Leona

by Jenny Rogneby

  Damn it, not that too.

  “I can’t talk right now. I’m sure you understand that I’m really busy.”

  “That’s why I’m calling. Another girl robbery, are you out of your mind? That little girl…”

  “I’ll call you later. I have information for you but can’t talk right now.”

  I hung up. Hopefully he would stay calm for a while. Right now I was thinking about the witness who had touched the girl.

  TWENTY-SIX

  After a quick stop by Forex in Old Town I was on my way back to the office. If there had been a lot of media with the first robbery, that was nothing compared to now. My colleagues at the crime scene had plenty to do just keeping journalists away. My phone was ringing nonstop.

  The commander had confirmed that a witness had touched the girl and got blood on his hands. The technicians had taken DNA and sent the blood for analysis. Otherwise there were no traces of her. Ronni seemed to have done his part.

  The results would show that the blood wasn’t real, but that didn’t matter too much. There was still no information that would reach the general public or create other problems. There was nothing else to do at the crime scene, so I headed back to the office.

  I had just opened my email when Claes appeared in the doorway with a big, cheerful smile on his face.

  “Leona, here come reinforcements!”

  I immediately realized my mistake. If I’d had the door to my office closed, indicating that I was occupied, I could have sat and thought over my next move in peace and quiet. Avoided what appeared to be really bad news. More investigators on the case was the last thing I wanted right now.

  Next to Claes stood Minna Nordin and Sam Friberg. They were new to the squad and as far as I knew they had previously been stationed in Property Crimes, where simpler cases like bicycle theft, property damage, break-ins, and other low-level crimes were investigated. They were hardly suitable for this type of investigation. Why was Claes foisting these two on me right now? After a quick look at Claes I turned my head back to the screen. I tried to ignore them. Simply pretended that they weren’t standing there.

  “Thanks, but I’ll manage,” I said with my eyes fixed on the screen.

  All three remained standing like statues in the doorway. I hoped Claes would realize that his plan was unwelcome, and that he would need to change tack and find some other task for them. I had neither the time nor the desire to babysit those two.

  “The case is too big to run on your own, Leona. You need more help.”

  “I have the investigators you gave me from the start. I’ll manage fine with them.”

  “They’re needed for other things. The three of you will have to work together on these robberies starting now. Be sure to summarize the case for Minna and Sam and put them to work. They’ll have to share your office for the time being.”

  “Excuse me?” I said, staring at Claes.

  “It’ll be more efficient that way. The case is a priority, and the investigation can’t drag on because we’ve been inefficient. Besides, there are two robberies now.”

  “Can you excuse us a moment?”

  I closed the door on Claes and me. Pulled the curtain on the window that faced the corridor. Minna and Sam remained standing outside. I turned to Claes.

  “What are you up to? Those two are still wet behind the ears.”

  “Everyone else is busy with more serious crimes. You understand that I can’t just pull a few officers from one of our homicides to investigate two robberies.”

  “If the robberies are so unimportant, let me run the investigation by myself. You know I can manage it.”

  He shook his head.

  “This comes from above. Management has been dragged into the media circus. The case is sensitive because of the little girl. I have to show that we have people working on it.”

  “So what do you want me to do with them? Or more precisely, what could they do for me? And that thing about them sharing my office — ha! How funny you are, Claes. Forget it, I won’t have it.”

  I was furious, but I managed to squeeze out a fake laugh so he’d understand how absurd the whole thing was. Being forced to have two bureaucrats at my heels intervening and questioning every detail was definitely not something I wanted.

  I didn’t have time for that.

  And I couldn’t afford it.

  “Be sure to put them to work. You won’t get any other help. After all, these are only two robberies, and no one was injured.”

  He repeated it like a mantra.

  “The little girl was covered with blood, Claes,” I said. “As far as we know she might be lying dumped in a container somewhere in Frihamnen right now.”

  Or else she’s asleep on a mattress in an apartment at Gärdet.

  “This is a serious case, Claes, and I don’t want anyone to mess it up. I’d prefer to work on it myself. If we’re so overloaded, can’t you find a use for those two somewhere else?”

  Claes looked at me. He must’ve realized I was right. “Look, I’ll make sure they get a different office, but you’ll have to put up with working with them. They need someone to learn from. Keep in mind that you were new once. It’s time to share your knowledge with others, Leona. You’ll probably make a good team, you’ll see.”

  Team? I despised the word. I was definitely not a team player. I preferred to work by myself, without having to debate every little investigative measure. The agency had never been good at training new personnel, learning by doing always applied. It had always been that way. It wasn’t really the best way to learn the job, if you asked me, but it was hardly my responsibility to cover up for the agency’s lax attitude where reasonable orientation programs for new police officers were concerned. Claes, however, seemed to have made up his mind.

  I would have to put up with them.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  When I turned off the engine, everything was quiet. It was strange how few people were outside at night. I looked at the clock. He wouldn’t be here for another three minutes.

