Cinderella Girl (3 page)

Petra could hardly keep from laughing. She took a big gulp of beer, wiping the foam from her upper lip with her index finger.

‘Would it be better to have a centre of gravity like you then, between your shoulders?’ she snorted. ‘I can only interpret that to mean you’re putting on a show. Ruffling yourself up like a male peacock to attract females.’

‘And look how well it works! Here I am, sitting with Stockholm’s best-looking policewoman …’

Jamal laced his hands behind his neck and looked at her with a playful gleam in his eyes. Petra liked what he’d said. The problem was that she didn’t know whether he meant it or if he was just pulling her leg. Even though she’d known him for a long time, she never really knew how to take him.

Their conversation was about a course they had attended during the day, along with twenty other hand-picked Hammarby police officers. It was called ‘Centring on Body Language’ and the main idea was that you could influence the impression you made on people around you with your posture. The point was not to change, but rather to use and develop what you already had.

Each participant had to take a short walk before the critical but amused eyes of the others, after which the location of that particular person’s centre of gravity was analysed. If you wanted to make an authoritative impression, for example during the arrest of a suspect, you wanted your centre of gravity in the right place and not
in your pot belly (like Jens Sandén) or your feet (as Petra imagined would be the case for Einar Eriksson). All in all the class had been an enjoyable break from the daily grind, and they had probably picked up one or two useful tips as well.

‘Anyway, birds ruffle their feathers up because they’re cold, not for any other reason,’ Jamal continued.

His brown eyes glistened in the glow of the candle on the table. When he smiled his teeth seemed blindingly white against the summer tan that lingered on his face.

‘But sweetie-pie, come and let me warm you up then.’ Petra stretched across the table with a feigned compassionate expression on her face and took one of his hands between hers. It was soft and warm.

‘I didn’t know you knew so much about birds,’ she continued.

‘No, I never cease to amaze.’

‘Then perhaps you can tell me what species the police commissioner belongs to? He’s good at puffing himself up.’

‘Brandt? I thought you said he was sexy,’ Jamal answered.

Petra let his hand fall back on to the table.

‘Knock it off,’ she said wearily. ‘They put those words in my mouth. It was his deputy – what’s his name, Malmberg – who put me on the spot there. What could I say? I had no interest whatsoever in commenting on the police commissioner’s way of walking. Malmberg suggested sexy and I smiled and nodded. Embarrassed.’

‘ “Yes, maybe so” is what you actually said,’ Jamal laughed.

‘Yes, maybe so. What the hell could I say? “No, I really don’t think so, more like unsexy”?’

‘You said you thought the police commissioner was sexy.’

‘It was Malmberg who said that.’

‘I think it was Holgersson actually.’

‘Yes, maybe it was. He’s a real creep.’

‘He is? I think he’s a lot of fun,’ Jamal smiled mockingly. ‘Apparently he reads you like an open book. Sniffs out your intimate feelings for the police commissioner.’

Petra let out an audible sigh and knocked back the last of her beer.

‘But what do you think Brandt meant by “feminine”?’ she asked with a hint of a worried frown.

‘I think he meant …’ Jamal looked at her for a moment with a serious expression before he continued. ‘… sexy,’ he finished the sentence and burst into laughter.

Petra threw out her arms and shook her head.

‘I’ll treat you to one more,’ said Jamal, getting up.

Petra watched him as he made his way over to the bar with the two empty beer glasses in his hands. He dismissed the whole embarrassing situation as a joke, but personally she had a hard time seeing anything funny about it.

After consuming massive quantities of beer, an hour or two later they went their separate ways. Outside the metro entrance at Allhelgonagatan Petra suggested they could keep drinking, but Jamal said he was getting up early the next morning and he intended to take a brisk walk home before sleeping off the buzz. When she asked about his plans, he revealed that he was going to Nacka to play golf.

‘Golf?’ said Petra. ‘You don’t play golf, do you?’

But her brain was working on a completely different question: Nacka? So you’re involved with Bella Hansson after all?

‘Well, I don’t know yet,’ Jamal smiled. ‘I’ve never tried.’

After a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek, Petra rushed down the steps with a centre of gravity that seemed to be somewhere down in her diaphragm.

* * *

Even though it was late in the evening, there were a lot of cars out making noise, splashing muddy water on to pedestrians and bicyclists, and saturating the air with stinking exhaust fumes. Nina was already waiting outside the Pressbyrån shop at the Ringen shopping centre on Götgatan when Elise showed up.

‘Shit, you look really hot!’ said Nina.

The colourful lights from the shops’ neon signs were reflected in the sunglasses on her head.

‘Where’d you get that jacket?’

‘Uh, it’s not mine,’ answered Elise. ‘I borrowed it from Sis.’

‘Are you drunk?’

Elise laughed.

‘Got some from my old lady. And you?’

‘Not yet,’ Nina replied. ‘But we’re going over to the Crocodile, aren’t we?’

‘I don’t have any money. Can I borrow some from you?’

‘Hey, look at that old man there.’

