The Ice Child Read online

  Suddenly she heard a sound outside the stable. Fanta heard it too. The mare pushed her ears forward and raised her head so swiftly that she rammed into Tyra’s chin. The sharp taste of blood filled the girl’s mouth. She swore, pressed her hand to her lips, and went outside to see what was going on.

  When she opened the stable door she was dazzled by the sun, but her eyes quickly adjusted to the light and she saw Valiant coming across the forecourt at full gallop with Marta on his back. Marta pulled up so abruptly that the stallion almost reared. She was shouting something. At first Tyra didn’t understand what she was saying, but Marta kept on yelling. And finally the words made sense:

  ‘Victoria! We’ve found Victoria!’

  Patrik Hedström was sitting at his desk in the Tanumshede police station, enjoying the peace and quiet. He’d come to work early, so he’d missed having to get the kids dressed and take them to the day-care centre. Lately that whole process had become a form of torture, thanks to the twins’ transformation from sweet babies into mini versions of Damien in the film Omen. He couldn’t comprehend how two such tiny people could require so much energy. Nowadays his favourite time with them was when he sat next to their beds in the evening and watched them sleep. At those moments he was able to enjoy the immense, pure love he felt for his sons without any trace of the tremendous frustration he felt when they howled: ‘NO, I WON’T!’

  Everything was so much easier with Maja. In fact, sometimes he felt guilty that, with all the attention he and Erica devoted to her little brothers, Maja often ended up neglected. She was so good at keeping herself busy that they simply assumed she was happy. And as young as she was, she seemed to possess a magical ability to calm her brothers down even during their worst outbursts. But it wasn’t fair, and Patrik decided that tonight he and Maja would spend time together, just the two of them, snuggling and reading a story.

  At that moment the phone rang. He picked it up distractedly, still thinking about Maja. But the caller quickly grabbed his attention, and he sat up straight in his chair.

  ‘Could you repeat that?’ He listened. ‘Okay, we’ll be right there.’

  He threw on his jacket and shouted into the corridor, ‘Gösta! Mellberg! Martin!’

  ‘What is it? Where’s the fire?’ grunted Bertil Mellberg, who unexpectedly showed up first. But he was soon followed by Martin Molin, Gösta Flygare, and the station secretary, Annika, who had been at her desk in the reception area, which was the furthest away from Patrik’s office.

  ‘Somebody found Victoria Hallberg. She was hit by a car near the eastern entrance to Fjällbacka, and she’s been taken by ambulance to Uddevalla. That’s where you and I are headed, Gösta.’

  ‘Oh, shit,’ said Gösta, and he dashed back to his office to grab his jacket. No one dared venture outdoors without the proper warm clothing this winter, no matter how big an emergency it was.

  ‘Martin, you and Bertil need to go out to the accident site and talk to the driver,’ Patrik went on. ‘Call the tech team and ask them to meet you there.’

  ‘You’re in a bossy mood today,’ muttered Mellberg. ‘As the chief of this station, of course I’m the one who should go out to the scene of the accident. The right man in the right place.’

  Patrik sighed to himself but didn’t comment. With Gösta in tow, he hurried outside, jumped into one of the two police vehicles and turned on the ignition.

  Bloody awful road, he thought as the car skidded into the first curve. He didn’t dare drive as fast as usual. It had started snowing again, and he didn’t want to risk sliding off the road. Impatiently he slammed his fist on the steering wheel. It was only January and, given how long Swedish winters lasted, they could expect at least two more months of this misery.

  ‘Take it easy,’ said Gösta, clutching the strap hanging from the ceiling. ‘What did they say on the phone?’ He gasped as the car skidded again.

  ‘Not much. Just that there had been a traffic accident and the girl who’d been struck was Victoria. Unfortunately, it sounds as though she’s in bad shape, and apparently she has other injuries, which have nothing to do with being hit by a car.’

  ‘What kind of injuries?’

  ‘I don’t know. We’ll find out when we get there.’

