Unwanted (17 page)

Since Teodora had herself been brought up in one of life’s harder schools, she had honestly seen nothing to object to in her son’s desperate and justified efforts to bring his wife up to scratch. Despite what she had told Fredrika Bergman, she had considerable insight into her son’s life with Sara and the turbulent aspect the relationship sometimes assumed. Teodora could not help regretting Sara’s inability to please her husband. Sara had certainly –
certainly
– never tried to hide who she was. And Teodora accepted that her son had married Sara to a large extent as an embarrassingly delayed rebellion against his poor parents. Nonetheless, Teodora was in no doubt at all where her daughter-in-law’s loyalties lay once things came to a head and she turned to the police for help. So the life of luxury Gabriel could offer didn’t suit her after all!

It was stupid of Sara, very stupid, to think that a good mother like Teodora would let her husband and grandchild down, under any circumstances. She was thinking above all of Lilian, she told herself as she lifted the receiver and rang two of her husband’s faithful old servants, who owed the Sebastiansson family large sums of money and considerable favours.

The simple part was saving Gabriel’s skin by arranging the alibis he needed and deserved. The hard part was guiding and directing him in life from now on. After the second phase of trouble and the second report to the police, Teodora had had a serious talk to her son. She had no particular problem with his attempts to knock Sara into shape, but the police involvement had got to stop. It was awkward for the family, and clearing his name repeatedly could prove difficult in the long run. Particularly as his efforts to smarten Sara up left such visible marks, and particularly as she hadn’t the sense to keep quiet about things one always sorted out within the family.

After the time Gabriel was legally banned from seeing his own wife, and therefore ended up ringing her a few times too many one evening, Teodora had finally had enough. He was either to see that he got Sara back, which from the outset she really did not favour, or he was to abandon his attempts to make her into a good person, and file for divorce. Divorce and sole custody.

Teodora didn’t know exactly how her son had managed it, but suddenly he and Sara were living together again. It didn’t last long. Sara carried on making trouble and soon it was time for another separation.

And now Sara had inconceivably pulled off the trick of depriving Teodora of her only grandchild. Her whole body was shaking. There was plainly no limit to the ways Sara imagined she could destroy the Sebastiansson family. Teodora, a mother herself, had seen how Sara treated her child, oh yes. No firm hand, and no particular maternal care, either. If the child was returned to her mother, Teodora was going to fight tooth and nail for her son to be allowed to bring the child up on his own. Sara would finally meet a foe impervious to police reports and threats. Sara would find out what happened when you lived your life in a way that was bound to destroy you, and tried to take your child with you to perdition.

In view of these feelings for her daughter-in-law and grandchild, she had had no difficulty at all in lying on her son’s behalf, either the day before or during that day’s interview with Fredrika Bergman. It was most regrettable, of course, that her son had not had time to inform her he was going on holiday, since that would have simplified the basis for further lies considerably.

She sighed.

‘They’ll be back, you know,’ he said.

Teodora jumped at the sudden sound of his voice.

‘Goodness, you gave me such a fright.’

Gabriel stepped over the threshold of his father’s library, where Teodora had been sitting ever since Fredrika Bergman left the house. Teodora got to her feet and walked slowly towards him.

‘I’ve got to know, Gabriel,’ she said in a low, urgent tone. ‘I’ve got to know for sure. Have you anything –
anything at all
– to do with Lilian’s disappearance?’

Gabriel Sebastiansson gazed past his mother, out of the window.

‘I think there’s a thunderstorm brewing,’ he said huskily.

T
here was a time, when Nora was much younger, when the darkness had been her enemy. Now she had grown up, she knew better. The darkness was her friend, and she welcomed it every evening and every night. The same went for the silence. She welcomed it, and she needed it.

Under the cover of darkness and silence, Nora quickly packed a suitcase of clothes. As usual in summer, the sky never turned completely black, but that deep, velvety blue was dark enough. The floor creaked under her bare feet as she moved about the room. The sound frightened her. The sound disturbed the silence, and the silence did not want to be disturbed. Not now. Not when she had to concentrate. Actually, it was quite simple packing this time. There was no need to take everything with her. She would only be gone a few weeks.

Nora’s grandma had been glad to hear her voice when she rang.

‘You want to come and stay for a bit, love?’ she exclaimed when Nora revealed her plan to go and visit her grandmother in the country.

‘If that’s all right,’ Nora said.

‘You’re always welcome here, dear. You know that, don’t you?’ her grandmother replied.

Safe Grandma. Wonderful Grandma. The one bright spot in a childhood that was otherwise painful to look back on.

‘I’ll ring again when I’ve booked the ticket and have a better idea what time I’ll be arriving, Grandma,’ Nora whispered into the telephone, and they hung up.

Nora tried to get her thoughts in order as she packed. She decided to travel in her red, high-heeled shoes. Shoes like the ones the Man had once said made her look cheap, but she loved wearing them now, and saw them as a badge of her independence. Perhaps it had been a mistake not to give her name to the police, but Nora really didn’t want to let anyone crack open the shell inside which she had successfully built herself a safe existence.

Nora’s case was packed and she felt ready to leave the flat.

She stood the suitcase on the floor and sat down on the edge of the bed. It was almost ten o’clock. She ought to ring Grandma to confirm when she’d be arriving, as promised.

Nora was just keying in the number when a sound from the hall caught her attention. Just a single sound, then it went quiet. Nora blinked. Then the sound came again, the sound of someone taking a step on the creaking floorboards.

Her mouth went dry with fear when he suddenly appeared in the doorway. Paralysed by the realization that it was all over now, she did not move from her seat on the bed. She had still not keyed in the whole number.

