Frozen Tracks (2 page)

'No, not personally.'

'Do you know anybody who knows him?' asked
Winter.

'Hey, what's all this?' she protested. 'I see you're back
at work again.' She looked at Winter, then turned to
her father. 'Sorry. It
is
serious. I didn't mean to tease.'

'Well?' wondered Winter.

'I might know somebody who knows somebody who
knows him. I don't know.'

Vasaplatsen was quiet and deserted when he got out
of the taxi. The street lamps lit up the newspaper kiosk
at the edge of Universitetsplatsen. A student of life, he
thought as he punched the code to the front entrance.

There was a faint smell of tobacco in the lift, a
persistent aroma that could have been caused by him.

'You smell of booze,' said Angela when he bent down
to kiss her as she lay in bed.

'Ödåkra Taffel Aquavit,' he said.

'I thought as much,' she said, turning over to face
the wall. 'You'll have to look after Elsa tomorrow
morning. I have to get up at half past five.'

'I've just been in to see her. Sleeping like a log.'

Angela muttered something.

'What did you say?'

'Just wait until tomorrow morning,' she said. 'Early.'

He knew all about that. Hadn't he just been on six
months' paternity leave? He knew all there was to know
about Elsa, and she knew all about him.

It had been a terrific time, maybe his best. There was
a city out there that he hadn't seen for years. The streets
were the same, but he'd been able to view them at
ground level for a change, in his own time, not needing
to be on the lookout for anything more than the next
café where they could pause for a while and he could
sample a bit of that other life, real life.

When he went back to work after his paternity leave,
he felt a sort of . . . hunger, a peculiar feeling, something
he almost found a bit scary. As if he were ready
for battle again, ready for the war that could never be
won, but had to be fought even so. That's the way it
was. If you cut an arm off the beast, it promptly grew
another one, but you had to keep on cutting even so.

As Winter fell asleep, he was thinking yet again about
that remarkable wound on the back of the student's
head.

It was a quiet night at the emergency desk, and felt like
the calm before the storm. But there won't be any storm
tonight, thought Bengt Josefsson, the duty officer, gazing
out at the trees that were also still, like they were before
an autumn gale. But it's too late for autumn gales now,
he thought. It'll soon be Christmas. And after that maybe
we shan't exist any more. They're talking of closing
down this station, and Redbergsplatsen will be handed
back to the enemy.

The telephone rang.

'Police, Örgryte-Härlanda, Josefsson.'

'Ah, yes. Well. Er, good evening. Is that the police?'

'Yes.'

'I phoned the police headquarters and they said they'd
connect me to a station close to Olskroken. Er, that's
where we live.'

'You've come to the right number,' said Josefsson.
'How can I help you?'

'Well, er, I don't really know what to say.'

Josefsson waited, pen at the ready. A colleague
dropped something hard on the floor in the changing
room at the end of the corridor.

'Just tell me what it's about,' he said. 'Who am I
talking to?'

She gave her name and he wrote it down. Berit Skarin.

'It's about my little boy,' she said. 'He, er, I don't
know . . . He told us tonight, if we understood him
rightly, er, that he's been sitting in a car with a "mister",
as he put it.'

Kalle Skarin was four, and when he got back home from
the day nursery he'd had a soft-cheese sandwich and a
cup of hot chocolate – he'd mixed the cocoa and sugar
and a splash of cream himself, and then Mum added
the hot milk.

Shortly afterwards he'd said he'd been sitting in a
car.

A car?

A car. Big car, with a radio. Radio talked and played
music.

Have you and your friends been out on a trip today?

Not a trip. Playground.

Are there cars there?

The boy had nodded.

Toy cars?

BIG car, he'd told her. Real car. Real, and he'd moved
his hands as if he were holding a steering wheel. Brrrrm,
brrrrmm.

Where?

Playground.

Kalle. Are you saying you went for ride in a car at
the playground?

He'd nodded.

Who did you go with?

A mister.

A mister?

Mister, mister. He had sweeties!

Kalle had made a new gesture that could have
been somebody holding out a bag of sweets, or maybe
not.

Berit Skarin had felt a cold shiver run down her spine.
A strange man holding out a bag of sweets to her little
boy.

Olle ought to hear this, but he wouldn't be back until
late.

And Kalle was sitting there in front of her. She'd
taken hold of him when he'd jumped up to go and
watch a children's programme on the telly.

Did the car drive away?

Drove, drove. Brrrrrrmm.

Did you go far?

He didn't understand the question.

Was teacher with you?

No teacher. Mister.

Then he'd run off to the television room. She'd
watched him go and had thought for a moment, then
gone to fetch her handbag from a chair in the kitchen
and looked up the home telephone number of one of
the nursery staff, hesitated when she got as far as the
phone, but rung even so.

