The Ice Child Read online

  ‘Has there ever been any talk about Jonas and Marta since then? Any gossip?’

  ‘You know what I think about gossip, Tyra,’ said Terese sternly as she cut the rolled dough into thick slices. ‘But to answer your question: no, I’ve never heard anything other than that they’re very happy. And then I met your father. Jonas and I just weren’t meant to be together. We were so young. You’ll see, you’re probably going to have a teenage love of your own.’

  ‘Oh, stop it,’ said Tyra, feeling herself blush. She hated it when her mother talked to her about boys and things like that. Terese didn’t have a clue.

  Now Terese gave her a searching glance. ‘But why are you asking me all these questions about Jonas? And about Marta?’

  ‘No special reason. I was just wondering.’ Tyra shrugged and tried to look nonchalant. Then she swiftly changed the subject. ‘Molly is going to get one of the cars out in the barn when she learns to drive. A Volkswagen Beetle. Jonas promised to fix it up for her.’

  She couldn’t keep a trace of envy from creeping into her voice, and she saw that her mother noticed.

  ‘I’m sorry I can’t give you everything I’d like to. We … I … Well, life doesn’t always turn out the way you’d thought it would.’ Terese took a deep breath and scattered sugar over the buns, which she’d placed on a baking sheet.

  ‘I know. It doesn’t matter,’ Tyra hastened to say.

  She didn’t mean to be ungrateful. She knew that her mother was doing the best she could. And she was ashamed even to be thinking about a car right now. Victoria would never have a car.

  ‘How’s it going with Lasse’s job-hunting?’ she asked.

  Terese snorted. ‘God doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to deliver a job for him.’

  ‘Maybe God has other things to think about than finding a job for Lasse.’

  Terese finished what she was doing and looked at her daughter.

  ‘Tyra …’ She seemed to be searching for the right words. ‘Do you think we could manage on our own? Without Lasse, I mean?’

  For a moment there was utter silence in the kitchen. The only sound in the flat was the noise the boys were making in the next room.

  Then Tyra said quietly, ‘It would be fine. I think we’d manage just fine.’

  She stepped forward and kissed her mother’s floury cheek. Then she went to her bedroom to change her clothes. All the girls from the stable would be at Victoria’s memorial service. They seemed to think of it as something exciting. She’d heard them eagerly whispering to each other, even discussing what they should wear. What idiots. Superficial, brainless idiots. None of them had known Victoria the way she had. Or at least not the way she thought she’d known her. With great reluctance Tyra took her favourite dress out of the wardrobe. It was time to say goodbye.

  It had been a delightful break for her to babysit for the twins and Maja. Anna hadn’t been lying when she told Erica that they had behaved perfectly all day, as children so often do. It was only with their parents that they displayed their worst behaviour. No doubt it had helped that she’d brought Emma and Adrian along. The two of them were idolized by their young cousins, since they were ‘big kids’, after all.

  She smiled to herself as she wiped off the worktop. It felt strange to be smiling; she hadn’t done it in so long. Yesterday, when she and Dan had talked here in the kitchen, she had felt a spark of hope return. She knew it might quickly fade, because afterwards Dan had again withdrawn into silence. But maybe they had taken a small step closer to each other.

  She had been serious when she told him she was ready to move out if that was what he wanted. A couple of times she had even gone on the web to look for a suitable flat for herself and the children. But that wasn’t what she wanted. She loved Dan.

  In spite of everything, over the past few months they had taken several small steps towards bridging the chasm between them. On one anxious occasion, after they’d both had a few too many glasses of wine, he’d reached out to touch her body, and she had clung to him as if she were drowning. They had made love, but afterwards he’d looked so tormented that all she wanted to do was run away. They hadn’t touched each other since. Except for the hug yesterday.

