Frozen Moment (36 page)

    
'The job?'

    'Yes,
she couldn't cope with the foster-children any more. She was grieving and… Olof
was moved to a family in Bergum, Olofstorp.'

    Christian
Tell brightened up.

    
'Olofstorp?'

    'Yes,
somewhere around there. The family's name began with J. Jid…
Jidbrandt
perhaps.
They were very experienced too. When Olof arrived they already
had a girl staying with them who'd been placed there some time before.'

    Tell
leaned forward.

    'Can
you tell me any more about these two families? The foster- families, I mean.'

    She
shook her head. 'No, it's such a long time ago. There could have been more than
two foster-families, and I think there might also have been a short stay in
some kind of institution for Olof, but I wouldn't put money on it.'

    Tell
pointed to Olof Bart's notes.

    'But
all the information should be in here?'

    Birgitta
Sundin nodded.

    'It
should, or at least all the information the social services board takes into
consideration will be there - a family care home investigation of each family,
a report on why the social worker and the family care home worker are
recommending that a particular child be placed with a particular family. You'll
be able to find out more if you read through these.'

    She
got up and quickly picked up a notepad and her Filofax.

    'I
have to dash. I hope I've been of some help.'

    Tell
nodded and shook her outstretched hand.

    'Thank
you for your time. Just one more thing: who can I contact with regard to
Susanne Pilgren? Is there someone who might know where she is?'

    'Do
you know if she lives here in Angered?'

    'Here?
No, I don't know. Her last recorded address was in Hogsbo, I think.'

    'Then
she's not in our area; you'll need to contact Hogsbo. I really do have to go.'

    She
was just about to close the door of her office when she paused.

    'What's
happened to Olof, anyway? Has he been murdered, or has he murdered somebody
else?'

    1995

    His
room was his own private space. Despite the fact that Solveig had abandoned all
sense and reason, she seemed to understand that there was only room in the
apartment for one person who had completely lost their mind. And he would lose
his mind too if he wasn't able to withdraw to his room without the risk of her
following him, churning out her bitter accusations.

    He
had been ashamed of his room for a long time: the grubby posters of racing cars,
the bedspread from Ahlen's department store with pictures of Tintin and Snowy -
he had loved Tintin when he was little - the embarrassing rug in the shape of a
fish, which had been embarrassing right from the start, when Solveig gave it to
him on his thirteenth birthday. The only reason he had kept it next to his bed
in Rydboholm was because there was a pale stain on the floor underneath the
fish. Then again, the stain was better when his friends came over - the fish
went in the wardrobe until he was alone again.

    Right
now he was grateful that when they'd moved, in spite of everything, he had more
or less copied the childish decor of the old room: the ugly fish rug expressed
a pure childish innocence he now found calming rather than offensive. Anyone
who came into this room without knowing who he was or what he had done would
see straight away that a child lived here. And a child could never be guilty of
anything. Not really.

    The
social worker who came to talk to his mother after Maya's disappearance clearly
shared this view. His voice was impossibly monotonous, like a robot or the
pre-recorded message on the speaking clock.

    'It
isn't your fault, Sebastian,' over and over again, and, 'It doesn't necessarily
mean that anything has happened to her, Solveig.'

    Sebastian,
who knew his mother better, was waiting for the explosion. It came, and as a
result the social worker ended up with a cut on his hand from the smashed vase.
Solveig didn't actually throw it at him; he cut himself when he was trying to
pick up the pieces from the floor. She did, however, attack him verbally, her
voice as quiet and monotonous as his had been earlier, but seething with rage.
The social worker, who was presumably trained to deal with individuals in
crisis, said in the same calm, monotonous tone that
He could see Solveig was
upset. He could hear that Solveig was upset.

    At
that point Solveig threw him out, incandescent with rage. As if it were the
social worker's fault that Maya hadn't come home after the party. His fault
that she had set off home several hours before her younger brother but that
there was still no sign of her when Sebastian - slightly the worse for wear -
crept into the hallway at four o'clock in the morning, and was faced with the
same fury that hit the receptionist and the person on the telephone exchange at
the police station the following morning.

    The
police officers who finally took the time to listen to Solveig also managed to
remain calm when they felt the full force of her rage.

    'She's
nineteen years old, fru Granith. You have to understand that she could have
gone off of her own free will. That's what they're like at that age. Grown up
enough to take care of
themselves
, but not mature
enough to think about others who might be worried. She'll turn up soon, fru
Granith, you'll see.'

    Sebastian
realised that the police officers probably regarded his mother as a hysterical
old woman. He was used to that. On one occasion he had accidentally overheard
their
landlord
refer to Solveig as 'the psycho on the
eighth floor'. That was the time Solveig had got it into her head that there
were rats living under the floorboards. She had made Sebastian ring up because
she suspected that the secretary wasn't passing her calls on to her boss.

    It
didn't particularly bother Sebastian when people spoke disparagingly of his
mother.