Nina whispered even though the man she was looking at was inside Pressbyrån and the doors were closed.

‘He’s so fucking ugly! He’s a paedophile, a real dirty old man,’ Nina continued.

The man was browsing through a magazine, and with his back turned towards them Elise couldn’t see what he looked like. But at least he didn’t wear a low-brimmed hat or turn up his coat collar for protection from their stares.

‘How do you know that?’ Elise asked. ‘Has he been after you or –?’

‘No way, as if! But I’ve heard about him from other girls. He drools over little girls and gropes them and carries on. Are we going?’

‘But I don’t have any money. Can I just borrow a hundred?’ Elise begged.

‘I barely have enough for myself. Sofia and Magda are already in the Crocodile; I’m going there anyway. Why don’t you go home and get some money, then I’ll see you in a while?’

Nina went off unconcerned and Elise remained standing on the pavement, not really knowing what to do next. Nina turned around a few moments later, waved and called with a happy smile, ‘Hurry up!’

Elise cast a glance through the Pressbyrån window and her gaze fell on the old man Nina had called a paedophile. He was still standing in the same place, reading magazines for free, but there were lots of people in the shop and the assistant was probably distracted.

Elise remembered a programme she’d seen on TV. It was a documentary about some young girls in Malmö who were on the street for various reasons. You couldn’t see their faces and their voices were distorted. Elise thought their friends probably recognized them anyway.
One of them said she was saving up for a horse of her own. She was thirteen.

After a few minutes’ consideration, Elise went into the shop. Her eyes swept across sweets and ice cream, sandwiches and drinks. Then she gathered her courage and sidled up to the man to see what he was reading. Sure enough, he was looking at naked girls. She looked quickly around. None of the other customers was within earshot if she spoke in a low voice.

‘Do you want to see some of the real thing?’ she asked, not looking at the man beside her.

He checked behind him to make sure it was really him she was talking to and then turned back to the magazine.

‘Some what?’ he asked guardedly, without looking up from his magazine.

‘A naked girl.’

‘How much do you want?’ he asked unperturbed.

So he had done this before. Nina was right.

‘A hundred for tits, three hundred for pussy,’ Elise answered with simulated experience.

‘And more …?’

‘That’s all,’ said Elise.

He put the magazine back in the rack, but still did not look her in the eyes.

‘You’ll get two hundred,’ he said, starting towards the door.

She followed with her heart pounding in her chest. It was both exciting and a little scary. Like the start of something new and dangerous.

His mother was lying in bed when he arrived. She didn’t complain about the pain; she just stated factually that probably she’d broken a rib because her chest didn’t feel right. Sjöberg asked whether he should call for an ambulance, but he knew she wouldn’t want to cause any fuss and bother. The ambulance staff had much more important things to do and what would the neighbours think. He helped her carefully up on to her feet, put her coat over her shoulders and led her out to the car. Then he went back into the apartment and gathered together some underwear and toiletries in a bag. At the last moment he happened to think of her handbag; then he turned off the lights and locked the door.

In the car, en route to the hospital, his mother told him that she had climbed up on a stool to put away a tray in a high cupboard after they had left her earlier that evening. She had lost her balance and tumbled to the floor.

‘The trouble I’m causing you now! I keep you up, and poor Åsa is all alone with the children.’

She shook her head and looked out of the side window.

‘Mum, the children are asleep and Åsa is too,’ said Sjöberg soothingly. ‘I can’t complain either, I’m off tomorrow. You’re the one I’m worried about; you could have asked me to put away that tray. You shouldn’t do that sort of thing, Mum, not at your age.’

‘I know. You don’t notice that the years pass.’

‘So how does it feel now? Are you sitting comfortably?’

‘I don’t feel it as much while I’m sitting.’

They sat in silence for a while and Sjöberg thought about what Åsa had said earlier. His mother was a rather strange character, he had to agree with that. He was just so used to her. She was now seventy-four and he was forty-nine. She had been a widow for more than half her life. What had it really been like for her? How did it feel then, when she was left alone with him? Feelings were not something they had talked about at home. Life went on as usual and it was neither good nor bad. It was what it was.

‘How did Dad die?’ he suddenly thought to ask.

His mother hesitated for a moment.

‘He got sick,’ she replied.

‘But what kind of illness did he have?’

When she didn’t answer his question right away he continued, ‘Was it cancer, or –?’

‘I never asked for details,’ she said with a sharp tone in her voice. ‘You never understand what those doctors say anyway.’

Sjöberg sighed. That’s how a typical conversation went, always had. The world is so big and incomprehensible. You yourself are little and insignificant and what good does it do to get involved, to stick out, to be seen or heard? The best you could do was to avoid attracting attention, keep your faults and doings hidden, and mind your own business.

Once at the hospital, they had to sit in the A&E waiting room for several hours. Sjöberg left for a few minutes to
get them some weak coffee from a vending machine; otherwise they mostly sat leafing through old newspapers. They didn’t speak much – you don’t in public – but when new patients showed up they both looked up curiously for a few moments. His mother refused to lie down in the waiting room and remained patiently in her seat until her name was called at about one-thirty.

