Cinderella Girl (24 page)

‘My password? Never.’

‘Your computer. Log in.’

While Petra logged into the computer he sat calmly, without trying to see what she typed.

‘There,’ said Petra. ‘I’m in.’

‘You maintain that your computer security is not compromised? That no one besides you could get into your computer?’

Petra nodded, but suddenly felt uncertain whether that was the right answer.

‘Go into your e-mail,’ Malmberg continued in a frosty voice.

Petra did as she was told without resisting. She had no obligation to accommodate him, but she wanted to get this whole thing over with.

‘At 11.58 p.m. on Friday you sent a provocative e-mail to Roland Brandt,’ said Malmberg, getting up from the chair and straightening his tie. ‘He is deeply offended and is going to take action. The fact that you were drunk might possibly be considered an extenuating circumstance. Or aggravating. We’ll get back to you when a decision has been made about whether drug treatment, suspension, transfer or termination will be necessary. Goodbye.’

The deputy police commissioner left the office with self-confident steps. Petra felt ready to cry, still not having a clue about what she was really being accused of. With a lump in her throat she double-clicked on the folder of sent mail.

* * *

The sun was going down and now there was probably only a short time to wait. Hanna had been longing all afternoon for evening to arrive because then, when it was dark outside, she would finally be rescued. By a nice man named Björn. He would bring food and sweets with him. Hanna could not wait any longer; she wanted it to be evening now.

In the morning, when there had been such a lengthy wait
ahead, she had felt very lonely. She lay on the floor in front of the TV, crying, for ages. She wanted Mummy so terribly that she could barely stand it. Her anger was gone now; she couldn’t be angry at Mummy any more. She didn’t think about Lukas at all. Only the loneliness was left. Loneliness that was so big her ears hurt. The silence in the apartment when the TV was turned off bounced back and forth in the rooms like a big thundering ball that would never stop. Right then she needed only Mummy, not even Daddy would do.

Hanna stopped crying when she ran out of energy, when her throat hurt so much that she was forced to stop. Then she lay in the same position for several hours just staring into space, her thoughts coming and going. She had not eaten a thing since morning; she did not have the energy to get up. Finally she fell asleep.

When she woke up a few hours later she felt better. She ate butter, straight from the packet, and uncooked cold potatoes from the refrigerator with the peel on. They weren’t good, but it satisfied her a little and soon Björn would come with hamburgers.

She was sitting at the little table in her room, lining up her bookmarks in long rows when the phone rang. She ran out into the hall, climbed up on the chair and answered before it had rung more than four times.

‘Hello?’ she answered hopefully.

Perhaps it was Mummy finally calling!

‘Is this Hanna?’

It was not Mummy’s voice.

‘Yes,’ she answered, despite the disappointment. ‘Who is this?’

‘Sweetie, it’s Barbro! How are you doing?’

‘I think you’re stupid,’ said Hanna.

‘I know you think this is taking a long time, but it was hard to find you, I must say.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘Dear Hanna! If you only knew how hard I’ve been working to find you!’

‘You’re lying,’ said Hanna again.

‘May I speak to Mummy or Daddy?’ Barbro tried.

‘They aren’t here. You know that.’

‘Is there anyone there I can talk to?’

‘No, I told you. You’re stupid.’

‘I’ve been looking all over for you, Hanna! Now I know where you live and I can call you too. Very soon a nice man will come and help you.’

‘I know,’ said Hanna.

‘You knew that?’ Barbro asked.

‘Yes, because he called and said he would come.’

Then she remembered that she promised Björn that it was their secret, that she shouldn’t tell that to anyone.

‘My daddy is coming soon,’ she said quickly.

‘Do you mean that?’ asked Barbro.

‘Yes,’ said Hanna. ‘He’s out buying hamburgers for us.’

‘But … So you mean your daddy has come home again?’

‘No, he’s out buying hamburgers, I said that.’

‘But that’s just great, Hanna! So you won’t be alone any longer?’

‘Yes. Bye!’ Hanna said brusquely and hung up.