  I had arranged the meeting at lower Gärdet. Here, it was calm. Far ahead of me, almost as an extension of the street, was the illuminated Kaknäs Tower. Peter had treated me to dinner in the restaurant there many years ago. It was beautiful to see the illuminated tower against the night sky. One minute to go. I made a U-turn so that I was on the right side of the street.

  I turned on the radio, scanning among the various stations without finding anything to listen to. I couldn’t stand the uninteresting babble, so I turned it off. I looked at the clock again. He ought to be here by now. Ronni.

  I had made it clear to him that I didn’t intend to wait more than five minutes after the scheduled time. After that I would assume he had crossed me, and he could expect major repercussions. His reaction, when I had said that, showed that he took me seriously. He respected me, and rightly so. Even Ronni understood that it would mean big problems to double-cross a police officer with good insight into the criminal world. Too big to be worth taking any risks. The previous handover had gone flawlessly.

  There was a flash in the window. I looked up. A car was coming. I couldn’t make out if it was him or not. I sat quietly as the car came closer. It was him. He slowed down until he was right alongside my car. I rolled down my window. He rolled down his. Without a word he handed me the backpack with the money. I noted that he had gloves on this time. It was one of the strange things about Ronni. He managed to do the most important things really well.

  I pulled on my gloves before taking the backpack. Ronni stayed in the car. After pulling open the zipper of the large compartment, I took out the plastic bags, quickly looked inside them, and then set them on the floor by the passenger seat. I nodded to Ronni and handed him the backpack. He drove off. I pulled out a black bag from the backseat and put the bags of money inside before driving home.

  With one hand on the steering wheel, I dug in my pocket for the phone. I quickly wrote “number two done” and sent the text messag
e. I had already told Peter that there had been another robbery and that I would have to work late that night. When I opened the door it was dark in the apartment. I slipped quietly into the larger bathroom in the hall, carrying the bag. The hatch in the bathroom ceiling, where the valves were, was an excellent space that was never used other than when the water needed to be shut off. I got on the toilet seat and reached up. Opened the hatch and pushed the bag in alongside the one that was already there. After that I locked the hatch and started brushing my teeth.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  I heard screams from far away. The sound was faint but still jarred in my ears. I’d heard it many times, yet I didn’t understand what it was. I looked around, trying to find where the sound was coming from. Now it had become so loud that I had to hold my hands over my ears, but it didn’t help. It came closer. Got louder.

  When I opened my eyes I could hear Benjamin crying hysterically in his room. I pulled off the covers and quickly got out of bed. Tripped on the rug and almost fell on my way out of the bedroom. Benjamin was lying in bed curled up in the fetal position, his face damp with sweat. The stomach pains seemed to get worse when his little body was stretched out. I sat on the edge of the bed and held him. He was inconsolable. I rocked him, stroking his forehead.

  “Shh, shh,” I whispered quietly. “It’ll be over soon.”

  “Knives, Mommy. Knives.”

  I knew what that meant. Hearing my own child say that it felt like knives in his stomach was almost more than I could bear. I felt a lump in my throat. I closed my eyes. Kept rocking him.

  “I know, sweetheart, I know. It will be over soon.”

  The camisole I usually slept in had become damp from his little body. Our skin stuck together. I looked up at the ceiling and felt tears forming. Quickly wiped them away. I needed to be strong for his sake. For almost twenty minutes I rocked him before the pain subsided. I tried carefully to get the wet pajama top off him. He whined and complained.

  “Yes, we have to, sweetheart. You can’t sleep in a wet top.”

  After some struggle I managed to get a dry pair of pajamas on him.

  “Daddy, Daddy,” he said between sobs.

  “Daddy is sleeping, Benji.”

  He started crying more. I carried him into our bedroom and set him down on the double bed beside Peter, who woke up and looked up at me.

  “His crying woke me up,” I said. “It’s better now. Will you take him while I put clean sheets on his bed?”

  Peter embraced Benjamin in the bed. I could no longer stop the tears but instead let them run down my cheeks, chin, and down onto my chest while I changed the sheets. I thought about all the doctors we had been to who squeezed and took samples while Benjamin cried hysterically. When we finally found out that he suffered from Crohn’s disease his condition had become so serious he had to have part of his intestine removed the week after the diagnosis. After the operation he had been better for a while. In the past six months, though, it had turned for the worse again. Soon we would get the results from the latest tests.

  After I changed the bed I could not get myself to lie down. Instead I remained sitting on his bed. Didn’t feel I was worthy of sleep when I knew he wouldn’t get any.

  It worried me that Benji had started asking more and more for his father. Just like Bea did.

  I looked up at the photograph we had framed and placed on Benjamin’s nightstand. His favorite nurse held her arm around him at the hospital, on the day we got to go home after the latest operation. Benjamin was smiling but pale and thin. It was no life for a little boy.

  I fell asleep with my head on his pillow.

  TWENTY-NINE

  It had become really cold in the ten minutes and thirty-five seconds I had been standing waiting for the reporter from Sweden’s Most Wanted. Waiting for people was one of the most frustrating things I knew. I would rather have been sitting at the office reading through interviews and memos. Many documents had come in but so far there was nothing I needed to worry about.