    They
didn't acknowledge the extent to which Solveig's conviction influenced their
actions, but the police did decide to start a search. They spoke to the people
who had arranged the party at the bikers' club, who were required to give the
names of all those who had attended the event, as far as they could recall.
There was no official list, of course, so the police ended up with just a
fraction of those who had actually attended. Only a few of those named were
contacted and asked if they had seen the young woman at the party, or if they
had seen or heard what her plans might have been after leaving the club. If she
had been seen talking to anyone. That was as far as they got.

    The
search in the nearby forest ended the same day it began, since Maya was found
just over a mile from the club. She was lying out in the open, about thirty
metres from the track, and the dogs found her almost at once. Her bike was in
the ditch, with a puncture.

    This
time different police officers came to see Solveig and Sebastian, an older man
and a younger woman. The female officer wore an expression of sympathy that
seemed to have been glued on.

    Solveig
was certain that Maya was dead.

    'She
isn't dead, fru Granith,' said the male officer. 'But she has severe
hypothermia, and she's unconscious. You need to prepare yourself for the
worst.'

    Sebastian
tiptoed into the apartment just as Solveig closed the bathroom door behind her,
releasing the drawn-out howl he had loathed since he was a child.

    The
older officer jumped when Sebastian suddenly appeared at the living-room door.
He cleared his throat. 'She's hit her head and she's unconscious. She… There's
no guarantee she'll regain consciousness.'

    The
police officers had refused to leave Sebastian alone in the apartment, despite
the fact that he had clung silently to the door frame of his childish room. Now
he was sitting in a consulting room with muted green lights. He could feel the
doctor's hands resting heavily on his shoulders, as if he were intending to
hold on to Sebastian in case he made a run for it.

    'She
fell and struck her head on a stone,' explained the woman who was holding
Solveig's hand.

    Two
police officers, now two doctors: the female was the older of the two, but the
male was some years away from middle age. Sebastian hadn't heard his name.

    'Her
body temperature is very low because she was lying out in the cold for such a
long time, and she's lost a great deal of blood from the wound in her head.'

    The
doctor wanted to let the words sink in before she went on, but the woman
opposite her was completely broken. There was hardly even a blink, and her face
was ash-grey.

    'She's
still alive in the sense that her heart is beating, but her brain is no longer
able to function.'

    She
pushed her chair closer to Solveig, so that their knees were touching. Solveig
jumped. The screech of the chair's metal legs across the floor made everything
in front of Sebastian's eyes go black.

    'Her
brain will never be able to function again.'

    Behind
him the male doctor still gripped Sebastian's shoulders, pressing Sebastian's
head and body against his stomach and chest, which smelled of aftershave with a
hint of disinfectant.

    
'There now.
There there,' he said, turning Sebastian's head
so that his cheek was lying flat against his green scrubs, his nose close to
the armpit. The smell was suffocating.

    Sebastian
tore himself free and threw up over Solveig's trouser leg. He didn't bother
looking to see whether he had caught the female doctor as well. He was out of
the room in a flash.

    'I
said I wanted to stay at home,' he mumbled as he hurtled down the corridor. 'I
said I didn't want to come.'

    He
managed to find some peace and quiet in an anonymous waiting area somewhere
deep inside the vast hospital. The thing he found consoling about this
particular waiting room was the fading daylight. No one had yet thought of
switching on the lights to illuminate the gloomy corners. He couldn't cope with
looking anyone in the eye.

    Sebastian
sank down on a shabby green sofa and waited for the tears that didn't come. His
eyes were dry and sore and hot, as if he had a temperature. With his heart
galloping irregularly he picked up a magazine and opened it, placing it on his
knee as if it were some kind of protection, something to fix his eyes on to
stop them wandering.

    Someone
dressed in white stepped into the tunnel that was his field of vision; it was a
young woman with a ponytail. She tilted her head to one side and spoke to him,
her expression conveying unease. The roaring in his ears rose and fell. Despite
the fact that he was making an effort to understand - not because he cared, he
just didn't want to look crazy - he was unable to grasp anything beyond the
fact that she was uttering words. Combinations of words, but words didn't
change a thing.

    He
got up and left her stunned face behind him.
Walked quickly
along the corridor towards the hiss of the swing doors, out to the lifts that
could take him to a different part of the hospital.
He could choose the
floor where his mother presumably lay sedated and probably also strapped down
by now, at least until the injection took effect. By this stage she had
doubtless attempted to strangle one of the doctors, and Sebastian thought that
even in a situation where any normal person would be well within their rights
to scream and yell and carry on, she would be incapable of containing herself
within the accepted framework. No ceiling could be high enough. In the end they
would have to take her to the secure unit for crazies.

    Or
he could choose the floor where Maya lay, looking as if she were sleeping or
dead, when in fact she was neither.

    He
thought about a comic he had once read. It must have been a long time ago
because he remembered spelling his way from one picture to the next with some
difficulty, and sometimes, when he couldn't manage the words, he had had to
make do with looking at the pictures. The cartoon was about a man who had been
stabbed but survived and ended up in a coma. As he lay unconscious he hovered
between life and death, in a special land:
the land of transition.
Most
people who die instantly from a heart attack or from the
splat
when they
land on the concrete below their block of flats only get a glimpse of it, so
brief that afterwards they might think they had imagined it - if there was an
afterwards, that is.