Cinderella Girl (9 page)

After a while she turned off the tap and got into the bathtub. It was so nice! She sat down carefully, but just then she heard the phone ringing out in the hall. Oh, why did it have to ring right now? She had to answer, had to talk to someone. Quick, quick! Heaving herself to her feet, she skidded on the slippery bottom but managed to catch herself by pure reflex. Her chin missed the edge of the tub by a hair’s breadth. But she wasted time and now the tears were coming again, although she tried to hold them back. She tried again and stood up more carefully this time, and climbed down on to the floor. But before she had even left the bathroom the ringing stopped.

So she slunk back to the bath and settled down in the warm water again. With a damp hand she tried to wipe away the tears from her cheeks. The square tiles on the
wall in front of her flowed together and she was no longer able to make the effort to see them clearly. Even though she had slept for the whole night and had only just woken up, she once again fell into a deep sleep.

* * *

Joakim woke up with a start at a knock on the door. He pushed himself up on to his elbows in the bed and looked around, half asleep. The bed that Jennifer should have slept in, because she was not in his, was untouched. Below him he could see Fanny lying quietly in her bed. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was only seven-thirty.

There was another knock and now he heard movement in the bed below him and assumed that Malin was stirring. Fanny was still completely quiet. Suddenly through his clouded condition he remembered how the night before had degenerated and he started to feel sick. It was warm in the cabin and he felt sweat breaking out on his upper lip. There was another knock, harder this time.

‘Open up, it’s the police!’ a voice called in a Finnish accent from outside.

Now Fanny too started moving; she complained with her face in the pillow, ‘Damn it, open the door, Joakim!’

‘Coming!’ he called back tamely, wriggling out of bed and down on to the floor.

Before he opened the door he glanced down to check whether he had something on. When he saw that he was wearing underwear he opened the door. Outside stood two men, neither of them in a police uniform. One however was
holding up what might be a police ID. Joakim stepped instinctively to the side and let the police come into the cabin.

‘Nieminen, detective chief inspector with the Åbo police,’ the policeman standing closest to him introduced himself in his melodic accent. ‘This is Inspector Koivu. What’s your name?’

The other man stood in the background and studied several sheets of paper. When Joakim gave his name, he made a note with a pencil. Both police officers looked in towards the girls, who were now sitting up in bed, curiously looking over towards them.

‘And you girls?’

They said their names and more notes were made.

‘I need to ask for your ID,’ Nieminen continued commandingly. ‘Please take them out. Who’s sleeping here?’ he then asked with a gesture towards the vacant upper bunk.

‘Jennifer, but she didn’t sleep here last night,’ Joakim answered.

‘Jennifer Johansson?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you know where she was last night?’ Nieminen asked. ‘Since she hasn’t been here?’

The girls got out of their beds and started rooting in their bags. None of them really knew what to say, which made the policeman impatient.

‘Well, when did you last see her?’

‘I haven’t seen her since we were with the guys next door getting primed a little,’ Malin answered. ‘That was pretty early in the evening.’

Fanny nodded in agreement and added, ‘You ought to know, Joakim. She’s your girlfriend.’

Joakim looked down at his feet in embarrassment, not knowing what to say.

‘I see, you’re the boyfriend,’ said Nieminen.

‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Joakim lamely. ‘Or, well, it’s hard to say. What’s this all about?’

‘A dead girl was found in a toilet. We think it may be Jennifer. If there aren’t any relatives on the boat, I have to ask one of you to come along and look at her.’

Joakim sat down on Malin’s bed.

‘We just need to look at your ID first.’

Malin and Fanny extended their ID cards, their real ID this time. It was probably best not to do anything stupid at this point. Joakim reached for his jeans, which he’d thrown on the floor at the foot of the bed, and pulled his wallet out of the back pocket.

He handed the whole wallet to Nieminen, who simply gave it to his colleague. None of the young people said anything; they looked wide-eyed at the two policemen, not really grasping what was going on.

‘So, are you the one who’s coming with us?’

Nieminen directed himself to Joakim, who mumbled something inaudible in response and started pulling on his trousers.