  Anna looked out of the kitchen window. The kids were playing in the snow. Even though her children were too old for such games, they both still thought it was fun to build snowmen and have snowball fights. She wiped her hands on a dish towel and cautiously pressed her palms to her stomach. She tried to remember what it had felt like when she was pregnant with Dan’s child. She couldn’t blame her grief for what she’d done. That was not the sort of thing to blame on an innocent child. But sometimes her sorrow was mixed with guilt, and she couldn’t help thinking that everything would have been different if their little son had lived. Then he would be playing out there in the snow with his older siblings, bundled up and looking like a little Michelin man, the way kids always looked in the winter when they were toddlers.

  Anna knew that sometimes Erica worried that the twins reminded her of the son she had lost. And in the beginning they had. She had been jealous and harboured bad thoughts about how unfair it was, the way things had turned out. But that feeling had passed. Sometimes life was unfair, and there was no logic to it, no reasonable explanation for why she and Dan had lost their beloved baby. Now she could only hope that they’d find a way back to sharing a life together.

  A snowball struck the windowpane, and she saw Adrian’s alarmed expression as he reached up his mittened hand to cover his mouth. At the sight of him, she made up her mind. Quickly she ran out to the hall, threw on her winter coat, and then tore open the front door. Doing her best imitation of a scary monster, she growled, ‘Hey, you two, time for a snowball fight!’

  The children stared at her in surprise. Then they shouted their joy to the winter sky.

  Gösta and Martin were sitting in the last pew of the church. Gösta had decided to attend Victoria’s memorial service the minute he heard it was going to be held. Her terrible fate had stirred up anxiety and fear in Fjällbacka, and now her family and friends had gathered for her funeral. They needed to talk about Victoria, to share memories and work through all the emotions prompted by the news of how terribly she had suffered. It was only reasonable that he and Martin should be there, representing the police station.

  It was hard for Gösta to push aside his own memories as he sat there on the hard pew. He had been here before for two other funerals: first his son’s, and many years later, his wife’s. Gösta twisted his wedding band on his finger. He had never felt right about taking it off. Maj-Britt had been the great love of his life, his beloved companion, and he’d never even thought about replacing her.

  Life’s paths were indeed inscrutable, he thought. Sometimes he wondered whether there might actually be some higher power guiding and steering human beings. In the past he’d never believed in anything like that. Back then he would have called himself an atheist, but the older he got, the more he felt Maj-Britt’s presence. It was as if she were still at his side. And it was almost a miracle that after so many years Ebba had resumed such a natural place in his life and heart.

  He looked around the church. It was beautiful. Built of the granite the Bohuslän area was known for, it had lovely tall windows that let in a flood of light. A blue-painted pulpit was on the left, and the altar was up front behind the carved altar rail. For once the church was packed to bursting point, and the congregation included close family members, distant relatives, and many of Victoria’s peers. Some of them were probably classmates, but Gösta recognized quite a few girls from the stable. They sat together in two of the middle rows, and many of them were audibly sobbing.

  Gösta cast a surreptitious glance at Martin and realized that maybe he shouldn’t have suggested that his colleague come along. It wasn’t long ago that Pia had been laid to rest in her coffin, and he saw from the pallor of Martin’s face that he was thinking the same thing.

  ‘I can handle this on my own,
if you like,’ Gösta whispered to him. ‘You don’t need to stay.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ replied Martin with a strained smile, but he kept his eyes fixed straight ahead throughout the entire service.

  It was a moving ceremony, and as the last hymns faded, Gösta hoped it had provided some solace to the family. With noticeable effort, Victoria’s parents got up from their seats in the front pew. Helena leaned on Markus for support as they walked along the centre aisle towards the door of the church, then everyone else slowly followed.

  Outside family and friends gathered in small groups. It was a bitterly cold day, but beautiful, with sunlight glinting off the snow. Subdued and freezing, their eyes red from crying, everyone stood there talking about how much Victoria would be missed and what unimaginable suffering she must have endured. Gösta could see the fear in the young girls’ faces. Were they next? Was the person who had kidnapped Victoria still in the area? He decided to give it a while before talking to them. He would wait until the group had dispersed and they began heading for home.