Barbro had been able to get phone numbers for every household at Ploggatan 20 with the help of the Eniro website, except for one that had an unlisted number. She
was prepared to make lots of calls that no one answered during the day, but to her great delight little Hanna answered at Barbro’s third try.

After the girl so brusquely hung up on her, Barbro still felt uncertain. The conversation had taken a strange turn, which she could not really describe afterwards. What had been said really? Had Deputy Police Commissioner Malmberg been in touch with Hanna? Or that Holgersson? Was the father back, or had he simply never been away? She had tried to order her thoughts during the course of the call, but before she could do that it was over.

Barbro sat for a long time afterward, fingering the phone and considering whether to call again. Finally she got up with a sigh and went into the kitchen to put on water for tea.

* * *

Jennifer’s personal possessions were kept in a shoebox. While she was alive it was absolutely forbidden for Elise to even touch the box, but now things were different. Jennifer was dead. Nothing could change that. She sat at their little table – you couldn’t really call it a desk, but it served that purpose – and carefully raised the lid of the box. She felt a tug in her belly as she cracked open the entrance to her big sister’s secret life.

Elise did not know what she had expected to find, but presumably something much more serious, much more forbidden than the jumble of meaningless trinkets she was looking at. A few bottles of perfume, costume jewellery
that hadn’t been Jennifer’s style for years, a few letters from a girl in Skåne she remembered that Jennifer had been pen pals with years ago. There was also a bundle of school photos of Jennifer’s friends from middle school, a pack of French cigarettes with no filters, a half-empty packet of birth control pills. And at the bottom: an address book.

Elise picked it up and leafed through it from the back. Only familiar names from Jennifer’s circle of friends. Most were old friends, from primary school, but a few new names had been added more recently. Elise kept track of who Jennifer saw, even if she was seldom invited to join them. Then she found Joakim. ‘Joakim Andersson,’ it said; it was like Jennifer was savouring the name.

How many times had Elise done the same thing with friends when they looked through the school yearbook to rate good-looking guys? It was actually pretty silly, but there was a tingle in your stomach when you saw the address of a cute boy. She wondered whether guys did the same thing: drooled over the girls’ meaningless street addresses. And now there it was again, that tingle in her stomach. Joakim was exciting, tall and grown-up – not like the spotty high-school boys she knew.

She closed the address book and picked up the bundle of school photos from the shoebox. She did not have to flick through many before she was looking into Joakim’s grey-blue eyes. In the picture he did not have a beard, but she recognized him anyway. There was no mistaking those eyes. He looked a little dangerous too. Maybe it was the eyes that did it, those mournful eyes that seemed to be looking inwards instead of at her. And then there was the adultness and his way of holding Jennifer, as if he owned her.
And now he was available, it struck her. Now he wasn’t Jennifer’s boyfriend any more; now he was free to go out with whoever he wanted, do what he felt like.

Everyone said they were so alike, Jennifer and her. Elise didn’t think so, but if that was how people saw them … Maybe he would too …? She would give a lot to feel those arms around her. Joakim was probably really sad now. Besides, the police had their eye on him; he must be a suspect. But Elise could not imagine that – that Joakim could have murdered Jennifer, strangled her. No, not the way he held on to her that time she had seen them together. She imagined that he was depressed. He needed consolation, someone to talk to.

And who could be better in that situation than her? They were in the same boat, Joakim and Elise. Living in a vacuum from the loss of Jennifer. It might be worth a try. She looked up his address again and memorized it. He did not live far from her, only a few blocks away. She put Jennifer’s things back in the shoebox, closed the lid and put it back in the cupboard. As if Jennifer could have discovered what she had done.

Elise caught up with a woman who had been out walking her dog and slipped into the building unnoticed. She stopped in front of the directory to see what floor Joakim lived on. There were two Anderssons in the building; she decided to go up the stairs to the second floor, where the first of them lived. She did not really know what she would say when she saw Joakim, but she was not exactly shy, so it would probably work out. She wondered whether Jennifer had ever been here. She had never said so, but
why should she have? It struck her that maybe Joakim would not be home, but she felt sure that he was, given the circumstances.

Indeed, Joakim opened the door. He looked inquisitively at her without saying anything.

