Cinderella Girl (10 page)

With a gesture she stopped them and then, as carefully as she could, walked over the still dew-wet grass and up to the bushes. Instinctively she felt Holgersson’s eyes on her back. Or that vicinity; she was quite sure where he was looking. Form-fitting sports leggings were not her garment of choice in Holgersson’s company.

‘He was lying in here,’ said Petra, managing with a single tug to get the pram insert out of the bushes.

Then they went over to the turning area where the pram was. Now she saw that it was damaged. One of the wheels was crooked and the steel frame was buckled on one side. She carefully set the insert on top of the frame and let the two cloth handles fall down on the little bed.

‘These must belong together,’ said Petra. ‘They match, even if the pram itself looks a little battered. We’ll have to cordon off a pretty big area,’ she said, sweeping with her hand in the direction of the bushes, twenty-something yards away.

Yet another police car showed up, and Holgersson ordered the two policemen who got out of the car to start fencing off the area. Petra told them about her macabre discovery and then took another look on her own around the discovery site, trying to think through the situation. Only now did she feel the throbbing in the scratches on
her legs. She glanced down and realized that she would have to throw away the expensive Nike leggings.

Someone must be missing the child, she thought. Someone must be completely desperate right now, chasing around searching for the blue pram with white dots. We have to find the boy’s parents. But then it struck her: that’s not my job. I’m just a witness; I ought to leave and head home.

She went back over to the turning area. The barrier was almost ready now. Out of habit, she took a look in the bin she passed as she came out on to the path again. Nothing special. It was not her job to root in bins and look for tracks in the grass. Staaf and Holgersson and their colleagues could take care of that.

‘I’m taking off now!’ she called to Staaf, who was standing further down on the hill. ‘You know where to reach me. The woman at number 10 knows you’re coming. Good luck.’

‘Thanks. We’ll be in touch,’ Staaf answered, raising his hand in farewell.

A little further away, Holgersson was standing on the lawn, looking after her with a smile that was hard to interpret. With a slight shiver, she turned around and started walking towards the allotments. Without really knowing why, she stopped by a municipal sand box, containing sand to grit icy roads, that was behind a fence she passed. She went to the gate, opened it and walked over to the sand box. She pulled the end of the sleeve of her hoodie down over her fingers and, with the cloth between her hand and the plastic, cracked open the heavy lid. She remained standing like that for a few seconds before she let the lid down with a bang.

‘Holgersson! Staaf!’ Petra Westman shouted. ‘You’ll have to expand the cordoned-off area. I think I found the mother.’

At quarter to six Sjöberg woke up, even though he really could have slept as long as he wanted. You’re getting old, he thought, before the memories of the night before washed over him. The first thing that struck him, strangely enough, was a sense of well-being. The subdued lighting and convivial glow of Saturday evening still rested like a filter over his thoughts. He was even smiling to himself at the memory of Margit’s warm embrace and the smell of her hair. When she looked at him with those honest, open, understanding eyes he was intoxicated; it made him feel at home somehow.

‘At home?’ he said out loud to himself.

What did that mean – at home? At home; that was here, of course, with Åsa. And then came the guilty conscience. But not completely. Not the way it should have. It should have hit him like the kick of a horse in his gut, but instead it slipped past him like a cat and settled down quietly in a corner of his awareness.

The hangover he should have had was almost non-existent. He went barefoot out to the hall and retrieved
Dagens Nyheter
, Sweden’s daily newspaper. Then he stopped into the kitchen where, just in case the hangover made itself known, he drank three glasses of water, and found a pen. Instead of sleeping for those extra hours, he lay down in bed again and managed to solve almost all of the Sunday crossword. When it was almost
quarter to seven he got up and prepared to drive out to Huddinge Hospital.

His mother had improved considerably and the X-ray images did not show any serious consequences from having broken her ribs. Sjöberg drove her home to Bollmora and helped her up to her apartment, which was on the second floor. After taking cups down from the cupboard above the kitchen counter, his mother made coffee, while Sjöberg looked for a binder on the bookshelf in the bedroom. When he found it he sat down at the kitchen table to help her pay the month’s bills. He flipped back and forth through the papers, in search of the right plastic folder. Suddenly his eyes fell on something he hadn’t seen before.

‘What’s this? Björskogsnäs 4:14. It’s a title deed for a piece of property. Do you own a piece of land?’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ his mother answered guardedly, not turning towards him.

She picked up the coffee pot and started pouring coffee for them both.

‘Would you like some milk? It’s good for your stomach.’

‘I don’t have any problems with my stomach, Mum. Why do you have this land? Where is it?’

