Third Voice (2 page)

Sandra Sahlmann was happy. She whizzed through the November darkness, in the pouring rain, on her new white scooter, feeling happy. Elated thoughts filled her mind – there were so many great things happening at the moment. Her volleyball coach had told her she’d be playing in the first team next season and she’d got an ‘A’ in her religious studies exam, rather unexpectedly as she hadn’t thought it had gone very well. She quickly rode along the edge of the golf course, up towards the residential area and sped up a bit more.

Then the engine died.

She turned the ignition a few times, but soon realised that she’d run out of petrol. She stopped at the side of the road and got off. She wasn’t far from home, only a few hundred metres, but pushing a scooter in this weather wasn’t much fun, so she took out her mobile and called her dad. He could come and meet her and bring an umbrella.

No answer.

He tended to put his mobile on silent when he watched TV, it helped him concentrate, he claimed. Or maybe he was out doing some shopping and couldn’t hear the phone ring. He had promised to buy tacos, her favourite food, as a reward for her ‘A’. She’d just have to handle the situation herself. I’ll put the scooter here and we can collect it later, she thought. She pulled the scooter under a tree and locked it up. She kept her helmet on. Then she tried calling her dad again. Maybe he’d turned his phone off silent? Or got home?

No.

She started to walk.

Luckily the light in the underpass was on, she could see that from afar. Sometimes it was broken. It wasn’t that she was afraid of the dark, but if there was someone else down there, you couldn’t really see who it was and she didn’t like that.

As she reached the underpass, she saw a man coming in the other direction. She knew most of the people living in the area, but she didn’t recognise him. She started walking a bit faster as they passed each other, half-ran the last stretch and turned around.

The man was gone.

Had he run too?

Sod it.

Now all she needed to do was get across the narrow path and through the woodland, and she’d almost be home.

The harsh wind flung wet leaves at her and the mist seemed to envelop the trees. But she felt safe in the woodland, even though it was quite dark tonight. She’d almost reached it when she remembered the bag. With her house keys. It was in the scooter’s storage box. If her dad was out shopping she wouldn’t be able to get in. She turned around and scurried back the way she’d come. Her mood had deteriorated significantly. On top of that the light in the underpass had gone out. She was so pissed off that she just hurried through it and over to the scooter, pulled open the storage box, got the bag and started walking back in the rain. When she saw the dark tunnel in front of her she thought about the man who’d disappeared.

Where had he gone?

She stopped before she went in and tried to look through to the other side. It wasn’t that far and it looked empty. She took a deep breath and ran straight through it. Ridiculous, she thought, once she’d reached the other side.

What am I afraid of?

In the distance she could see that the lights were on in a neighbouring house. For some reason that suddenly made her feel safe. At least there were people around. She crossed the wet grassy slope and approached the woodland again, and tried to cheer up. It wasn’t much further and then they’d collect her scooter together and eat tacos.

She was in the woodland now.

The wet leaves squelched beneath her shoes.

She walked along the poorly trodden path, a path that she’d walked a hundred times, it stopped just outside their garden hedge. Then she heard the noise. As though a branch was being broken off. Right behind her. She turned around, her helmet was restricting her view.

What was that noise?

She looked at the trees, the dark trunks and the branches weighed down by the rain.

A deer?

Here?

She turned back and started walking faster. She knew where the path went, but still walked straight into a tree trunk. She staggered and pulled off her helmet. Then she heard another noise. Much closer.

There’s someone here!

She threw her helmet on the ground and rushed between the trees. It wasn’t that far to the garden hedge and she’d be safe there. Though not until she’d reached the gate. It was quite a high hornbeam hedge that surrounded her house and she had to run around it before she reached the gate. She ran as fast as she could until she suddenly fell to the ground. A mound of compost had tripped her up. Right next to the hedge. She lay still for a few seconds, her face pressed into the wet clay, not daring to look behind her, and felt the tears welling up in her eyes.