'Ah. Sorry to disturb you in the evening like this, er,
it's Berit Skarin. Yes, Kalle's mum. He's just told me
something and I thought I'd better ask you about it.'

Bengt Josefsson listened. She told him about the
conversation she'd had with one of the nursery school
staff.

'Nobody noticed anything,' said Berit Skarin.

'I see.'

'Can that kind of thing happen?' she asked. 'Can
somebody drive up in a car and then drive off with one
of the children without any of the staff seeing anything?
Then bring the child back again?'

Much worse things than that can happen, thought
Josefsson.

'I don't know,' he said. 'The staff didn't notice
anything, you say?'

'No. Surely they must have done?'

'You'd have thought so,' said Josefsson, but in fact
he was thinking differently. Who can be on the lookout
all the time? Thinking, who's that man standing under
the tree over there? Sitting in that car?

'How long does your boy say he was away?'

'He doesn't know. He's a child. He can't distinguish
between five minutes and fifty minutes if you ask him
afterwards.'

Bengt Josefsson pondered this.

'Do you believe him?' he asked.

No reply.

'Mrs Skarin?'

'I don't know,' she said. 'I just don't know.'

'Does he have, er, a lively imagination?'

'He's a child. All children have lively imaginations if
there's nothing wrong with them.'

'Yes.'

'So what should I do?'

Bengt Josefsson looked down at the few sentences
he'd jotted down on his notepad.

Two colleagues came racing past his desk.

'Robbery at the newspaper kiosk!' one of them yelled.

He could already hear the siren from one of the cars
outside.

'Hello?' said Berit Skarin.

'Yes, where were we? Well, I've noted down what
you said. Anyway, nobody's gone missing. So, if you
want to report it, then . . .'

'What should I report?'

That's the point, thought Josefsson. Unlawful deprivation
of liberty? No. An attempted sexual offence, or
preparing the way for one? Well, perhaps. Or the imagination
of a very young child. He evidently hadn't come
to any harm be—

'I want to take him to a doctor now,' she said, interrupting
his train of thought. 'I take this very seriously.'

'Yes,' said Josefsson.

'Should I take him to a doctor?'

'Have you, er, examined him yourself?'

'No. I phoned straight after he'd told me.'

'Oh.'

'But I will do now. Then I'll see where we go from
there.' He heard her shouting for the boy, and a reply
from some distance. 'He's watching the telly,' she said.
'Now he's laughing.'

'Can I make a note of your address and phone
number?' said Josefsson.

There were the sirens again. It sounded as if they
were heading east. Chasing the robbers. A couple of
thugs from one of the ghettos north of the town, drugged
up to the eyeballs. Dangerous as hell.

'OK, thank you very much,' he said, his mind miles
away, and hung up. He made his handwriting clearer
in a couple of places, then put the page to one side,
ready for keying into the computer. Later on he'd put
his notes into the file, if he got round to it. Filed under
. . . what? Nothing had happened after all. A crime
waiting to be committed?

There were other things that had already happened,
were happening right now.

The phone on his desk rang again, phones were
ringing all over the station. Sirens outside, coming from
the south. He could see the flashing blue light on the
other side of the street, whirling round and round as if
the officers in the patrol car were about to take off and
fly over to where all the action was.

Jakob, the student, was conscious but very groggy and
in a world of his own. Ringmar sat by his side,
wondering what had happened and how. There were
flowers on the bedside table. Jakob was not alone in
this world.

Somebody entered the ward behind Ringmar. Could
that be a flash of recognition in Jakob's eyes? Ringmar
turned round.

'They said it was all right for me to go in,' said the
girl, with a bunch of flowers in her hand. She seemed
to be about the same age as his own daughter. Maybe
they know each other, he thought, getting to his feet
as she walked over to the bed, gave Jakob a cautious
little hug and then put the flowers down on the table.
Jakob's eyes were closed now, he'd probably nodded
off again.

'Even more flowers,' she said, and Ringmar could see
she would have liked to take a look at the card with
the other bouquet, but couldn't bring herself to do it.
She turned to face him.

'So you're Moa's dad, are you?'

Good. Moa had done her bit.

'Yes,' he said. 'Maybe we should go to the waiting
room and have a little chat.'

* * *

'I suppose he was just unlucky,' she said. 'Or whatever
it is you say. Wrong man in the wrong place, or however
you put it.'