  With blank expressions Markus and Helena moved among the mourners to exchange a few words with everyone. Ricky stayed a short distance away, wanting to keep to himself. Some of Victoria’s friends went over to him, but they seemed to get only one-syllable responses and eventually they left him in peace.

  Suddenly Ricky looked up and met Gösta’s eye. He hesitated for a moment but then came over to the two officers.

  ‘I need to talk to you,’ he said in a low voice to Gösta. ‘Someplace where no one can hear us.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Gösta. ‘Is it okay if my colleague Martin comes too?’

  Ricky nodded and led the way to the far corner of the cemetery.

  ‘There’s something I have to tell you,’ he began, kicking at the ground with his shoe. The powdery snow whirled up around them and then settled back down like glitter. ‘It’s something I should have told you long ago.’

  Gösta and Martin exchanged glances.

  ‘Victoria and I never had any secrets from each other. Never ever. It’s hard to explain, because we always stuck together, but all of a sudden I had a feeling she was keeping something from me. She was pulling away, and that made me worried. I tried to talk to her, but she was avoiding me more and more. Then … then I worked out what it was all about.’

  ‘And what was it?’ asked Gösta.

  ‘Victoria and Jonas.’ Ricky swallowed hard. He had tears in his eyes, and it looked as if it was causing him physical pain to say the words.

  ‘What do you mean, Victoria and Jonas?’

  ‘They were together,’ said Ricky.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘No, not a hundred per cent. But all the signs were there. And yesterday I met Victoria’s best friend Tyra, and she told me she suspected something too.’

  ‘Okay, but if that’s true, then why do you think she didn’t tell you about Jonas?’

  ‘I don’t know. Or rather, yes, I do. I think she was embarrassed. She knew I would think it was wrong, but she shouldn’t have been ashamed for my sake. Nothing she did would ever have changed how I thought of her.’

  ‘How long do you think the relationship had been going on?’ asked Martin.

  Ricky shook his head. He wasn’t wearing a hat, and his ears were red from the cold.

  ‘I don’t know. But it was sometime before summer that I started feeling like she was a little … different.’

  ‘In what way was she different?’ Gösta wiggled his toes inside his shoes. They were starting to go numb from the cold.

  Ricky paused to think. ‘There was something secretive about her that I’d never noticed before. Sometimes she’d be gone for a couple of hours, and if I asked her where she’d been, she’d tell me it was none of my business. She’d never done that before. And she seemed both happy and … I don’t know how to describe it, but happy and depressed at the same time. Her mood could change in an instant, shifting up and down. Maybe because she was a teenager, but I think there was some other reason too.’ When he said that, he sounded so sensible that Gösta had to remind himself Ricky was only eighteen.

  ‘So you suspected she was having a relationship with someone?’ queried Martin.

  ‘Yes, I did. But it never occurred to me it might be Jonas. Good Lord, he’s … ancient! Plus he’s married.’

  Gösta felt a smile tugging at his lips. If Jonas, who was in his forties, was considered ancient, then he must be practically a fossil in Ricky’s eyes.

  Ricky wiped away a tear that had spilled down his cheek.

  ‘I was so angry when I found out about it. He’s almost a … paedophile.’

  Gösta shook his head. ‘In principle I agree with you, but the legal age is fifteen. How it should be regarded from a moral point of view is another story.’ He mulled over what Ricky had just told them. ‘So how did you find out they were having a relationship?’

  ‘Like I said, I had a feeling that Victoria was with someone, and she didn’t think my parents and I would approve.’ Ricky hesitated. ‘But I didn’t know who it was, and she refused to tell me when I asked. That was so unlike her, because we always shared everything. Then one day I went over to the riding school to fetch her, and I saw them having a quarrel. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I understood at once. I ran over and yelled to her that finally I understood everything and I thought it was disgusting. But she yelled back that I didn’t understand a thing, and I was an idiot. Then she rushed off. Jonas just stood there, looking like a fool, and I was so furious that I really let him have it.’