‘Dad!
Dad!
’

She screamed out loud. If her father was home, he might hear her! She was just on the other side of the hedge! She straightened her arms and pushed herself up from the ground and started running again. Towards the gate. It was open. She ran through, towards the door, took hold of her bag and tried to open it. The zip was stuck. Finally she managed to open it, found the key and put it in the door, turned the lock, pulled the door open, rushed inside and slammed it shut, locked it twice, breathed out and turned around – five metres in front of her she saw her father
hanging from the ceiling by a blue tow rope, his tongue hanging out and his wide-open eyes staring straight at her.

Dinner was great, everything from the madeira-flavoured chanterelle soup to the veal and the delicious panna cotta.

‘Did you make the panna cotta as well?’

‘It’s not that hard.’

Olivia smiled. Not much in the way of cooking was hard for Maria Rönning, her adoptive mother, a lawyer of Spanish origin with long black hair. They sat at Maria’s kitchen table in the terraced house in Rotebro. Maria had collected Olivia from the airport and insisted on cooking her dinner. It didn’t take much to persuade Olivia. Many long hours spent flying across the Atlantic with tasteless food and dry biscuits with watery coffee had made her mother’s offer hard to refuse. What she had really wanted to do was to head back to her two-room flat on Söder to sleep and recharge her batteries before delivering some difficult news to Maria.

It had to be done at the right time.

Having dinner with her in her kitchen, jetlagged, plied with wine, would create an intimacy between them that Olivia would have preferred to avoid.

But now it couldn’t be helped.

So she’d decided to disclose most of it in the car on the way back from Arlanda airport.

‘Change your name?’ Maria said at the wheel.

‘Yes. To Rivera.’

‘When did you decide that?’

‘In Mexico.’

‘Olivia Rivera?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s a beautiful name.’

Maria kept her eyes on the road. Olivia observed her from the side. Did she mean what she’d said? Did she mean that it was a beautiful name in general or what?

‘It suits you,’ Maria said.

Olivia was stumped. She had expected a very different reaction and had put together a barrage of arguments for wanting to take her deceased mother’s name. ‘It suits you.’ What was she supposed to say to that?

‘Thanks. And I’ve also decided to take a break from the police force. For the time being at least.’

‘Good.’

‘Good?’

‘What would you want to be a police officer for? It’s not for you, I’ve said that all along.’

Which was true. Maria had never been keen on Olivia’s decision to join the police. She had supported it, but without any great enthusiasm. But Olivia still felt slightly irritated. Why shouldn’t she be a police officer?! Even though she didn’t want to be one any more? She suddenly felt unsettled. Maria had responded to her two most important decisions as though they were trivialities. Or at least not as important as they were to Olivia. During the rest of the car journey Olivia described the various places she’d visited, and they aired their mutual relief at Obama’s victory in the presidential election.

‘So what are you going to do instead, then?’

Maria poured some more wine while looking at Olivia.

‘Instead of what?’

‘Becoming a police officer?’

‘I’m thinking of studying history of art.’

Just don’t say ‘good’ now, Olivia thought.

‘Smart. A bit of a link to Adelita.’

‘Yes.’

Maria smiled and looked at Olivia.

‘What is it?’

‘You’re very tanned.’

‘I’m half Mexican.’

‘Calm down, darling, that was a compliment.’

‘Thanks.’

Olivia felt she needed some air. She’d steeled herself for this first meeting with Maria and had felt a kind of obstinate need to provoke her with the name change and things, and it had ended up in a strange kind of nothingness.

‘Shall we go for a walk?’ Maria suggested.

It had stopped raining. But Olivia was still quite shocked when she stepped outside. She’d spent quite some time in a tropical climate – here it was about zero degrees and a harsh November wind was blowing. Maria had dressed her up in an old down jacket and a hideous woollen hat.

And Olivia was soon very glad that she had.

Side by side they walked up the row of houses where Olivia had spent most of her childhood. Maria pointed at the houses as they passed by, telling her who still lived there, who had died, who had got remarried to a neighbour and so on, and Olivia nodded every now and again to appear interested. Her thoughts were elsewhere, with Arne, her adoptive father, Maria’s husband, who had died of cancer when Olivia was nineteen. Olivia had idolised Arne. He’d been her rock during those tough teenage years, always by her side when she needed his support, felt lost, wanted to die or run away or just curl up next to someone who consoled her without making comments.

