The Girl in the Woods (Patrik Hedstrom and Erica Falck, Book 10) Page 4

  Most of the best places were already taken by morning.

  ‘Fucking swimmers,’ he mumbled.

  He managed to find a sheltered cleft on the back side of Långskär Island.

  ‘Okay, we’re going to pull in here. Could you jump ashore with the mooring line?’

  Sam pointed to the rope lying on the deck in the bow of the boat.

  ‘Jump?’ said Jessie.

  Jumping was not something she ever did. And definitely not from a boat on to slippery rocks.

  ‘It’s not hard,’ said Sam calmly. ‘I’ll stop the boat right before we get there. Crouch down in the bow so you can jump ashore. It’ll be fine. Trust me.’

  Trust me. Was she even capable of such a thing? Trust someone? Trust Sam?

  Jessie took a deep breath, crawled forward to the bow, took a tight grip on the rope, and crouched down. As the island got closer, Sam slowed their approach, and they slid gently and quietly toward the rocks where they would moor. Much to her own surprise, Jessie leapt from the boat on to the rocks, landing lightly, and still holding the rope in her hand.

  She’d done it.

  It was their fourth trip to the Hedemyr department store in two days, but there wasn’t much else to do in Tanumshede. Khalil and Adnan sauntered around the top floor among all the clothing and accessories on display. In the beginning Adnan had a hard time dealing with all the looks levelled at them, and the suspicion. By now he’d accepted that they attracted attention. They didn’t look like Swedes or talk like Swedes or move like Swedes. He probably would have stared too if he’d seen a Swede in Syria.

  ‘What the hell are you looking at?’ snapped Adnan in Arabic, turning toward a woman in her seventies who was staring at them.

  No doubt she was keeping an eye on them to make sure they didn’t shoplift. Khalil could have told her that they would never take anything that didn’t belong to them. They wouldn’t dream of it. They weren’t brought up like that. But when she snorted and headed for the stairs to the ground floor, he realized it would be pointless.

  ‘What kind of people do they think we are? It’s always the same thing.’

  Adnan continued cursing in Arabic and waving his arms around so he almost knocked over a lamp on a nearby shelf.

  ‘Let them think whatever they like. They’ve probably never seen an Arab before,’ said Khalil.

  Finally he got Adnan to smile. Adnan was two years younger, only sixteen, and sometimes he still seemed like a boy. He couldn’t control his emotions; they controlled him.

  Khalil hadn’t felt like a boy for a long time now. Not since the day when the bomb killed his mother and little brothers. The mere thought of Bilal and Tariq brought tears to his eyes, and Khalil quickly blinked them away so Adnan wouldn’t notice. Bilal was always getting into mischief, but he was such a happy kid, it was hard to be mad at him. Tariq was always reading and filled with curiosity; he was the boy everyone said would be something great one day. In a split second they were gone. Their bodies were found in the kitchen, with their mother lying on top of the boys. She hadn’t been able to protect them.

  Clenching his fists, Khalil looked around, thinking about how his life was now. He spent his days in a small room in the refugee centre, or he roamed through the streets in this strange little town where they’d landed. Such a quiet and desolate place, lacking all smells and sounds and colours.

  The Swedes went about in their own world, barely even greeting one another, and they seemed almost frightened if anyone addressed them directly. They all spoke so quietly, without gesturing.

  Adnan and Khalil went downstairs and out into the summer heat. They paused on the pavement outside the department store. It was the same thing every day. So difficult to find anything to occupy their time. The walls of the refugee centre seemed to close in, as if trying to suffocate them. Khalil didn’t want to seem ungrateful. Here in Sweden he had a roof over his head and food in his belly. And he was safe. There were no bombs falling here. People lived without the threat of either soldiers or terrorists. Yet even in safety it was hard to live a life in limbo. Without a home, without anything to do, without purpose.

  This was not living. It was merely existing.

  Adnan sighed as he stood next to Khalil. In silence they headed back to the refugee centre.

