{"id":879,"date":"2021-07-12T13:03:52","date_gmt":"2021-07-12T13:03:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/?p=879"},"modified":"2021-07-12T13:03:58","modified_gmt":"2021-07-12T13:03:58","slug":"stockholm-syndrome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/stockholm-syndrome\/879\/","title":{"rendered":"Stockholm Syndrome"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHello,\u201d said the tall man as he peered around the door to the classroom. \u201cAre you Cecelia Luth?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhy, yes I am,\u201d said Luth. \u201cMay I ask who wants to know?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy name is Bejerot,\u201d he replied and stepped into the room, \u201cbut not the famous one. Are you familiar with the name?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI really don\u2019t know who you might mean,\u201d Luth responded warily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t know Nils Bejerot?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShould I?\u201d Luth said, \u201cThe name seems familiar, but I can\u2019t place it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe coined the phrase \u2018Stockholm Syndrome\u2019,\u201d he said. He pulled a photograph from his jacket, \u201cafter the attempted robbery of the Kreditbanken in Sweden. Jan-Erik Olsson held four people hostage, demanding the release of his jailed friend, Clark Olofsson. They refused to testify against their captor.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAh yes,\u201d Luth said, \u201cI recall now. What does that have to do with me?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell, Miss Luth,\u201d said Bejerot, \u201cI have evidence it involved you. That you were one of the putative hostages.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He held out the photograph. She remembered it being taken by a photographer as the police led out the robbers and their captives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s you behind Enmark, isn\u2019t it?\u201d he pointed at a dark-haired woman. \u201cThe funny thing is, all the reports were of four hostages, yet here in this photograph we have five.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is a similarity,\u201d she said, \u201cbut this woman is older than me. She would be about sixty now and I am nothing like that age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the other thing,\u201d Bejerot said as he reached into his pocket and pulled out another photograph, holding it out for Luth to see. \u201cThis is Clark Olofsson being led to trial in Belgium. He\u2019s in the centre. On his right is a woman described as his fianc\u00e9e, Rita Bran. It\u2019s the same woman, except she hasn\u2019t aged a day, despite it being over twenty years later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luth stroked the photograph. She loved Olofsson with all her heart, but like all the others he grew old while she carried on ageless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt seems you have the makings of a case,\u201d she said, and turned to face the blackboard, \u201chow would you like to proceed?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh, that\u2019s easy, Miss Luth,\u201d he said. \u201cI know Olofsson squirrelled away millions, but none of it was ever found. I believe you took it and I want a share. Fifty-fifty would be nice, I\u2019m not greedy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She turned to him, her eyes ablaze, pointed teeth growing over her bottom lip, \u201cI\u2019m afraid I can\u2019t do that, Mr Bejerot, you see there is a reason I don\u2019t age and there is a reason people do what I ask without question.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was on him before he drew his gun, and it was all over in seconds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luth picked up his body and dragged it onto the school roof, where she hid it behind some ducting. It would be months before they found it, by which time she would be far, far away, her secret safe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cHello,\u201d said the tall man as he peered around the door to the classroom. \u201cAre you Cecelia Luth?\u201d \u201cWhy, yes I am,\u201d said Luth. \u201cMay I ask who wants to know?\u201d \u201cMy name is Bejerot,\u201d he replied and stepped into the room, \u201cbut not the famous one. Are you familiar with the name?\u201d \u201cI really […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10158782359051062_103813597863211":"","twitter_1225722811282530305_1225722811282530305":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"A tense new #flashfiction from #SwanseaWriters. This is \"Stockholm Syndrome\" by Martyn R Winters","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[379,502],"tags":[500,501],"class_list":["post-879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-379","category-july-2021-the-secret","tag-stockholm","tag-syndrome"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbrNJE-eb","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=879"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":881,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879\/revisions\/881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}