‘Hi,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘Aren’t you Joakim?’

‘Yes,’ he answered, smiling cautiously back.

He looked like he’d been in a fight, with a yellowish bruise around one eye.

‘I’m Elise.’

Joakim looked at her in silence for a few moments, not revealing what he was thinking.

‘You look alike,’ he said.

‘That’s what they tell me.’

Neither of them seemed able to think of anything else to say.

‘May I come in for a minute?’ Elise asked at last.

‘No, right now isn’t a very good time,’ Joakim replied, looking over his shoulder as if someone inside was not supposed to know she was there. ‘Did you want anything in particular?’

‘No. I just wanted to talk a little.’

‘I’m sorry about your loss,’ said Joakim, lowering his eyes.

Those words were so solemn somehow. It didn’t sound natural when young people talked that way, but perhaps there was no other way to express it.

‘I guess I should say the same thing,’ said Elise.

‘Yeah. What happened was terrible.’

‘Are the police after you?’ asked Elise, in an attempt to find some common ground.

‘Yes, of course,’ Joakim answered. ‘Are they after you too?’

‘They don’t think I’m the one who did it, but they’re always asking a lot of questions.’

‘Tough,’ Joakim nodded.

‘Do they suspect you, or …?’ asked Elise.

‘I suppose so. I guess they have to,’ Joakim sighed.

‘I don’t think you did it anyway. You don’t look like a murderer,’ Elise said.

‘Thanks,’ said Joakim with a faint smile.

He felt above his eye with his middle finger, as if he wondered whether the bruise didn’t tell a different story. There was an echo in the stairwell as the door shut down below.

‘How does it feel?’ asked Elise.

Joakim hesitated for a moment before he answered.

‘Terrible, actually. It’s as though life has … stopped. You don’t know how you’ll go on.’

‘It’s the same for me,’ Elise hurried to say.

Actually she didn’t know how she felt. She had not really had time to feel anything yet. It was hard to grasp that her sister had really been murdered. That Jennifer no longer existed. She had not really started to miss her yet. Joakim looked distressed, and she had a desire to hold him. Stroke his cheek, show him in some way that she cared. She heard someone approaching on the stairs from below and turned towards the sound. A man was on his way up the stairs, but she could not see his face because he kept his eyes looking downwards, towards his shoes.

She turned back to Joakim and was about to say something when she noticed how he froze. His eyes became blank somehow, as if he were no longer present. He was no longer looking at her but at the man who was approaching them. Elise immediately felt the tension in the air and
lifted up her shoulders to defend herself against whatever was coming from behind. Both she and Joakim stood as if nailed to the floor. She did not dare turn around; she just stared at Joakim and tried to read in his expression how she should react.

‘I see,’ said a man’s voice just behind her.

Joakim did not say anything. Elise did not move.

‘What have we here?’

‘Just a friend,’ said Joakim.

* * *

That was the wrong answer; Joakim knew that. He could have said almost anything at all, but not that. He was expected not to have any friends. Especially not a girl. He could have said it was someone selling something or someone who had knocked at the wrong door. Anything at all, but not that. He had done it for Elise’s sake, so she wouldn’t wonder, for appearances’ sake. But he should have known better.

‘That’s a pretty little friend you have,’ said the man in a joyless tone, but the scorn in his voice did not escape Elise.

He was talking about her, perhaps to her, and she did what was natural, she turned towards the strange man with a forced smile, as if to say hello. But the smile disappeared and she could not get out a word. Joakim saw what was happening without understanding, so to rescue the situation he said quickly, in as neutral a voice as he could manage, ‘She was just leaving, Dad.’

But the words disappeared into empty nothingness.
Elise, who could simply have raised her hand in farewell and left, stood as if frozen with her mouth open and could not tear her eyes from the man. Joakim’s father, who was in mid-step to the doorway, had only to complete the motion and disappear into the darkness of the apartment. Instead he stopped and Joakim saw the contempt in his father’s eyes as they devoured her from head to toe – one body part at a time – before he hissed, saliva foaming at his lips, ‘Aren’t you dead, you little whore?’