  Less than an hour later they arrived at Uddevalla hospital and parked at the front entrance. They hurried to the ER and accosted a doctor named Strandberg, according to his name badge.

  ‘I’m glad you’re here. The girl is just going into surgery, but it’s not certain she’ll make it. We heard from the police that she has been missing and, in the circumstances, we thought it best if you were the ones to notify her family. I assume you’ve already had a great deal of contact with them. Am I right?’

  Gösta nodded. ‘I’ll phone them.’

  ‘Do you have any information about what happened?’ asked Patrik.

  ‘Only that she was hit by a car. She has severe internal bleeding, as well as a head injury, though we don’t yet know the extent of that injury. We’ll keep her sedated for a while after the operation in order to minimize any brain damage. If she survives, that is.’

  ‘We heard that she had suffered some sort of injuries prior to the accident.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Strandberg, hesitating. ‘We don’t know exactly which injuries are the result of the accident and which occurred previously. But …’ He seemed to be struggling for the right words. ‘Both of her eyes are gone. And her tongue.’

  ‘Gone?’ Patrik looked at the doctor in disbelief. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Gösta’s equally astonished expression.

  ‘Yes. Her tongue has been severed, and her eyes have somehow been … removed.’

  Gösta covered his mouth with his hand. His face had taken on a slightly greenish tinge.

  Patrik swallowed hard. For a moment he wondered whether he was having a nightmare, and hoped he would soon wake up. Then he would be relieved to find it was all a dream and could turn over and go back to sleep. But this was real. Disgustingly real.

  ‘How long do you think the surgery will take?’

  Strandberg shook his head. ‘It’s hard to say. As I mentioned, she has massive internal bleeding. Maybe two or three hours. At the least. You can wait here.’ He gestured towards the large waiting room.

  ‘I’ll go and ring the family,’ said Gösta, moving away down the corridor.

  Patrik didn’t envy him the task. The Hallberg family’s initial joy and relief at hearing that Victoria had been found would swiftly be replaced with the same despair and dread they’d been living with for the past four months.

  He sat down on one of the hard chairs. Images of Victoria’s injuries whirled through his mind. But his thoughts were interrupted when a frantic nurse stuck her head in the door and shouted for Strandberg. Patrik hardly had time to react before the doctor dashed from the waiting room. Out in the corridor Patrik could hear Gösta talking on the phone with one of Victoria’s relations. The question was, what news would they hear next?

  Ricky tensely studied his mother’s face as she talked on the phone. He strained to read every expression, hear every word. His heart was pounding so hard in his chest that he could hardly breathe. His father sat next to him, and Ricky sensed that his heart was hammering just as hard. It felt like time was standing still, as if it had stopped at that exact moment. All his senses were somehow heightened. Even as he focused his full attention on the phone conversation, he could clearly hear every other sound. He could also feel the wax tablecloth under his clenched fists, the wisp of hair that was tickling the back of his neck under his collar, and the linoleum floor under his feet.

  The police had found Victoria. That was the first thing they heard. His mother had recognized the number and grabbed the phone. Ricky and his father had instantly stopped eating their food when they heard her say, ‘What’s happened?’

  No courteous greeting, no ‘hello’, no mention of anyone’s name, which was his mother’s usual way of answering the phone. Lately
all such things – common courtesies, social rules, what one should or should not do – had ceased to matter. Those sorts of things belonged to their life before Victoria disappeared.

  Neighbours and friends had arrived in a steady stream, bringing food and awkwardly offering well-intentioned words. But they never stayed long. Ricky’s parents couldn’t bear all the questions or the kindness, concern, and sympathy in everyone’s eyes. Or the relief, always the same hint of relief that they were not the ones in this situation. Their children were all at home, safe and sound.

  ‘We’ll leave right now.’

  His mother ended the conversation and slowly placed her mobile on the worktop, which was the old-fashioned kind, made of steel. For years she had nagged his father to replace it with something more modern, but he had grumbled that there was no need to replace anything that was clean and in one piece and still fully functional. And his mother had never insisted. She simply brought up the topic on occasion, in the hope that her husband would suddenly change his mind.