  Eva stood as if frozen to the spot, hugging her arms around her torso. Peter kept rushing around. He’d searched everywhere at least four or five times, lifting up bedclothes, moving the same boxes, calling Nea’s name over and over. But Eva knew it was pointless. Nea wasn’t here. She could feel her absence in her body.

  She squinted her eyes, noticing a dot way off in the distance. A dot that got bigger and bigger, becoming a white splotch as it approached. Eva realized it must be the police. Soon she could clearly see the blue and yellow markings on the car, and a chasm opened inside her. Her daughter was missing. The police were here because Nea was missing. She’d been missing since this morning. Her brain struggled to take in the fact she’d been missing since the morning. How could they have been such bad parents not to notice their four-year-old had been gone all day?

  ‘Are you the one who called?’

  An older man with silver hair had got out the police car and now came over to her. She nodded mutely, and he reached out to shake her hand.

  ‘Gösta Flygare. And this is Bertil Mellberg.’

  An officer about the same age but significantly heavier shook her hand as well. He was sweating copiously and raised his arm to wipe his brow on his shirtsleeve.

  ‘Is your husband here?’ asked the thinner officer with greyer hair as he scanned the yard.

  ‘Peter!’ called Eva, alarmed at how weak her voice sounded.

  She tried again, and Peter came rushing out of the woods.

  ‘Have you found her?’ he shouted.

  Then he caught sight of the policemen and his heart sank.

  It all seemed so unreal to Eva. This couldn’t be happening. She expected to wake up at any second, relieved to find she’d simply been dreaming.

  ‘Why don’t we sit down and talk over a cup of coffee?’ said Gösta calmly as he touched Eva’s arm.

  ‘Of course. Come in. We’ll sit in the kitchen,’ she said as she led the way.

  Peter stayed where he was, standing in the middle of the farmyard, his long arms hanging limply at his sides. She knew he wanted to keep searching, but she couldn’t handle this conversation on her own.

  ‘Peter, come on.’

  With heavy steps he followed his wife and the police inside. Turning her back on the others, Eva began fiddling with the coffee machine, but she was very aware of the officers’ presence. Their uniforms seemed to fill the whole room.

  ‘Milk? Sugar?’ she asked them, and both nodded.

  She got out the milk and sugar as her husband stood in the doorway.

  ‘Sit down,’ she told him, a bit sharply, and he obeyed.

  As if on autopilot, she set the table with coffee mugs, spoons, and a packet of Ballerina biscuits she found in the cupboard. Nea loved Ballerina biscuits. The thought made Eva flinch, and she dropped a spoon on the floor. Gösta bent down to pick it up, but she beat him to it. She put the spoon in the sink and took a new one out of the silverware drawer.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be asking us questions?’ said Peter, keeping his gaze fixed on his hands. ‘She’s been missing since this morning, and every second counts.’

  ‘We’ll wait for your wife to sit down, and then we’ll start,’ said Gösta with a nod toward Eva.

  She poured coffee for all of them and sat down.

  ‘When did you last see the little girl?’ asked the fat officer as he reached for a biscuit.

  Eva felt a rush of anger. She’d put the biscuits on the table because it was expected when guests came over, but it infuriated her to see him munching on a chocolate biscuit as they answered questions about Nea.

  Eva took a deep breath, knowing she was being irrational.

  ‘Last night
. She went to bed at the usual time. She has her own bedroom, and I read her a good-night story and then turned off the light and closed the door.’

  ‘And you didn’t see her after that? She didn’t wake up during the night? Neither of you went to check on her? You didn’t hear anything?’

  Gösta’s voice was so gentle, she could almost ignore the fact that his colleague had helped himself to another biscuit.

  Peter cleared his throat.

  ‘No. She always sleeps through the night. I was the first one up this morning. I was going to drive the tractor over to the woods, so I just had a quick cup of coffee and a piece of toast. Then I left.’

  There was a pleading tone to his voice. As if there might be some answer to be found in what he’d said. Eva reached out to put her hand on his. It felt as cold as her own.

  ‘And you didn’t see Linnea at that time? In the morning?’