They sat down on their own, by a window. The
grey light of day outside seemed translucent. The room
was in a strange sort of shadow cast by a sun that
wasn't there. A woman coughed quietly on a sofa by
a low wooden table weighed down by magazines with
photos of well-known people, smiling. Well-known to
whom? Ringmar had wondered more than once.
Visiting hospitals was part of his job, and he'd often
wondered why
Hello!
and similar magazines were
always piled up in dreary hospital waiting rooms.
Maybe they were a kind of comfort, like a little candle
burning on the tables of such cavernous barns. All of
you in that magazine, who are photographed at every
premiere there is, maybe used to be like us, and maybe
we can be like you if we get well again and are discovered
in the hectic search for new talent. That search
was nonstop, neverending. The photos of those celebrities
were proof of that. There was no room for faded
Polaroids of crushed skulls.

'It wasn't bad luck,' said Ringmar now, looking at
the girl.

'You look younger than I'd expected,' she said.

'On the basis of Moa's description of me, you mean,'
he said.

She smiled, then turned serious again.

'Do you know anybody who really disliked Jakob?'
Ringmar asked.

'Nobody disliked him,' she said.

'Is there anybody he dislikes?'

'No.'

'Nobody at all?'

'No.'

Maybe it's the times we live in, Ringmar thought,
and if so it has to be a good thing. When I was a youngster
we were always mad at everything and everybody.
Angry all the time.

'How well do you know him?' he asked.

'Well . . . he's my friend.'

'Do you have several mutual friends?'

'Yes, of course.'

Ringmar looked out of the window. Some fifty metres
away, two youths were standing at the bus stop in the
rain, holding their hands up to the sky as if giving
thanks. Not an enemy in the world. Even the rain was
a dear friend.

'No violent types in your circle of friends?' asked
Ringmar.

'Certainly not.'

'What were you doing when Jakob was attacked?'

'When exactly was it?' she asked.

'I'm not really allowed to tell you that,' he said, and
proceeded to do so.

'I'd been asleep for about two hours,' she said.

But Jakob wasn't asleep. Ringmar could see him in
his mind's eye, walking across the square named after
Doktor Fries. Heading for the tram stop? There weren't
any trams at that time of night. And then somebody
appeared out of nowhere, and one hell of a bash on the
back of his head. No help from Dr Fries. Left there to
bleed to death, if the bloke who'd called the police
hadn't happened to pass by shortly after it had happened
and see the lad lying there.

Jakob, the third victim. Three different places in the
same town. The same type of wound. Fatal, really.
Perhaps. But none of them actually died. Not yet, he
thought. The other two victims had no idea. Just a blow
from behind. Saw nothing, just felt.

'Do you live together?' he asked.

'No.'

Ringmar said nothing for a moment. The two youths
had just jumped aboard a bus. Maybe it was getting a
bit brighter in the west, a slight glint of light blue. The
waiting room was quite high up in the hospital, which
itself was on the top of a hill. Maybe he was looking
at the sea, a big grey expanse under the blue.

'You weren't worried about him?'

'What do you mean, worried?'

'Where he was that night? What he was doing?'

'Hang on, we're not married or anything like that.
We're just friends.'

'So you didn't know where he was that night?'

'No.'

'Who does he know out there?'

'Where?'

'In Guldheden. Round about Doktor Fries Torg,
Guldheden School, that district.'

'I haven't the slightest idea.'

'Do you know anybody around there?'

'Who lives there, you mean? I don't think so. No.'

'But that's where he was, and that's where he was
attacked,' said Ringmar.

'You'll have to ask him,' she said.

'I'll do that, as soon as it's possible.'

Winter had taken Elsa to the day nursery. He sat there
for a while with a cup of coffee while she arranged her
day's work on her little desk: a red telephone, paper,
pencils, chalks, newspapers, tape, string. He would get
to see the result that afternoon. It would be something
unique, no doubt about that.

She barely noticed when he gave her a hug and left.
He lit a Corps in the grounds outside. He couldn't smoke
anything else after all these years. He'd tried, but it was
no use. Corps were no longer sold in Sweden, but a
colleague made regular visits to Brussels and always
brought some of the cigarillos back for him.

It was a pleasant morning. The air smelled of winter
but it felt like early autumn. He took another puff, then
unbuttoned his overcoat and watched children hard at
work on all sides: building projects involving digging
and stacking, moulding shapes; every kind of game you
could think of. Games. Not much sign of games in the
sports grown-ups indulge in nowadays, he thought, and
noticed a little lad running down the slope towards a
gap in the bushes. Winter looked round and saw the
two members of staff were fully occupied with children
who wanted something or were crying or laughing or
running around in all directions, and so he strode swiftly
down the hill and into the bushes, where the lad was
busy hitting the railings with his plastic spade. He turned
round as Winter approached and gave him a sheepish
grin, like a prisoner who'd been caught trying to escape.