by Ian Giles
The police still hadn’t been in touch—she had to assume that they were leaving her in peace with her son for the first night out of respect. Sandra didn’t have anything to offer the investigation either. She had already shared her suspicions, and in that regard nothing had changed. They also had a crime scene to investigate—the chamber where Erik had been held was cordoned off. She hadn’t seen the clothes he had been wearing when he had disappeared; they were presumably already safely in the custody of the forensic specialists. Somewhere there had to be a trace of Hallin, if only a strand of hair.
Sandra hadn’t understood much about what had happened when Erik had been found, but apparently a member of the public had raised the alarm. Someone had happened to open a door by chance and had found the boy, realised that it was Erik, and done what was needed. Sandra had wanted to hear more about that, but was also grateful that the police were leaving her alone for the time being. She would find out the details soon enough, and she would have the opportunity to express her gratitude to those involved.
Her mobile vibrated in her pocket. She pulled it out and noted that it was a picture message. From Kerstin. A very blurry photo of something that she couldn’t initially identify. And there was no explanatory text either. The subject was so compressed that it looked like the picture had been taken through a crack between two planks of wood or something. Upon closer examination, she thought she could make out parts of a car—possibly a blue one, or grey. And perhaps a person, too. If so, they were walking alongside the car, coming towards the photographer. But it was hard to make out, because there seemed to be water pouring down between the photographer and the subject of the picture. And no matter how much she zoomed in, the picture got no clearer nor any more comprehensible. Sandra concluded that Kerstin must have pressed a button and sent the message by mistake. She turned off her screen, put the mobile back in her pocket, and directed her attention back at her sleeping son.
As far as the book was concerned, the story was beginning to reach its end, and Sandra decided the time was ripe to rewrite her own experiences during the day. What had happened when Erik had been found would have to wait until the morning, but she could still portray everything she had seen from her own perspective.
The hospital staff had been kind enough to let her spend the night in the room, so she snuggled down with her laptop in the visitor’s bed and began to write.
AFTER SEVERAL HOURS of intense work, she was disturbed by a vibration from her pocket. She pulled out her mobile and saw that Kerstin had sent her a message. “Want to talk?” it said. Sandra glanced at the clock on the wall and saw it was just after eleven. She went over to Erik, who was sleeping deeply in his bed. His ribcage rose and fell, the connections from the two bags on the drip stand producing small shiny drops of fluid that fell down their drip chambers at a stately pace, making a sound akin to crystal being tapped. Everything looked fine, but she still felt ill at ease. She sat back down on her bed and rang Kerstin.
“Hi Sandra,” said Kerstin. “I’m so happy for you.”
“Oh, is word out already?” Sandra said with a smile.
“It may well be,” Kerstin replied. “How is he?”
A nurse stepped into the room, crossed the short distance to Sandra, and proffered a tray with glasses on it. Sandra picked bilberry soup, something she never drank these days, but that she had loved as a child. She had a long night ahead of her, and even though she wasn’t all that thirsty she took the opportunity to help herself to a glass of apple juice as well. She needed energy both to write and to watch over Erik. Maybe she was overreacting, but if his condition changed at all, she wanted to know straight away. The nurse smiled benevolently at her from behind a pair of oversized spectacles with thick rims that didn’t seem to belong in this millennium.
“Given the circumstances, he’s well,” said Sandra. “He was cold, dehydrated, and malnourished, but he’ll recover quickly. And his memories are pretty hazy, so I think that if we handle this situation right he’ll be okay mentally too.”
“That’s good,” said Kerstin.
Sandra placed the glasses on the bedside table and thanked the nurse, who disappeared back into the corridor with her tray.
“How did things go with the cash?” she asked Kerstin.
“It went well.”
“You found the money?” Sandra said with a laugh. “You really did?”
“We did. I said I had a good feeling about this.”
“That’s wonderful, Kerstin. Well done, really!”
“It was more luck than anything else, but we had to work hard. The bags were in the tanks under the outdoor privy, covered by . . . Well, you can probably imagine that yourself.”
“How on earth did you think to look there?”
“Well it was exactly that which gave me the idea,” Kerstin replied. “The fact that no one would think of looking there.”
“Impressive,” said Sandra, and she really meant it. “Where is it now?”
“At my flat,” said Kerstin. “You can pick it up when you’ve got time.”
The door opened and another two nurses appeared. One was pushing a trolley in front of her.
“I have to go,” said Sandra. “Let’s talk again tomorrow?”
“Sure,” said Kerstin. “Good luck with it all.”
Sandra ended the call and looked up at the nurses.
“My name’s Maria and I’m the night nurse tonight,” said one of them. “I just wanted to introduce myself. Branca here is an assistant nurse and is going to check your little one’s blood pressure and temperature. Do you have any questions?”
Sandra thought about this while the assistant nurse raised the bed and stuck the thermometer in Erik’s ear.
“Thirty-seven point two,” she said, wrapping the blood pressure sleeve around Erik’s arm and attaching a clamp to his finger. “It’s beginning to normalise.”
