The Ice Child Page 37

  It occurred to Erica that Patrik and his colleagues might have already found Molly and Marta, but she thought it was unlikely. If they had, he would have phoned to give her at least a brief report. She was certain of that. But where could they be?

  She passed the north entrance to Fjällbacka via Mörhult and braked as she entered the sharp curve where the road headed down towards the row of newly built boathouses. It would be asking for trouble to drive this section at full speed. Again and again her thoughts returned to Laila’s account of that horrifying day and what took place in that house in its remote location. It had been a House of Horrors even before people began calling it that, before anyone knew the truth.

  Erica stomped on the brakes. Her car skidded and her heart pounded as she fought to keep control. Then she slapped her hand on the steering wheel. How could she be so stupid? She accelerated past the Richter Hotel and the restaurant in the old tinned goods factory. She had to restrain herself from racing like a madwoman through Fjällbacka’s narrow streets. Only when she reached the other side of town did she dare to increase her speed, but only as fast as the icy conditions would permit.

  Keeping her eyes fixed on the road, she again tried to ring Patrik. No answer. She tried both Gösta and Martin, but without success. They were probably busy with something, and she wished she knew what it was. After a moment of hesitation, she again tapped in Patrik’s number and then left a message on his voicemail, telling him as briefly as she could what she’d found out and where she was headed. He would probably be cross, but she had no choice. If she was right but failed to do anything, the consequences might be disastrous. And she would be very careful. She’d learned a few things over the years, after all. She had her children to think of, so she wasn’t about to take any risks.

  She parked a short distance away so the car engine wouldn’t be heard and then sneaked over to the house. It looked completely abandoned, but there were fresh tyre tracks in the snow, so someone must have been here recently. As quietly as she could, she opened the front door, all her senses on alert. At first she heard nothing, but then she became aware of a faint sound. It seemed to be coming from below, and it sounded like someone was calling for help.

  All thoughts of proceeding cautiously instantly vanished. She dashed towards the cellar door and tore it open.

  ‘Hello? Who’s there?’ Erica heard the panic in what sounded like an elderly woman’s voice. Frantically she tried to recall where the light switch was located.

  ‘It’s Erica Falck,’ she called. ‘Who’s down there?’

  ‘It’s me,’ she heard, and assumed it had to be Molly. ‘Me and my grandmother.’

  ‘Stay calm. I’m just trying to find a light switch,’ Erica told her, silently cursing until she finally found it. As she touched the switch, she prayed that the electricity was still working. Then she automatically squinted her eyes in the glare. Down below she could see two figures huddled next to the wall, both of them holding up their hands to shade their eyes.

  ‘Good Lord,’ said Erica, racing down the steep stairs. She went straight over to Molly, who sobbed as she clung to her. Erica let the girl cry on her shoulder for a moment before she gently pulled away.

  ‘What’s going on here? Where are your parents?’

  ‘I don’t know. Everything is so strange,’ Molly said, her teeth chattering.

  Erica looked at the shackles fastened to the rough chain. She felt the same horror she’d felt the first time she was in this basement. It was the same chain from so many years ago, the chain used to fetter Louise. Erica turned to the elderly woman and gave her a kind look. Her face was dirty, making all the wrinkles look even deeper.

  ‘Do you know if there are any keys so I can get you loose?’

  ‘My key is over there.’ Helga pointed to a bench standing next to the opposite wall. ‘If you unchain me, I can help you look for Molly’s key. It’s not the same as mine, and I didn’t see what happened to it.’

  Erica was impressed that the old woman was so calm. She got up to get the key. Behind her Molly was sobbing uncontrollably, muttering things she couldn’t understand. With the key in her hand, Erica came back to kneel beside Helga.

  ‘What happened? Where are Jonas and Marta? Are they the ones who chained you up? Good Lord, how could anyone do that to their own child?’

  She chattered nervously as she fumbled with the lock. But then she stopped herself from saying anything more. She was talking about Molly’s mother and father. No matter what they’d done, they were still her parents.

  ‘Don’t worry. The police will catch them,’ she said quietly. ‘What your son has done to you and Molly is terrible, but I promise you he’ll be caught and put in prison. I know enough to guarantee that he and his wife will never be released.’

  The lock opened, and Erica stood up to brush off her knees. Then she reached out her hand to help the elderly woman to her feet.

  ‘Let’s try to find the other key,’ she said.

  Molly’s grandmother looked at her with an expression that she couldn’t read. Suddenly Erica felt uneasiness churn in her stomach. After a moment of eerie silence, Helga tilted her head to one side and said calmly:

  ‘Jonas is my son. I’m afraid I can’t allow you to destroy his life.’

  With unexpected swiftness, she bent down to pick up a shovel that lay on the floor. She raised it overhead, and the last thing Erica heard was Molly’s shrill scream echoing off the walls. Then everything went black.

  It was a strange feeling to return to the farm after all the hours they’d spent there last night in the glare of the spotlights, which had revealed things that no human being should have to see. A quiet calm had descended over the property. The horses had all been caught, but instead of coming back here, they were being cared for by neighbours on nearby farms. Since the owners were missing, the police had had no other choice.