‘I’m very sorry about this. But it’s good if we know for certain as soon as possible; it’ll help us know what we have to go on,’ said Nieminen, in a friendlier tone now.

Koivu gave the young people back their ID cards while Joakim pulled on his T-shirt.

‘We’ll need to talk to you more during the day, girls.
Until then, try to remember what you were up to and when, and what Jennifer was doing during the evening and night.’

Joakim and the two policemen disappeared through the door, which closed by itself behind them.

When they got out of the lift on one of the upper decks Joakim saw that barricade tape had already been put up in various places. A number of uniformed policemen made sure that no unauthorized persons went past. Joakim could not think clearly. He was brought to a room, which according to the sign outside was the ship doctor’s consulting room. This too was guarded by a policeman in uniform. The two men escorting him exchanged a few words with each other in Finnish and then unlocked the door and pushed him into the room ahead of them. The door closed behind them and Joakim took a few hesitant steps forward. He felt as if his legs were going to fold under him, and instinctively he held his breath.

On a cot by one wall lay Jennifer. Of course it was her. But the liveliness in her face, which was an odd flame-red colour, was gone. Her forehead looked freckled, as did her closed eyelids. On her throat a few large, light-red marks were visible that he did not recognize. And her lips no longer glistened. She still had on her black, waist-length leather jacket, and her belly could be glimpsed in the gap between her trousers and her top. Joakim was struck by the terrible stillness. Not a sound could be heard; even the policemen seemed to be holding their breaths.

Then the silence was broken by a drawn-out whimpering sound that issued from Joakim’s mouth. The sound grew louder and at last he put his hands in front of his
face and let the tears flow. He turned quickly around and rushed towards the door.

‘Let me out of here!’ he pleaded. ‘It’s Jennifer – I don’t want to see any more! Let me out, let me out!’

‘I don’t know what she was doing last night,’ Joakim had to admit when he was questioned a short time later by the Finnish police inspector, in a room adjoining the doctor’s consulting room.

He had been told that the ferry was in Åbo and that no passengers would be allowed off until everyone on board had been questioned. That had no significance for him, except that it would be a while before they got back to Stockholm.

‘Was she murdered?’ asked Joakim, even though he already knew the answer.

‘It looks that way. Strangled, presumably. In one of the toilets.’

‘So anyone could have done it?’ asked Joakim.

‘It’s not usually just anyone who does this sort of thing,’ the policeman answered with a joyless smile.

He now clasped his hands before him on the table and cleared his throat, as if to start again.

‘And you were, or you weren’t, or to some extent you were her boyfriend. Were you really her boyfriend?’

Nieminen acted appropriately and even kindly towards Joakim, but he was not able to conceal his suspicion very well. That was probably how he had to be in his occupation. Joakim felt ill at ease and squirmed in the chair, still shaken up after his encounter with the expressionless face of death.

‘Yes and no,’ he answered uncertainly.

Even he did not understand what their relationship had been, so how could he explain it?

‘I guess you could say we were together sometimes, sometimes not.’

‘So you exploited her just as it suited you? You’re twenty-four and she was sixteen. Wasn’t she a little young for you?’

‘Maybe so.’

Joakim could only bear to answer one question at a time, and the policeman’s insinuation that he had exploited Jennifer had to remain unchallenged. Had he? He had been in love with Jennifer. That was for real. Until yesterday. Until he had seen her preening for those old men in the bar. Then all his tender feelings and hopes had faded. After that he had felt only anger. And contempt. At first he was hurt, but he’d been hurt many times before. You can’t go around bleeding all the time, so he forced the wounds to heal quickly. But they always left ugly scars.

‘Tell me about yesterday evening. Tell me about Jennifer.’

‘We were partying in the cabin next to ours, for an hour or two maybe. Jennifer and me and a few others. She was sitting on my lap. People came and went. There was a party in the cabin next to that one too; the door was open. Same group. I didn’t know anyone besides Jennifer to start with; the others were her friends.’

‘Were you drunk?’

‘Yes, I guess I was. That’s, like, the point. Everyone was drunk.’

‘Everyone was drunk? They were just young kids. How did they get on the boat to begin with?’

