Cinderella Girl (32 page)

‘Hedberg,’ mumbled Petra, but the woman had already hung up.

Eriksson and Petra stood staring at each other for a few moments before the information sank in.

‘But I talked with the girl this afternoon and with her father just now,’ said Eriksson with a puzzled expression.

‘And they weren’t missing any family members?’

Eriksson shook his head with a frown.

‘Then it wasn’t her dad,’ Petra said. ‘We have to go there. Do you know where it is, Einar?’

‘By Vitabergsparken. Ploggatan is an extension of Stora Mejtens Gränd. Or the other way around. But Sjöberg and Hamad are in the vicinity. We’ll send them there if it’s urgent.’

‘It is,’ said Petra, speed-dialling Sjöberg.

* * *

There was a terrible racket in the stairwell, someone hollering and screaming and hammering with something that sounded like metal. Sjöberg and Hamad quickly ran up the stairs to the fourth floor. A dozen people were assembled there watching with amusement an elderly woman who was crouching down, banging the cover of the Hedberg family’s letter box. When Sjöberg caught sight of Barbro, he could not conceal the start of a smile.

‘You can go home now,’ he said to the curious observers, holding up his police ID so that they could all see it. ‘We’ll take over here.’

Hamad herded them away and made sure they scattered. Sjöberg extended his hand to Barbro and helped her up.

Barbro greeted them quickly, without taking the time to smile back at the policemen.

‘I’ve been ringing, but no one opens. But I know someone’s in there.’

‘Really?’ said Sjöberg, putting his ear to the door.

He kept it there for a minute or so before he gave up.

‘There’s not a sound coming from inside,’ he said. ‘Are you sure someone’s there?’

‘Yes, I am,’ Barbro replied. ‘Before I rang I listened for sounds from inside the apartment, just like you. I heard
both a child’s and a man’s voice. I called to Hanna through the letter box, but then it went completely quiet. I think it’s very strange that no one opens the door when you ring –’

‘Yes, you might think that,’ said Sjöberg. ‘They may be busy with something … May I ask, what’s your business here exactly?’ Barbro briefly told him how she had been phoned by little Hanna on Sunday evening, and how after several days of toil she had managed to find the address. She also let it be known that she suspected that the police had not been very quick in their handling of the matter. Sjöberg could hardly believe his ears, but realized that this woman clearly had a mind of her own and was worth taking seriously.

‘You haven’t spoken with Hanna again, after that first conversation?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I have,’ Barbro admitted. ‘But Hanna was mad at me and did not want to talk.’

‘Mad at you?’

‘She thought I’d betrayed her. I did promise that I would rescue her. But she said she wasn’t alone any more – or actually that someone was on their way here. At first I thought it must be the police, but then she said it was her daddy …’

‘But you didn’t really believe that?’

‘Yes, I guess this sounds strange, but … no. She said it in a way that sounded as if she changed her mind while she was talking. I can’t really put it into words; I don’t remember exactly what she said. First I got the impression that the police were on their way here, then suddenly Daddy was home and going to get hamburgers for her.’

Sjöberg pushed the doorbell a few times and the angry
bell signal was heard clearly and audibly out in the stairwell, but no other sounds.

‘Call Westman and ask if we should go in,’ Hamad suggested.

‘I’ll go down to the street,’ said Sjöberg. ‘It’s not necessary for the whole building to hear what we’re talking about.’

‘I’ll stay here,’ said Barbro, as she rang the doorbell. ‘In case something happens.’

‘I’ll stay here with Barbro,’ said Hamad, ‘and continue to make a disturbance. Go down and call now, Conny.’

Sjöberg went down to the street and wandered towards Vitabergsparken while he called. He filled Westman in, and she promised to call back as soon as she had spoken to the prosecutor about a search warrant. She kept the bad news about what had happened to Sandén to herself for the time being.

While he waited Sjöberg sat down on a bench in the park and looked out over the crime scene in the autumn darkness. Could it be the case, he thought, that a little girl had spent four whole days alone, locked in an apartment while her mother was in the morgue? The thought was dizzying. And where had the father been all this time? It was almost inconceivable that the mother would have left her three-year-old alone at home. Unless she was desperate for some reason. What was she doing out in the middle of the night?

He looked over the lawns around him. His eyes fell on the bushes where the boy was found. He imagined the child lying there in the pram insert. Inconsolable to start with, but then sleeping, perhaps unconscious. He shook off the unpleasant thoughts and thought instead about
his own family. His own children who were down with chickenpox at their grandparents. Imagined Åsa chasing back and forth between healthy and sick children who demanded attention – each in their own way. She had help from her parents anyway, he consoled himself.

His gaze wandered back to the bushes, and it suddenly struck him that the little boy had tonsillitis. He was reminded of when Maja, his own five-year-old, had tonsillitis as a baby. How she screamed without stopping during a flight to Greece. Disturbed everyone on the plane. Åsa and he took turns carrying her around, but nothing helped. She could not sleep, would not take her dummy; Calpol had not helped.

Suddenly it was clear to him what had happened. A single mother with a sleeping three-year-old and a baby with tonsillitis. She was desperate. At last, exhausted, she left the big sister sleeping alone at home and went out for a walk. Only a short walk in the immediate vicinity so the child would have a chance to fall asleep. Fall asleep, and fall silent. That’s what had happened. One time. A single time, in desperation she left her three-year-old home alone, and it had ended badly. Very badly.

The phone rang.