Erik wasn’t disturbed in his sleep; he had no idea that he was the subject of a range of medical checks.
“Ninety-five over sixty,” said Branca. “Saturation ninety-seven percent, pulse eighty-nine.”
“Those are excellent figures,” Maria explained. “Erik is definitely on the mend, so you can sleep soundly tonight.”
Then they vanished with the trolley, leaving Sandra with a number of questions spinning around her head despite their best intentions. One of them related to security at the hospital. Could she really sleep soundly tonight? For some reason, she didn’t feel convinced.
There was barely a sound to be heard from the corridor, and the town outside the window was calm too. Erik looked peaceful lying there on his back in the adjustable bed, which was still propped up following the checks. The soft glow of the night-light cast secretive shadows over his face. What exactly had happened to him? Would she ever find out?
Right now, it didn’t matter. Erik had been restored to life; he was in safety and under the watchful eye of hordes of uniformed health personnel with sound skills and kind voices. All eyes on Gotland were looking towards Erik; it was unthinkable that anything would happen.
Yet there was something inside her that kicked back. Sandra didn’t go in for premonitions and omens very much, so she didn’t allow herself to take the ominous feeling so seriously that she did anything tangible to prevent what she imagined might happen. She didn’t make a hysterical call to the police to demand police protection, nor did she ask her parents to keep her company during the night.
Her only plan was to stay awake all through the night and to press the alarm button if necessary. After everything that had happened, she was just overwrought. The worst that could happen had already happened, and it wouldn’t happen again.
She shook off the baseless unease, settled down in bed with the laptop on her knee, took a deep breath, and began to write again.
68
Kerstin
SEVERAL HOURS AFTER Jeanette had left her, Kerstin was pacing back and forth in the flat with a really bad feeling in he
r body. The feeling that she wasn’t good enough, the feeling of having all the dials turned up, of being too much. Clingy, as Jeanette had put it. It was downright painful. Like a bad conscience, it was impossible to wriggle free from it, impossible to push it to one side and take a breather.
Kerstin tried to read, watched some TV, cooked, ate, played games on her mobile—but it wouldn’t go away. She couldn’t concentrate on anything. The joy at the day’s exploits was unable to penetrate through the din of negative and irrelevant emotions. What did it matter how Jeanette dealt with the knowledge that it was Kerstin’s husband she had left to die in the car wreck once upon a time? How could it ever be Kerstin’s problem to arrange a soft landing for Jeanette after she found that out? If Jeanette wanted to torture herself, then let her. She could just as well let the curses whistle past her if that was the way she wanted it.
Kerstin tried to persuade herself. But she wasn’t disposed that way. She wanted the people around her to feel good, and it was most unsatisfying that she personally had some responsibility for Jeanette’s emotional about-turn. She knew full well that the problem was founded upon Jeanette’s obstinacy rather than Kerstin herself. But if anyone had it in them to break the deadlock inside Jeanette, it was Kerstin. Perhaps it was presumptuous to think like that, especially given Jeanette’s harsh parting words, but Kerstin needed to rise above that kind of thing. Despite the fact that Jeanette was an arch-egoist, incapable of pulling herself together even though Kerstin had been magnanimous and had forgiven her, it was probably best for now to put Jeanette first and deprioritise her own emotional needs—such as not wanting to be seen as excessively pushy.
It was around midnight when she decided to stroll over to Jeanette’s flat, force her way in, and refuse to climb down in the face of harsh words and outright insults. She was going to stay with Jeanette until she had softened and become more reasonable. She would prevent her from continuing in her downward spiral and from harming herself, if it was really going that far.
That was why she put on her shoes, pulled on her thin padded jacket, and stole out into the summer night. It was a magnificent, starry night, the moon making little fuss as it made its shy retreat. Nature was giving off the scents of saturation, and the deluge of water that had fallen from the sky to Erik’s benefit over the last few days had already been sucked up into the natural circulatory system. Everything was beautiful: the grass, trees, and bushes shimmered in various shades of green and immediately put her in a better mood.
She considered what there was to be happy about—not least for Jeanette. The fact that Kerstin and Jeanette had managed to get their hopeless project across the finishing line—despite their limited resources in every respect—and that they had managed to find the money was frankly verging on miraculous. The fact that they had also saved the life of Sandra’s three-year-old was even more worthy of celebration, even if it wasn’t really a proper celebration since they had simply been lucky to be in the right place at the right time. And they’d had the presence of mind to take the necessary action demanded in that situation, just as anyone else would have done.
Kerstin saw Jeanette before her, radiating with joy when Kerstin had praised her for the initiative she had demonstrated in rescuing the boy from the cellar. She remembered the roguish look in her eyes when they had managed to wriggle free from the grasp of the police, when they had retrieved those two bags and cycled away from the hunting cabin with three million kronor each slung over their shoulders. Together, the two of them had managed to do all this, and while they had been doing it they had become closer than ever before.