‘It wasn’t too hard. I had to show ID, but not the girls. I don’t know about the others.’

A half-truth, but Joakim saw no reason to mention anything about fake IDs.

‘What happened to your face?’ Nieminen asked unexpectedly.

Joakim had not looked in the mirror since yesterday and had completely forgotten how he looked. Instinctively he brought his hand to his nose and felt it carefully.

‘Got beat up,’ he mumbled.

It went against his instincts, but he could not lie before the penetrating gaze of this policeman.

‘My dad,’ he added. ‘It was my dad.’

‘Is your dad with you on the trip?’

‘No, damn it. It was on Friday. He gets a little angry sometimes,’ Joakim said in an effort to downplay it.

‘I see. And then?’ Nieminen continued.

‘Jennifer left. I thought she’d gone into the other cabin. After a while I went to look for her, but she wasn’t there either. I tried the door to our cabin, but it was locked and it was quiet inside. We only had two key cards, but I didn’t have either of them. So I searched in the toilets, but she was gone.’

‘And you were content with that?’

‘No, I went out and searched for her on the boat. I searched everywhere, but I couldn’t find her.’

‘What time was it when you discovered she was gone?’

‘Nine, nine-thirty maybe. I don’t know for sure.’

‘And then?’

‘I took the lift up to the top floors to look for her. I searched everywhere. In the bars and restaurants, at the
disco, everywhere, but she was nowhere. So I had a beer up there by the big dance floor.’

‘Where did you think she’d gone?’

‘No idea. Sometimes she acts that way. Just disappears. You don’t really know where she’s coming from. But after a while I caught sight of her up there. She was sitting at the other end of the place, with two men. They were older, in suits.’

‘Did you go up to her then?’

‘No, I didn’t. I sat there for a while and then I left.’

‘Why did you do that? She was your girlfriend, after all.’

That suspicious gaze was evident now. Yes, why
didn’t
he go over to her? How could he put his disappointment into words? How could he explain to the policeman that it was Jennifer who controlled their relationship, despite the age difference? That he followed Jennifer’s lead, that he had never had a girlfriend before her. And that she had started to see through him.

‘I guess I didn’t care about her,’ he answered nonchalantly. ‘As far as I was concerned she might as well sit there and show off for those old blokes.’

‘How did you feel then? Were you offended?’

‘I just felt like she wasn’t my girlfriend any more. It was over,’ Joakim lied.

‘And what did you do then?’

‘I went to a different bar and had a few more beers,’ he lied again. ‘Then I went to bed.’

‘And those men – would you recognize them?’

‘Don’t know. Maybe.’

‘What did they look like?’

‘One was dark and one was fair-skinned, I think. I don’t remember more than that.’

‘Were they Finnish? Swedish?’

‘No idea. I was sitting too far away.’

‘We’ll get back to you,’ said Nieminen with a gesture towards the door.

* * *

Just as the ambulance was leaving Stora Mejtens Gränd with the baby, the police showed up. Petra thanked the woman, whose name was Ester Jensen, for her help and apologized for the trouble and the mess she left behind. She said that she was a police officer herself and that they would come back and speak to her again during the day.

Then she went out on to the street to meet the police. Petra knew both of the patrol officers as acquaintances. One was a harmless character named Staaf. The other one’s name was Holgersson, an oaf with his centre of gravity between his shoulder blades. He swayed as he walked in a way that made it look like he was about to fall backwards. His pumped-up upper arms presumably prevented him from letting his arms hang along his sides like a normal person, or else he deliberately held them that way. He had also participated in Friday’s course in body language. With a sting of irritation she recalled that he might have been the one who had put the word ‘sexy’ in her mouth when they were discussing the police commissioner’s gait.

Staaf gave her a smile of recognition. Holgersson also
had a hint of a smile on his lips, while his eyes were directed at parts of her body other than her face.

‘Hi,’ she said, nodding at them. ‘I’m the one who found the child.’

‘Oh, shit,’ said Staaf.

‘Let me show you where it was,’ said Petra, going down towards the park with the two policemen in tow and over to the bushes where she had found the boy.