Maria always made comments.

Olivia hated that.

Then Arne died, leaving her with deep sorrow and a white Ford Mustang. She still had the Mustang, but the sorrow had morphed into something else entirely.

From the moment she found out that Arne wasn’t her real father.

Both he and Maria had hidden it from her. But more than that, he’d hidden Olivia’s terrible story from both her and
Maria, in a way that she couldn’t understand and probably never would. She wouldn’t get any answers. He was dead. But it was a betrayal that dragged her much-loved adoptive father down into a snake pit of chaotic emotions. Eventually she came to accept things as they were. Why waste your energy being angry with a man who’s dead and buried? She had ultimately reconciled herself with what had happened.

She’d had to.

She had loved Arne and he had loved her. Deeply and sincerely, as long as he lived. There was no reason to spoil that.

‘What are you thinking about?’ Maria asked.

They’d just turned into Holmbodavägen.

‘How Dad would have reacted to my new name.’

‘He would have reacted like me.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because he was… what’s going on?!’

Maria stopped and pointed. There was an ambulance outside one of the houses at the end of the road. A couple of uniformed police officers were just coming out through the gate. Mary took hold of Olivia’s arm.

‘That’s the Sahlmanns’ house, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

Olivia knew who the Sahlmanns were. She’d babysat their youngest daughter Sandra quite a few times when she lived at home. After Sandra’s mother Therese died in the tsunami eight years ago, Maria had been one of those in the neighbourhood who’d supported her father Bengt and helped him with various legal formalities.

‘What’s happened?’ Maria said.

They walked over to the ambulance. Olivia saw that there were a few neighbours standing half-hidden behind their curtains, peering at the Sahlmanns’ house. When they were almost there, she was surprised to see that one of the officers at the gate looked very familiar. It was Ulf Molin, one of her classmates at the Police Academy. He was the most persistent of all the guys
who’d hit on her during those couple of years. Olivia quickly pulled off the ugly woollen hat.

‘Hi Ulf.’

Ulf Molin turned around.

‘Olivia? Hi! What are you doing here?’

‘Visiting my mum, she lives nearby.’

‘So, how are you doing, then? You’re so tanned! I heard that you’d…’

‘I’ve taken some time out. What’s happened? This is Maria, by the way, my mum.’

Ulf greeted Maria. A bit too smarmily, Olivia thought. Hasn’t he given up yet?

‘We know Bengt Sahlmann and his daughter Sandra,’ Maria said and repeated Olivia’s question. ‘What’s happened?’

Ulf took a few steps to the side and Olivia and Maria followed him. Consciously or unconsciously, he lowered his voice slightly.

‘Sahlmann has killed himself. Hanged himself. His daughter came home a while ago and found him.’

Maria and Olivia looked at each other. Hanged himself?

‘Oh, the poor girl!’ Maria exclaimed.

‘Where is she now?’ Olivia asked.

‘In the ambulance. They’ve given her a sedative. We’ve asked her where her mother is, but she won’t answer.’

‘Her mother is dead,’ Maria said.

‘Oh, I see.’

‘Have you contacted any relatives?’

‘We’ve tried to get hold of her aunt, but she seems to be at some conference in Copenhagen, so we haven’t reached her yet.’

‘No one else?’

‘She hasn’t mentioned anyone else.’

‘Can I talk to her?’ Olivia asked.

Ulf nodded and went over to the ambulance and opened the back door. Olivia stepped forward and looked inside. A female paramedic was sitting on one side. On a narrow bench opposite sat a thin teenage girl, slumped over, in muddy clothes and with
a red blanket around her shoulders. Her blonde hair hung down over her eyes, her hands clasping her mouth. It took a little while before Olivia recognised her, but no time at all before she felt a lump in her throat.

She swallowed hard.

‘Hi Sandra. Do you remember me?’ Olivia said.

Sandra turned her tear-stained face towards Olivia.

‘I used to babysit you when you were little. Do you remember?’