  ‘Did anyone hear you?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. The older girls had gone out riding with the younger ones, and Marta was giving Molly a lesson out in the paddock.’

  ‘Did Jonas admit to anything?’ Gösta could feel anger surging inside of him too.

  ‘No, not a thing. He just tried to calm me down, and he kept on saying that it wasn’t true, that he’d never touched Victoria, that I was simply imagining things. What bullshit! Then his mobile rang and he said he had to leave. But I’m sure it was just an excuse because he didn’t want to talk to me any more.’

  ‘So you didn’t believe him?’ Gösta’s toes were now completely frozen. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Markus looking their way, no doubt wondering why they were talking to his son.

  ‘Of course not!’ Ricky spat out the words. ‘He was totally calm, but I could tell from the way they’d been arguing that it was about something personal. And Victoria’s reaction confirmed it.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us about this before?’ asked Martin.

  ‘I don’t know. Everything was so chaotic. Victoria never came home that night, and when we realized that she’d disappeared on her way home from the stable, we phoned the police. The worst thing was that I knew it was my fault! If I hadn’t yelled at her and started quarrelling with Jonas, if I’d driven her home as planned, she wouldn’t have been picked up by some fucking psychopath. Besides, I didn’t want my parents to find out about her relationship with Jonas. They were already so worried, and I didn’t want them to be subjected to a bunch of scandalous articles. Especially since I’d convinced myself that Victoria would eventually come back home. And since I hadn’t told you about this right from the start, it got harder to do it later on. I’ve had such a guilty conscience and …’ Tears poured out, and Gösta instinctively stepped forward to put his arm around Ricky.

  ‘Hush. It’s okay. And it’s not your fault. Don’t think it is. Nobody is blaming you. You wanted to protect your family, and we understand that. It’s not your fault.’ After a moment the tension seeped out of the boy’s body, and he stopped crying.

  Ricky looked up at Gösta.

  ‘Somebody else knew about this,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I found some strange letters in Victoria’s room. A bunch of drivel about God and sinners and burning in hell.’

  ‘Do you still have the
letters?’ asked Gösta, holding his breath.

  Ricky shook his head.

  ‘No, I threw them out. I … I thought they were so awful, and I was afraid my parents would find them. They would have been really upset. So I threw the letters in the rubbish. Was that a stupid thing to do?’

  Gösta patted his shoulder. ‘What’s done is done. But where in her room did you find them? And can you try to recall the exact wording?’

  ‘I went through all her things after she disappeared. Before you came over to search her room. I thought I might find something about Jonas. The letters were in the back of one of the desk drawers. I don’t remember everything they said. Just a few lines that sounded like Bible quotes. With words like “sinners” and “harlots” and things like that.’

  ‘And you assumed they were referring to Victoria’s relationship with Jonas?’ asked Martin.

  ‘Yes. That seemed the most likely. Someone who knew about it and wanted to … scare her.’

  ‘And you have no idea who might have sent those letters?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Okay. Thank you for telling us about this. That was the right thing to do,’ said Gösta. ‘You’d better go and join your parents now. They’re probably wondering what we’ve been talking about all this time.’

  Ricky didn’t reply. He merely bowed his head and with heavy steps headed back towards the church.

  By the time Patrik came home, it had already been dark for hours. As soon as he stepped in the door, he noticed a delicious aroma coming from the kitchen. It smelled as if Erica had made something extra special for Saturday dinner. He was guessing it was her pork casserole with blue cheese and potato wedges, which was one of his favourite dishes. He hurried into the kitchen.

  ‘I hope you’re hungry,’ said Erica, putting her arms around her husband.

  They hugged each other for a few moments, and then he went over to the cooker and lifted the lid of the turquoise Le Creuset pot, which she only used on special occasions. He’d guessed right. Slices of pork were simmering in a wonderful cream sauce, and in the oven the potatoes were turning a crispy golden brown. He saw also that she’d made a salad in a big bowl, a special blend of spinach, tomatoes, parmesan cheese, and pine nuts, mixed with the herb dressing he loved.