  ‘In light of what we now know, maybe we should have stationed someone here to keep watch,’ said Gösta as they crossed the deserted yard.

  ‘My view exactly,’ said Mellberg.

  Patrik nodded. In hindsight it was always easy to see the obvious, and Gösta was right. Fresh tyre tracks led to Einar and Helga’s house and then away. But there were no tyre tracks or footprints outside Jonas and Marta’s house. Maybe they’d thought someone was still there, watching their house. Patrik felt his uneasiness growing. The theory unfolding before them was so inconceivable that it was impossible to know what might happen next.

  Martin opened the front door and went in.

  They didn’t say a word as they cautiously took a look around. The whole house had an empty air to it, telling Patrik that everyone who could had left. That would be their next problem: trying to locate the four people who had disappeared, some of them voluntarily, some of them not. Hopefully they were all still alive, but he had his doubts.

  ‘Okay. Martin and I will go upstairs,’ he said. ‘Bertil, you and Gösta stay here, just in case somebody turns up.’

  With every step he took, Patrik became more convinced that something was terribly wrong. His whole psyche seemed to be warning him of what they would encounter upstairs. But his feet kept going.

  ‘Shhh,’ he said, holding out his arm to stop Martin from moving past him. ‘Better to be safe than sorry.’

  He got out his service weapon and took off the safety. Martin did the same. With guns raised, they crept the rest of the way up the stairs. The first rooms along the hall were empty, so they headed for the bedroom at the far end.

  ‘Oh, my God.’ Patrik lowered his gun. His brain registered what he was seeing, but he still couldn’t take it in.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Martin from behind him. Then he backed away, and Patrik could hear him throwing up in the hall.

  ‘We won’t go in,’ said Patrik. He had stopped on the threshold and was now surveying the macabre scene in front of him. Einar was partially reclining in bed. The stumps of his legs lay on top of the covers, and his arms lay
limply at his sides. A syringe lay next to his left arm, and Patrik guessed that it contained ketamine. His eye sockets were empty and bloody. It looked as if the procedure had been done in haste, since the acid had spilled out and etched furrows on his cheeks and chest. Blood had run out of his ears, and his mouth was a sticky red grimace.

  To the left of the bed, the TV was on, and only now did Patrik notice what was on the screen. Mutely he pointed at the images, hearing Martin swallow hard behind him.

  ‘What the hell is that?’ he whispered.

  ‘I think we’ve found some of the videos that were missing from the barn.’

  HAMBURGSUND 1981

  She was sick and tired of all their questions. Berit and Tony were always asking her how she felt and if she was sad. She didn’t know how to answer, didn’t know what they wanted to hear. So she kept quiet.

  And she stayed calm. In spite of all the hours she’d spent in the cellar when she was forced to eat from a bowl like a dog, she had always known that her mother and father would protect her. But Berit and Tony would not. They might send her away if she didn’t behave, and she wanted to stay here. Not because she was happy with the Wallanders on their farm, but because she wanted to be with Tess.

  They had taken to each other from the very first moment. They were so alike. And she had learned so much from Tess. For six years now she had lived on the farm, and sometimes it had been hard to control her rage. She longed to see pain in someone else’s eyes, and she missed the sense of power that she’d had, but with Tess’s help she’d learned how to rein in her impulses and hide beneath a shell of normality.

  Whenever their longing grew too great, they would turn to the animals. But they always made sure that the injuries they inflicted looked as if they’d been caused by something else. Berit and Tony never suspected. They simply bemoaned their bad luck. And they never realized that she and Tess had kept watch over the sick cow because they enjoyed seeing the animal’s torment as the light in her eyes was slowly extinguished. Their foster parents were so stupid and naive.

  Tess was much better than she was at fitting in and not drawing attention. At night she would whisper about fire, about the all-encompassing euphoria of watching something burn. She said she could hold that desire in her hand and crush it so hard that there would be no risk of ever being caught if she let it out.

  The nights were what she liked most. Ever since the beginning, she and Tess had slept in the same bed. At first for the feeling of warmth and security, but gradually something else had crept in. A trembling took over their bodies as their skin touched under the covers. Cautiously they had started to explore each other, running their fingertips over unfamiliar shapes until they knew every millimetre of each other’s bodies.

  She didn’t know how to describe the feeling. Was it love? She had never loved anyone, or hated anyone either. Her mother probably thought she did, but it wasn’t true. She didn’t feel hatred, just an indifference towards things that other people seemed to think were important in life. But Tess knew how to hate. Sometimes she would see the hatred blazing in her eyes and hear the contempt in her voice when she talked about people who had treated them badly. Tess asked a lot of questions. About her father and mother and little brother. And about her grandmother. After her grandmother came to visit, Tess talked about her for weeks, wondering whether she was someone who deserved to be punished. She couldn’t understand Tess’s anger. She didn’t hate anyone in her family, she simply had no feelings for them whatsoever. They had ceased to exist the moment she came to stay with Tony and Berit. They were her past. Tess was her future.