‘Hello, Doll,’ he whispered. ‘You going somewhere?’

The telephone slipped automatically from Nora’s hand and she shut her eyes in the hope that the evil would disappear. The last things she saw were the red shoes, still standing beside her suitcase.

D
r Melker Holm had always enjoyed the night shift in Accident and Emergency. For one thing, he was the sort of man who liked things being on the go, when there was stuff happening, and for another, he found himself irresistibly attracted by the nocturnal calm that always followed the more turbulent hours.

Maybe when Melker went on duty that night, he already had a premonition that this shift would be different. The emergency ward was buzzing with a level of commotion and activity that could hardly be considered normal. A serious car accident involving several vehicles took a very long time to deal with, while in the waiting room, a group of patients with slightly less acute problems grew increasingly fed up with the long wait.

Melker heard Sister Anne’s footsteps before he heard her voice. Sister Anne had uncommonly short legs, which meant she took unusually short, quick steps. Apart from that, Melker had not noticed a single defect in her overwhelming physical presence. Though he was never one to listen to or spread gossip, he had – most unintentionally – heard that Sister Anne had not been slow to see how she could capitalize on her beauty.

He could not have cared less about vulgar women prostituting themselves in their places of work. At the same time, Sister Anne, of all people, was someone in whom he felt a degree of trust. There was something fundamentally stable about her. She was reliable. And there were few personal qualities Melker valued more highly than reliability.

Sister Anne appeared in the doorway a few seconds after he first heard her.

‘I think you ought to come, Doctor,’ said Sister Anne, and Melker noted a tension in her features he had not seen before.

Asking no questions, he got up and went with her.

To his surprise, Sister Anne hurried right through the Emergency Department and out of the front entrance. Only then did Melker speak.

‘Sorry, but what’s going on?’

Sister Anne turned her head towards him and her steps faltered a little.

‘A woman rang,’ she said. ‘She said she and her husband were on their way here by car. She said it was her first baby and she was afraid they wouldn’t make it in time. Afraid the baby was going to be born on the way. She wanted us to go out ready to meet them.’

Sister Anne licked her lips and anxiously scanned the drive leading to the Emergency Department. She sensed Melker’s quizzical look and turned back to him again.

‘She said they were almost here, and I couldn’t get hold of the obstetrician, so I thought . . .’

Melker interrupted her with a nod.

‘That’s all right. But they aren’t here, are they? And anyway – why would they be coming to A&E? You should have sent them to Maternity.’

Sister Anne flushed.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to waste your time,’ she said quickly. ‘It was just . . . Well, her voice. There was something about her voice that made me think it was much more urgent than it clearly is.’

Melker nodded again, graciously this time.

‘I understand what you were thinking and I am at your disposal, absolutely. But if they ring again, do tell them to go to Maternity Reception, please.’

He turned on his heels and went back to his room. He happened to glance at his watch. It was just past midnight. A new day had begun.

It was just after one o’clock when Melker heard Sister Anne’s footsteps in the corridor once more. He had time to register that it really sounded more as if she was running, and then she was at his door, rain-sodden and wild-eyed.

‘You must bloody well come right now,’ she said, and rapidly repeated herself: ‘Bloody well come right now.’

Melker Holm was taken aback by the strong language, which was totally inappropriate in the working climate of the Emergency Department, and rushed after Sister Anne through the reception area and out into the car park.

‘Carry on, to the parking area at the far end,’ Sister Anne exhorted him.

At the end of the access road, just between the ordinary visitors’ car park and the approach to A&E, in the middle of the pavement, lay a little girl. She did not have a thread of clothing on her body, and her empty, glassy eyes stared unseeing up into the night sky as it pelted her pale, naked body with rain.

‘What on earth . . . ?’ mumbled Melker, kneeling down beside the girl and checking her pulse, though he could tell at a glance that she was dead.

Later, Melker was to envy Sister Anne her ready tears, mixing freely with the rain, for he was unable to shed any himself for several days.

‘I popped out to check whether that couple were waiting out here in the car park, because they didn’t ring again,’ he heard Sister Anne say. ‘Oh my God, she was just lying here. Just lying here.’

Against his better judgment, Melker Holm leant down and stroked the girl’s cheek. His eye fell on her forehead, where someone had written a word, the letters blurred and sprawling. Someone had marked her body.

‘We must ring the police right away so we can get the poor little thing into the warm,’ he said.

J
ust as he was opening the front door to set off for work, Alex received the call from the police up in Umeå.

‘DCI Hugo Paulsson here, from the Umeå Crime Squad,’ bellowed a voice at the other end.

Alex stopped what he was doing.

Hugo Paulsson gave a sigh.

‘I think we may have found your little girl, the one who went missing from the Central Station,’ he said softly. ‘Lilian Sebastiansson.’

Found?
Alex would remember that moment later as one of the few in his career when time stood utterly still. He did not hear the rain beating on the window, did not see Lena who was watching him from just a few feet away, did not say anything in reply to what he had just heard. Time stopped, and the ground opened up beneath his feet.

How the hell could I mess up on this one?

When Hugo Paulsson found himself still getting no reply, he went on.

‘She was found at the hospital here in Umeå, outside A&E, at one o’clock last night. It took a while to establish the likely identity, because we had another little girl up here who’d run away, you see, and we had to make sure it wasn’t her first.’

‘Lilian didn’t run away,’ Alex said automatically.

‘No, of course not,’ said Hugo Paulsson grimly. ‘But anyway, now you know where she is. Or to be more accurate – where she probably is. Someone will have to identify her.’