Kerstin had finally decided to forget old injustices—putting it mildly, of course, but effectively offering forgiveness. She would put all the infected memories behind her and look ahead. This was a day when life had smiled broadly at both of them; Jeanette and Kerstin had every reason to be happy together. Yet, their day together had ended in emotional catastrophe—a teary darkness from which Jeanette seemed unwilling and unable to extricate herself.
But she reminded herself of all the beautiful things around her: the sky, the dazzling scents, and colours of nature. She wanted to believe that Jeanette could appreciate all that too. That the fresh night air and all it carried on its currents would make her feel more lighthearted too. Kerstin would try to get her into a better state of mind, and despite what awaited her she was convinced she was doing the right thing.
There was a pling on her mobile, but that wasn’t going to change anything.
69
Sandra
IT WAS ALREADY past midnight and Sandra had finished jotting down the day’s events, or at least what she knew had happened during the day. Since the police had not yet been to see her, and she hadn’t contacted them, there was a lot she didn’t know about how Erik had been found and in what circumstances he had spent the last four days. On the other hand, what she did know was what her own day had been like, how she had been cast from extremity to extremity before finally ending up in a bed at Visby General Hospital. And that was only the start, since all aspects needed to be depicted, including her own. Now, however, there was nothing more to write about—she would have to wait for the morning and try to stay awake by other means.
She had no intention of sleeping. She was going to watch by Erik’s side, making sure that his condition didn’t take a turn for the worse and that no one other than the night staff visited the room. Of course it was possible that Erik had left the kindergarten group and the woods at Furulundsskogen under his own steam. But given the subsequent search efforts, the idea that he could have succeeded in disappearing without anyone seeing him was unthinkable. In short, he must have been helped, and in view of the timing and the threats that Sandra had received, the idea that it was anyone other than Hallin behind the disappearance seemed impossible. He had everything to gain from Erik not being found alive, and it must have upset his plans that the boy had eventually been found against all the odds.
So what would he do about it? And when? Sense told her that he ought to avoid being seen anywhere near Sandra and Erik, but emotionally she couldn’t relax. All the effort that must have lain behind everything that had happened to them lately! But it had been of no use to Hallin, since Erik was still his son. Since Erik was still alive.
A child’s life seemed so fragile. Erik was so small and vulnerable that it seemed as if he wasn’t built for survival, and yet he clearly had been. The death of such a small person felt like an impossibility, yet at the same time the exact opposite did too. The fear of what might happen if she let herself fall asleep overwhelmed Sandra in waves as she sat there, hugging her anxiety in the soft night-light.
She achieved no great success in her efforts to ward off imagining the worst. Just about anybody could pass through a Swedish hospital completely unnoticed at any time of day. They could easily enter a room and reconfigure or disconnect some tubes without anyone noticing.
It was crazy really that she hadn’t already contacted the police to find out what they had to say, to find out what their view was on Hallin’s role in the disappearance, and to request police protection at the hospital. After all, the kidnapper had not been fully successful in his endeavours thus far. At the same time, it seemed somehow pointless—assigning the three-year-old and thereby herself such importance that uniformed police officers had to guard the room they were in, as if they were in some Hollywood movie.
Of course Hallin wouldn’t try anything here and now. It would draw too much attention and create too much commotion in relation to himself. He had to assume that Sandra would make sure that all spotlights were aimed at him in particular. So when all things were considered, Sandra had nothing to fear, but she was still sitting there throwing suspicious glances around and jumping at the slightest sound from outside the ward. It was just a feeling she had—it might be illogical but it was still very tangible. Somehow, she felt exposed, and the darkness and stillness around her did nothing to improve matters. Right now, the morn
ing seemed a very distant prospect.
She browsed on her phone a bit to see whether she had missed anything. She had read somewhere that using your mobile was the last thing you should do if you wanted to try and sleep. The flickering light, or the sound, or whatever it was, triggered all the wrong receptors in the nervous system, and postponed sleep by several hours. Splendid, Sandra thought to herself. She rediscovered the message she had received earlier that evening from Kerstin. She decided to give it another look in the absence of anything else to do, and she sent the photo to her laptop via Bluetooth.
She imported the blurry photo to her image application, but realised before she had even got started that she lacked the resources and skills necessary to deal with it. Instead, she sent it over to one of the editors at the newspaper who she knew was working tonight and asked him get someone with the right expertise to do their very best to enhance the photo quality. Then she did what she could on her own: she enlarged it, auto corrected, modified the exposure and contrast and anything else she could think of without being able to make head or tail of what was in the photo. Other than it being a car in the rain, and possibly a person.
It was probably irrelevant—Kerstin hadn’t mentioned the picture message when they had spoken an hour or so earlier, after all. And there had been no writing in the message, which suggested Kerstin hadn’t sent it intentionally. Or even taken it intentionally. And now Sandra was reluctant to disturb her again with a question about a missent picture message that was only being asked because she was struggling to pass the time during the night shift.