‘It must be something left behind after Dad. It’s nothing.’

‘Mother, of course it’s something. It’s a bit of property. Where is Björskogsnäs?’

‘I’m so bad at geography, you know. I really have no idea.’

She was still standing with her back to him, so he stood up and went over to the counter to look her in the eyes.

‘Are you lying to me?’ he asked.

‘Lying! Pah!’ she said simply, carrying the cups to the kitchen table.

She set them down, directed her attention to the binder instead, turned a few pages ahead and then said, ‘Here are the bills. The chequebook and envelopes are on the bookshelf.’

Sjöberg did not understand. Other than that it was pointless to try to talk to his mother about something she did not want to talk about. He drank his coffee and looked out of the kitchen window at the cloudy grey sky while she wrote her cheques. Finally, after Sjöberg had checked through the bills and cheques one more time, she put them in their envelopes and sealed them. Sjöberg understood that he really had no right to root in his mother’s business. If she wanted to have a secret property, she was perfectly entitled to. But yet – he just could not leave the subject like that. So much in their life together had remained unspoken and unexamined. He felt dissatisfied with all the evasive manoeuvres, with his mother’s way of constantly navigating away from troublesome topics of conversation, always flinching from what wasn’t simple.

‘So, was it something he inherited?’ Sjöberg persisted. ‘Did Dad inherit the property from Grandma and Grandpa?’

‘I don’t know, I’m telling you! Now let’s just forget about it!’

His mother did not often raise her voice. It was best to shelve the matter. And pretend nothing had happened, in the customary Sjöbergian manner.

‘I’ll go to the supermarket for you, Mum. What do you need?’

They made a shopping list together. An easy task that did not involve any discussions.

Hanna opened her eyes and discovered that she could not breathe. She did not know where she was. Terrified, she started to wave her arms. Then she remembered she was still in the bathtub. She slid up into a sitting position, coughing and spluttering, and finally managed to take a deep breath again. She knew of course that you couldn’t sleep in the tub. When she had calmed down she stood up. Her whole body ached; it hurt almost everywhere. She moved slowly and carefully now; she did not want to do more damage to herself. Remembered that she was going to wash her hair, but did not have the energy. Had to sleep now.

She climbed over the edge of the tub and reached for a towel, moving at a snail’s pace. She dried her whole body softly and carefully, almost dabbing it. Then she dropped the towel on the floor and staggered into her parents’ bedroom. She could not see clearly but, squinting through one eye, she managed to focus on the covers on the armchair. She took hold of one of them and pulled it with her over to the bed. Crawled up, thought there ought to be a sheet, before she pulled the cover over herself and fell asleep again.

* * *

‘Conny, it’s Petra.’

Sjöberg was at the Ica supermarket with a trolley full of shopping.

‘Listen, something’s happened here. You probably need to come in.’

‘I thought you were off today.’

‘I thought so too. I was out jogging this morning – in
Vitabergsparken. I found a baby pram insert in some bushes, pulled it out and in the insert there was a little baby. There was a baby in the bushes! I didn’t know whether he was alive or dead. I ran with him to a house and tried to bring him back to life. Then the ambulance came.’

‘Oh, shit. Do you know how he’s doing now?’

‘No, I haven’t had time to find out. I helped the patrol officers fence the area off – it was Holgersson and Staaf and a few others.’

‘Good,’ said Sjöberg. ‘They’ll be sure to contact the boy’s parents. Someone must be missing him.’

‘Conny, that’s just it. I’d finished here and was just going home –’

‘Yes?’

‘You know how curious I am, and I couldn’t resist opening the lid of one of those municipal sand boxes as I went past –’

‘And?’

‘There was a woman lying there. The body of a woman. I don’t know for sure, but I assume it’s the mother.’

There was silence for a few moments. Then Sjöberg continued matter-of-factly, ‘How did she die?’

‘Her skull was completely crushed. Someone put her in that box. I don’t think this is a case for patrol officers.’

‘Where are you now, Petra?’

‘I’m still in Vita Bergen.’

‘What’s going on?’

‘They’ve photographed the discovery site, and they’re in the process of photographing the rest now. I called Bella, and a few of her men have already started combing through the area. She’s on her way here from a tennis court
somewhere. The medical examiner is also on his way. We’ve cordoned off a large part of the park. I’m going to call the hospital and check the boy’s condition. Just hope he’s not dead too … Poor, poor baby. We need to take this over now.’

‘It looks like you’ve already done that. Good work, Petra. Call in Einar, Jamal and Sandén. It helps if everyone has seen the crime scene. I’ll talk to the police commissioner. We’ll contact the prosecutor’s office later. I’m out in Bollmora right now. I’ll be there within an hour.’