‘I can’t get hold of Rosén,’ said Westman, stressed. ‘But Einar has found out that the father’s name is Carl Hedberg and the mother is Cecilia Hedberg; both are registered at that address.’

‘In any case no one’s opening the door for us,’ said Sjöberg. ‘But reportedly the three-year-old is in there with a man.’

‘Then that must be the father.’

‘Of course it might be the father, but why doesn’t he answer the door? Why hasn’t he reported his wife’s disappearance? I think it’s someone else.’

‘The keys,’ said Westman suddenly.

‘What keys? What do you mean?’

‘She didn’t have any keys with her. The victim had no keys on her when we found her.’

‘We have to go in,’ said Sjöberg.

‘I’ll keep hunting for Hadar, so at least we have a search warrant.’

‘Make it quick. I’m going to catch hell for this, but we’re going in now. Send a couple of cars and an ambulance.’

Sjöberg was already running towards the apartment building at Ploggatan 20 before he ended the call. He entered the code and was halfway up to the second floor when the door closed behind him. He took two steps at a time and when he appeared Hamad and Barbro Dahlström looked worriedly at him.

‘We’re going in now,’ said Sjöberg breathlessly, and without waiting for an answer he tugged on the door handle with all the strength he could muster. The door offered no resistance, but instead flew open and hit him on the chin and chest, but he barely noticed it. Hamad slipped into the lighted apartment; Sjöberg gestured to Barbro to stay where she was and then followed Hamad. From the hall they went into a living room, where they stopped and listened for sounds. Through one of the doorways in the living room they caught a glimpse of a bedroom, and from there the sound of splashing was heard. Hamad went into the bedroom quietly with Sjöberg right behind him. Through a
half-open door they could see a tiled floor, and they slipped carefully over to the doorway. Jamal watched Sjöberg soundlessly form his mouth into one, two, three, and then Hamad rushed into the bathroom with Sjöberg at his heels.

* * *

In the bathtub a fully grown man was sitting. Naked, with his hand over the mouth of little Hanna, who was sitting on his lap looking wide-eyed at the policemen rushing in. Hamad stopped for a moment and stared at the hollow-eyed fifty-three-year-old and his catch. A terrified three-year-old girl whose mother he had killed. Hamad had barely understood what he was seeing before he was at the edge of the bathtub tearing Hanna out of the man’s arms.

‘It’s Sören Andersson,’ he said to Sjöberg, who mutely let his eyes wander between the little girl in his colleague’s arms and the disrobed man in the tub.

Then Hanna started to scream. Not a scream full of despair and sorrow, but a three-year-old’s furious, defiant howling.

‘It just rang and rang! We were taking a bath!’ she screamed.

Again and again the same thing: that they didn’t have time for the bath because the doorbell was ringing the whole time. Sjöberg grabbed a bath towel from a hook on the wall and placed it over her where she was hanging in Hamad’s arms. Hamad pulled her towards him, but she was stiff with rage and flailed her arms around. Barbro had defied the instructions she’d been given and slipped up to
the doorway. With her hand to her mouth she became a witness to the incomprehensible scene playing out in the bathroom. Hamad forced his way out to the bedroom with the hysterical child and sat down on the edge of the bed with her, trying to calm her with gentle words and caresses.

Barbro looked from Hanna in the arms of Hamad to Sjöberg who calmly stepped up to the bathtub, took Sören Andersson by the neck and pushed his head down under the water. It felt like an eternity before she could get herself to react and she saw the pale, hairy arms flapping around the naked body in the water. Then her legs came to life and she went up to Sjöberg resolutely and placed her hand on his arm.

‘That’s enough now, inspector,’ she said calmly. ‘I didn’t see that. Get him out of the tub now.’

Then she gave him a friendly pat on the arm and Sjöberg released his hold on Sören Andersson, whose head came up out of the water panting and snorting. Sjöberg threw him a towel and ordered him to get out of the bathtub. Barbro left the bathroom and sat next to Hamad on the bed and with his help lifted the girl over on to her lap and repeated in a calm, firm voice the same words, over and over.

‘Little Hanna, Barbro’s here now and everything’s going to be all right …’

Patiently she repeated the chant until the girl calmed down and finally, exhausted, fell asleep with her head against her shoulder.

From out on the street sirens were heard.

It was almost two a.m. when Sjöberg rang her doorbell. She smiled at him when she opened the door, but he did not smile back. He looked at her with eyes red from crying without saying anything. He was completely exhausted and tears were running down his cheeks. He embraced her without a word and burrowed his head down into her soft, reddish-brown hair. They remained standing like that for a long time before in a whisper she suggested that they should sit down. He sank down on the floor with his back leaning against the wall and she sat down beside him and took his hand and placed it in her lap.

‘You can tell me now if you want,’ she whispered.

And he told her. The words flew out of him like sparks from a bonfire; they were blinding but brief, burned out, extinguished and replaced by new words. She let him talk without interruption, without curious questions that interfered. She listened to stories about people in prison; a woman in a coffin and a girl in a public toilet; grown men in invisible chains and a child in a bathtub; a woman imprisoned in her own body and the invisible bonds between daughters and mothers, sons and fathers. He told her about a woman in a window and a man that fell. About how sometimes you didn’t know what you were seeking, but you still had to keep searching anyway; how sometimes you found something you didn’t know you were looking for.

Several hours later, as he lay beside her on the rug, emptied of words and thoughts and tears, and their hands were woven together and he felt her gentle breath against his cheek – nothing warned him, no barriers went up, no inner voice told him that what happened shouldn’t happen.