsoever with our son. This has been the situation for many years. You must believe me. I feel a little sad to hear that you are pregnant. It goes against my beliefs completely, but yet I feel I must give you a piece of advice: if it is still possible, I think you should terminate the pregnancy. Try to forget Sebastian. He will never take any responsibility, either for you or the child. It pains me to write this, and you will probably wonder what kind of mother I am, but most people are better off without Sebastian in their lives. I really do hope that things work out for you in spite of the circumstances.

  Sebastian read the letter one more time. His mother had followed the script for their relationship to the letter. Even after her death she still managed to hurt him. He tried to calm his thoughts and concentrate on facts, not feelings. Stand outside. Act professionally. What did he know? Thirty years ago when he was working at Stockholm University, he got someone called Anna Eriksson pregnant. Perhaps she had an abortion, perhaps she didn’t. At any rate she had moved from—he looked at Anna’s address—Vasaloppsgatan 17, at some point thirty years ago. He had gone to bed with her. Was she one of his former students? Probably. He had had sex with several of them.

  It was possible to trace his former head of the department, Arthur Lindgren, via directory inquiries. Arthur, who was now retired, answered after three separate calls; the last time Sebastian let the phone ring more than twenty-five times. Arthur was still living on Surbrunnsgatan, and when he had woken up a little and grasped who was calling him at half past five in the morning, he had been surprisingly helpful. He promised to look through the documents and files he had at home in search of an Anna Eriksson. Sebastian thanked him. Arthur had always been one of the few people Sebastian respected, and that respect was mutual; he knew that Arthur had actually defended him when the university first tried to kick him out. In the end, however, the situation had become untenable even for Arthur. Sebastian’s womanizing was no longer restricted to discreet little affairs; there were so many rumors about him that the board managed to have him suspended on the third attempt. That was when he went to the USA, to the University of North Carolina. He had begun to realize that his days were numbered and applied for a Fulbright scholarship.

  Sebastian started to draw up a timeline, noting down the date of the first letter: December 9, 1979. The second letter was dated December 18. He counted back nine months from December, which took him to March 1979.

  He had arrived in Chapel Hill in North Carolina at the very beginning of November 1979. So March to October was the relevant period, eight possible months. She had probably discovered she was pregnant around the time of the first letter, so September–October would seem to be the most likely months. Sebastian tried to recall as many memories as he could of sexual encounters during the autumn of 1979. It wasn’t easy: that particular period at the university had been one of the most intensive in his catalog of sexual misdemeanors. This was partly because the stress of the department’s constant investigations into his behavior simply exacerbated his need for affirmation and partly because after a number of years spent experimenting, he had perfected the role of seducer. The clumsiness was gone, along with the fear, the ineptitude. He simply enjoyed what he was good at, and he had crossed every boundary during the course of several hectic years.

  When he looked back on those days later on, he had been amazed at his behavior. When the HIV/AIDS panic had begun to rage at the beginning of the eighties, he had realized with horror just how bad his abuse had actually been. He had started trying to find ways to resist and gained a great deal of strength from his more detailed research into serial killers in the United States. He remembered the moment when he was sitting in Quantico, the FBI training center, where he was working on a joint project with the FBI and the University of North Carolina, and realized that the way he acted had much in common with the motivation behind a serial killer’s actions. Admittedly, these actions had completely different consequences; it was as if he were playing poker for matchsticks and the serial killers for gold chips. But the basis was the same: difficult upbringing with a lack of empathy and love, poor self-esteem, and a need to show the individual’s strength. And then that constant cycle of fantasy—execution—angst, spinning around all the time. The individual needs affirmation and fantasizes about control; in his case it was sexual, in the serial killer’s it was a matter of another person’s life and death. The fantasy becomes so strong that in the end it is impossible to resist acting it out. This is followed by angst over what he has done. The affirmation was, in fact, worthless. He is bad. A bad person. With the despair the fantasies return, assuaging the angst. These fantasies soon grow so strong that the need to find an outlet for them is reawakened. Around and around it goes.

  This realization had frightened Sebastian, but had also better equipped him for his work in helping the police track down serial killers. He made progress in his a
nalysis. His profiling became sharper. It was as if he had that little something extra that made him unusually well suited to understanding the psychology of a perpetrator. And it was true, of course. Deep inside, behind the academic veneer, the wide knowledge, and the intelligent comments, he was actually very similar to those he was hunting.

  Arthur called back an hour later. By that time Sebastian had already rung directory inquiries and discovered that there were so many Anna Erikssons in Sweden that their computers simply said “too many matches.” He then tried restricting the query to Stockholm and was told there were 463 matches; of course, he didn’t even know if she still lived in Stockholm. Or if she had married and changed her name.

  Arthur had good news and bad news. The bad news was that, according to the notes Arthur still had, no Anna Eriksson had registered in the Psychology Department in 1979. Someone of that name had started in 1980, but obviously it couldn’t be the same woman.

  The good news was that he had managed to gain access to Ladok.

  Of course—why hadn’t Sebastian thought of that? The system for the storage and management of higher education results had been only a few years old when he left the university. Addresses, name changes, and similar information were updated automatically from the electoral roll. And the best part of all: this information was public property. It wasn’t usually given out over the telephone, but one of the administrators at the university had made an exception for the former head of department on this early morning. He had the addresses and numbers of the three Anna Erikssons who had been registered at the university during the period in question.