The female doctor confirmed that several ribs were broken and his mother was taken in a wheelchair to a ward where she would stay, at least overnight, for X-rays and observation. Sjöberg tucked her into bed and promised to be in touch the next day.

When he finally left she was already asleep; it was almost two-thirty in the morning.

Sjöberg yawned as he came out into the corridor. He looked around for some clue to which direction might take him out of the large hospital. A little further down the long corridor he spotted some signs and made for them. A couple of nurses came towards him and just as he was about to ask them the way he stopped short. He stood rooted to the spot with a stupid expression on his face and at first he could not manage a word.

One of the nurses was much too familiar, with her flowing dark-red hair and her lively green eyes. She was the woman in the window, the woman who had tormented him at night for many months. Lately in his dream her facial features had started to blur into a kind of general female appearance, because it had been almost a year since he’d last seen her – Margit Olofsson. But the hair was always the same, and now here he stood, stammering, not knowing what to do. This is ridiculous, he thought.
This woman doesn’t know about my absurd dreams. They had only met two or three times the previous year, during a murder investigation, and had not exchanged many words. What was the matter with him? Her neutral expression changed to recognition and she was already smiling broadly when he finally came out with an awkward greeting.

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Margit Olofsson …’

‘Inspector! Good job, remembering my name after such a long time. I must have been a prime suspect!’ she joked.

The other nurse continued on her way along the corridor and they were left alone together. Sjöberg couldn’t think of anything to say, so Margit Olofsson continued, ‘What are you doing here? Is there another murder case?’

‘No, my mother broke a couple of ribs, so I drove her here. We’ve been in casualty since eleven o’clock, and she’s spending the night for observation. Do you work at this time of night?’

‘Yes, periodically. But tonight has actually been pretty quiet, so it’s no problem.’

Sjöberg didn’t know where the idea came from, but without thinking he heard himself saying, ‘May I get you a coffee?’

In order to play down what felt to him like a minor social transgression, but which presumably meant nothing to Margit Olofsson, he added, ‘I feel like I need a cup of coffee, so I don’t fall asleep behind the wheel.’

‘Why not?’ Margit Olofsson replied. ‘I’ll just go and tell them I’m taking a break. Wait here so I can pilot you through the labyrinth here at Huddinge!’

‘So how is she doing now?’ asked Margit Olofsson as they sat facing each other in the hospital cafeteria with their coffee.

‘Pretty good, I guess. They’re going to X-ray her to make sure she hasn’t punctured a lung or anything. She may get to go home as early as tomorrow.’

‘I’ll look in on her. What’s her name? Sjöberg perhaps?’

‘Yes, Eivor. And how are you doing? And – what was her name – Ingrid?’

‘I don’t have any contact with Ingrid Olsson now. I never knew her well; it was only for a few weeks that it worked out that way.’

‘The good Samaritan …’ said Sjöberg.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Margit Olofsson self-deprecatingly. ‘Things are fine with me anyway. Two happy children who’ve left home. A husband in the painting business and personally …’

‘Isn’t he happy then?’ Sjöberg interrupted.

‘… I’ve been idling around here for thirty years.’

She finished the sentence, but now she looked at him thoughtfully. Sjöberg felt like he was blushing, but hoped it didn’t show. Why did he ask that? What had got into him? Was he really sitting here flirting with Margit Olofsson, an extremely peripheral person from an old murder investigation? It was definitely time to drive home.

‘Well, I guess he’s happy in his own way. And I in mine,’ she answered cryptically, with a slight, almost imperceptible smile. ‘And you?’

During the few seconds Sjöberg took to consider how he should answer that, he was flooded by an almost irresistible urge to tell her about the strange dream. She
aroused peculiar feelings in him, which he couldn’t really put into words. It wasn’t love, in any event not the kind of love he had for Åsa or the children. Not a communion of souls either, because what did they have in common? Nothing apparently, at least nothing he could discern behind the outer shell of the person he’d encountered up to now. Was it desire? Absolutely not. Margit Olofsson – who was certainly decent-looking and not at all lacking in charm – did not have much of what he would normally be attracted to in a woman.

Even so, he was drawn to her. There was something about this person that simply made him want to crawl into her arms and weep. He wanted to tell all the secrets of his heart and pour out his innermost thoughts to her. Was the same maternal aura that had caused Ingrid Olsson to ask her for help now sucking him in too? He didn’t think so. He already had all the love, concern and friendship he needed. Margit Olofsson stirred up his emotions in a way he did not recognize from his almost half-century of living. He had to get out of here, collect himself.

‘Oh yes, no reason to complain,’ he replied, the words sounding as if they had come from his mother rather than himself.

They sat out the rest of her half-hour break and talked about themselves and their lives, aspects both important and trivial. When Sjöberg finally got in the car to drive home he did not think he had exposed too much of himself. He had not mentioned the dream.