  Ricky didn’t think his mother cared any longer about what sort of kitchen worktop they had. It was strange how things like that quickly lost all importance. All that mattered was finding Victoria.

  ‘What did they say?’ asked Ricky’s father. He had stood up, but Ricky was still sitting at the table, staring down at his clenched fists. His mother’s expression told them they wouldn’t want to hear what she had to say.

  ‘They’ve found her. But she’s seriously injured and in hospital in Uddevalla. Gösta said we need to get there fast. That’s all I know.’

  She burst into tears and then sank down as if her legs could no longer support her. Her husband just managed to catch her. He stroked her hair and hushed her, but tears were running down his face too.

  ‘We need to get going, sweetheart. Put on your jacket, and we’ll leave right away. Ricky, help your mother. I’ll go out and start the car.’

  Ricky nodded and went over to his mother. Gently he put his arm around her shoulders and got her to move towards the front hall. There he grabbed her red down coat and helped her to put it on, the way a parent would help a child. One arm in, then the other, and he carefully zipped up the coat.

  ‘All right,’ he said, placing her boots in front of her. He squatted down and helped her to put them on too. Then he quickly put on his own jacket and opened the door. He could hear that his father had the car running. He was scraping off the windows so frantically that he’d created a cloud of frost, mixed with the vapour from his breath.

  ‘Bloody winter!’ he cried, scraping so hard that he was probably scratching the windscreen. ‘What a damn, sodding, bloody winter!’

  ‘Get in the car, Pappa,’ said Ricky. ‘I’ll do that.’ He took the scraper away from his father, after first settling his mother in the back seat. His father complied, offering no resistance. They had always let him believe that he was the one in charge in the family. The three of them – Ricky, his mother, and Victoria – had a secret agreement to allow Markus Hallberg to think that he ruled with an iron fist, even though they knew he was too nice to rule even with one finger. It had always been Helena Hallberg who had ensured that everything was done as it should be done – until Victoria disappeared. She had deflated so swiftly that Ricky sometimes wondered whether his mother had always been this shrivelled and dispirited person who was now sitting on the back seat, staring blankly into space, whether she had ever possessed a sense of purpose. Yet for the first time in months he saw something else in her eyes, a mixture of eagerness and panic prompted by the phone conversation with the police.

  Ricky got in behind the wheel. It was strange how a gap in the family was filled, how instinctively he had stepped up to take his mother’s place. As if he possessed a strength he’d never known he had.

  Victoria used to tell him that he was like Ferdinand the bull. Lazy and foolishly nice on the outside, but in moments of crisis he would always come through. He’d give her a playful nudge and pretend to be offended, but secretly he was happy to be compared to Ferdinand the bull. Although lately he no longer had time to sit and smell the flowers. He wouldn’t be able to do that again until Victoria came back.

  Tears began running down his cheeks and he wiped them off on the sleeve of his jacket. He hadn’t allowed himself to think that she might never come home. If he’d done that, he would have fallen apart.

  And now Victoria had been found. Though they didn’t yet know what awaited them at the hospital. He had a feeling they might not want to know.

  Helga Persson peered out of the kitchen window. A short while ago she’d seen Marta come riding into the yard at full gallop, but now everything was quiet. She had lived here a long time, and the view was very familiar, even though it had changed a bit over the years. The old barn was still there, but the cowshed, where they’d kept the cows she’d taken care of, had been torn down. In its place was the stable Jonas and Marta had built for their riding school.

  She had been happy that her son had decided to settle so close by, that they were neighbours. Their houses stood only a hundred metres apart, and since he ran his veterinary clinic at home, he frequently stopped in to see her. Every visit made her day a little brighter, which was what she needed.

  ‘Helga! Helgaaaa!’

  She closed her eyes as she stood next to the worktop. Einar’s voice filled every nook and cranny of the house, enveloping her and making her clench her fists. But she no longer had the will to flee. He had beat it out of her years ago. Even though he was now helpless and completely dependent on her, she was incapable of leaving him. That wasn’t something she considered any more. Because where would she go?