  Peter shook his head.

  ‘No, the door to her room was closed. I tiptoed past as quietly as I could so I wouldn’t wake her. I wanted Eva to be able to sleep a little longer.’

  She squeezed his hand. That was Peter in a nutshell. Always so considerate. Always thinking of her and Nea.

  ‘What about you, Eva? Tell us about your morning.’

  Gösta’s gentle voice made her feel like crying.

  ‘I woke up late, it was already half past nine. I can’t remember the last time I slept so late. The whole house was quiet, and the first thing I did was go to check on Nea. The door to her room was open, and her bed was unmade. She wasn’t there, so I just assumed …’

  Eva couldn’t hold back a sob. Peter placed his other hand on top of hers and gave it a squeeze.

  ‘I assumed she must have gone with Peter out to the woods. She loves doing that, and she often goes with him. So it wasn’t strange and I didn’t think for a second …’

  Eva could no longer hold back the tears. She reached up to wipe them away.

  ‘I would have assumed the same thing,’ said Peter, and again squeezed his wife’s hand.

  She knew he was right. And yet. If only she had …

  ‘Could she have gone to visit a friend?’ asked Gösta.

  Peter shook his head.

  ‘No, she always stays here on the farm. She has never even tried to go beyond our property.’

  ‘There’s always a first time,’ said the fat officer. He’d been sitting so quietly as he ate one biscuit after another that Eva practically jumped when he spoke. ‘Maybe she ran into the woods.’

  Gösta gave Bertil Mellberg a look that Eva couldn’t decipher.

  ‘We’ll organize a search party,’ he said.

  ‘Do you think that’s what happened? She got lost in the woods?’

  The woods went on forever. The very thought of Nea lost in there made Eva feel sick with apprehension. They had never worried such a thing might happen. And Nea had never gone off on her own. But maybe they’d been naive. Naive and irresponsible. Allowing a four-year-old girl to run free on the farm when it was right next to a big woods. Nea was lost, and it was all their fault.

  As if Gösta could read Eva’s mind, he said:

  ‘If she’s in the woods, we’ll find her. I’m going to make a few phone calls right now, and we’ll start the search in no time. We’ll have a search party organized within the hour, so we can make maximum use of the daylight.’

  ‘Will she make it through a night out there on her own?’ asked Peter in a toneless voice.

  His face was deathly pale.

  ‘The nights are still warm,’ Gösta assured him. ‘She’s not going to freeze, but we’ll do everything we can to find her before it gets dark.’

  ‘What was she wearing?’ asked Mellberg, reaching for the last biscuit on the plate.

  Gösta looked surprised.

  ‘That’s a good question. Do you know what clothes she had on when she disappeared? Even though you didn’t see her this morning, maybe you could check to see if any of her clothes are missing.’

  Eva nodded and stood up to go to Nea’s room. At last, here was something concrete she could contribute.

  But at the door to the bedroom she hesitated. She took several deep breaths before she could push it open. Everything looked exactly the same as always, which made it even more heartbreaking. The wallpaper with pink stars, with little pieces missing where Nea had picked at the paper. The teddy bears piled up at the end of the bed. The bedclothes decorated with pictures of Elsa from the film Frozen. The Olaf doll that always lay on the pillow. The hanger with … Eva stopped short. She knew exactly what Nea had on. To make sure she peeked inside the wardrobe and then looked around the room. No, she didn’t see it anywhere. She hurried back downstairs.

  ‘She’s wearing her Elsa dress.’

  ‘What does an Elsa dress look like?’ asked Gösta.

  ‘It’s a blue princess dress. With a picture of the princess on the front. Elsa, from Frozen. She loves Frozen. And she probably has on her Frozen knickers too.’

  Eva realized that things she took for granted, as the parent of a young child, might be completely foreign to someone else. She’d watched that film at least a hundred times. It was on twice a day, every day, year round. Nea loved it more than anything, and she could perform the whole ‘Let It Go’ scene. Eva forced back a sob. She could picture Nea so clearly as she whirled around wearing her blue dress and the long white gloves, dancing as she sang all the lyrics. Where was she? And why were they just sitting here?

