She’d given up her attempts to scream and was instead squeezing her eyes shut in the hope that the nightmare would end. It didn’t. Instead, she felt him tear off her pyjama bottoms and stroke the inside of her thigh. This isn’t happening, was the only thought she could manage.

Hampus had a dark side, she knew that, but this was something else. This just couldn’t be true. But when she felt him pushing a finger into her, she realized hope was futile.

‘She’s waking up,’ said a voice that sounded neither like Hampus nor either of the others, and she finally pieced it together. ‘Should we give her another dose?’

She’d been dreaming. It wasn’t Hampus and his mates. She was waking up now, only to realize that the reality she was in was, if possible, even worse.

‘No, why?’ said another voice. ‘We’re practically done.’

Even though she didn’t really want to look, she opened her eyes, and it was in fact not Hampus straddling her, pulling out his finger to sniff it. It was Adolf Hitler, or someone wearing a Hitler mask. Someone with a beard and long hair who was dressed in a tattered denim waistcoat, showing the Terminator tattoo that reached all the way up his neck.

‘What do you reckon?’ said the other Hitler mask who was leaning over her, squeezing her breast with a hand that was missing a middle finger. ‘Isn’t it about time to pop this Jewish cunt’s cherry?’

‘Almost, but not quite,’ said a third man outside her field of vision. ‘We have to leave something to look forward to.’

‘Be seeing you.’ The man straddling her climbed off the bed, laughing all the while, and left with the others.

Lilja stayed where she was, not daring to do anything other than look around at the spray-painted swastikas on her walls.

79

While waiting for Theodor to come down after his shower, the lasagne went back in the oven and Fabian sat in the kitchen with Sonja and Matilda, chatting idly. Every once in a while, Sonja laughed at something Matilda said, and occasionally he tried to put on a smile, too. But he found it difficult; it mostly felt like an uncomfortable rictus.

In a way, he should be relieved. Sonja and he were finally on the same page and together they’d knocked some sense into Theodor. There was no doubt that going over to Helsingør and contacting the Danish prosecutor was the right thing to do. But his concern about what would happen after that was still there like a festering ulcer. Also, it had been almost fifteen minutes, and he didn’t know anyone who showered as quickly as Theodor.

‘I’m going to see how he’s doing.’ He stood up and left the table. ‘Why don’t you start?’