‘The reporters, Conny. What should I do with them? They’re already here. This is going to be on the news this afternoon.’

‘Just take it easy. Say that we found the body of a woman, but we don’t know more than that. Let them take their pictures. They don’t know about the child?’

‘No, they don’t seem to.’

‘Good. We’ll leave it like that.’

Sjöberg put his mobile phone back in the inside pocket of his jacket. He paid for the shopping and walked quickly back to his mother’s apartment. After helping her put away the groceries, he said a quick goodbye, got in the car and drove in towards town. Momentarily incapable of focusing, he let his thoughts flutter between sand boxes and Margit Olofsson, mysterious land titles and abandoned infants.

* * *

‘Yes, I saw her in the bar.’

The bartender Juha Lehto held the photographs he’d been given by Nieminen, who sat opposite him, studying
the bartender over his glasses. The interview was being conducted in swivel chairs at a window table in the dance hall on the upper deck. At tables around them staff and passengers were being questioned by other police officers. All of the almost two thousand people on board would be questioned before those disembarking in Åbo would be allowed off and the ferry could return to Stockholm.

‘Are you sure it was her?’ asked Nieminen.

‘Yes, I recognize the jacket,’ said Lehto, pointing at the picture the crime scene photographer had taken a few hours earlier. ‘I recognize the face too. She was very pretty.’

He said this with a gesture towards the other photo, a copy of her ID card.

‘What time was this?’

‘I would say it was nine, maybe nine-thirty. There were very few people in the bar.’

‘Was she alone?’

‘No, she was in the company of an older man. He may have been somewhere between fifty and sixty. Although I don’t think they were together actually. At first I thought so, because they came in at the same time and he ordered for both of them.’

‘What did he order?’

‘Beer, I think. But he wasn’t very nice to her. She seemed upset.’

‘Did you hear what they were talking about?’

‘No, but he took her roughly by the arm and looked angry. Or mean rather. I was just about to say something to him when another man came up that she seemed to know and stood between them. She went and sat with him at a table right next to the bar.’

Lehto pointed towards a table at the other end.

‘Over there, just to the left of the bar. There were two Finnish men sitting there together. Well-dressed, in suits. It looked like they were working, but they stopped when the girl sat down with them.’

‘The man at the bar, then, the unpleasant one – was he Finnish too?’ asked Nieminen.

The bartender hesitated for a moment before he answered.

‘No, he was Swedish,’ he said. ‘He had no accent, as far as I could tell. He just got up and left when the girl had gone.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘Ordinary. Nothing special about him that I noticed. Other than that he had an aggressive attitude, like I said.’

‘This man, do you recognize him?’

Nieminen showed the bartender another photograph – the picture they had taken of Joakim earlier in the morning.

‘No, I don’t think so,’ answered Lehto. ‘Should I?’

‘He was sitting at one of those tables at about the same time and said he saw her together with the two Finnish men. He said he ordered a beer.’

‘It was probably from my colleague who was waiting tables. We take table orders sometimes when there aren’t many customers. I don’t remember him anyway.’

‘Do you think you’d be able to point out those men we were talking about?’

‘Doubtful. Not the guys in suits anyway. Possibly the one at the bar, but I don’t know.’

Nieminen let the bartender return to his work and made yet another note on his pad before he called the next man.

Joakim was in the breakfast lounge, absentmindedly toying with a rye roll with liver pâté. The mood on the boat was subdued, the conversations at the tables around him quiet. He felt completely empty inside. He needed to eat, but the very sight of the sandwich turned his stomach. He looked at the seagulls diving through the rain-soaked air outside the windows, but he did not see them. At the same table as him, but a few seats further away, a Finnish father sat with two boys about ten years old playing cards. The chair across from him was pulled out and someone sat down, but he took no notice of that either. Instead, he continued his listless staring out the window. Until a voice mercilessly roused him from his musings.

‘Well, that put a real damper on this trip, wouldn’t you say?’

Joakim turned and looked blankly at the all-too-familiar face without answering. At first he was struck by a sense of unreality. It could not be true, not this too. He could not react, did not know how he should react, whether to be frightened or even relieved. Relieved at the domesticity of the situation, relieved in the security that the balance of terror was restored.

‘That was one pretty girl, by the way.’

Joakim could not get out a word.

‘Yeah, the one in the bog, I mean. The body. Although a little sluttish, in my opinion. She got in over her head, you might say.’

Only now did he hear, only now did he understand what he was seeing and hearing.

‘Dad, that was Jennifer. My Jennifer,’ he said quietly.