  ‘I’ll go and make those phone calls. Then we’ll start the search,’ said Gösta, as if he’d heard her silent scream.

  All she could muster was a nod. She looked at Peter. Both of them were thinking the same dark thoughts.

  Bohuslän 1671

  It was an overcast November morning, and Elin Jonsdotter shivered as she sat next to her daughter in the clattering wagon. The vicarage, which they were gradually approaching, was beginning to look more like a castle compared with the little house where she and Per had lived in Oxnäs.

  Britta had been fortunate. That had always been true. As their father’s favourite, Elin’s little sister had received all manner of advantages during their childhood, and there had never been any doubt that she would find a good husband. And their father had been right. Britta had married the vicar and moved into the vicarage, while Elin had been forced to settle for Per the fisherman. But Elin had no complaints. Per might have been poor, but a kinder person could not be found on this earth.

  A heavy feeling settled in her chest at the thought of Per. But she gave herself a shake and plucked up her courage. There was no use shedding any more tears over something she could not change. God had wanted to test her, and now she and Märta would have to try to survive without Per.

  She had to admit, it had been most generous of Britta to offer her a position as a maid at the vicarage, as well as a roof over their heads. Even so, Elin felt a great sense of unease as Lars Larsson drove into the yard, their few possessions piled in the wagon. Britta had not been a particularly nice child, and Elin doubted that age would have made her any kinder. But she could ill afford to turn down the offer. As tenants in the coastal area they had merely leased the fields. When Per died, the farmer had said they could stay until the end of the month, but then they would have to leave. As a poor widow without a home or any means of support, she would have to rely on the good will of others. And she had heard that Britta’s husband Preben, who was the vicar in Tanumshede, was a pleasant and amiable man. She had seen him only at church services. She had not been invited to Britta’s wedding, and of course she and her family had never been invited to visit the vicarage. But she recalled that he had kind eyes.

  When the wagon came to a halt and Lars muttered that they should climb down, she pulled Märta close for a moment. Everything would be fine, she told herself. But a voice inside her was saying something else entirely.

  Chapter Four

  Martin gave the swing another push. He couldn’t help smilin
g at Tuva’s happy shriek.

  He was feeling better with every day that passed, and he realized this was largely due to his daughter Tuva. Right now she was on summer holiday from pre-school, and he had a couple of weeks off, so they were spending every second together. And it had done both of them a world of good. Ever since Pia died, Tuva had slept in his bed, and every night she fell asleep leaning against his chest, often in the middle of a story. He would slip out of bed when he was sure she was sleeping and go sit in front of the TV for another hour or two, drinking a cup of the calming tea he’d bought at a health-food shop. Annika was the one who had suggested in the wintertime he should try to find some soothing natural herb or supplement for those times when sleep evaded him. He didn’t know whether it was a placebo effect or the tea was actually working, but he’d been able to get some sleep. And maybe that’s what had made all the difference, enabling him to cope with the loss. It never went away entirely, but the edges had gradually worn smooth, and he could even allow himself to think of Pia without falling apart. He tried to tell Tuva about her mother. They would talk about her and look at photographs. Tuva was so young when Pia died that she had very few memories of her mother. He wanted to tell her as much about Pia as he could.

  ‘Pappa, push me higher!’

  Tuva shrieked with joy when he gave the swing an even harder push, and she soared higher.

  Her dark hair flew around her face and, as had happened so many times before, Martin was struck by how much the little girl looked like Pia. He got out his mobile to film her, backing up to get everything in the frame. When his heels bumped into something, he heard a loud cry. Startled, he glanced behind him and caught sight of a toddler who was screaming to high heaven as he held a sandy toy spade in his hand.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ said Martin, kneeling down to comfort the boy.

  He glanced around, but none of the other adults showed any sign of coming over, so he ruled them out as the kid’s parents.

  ‘Shhh, don’t worry, we’ll find your mamma and pappa,’ he consoled the toddler, who merely screamed even louder.