  There was only one thing she wanted to remember about her old life: the stories her father had told about the circus. All the names, all the towns and countries, all the animals and tricks, the way the circus had smelled and sounded, all the colours that had made it into a magical fireworks show. Tess loved to listen to the stories. She wanted to hear them again every evening, and she would always ask questions about the people in the circus, about how they lived, what they said, and then she would listen breathlessly to the answers.

  The more they got to know each other’s bodies, the more she wanted to tell Tess. She wanted to make her happy, and her father’s stories were something she could offer.

  Her entire existence now revolved around Tess, and she realized more and more that she had behaved like an animal. Tess explained how everything functioned in daily life. They should never appear weak or allow themselves to be governed by what was inside of them. They had to learn to wait until the right moment; they had to teach themselves self-control. It was difficult, but she kept on practising, and her reward was being able to crawl into Tess’s arms every night and feel her warmth spread through her own body, feel her fingers on her skin, her breath in her hair.

  Tess was everything. Tess was the whole world.

  Chapter Fifteen

  They stood in the cold of the yard, breathing in as much fresh air as they could. Torbjörn was inside the house. Patrik had phoned him as he kept his eyes fixed on the TV screen. Then he’d forced himself to remain in the doorway and watch the video.

  ‘How long do you think he was doing it?’ asked Martin now.

  ‘We’ll have to go through all the videos and match them up with any reported disappearances. But it looks like they go way back in time. Maybe we’ll be able to tell based on Jonas’s age in the videos.’

  ‘My God. To think he forced his own son to watch and then filmed the whole thing. Do you think he made his son participate too?’

  ‘It didn’t look like it, but maybe there’s more on the other videos. If nothing else, Jonas seems to have repeated the crimes later on.’

  ‘And with Marta’s help,’ said Martin, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘What sick people they are.’

  ‘I never even imagined that she was involved in all this,’ said Patrik. ‘But if it’s true, I’m even more worried about Molly. Would they harm their own child?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ said Martin. ‘You know what? I always thought I knew a lot about my fellow human beings, but this proves that I know absolutely nothing. Under normal circumstances, I would say they’d never hurt her, but I don’t think we can expect these people to behave in accordance with any rules whatsoever.’

  Patrik knew that they were both picturing the same images in their minds. Those grainy films, with all sorts of breaks and flickers, transferred to DVDs but recorded with old equipment. Einar was tall and strong, even handsome. He was in the room under the barn, which was almost impossible to find unless someone was actually looking for it, and no one had thought of doing that for all these years. What he’d done to those girls, whose names the police didn’t yet know, was beyond description, as were his eyes when he looked into the camera. The girls screamed as he calmly instructed his son on the best angles to film. Sometimes Einar would take the camera and turn it towards Jonas. Back then he was a gangly teenager, though Patrik surmised that they would see him grow older in later videos. And on one occasion they saw a young Marta.

  But what had made Jonas carry on his father’s odious deeds? When had that happened? And how had Marta been dragged into the world of horror that the father and son had created? If they were never found, the police might never obtain a clear picture of what went on. He wondered what Helga had known about all this. And where was she now?

  He got out his mobile and glanced at the display. Three missed calls from Erica and a voice message. Filled with an awful sense of foreboding, he tapped the voicemail icon and listened. Then he swore so loudly that Martin jumped.

  ‘Get Gösta. I think I know where they are. And Erica is already there.’

  Patrik ran for his car. Martin followed as he shouted to Gösta, who had gone around to the back of the house to take a piss.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Gösta came running towards them.

  ‘Marta is Louise!’ Patrik yelled over his shoulder.

  ‘Who?’

  Patrik yanke
d open the door on the driver’s side. Martin and Gösta got in the car.

  ‘Erica went to see Laila this morning. Marta is Louise, the little girl who was chained up in her parents’ cellar. Everyone thought she died in a drowning accident, but she didn’t. I don’t know any more of the details, but if Erica says it’s true, then it probably is. She thinks that Marta and Molly are in the house that belonged to Marta’s parents. And she’s gone over there to find out, so we need to get there fast!’

  He turned the key in the ignition, stomped on the accelerator, and pulled out of the yard. Martin stared at Patrik in bewilderment, but he didn’t care.

  ‘You stupid, stupid woman,’ Patrik snarled between clenched teeth. ‘Sorry, sweetheart,’ he then added. He didn’t mean to swear at his beloved wife, but fear was making him furious.

  ‘Watch out!’ shouted Gösta as the car skidded.

  Patrik forced himself to slow down even though he wanted to floor the accelerator. Terror was eating away at him like a wild animal.

  ‘Shouldn’t we tell Bertil where we’re headed?’ said Martin.

  Patrik swore. He’d forgotten that Mellberg was back at the farm. He’d gone inside with Torbjörn to ‘assist with the technical inspection’. Right now he was no doubt driving Torbjörn and his team mad.

  ‘Right. Go ahead and ring him,’ said Patrik without taking his eyes off the road.

  Martin phoned Mellberg, and after a few remarks, he ended the conversation.

  ‘He says he’ll be right behind us.’