  It struck me how my job had changed. Investigating your own crime was relatively calm work. I avoided most of the usual tasks like organizing surveillance on various suspects, searching houses, wiretapping, assessing information that came from colleagues’ investigations and interviews, searching various registers, and mapping various individuals’ contact networks and family relationships in a constant struggle against the clock. Now it was more about lying low. Making sure that none of my colleagues started digging too deeply into anything. Only doing what was absolutely necessary. Appearing on Sweden’s Most Wanted was perfect. That way I was showing that I was doing all that I could, while also being the one who received and assessed the credibility of the tips that came in. I got tired of waiting and started to walk back to my car when I heard someone calling.

  “Leona?”

  I turned around. A dark-haired young woman with her hair in a ponytail came running toward me.

  “Maria Tillström. I’m sorry we’re late. I didn’t know about the roadwork here. We had to park so far away…”

  “Okay. Let’s just get started. I have to be back at the station as soon as possible.”

  I nodded at the photographer who had followed and started rigging up the tripod and camera. Maria told how she envisioned the whole thing. I couldn’t bear to listen. Mostly I was annoyed because it was always so windy around Slussen. My cheeks felt numb.

  I had already prepared what to say, so when the photographer was ready all that was left to do was go for it. The camera was aimed at me where I stood in front of the exchange office.

  “Here behind me, at Forex in the Old Town, is where the robbery occurred last Tuesday, when a blond girl about age seven carried off a large sum of money. Judging by the evidence the girl was forcibly compelled to carry out the robbery. Out of fear that she would be subjected to more violence, staff and customers did not intervene. The girl left the exchange office in the direction of Lilla Nygatan and since then it has not been possible to trace her. This crime is very similar to a robbery at SEB on Nybrogatan earlier in September. We are now searching for the little blond girl who is believed to have been involved in both robberies, but we are also seeking other information that may help us solve the crimes. The girl is presumably traumatized, and it is of greatest importance that we locate her as soon as possible.”

  “Very good,” said Maria Tillström. “I have what I need but we’ll do it one more time to get more camera angles.”

  The photographer moved the camera and tripod a little farther away to film from a different direction. I quickly ran through the same spiel one more time and then took the car back to the police station. It was Friday, and I hoped that most of my colleagues had already left for the day. I thought I’d have time for a short tournament before I needed to pick up the kids at day care.

  THIRTY

  There were more enjoyable things to do on a Sunday afternoon in September than traipsing around Spånga to open houses, along with two hyperactive children and a husband who saw the possibilities in a house’s every flaw. Peter had found two open houses that he desperately wanted to go to. One was in Spånga and the other in Aspudden. Even that was telling — one north of the city, the other south. Peter didn’t seem to know what he wanted. He had grown up in an apartment himself and often talked about how he envied classmates who could have a barbecue in the garden or play soccer with their parents outside the house in the summer. Personally I had no such memories of my upbringing in a single-family house.

  It was light outside even though it was seven o’clock in the evening. I was fourteen. I sat in my room, looking out at the well-tended lawn and the flowers that Mother had planted. My siblings and I were not allowed to play in the garden as children. In our teens none of us was interested in using it. My brothers were almost never at home anymore. I was not allowed to go anywhere after school. It was best for everyone that I stayed at home, Mother always said. I had started to agree with her, and spent most of my time
in my room. Still, I dreamed of being somewhere else.

  There was a lot of time for thinking in my room. I had stopped talking with the stars long ago. Had learned to talk inside my head instead, so that others did not hear. The emotions that previously stormed inside me had stopped.

  Perhaps I had learned to restrain them.

  Perhaps I had lost the ability to feel them.

  I didn’t care which was true.

  The main thing was that I didn’t have to go into the cellar. Father had stopped sending me down there. I was too old and in any case I had started to understand how to behave, he said. When Father did punish me, I had to go to my room instead. I was quite happy with that. I avoided the rest of the family anyway. Preferred to be by myself.

  But this day Mother had been really angry at me. We’d had a theme day at school — uniformed occupations. We’d watched a film about how the fire department, military, and police worked. One person from each service had come to speak to the class. I was completely fascinated.

  Not by the military officer.

  Not by the fireman.

  By the policeman.

  What he’d said sounded action-packed and intense, like a Hollywood movie. I wanted to be like him. He was calm, but he talked about the most exciting things. I wanted to be just like that. I danced home in a rush. Told Mother I’d decided to spend my future working life in uniform. I would learn to fight. Shoot. Chase bad guys. Fight against evil. In a bulletproof vest. With a baton. With a pistol. With all that great stuff.

  She looked at me and said that I should stop thinking along those lines at once. Someone like me wasn’t suitable to work as a police officer. I didn’t let myself be swayed but instead continued to talk more and more excitedly about everything I had heard during the day. When Mother sent me to my room I continued to dream myself away. Away from Mother and Father. Away from the house.

  I would become a police officer.