  ‘HELGAAAA!’

  His voice was the only thing left that still retained its former strength. The illnesses and then the amputation of both legs as a result of neglecting his diabetes had robbed him of his physical strength. But his voice was as commanding as ever. It continued to force her into submission just as effectively as his fists used to do. The memories of all those blows, the cracked ribs and throbbing bruises, were still so vivid that the mere sound of his voice could provoke terror and the fear that this time she might not survive.

  She straightened up, took a deep breath, and called out:

  ‘I’m coming!’

  Briskly she climbed the stairs. Einar didn’t like to be kept waiting, he never had, but she didn’t understand why there was always such a hurry. He had nothing else to do but sit and grumble, his complaints ranging from the weather to the government.

  ‘It’s leaking,’ he said when she came into the room.

  She didn’t reply. Simply rolled up her sleeves and went over to him to find out how great the damage might be. She knew he enjoyed this sort of situation. He could no longer use force to hold her captive. Instead he relied on his need for care and attention, which she should have bestowed on the children she’d never had, the ones he had beaten out of her body. Only one had lived, and there were times when she thought it might have been best if that child had also been expelled in a rush of blood between her legs. Yet she didn’t know what she would have done if she hadn’t had him. Jonas was her life, her everything.

  Einar was right. The colostomy bag was leaking. And not just a little bit. Half his shirt was soaked through.

  ‘Why didn’t you get here faster?’ he said. ‘Didn’t you hear me calling? I suppose you had something more important to do.’ He glared at her with his watery eyes.

  ‘I was in the bathroom. I came as quick as I could,’ she said, unbuttoning his shirt. Carefully she pulled his arms out of the sleeves, not wanting to get even more of his body wet.

  ‘I’m freezing.’

  ‘I’ll get you a clean shirt. I just need to wash you off first,’ she said with all the patience she could muster.

  ‘I’m going to catch pneumonia.’

  ‘I’ll be fast. I don’t think you’ll catch cold.’

  ‘Oh, so now you’re a nurse too, huh? I suppose you even know bet
ter than the doctors.’

  She said nothing. He was just trying to throw her off balance. He liked it best when she cried, when she begged and pleaded with him to stop. Then he was filled with a great sense of calm and satisfaction that made his eyes shine. But today she wasn’t going to give him that pleasure. These days she usually managed to avoid such scenes. Most of her tears had been shed years ago.

  Helga went into the bathroom to fill a basin with water. The whole procedure had become routine: fill the basin with water and soap, wet the rag, wipe off his soiled body, put him into a clean shirt. She suspected that Einar purposely made the bag leak. According to his doctor, it was impossible for it to leak so frequently. Yet the bags kept on leaking. And she kept on cleaning up her husband.

  ‘The water’s too cold.’ Einar flinched as the rag rubbed at his stomach.

  ‘I’ll make it warmer.’ Helga stood up, went back to the bathroom, put the basin under the tap and turned on the hot water. Then she returned to the bedroom.

  ‘Ow! It’s scalding! Are you trying to burn me, you bitch?’ Einar shouted so loud that she jumped. But she didn’t say a word, just picked up the basin, carried it out, and filled it with cold water, this time making sure that it was only slightly warmer than body temperature. Then she carried it back to the bedroom. This time he didn’t comment when the rag touched his skin.

  ‘When is Jonas coming?’ he asked as she wrung out the rag, turning the water brown.

  ‘I don’t know. He’s working. He went over to the Andersson place. One of their cows is about to calve, but the calf is in the wrong position.’

  ‘Send him up here when he arrives,’ said Einar, closing his eyes.

  ‘Okay,’ said Helga quietly, as she wrung out the rag again.

  Gösta saw them coming down the hospital corridor. They were hurrying towards him, and he had to fight his impulse to flee in the opposite direction. He knew that what he was about to tell them was written all over his face, and he was right. As soon as Helena met his eye, she fumbled to grab Markus’s arm and then sank to the floor. Her scream echoed through the corridor, silencing all other sounds.