Cinderella Girl

by Carin Gerhardsen

  ‘Silly Barbro,’ she said out loud to herself.

  That silly Barbro, who had promised to come and rescue her. True, she had said it would take time, but now Hanna had waited a really long time. And no one had called all day. Not even Mummy. Mummy could at least call and talk to her for a little while. Even if she didn’t want to live here any more. Hanna had tried calling, but no one ever answered. She stuffed another meatball into her mouth and it was so big her mouth was completely full.

  ‘Gilly Gaggo’ came out when she tried to speak.

  It sounded funny. She laughed and pieces of meatball flew out of her mouth.

  ‘Gilly Gaggo,’ she said several times, until it started to sound like ‘silly Barbro’ again.

  The meatballs she couldn’t eat she put back into the packet, which she left on the table. At preschool the children who were potty-trained had to go to the toilet to pee after eating, so Hanna did the same. It actually went really well. She had only got pee on her underwear once today and then she had managed to stop herself and run into the bathroom to finish peeing. Daddy would be proud of her if she could do that sort of thing when he came home. If he ever did come home.

  As she was standing on her little white stool washing her hands after using the toilet, the phone rang. For the first time all day the phone was ringing. Without bothering to dry her wet hands, she rushed out into the hall, climbed carefully but not slowly up on to the children’s chair and picked up the receiver.

  ‘Hello!’ she called, but there was silence on the other end.

  ‘Hello! Hello! Is this Barbro?’

  No answer, but still she felt as if someone were there. She happened to remember what Barbro had said; that if someone called – whoever called – she should tell them the same thing she had told her.

  ‘My mummy has moved away and Daddy is in Japan and I’m all alone!’

  The words poured out of her like a flood.

  ‘Can you come and rescue me, because I fell down and hurt myself and there was blood although it’s almost gone now. I can’t come out because Mummy locked me in ’cause I’m so noisy. Barbro was supposed to come and rescue me, but that was days and days ago and I’m all alone.’

  Still no answer, but now she was sure she heard someone breathing, so she continued.

  ‘I can see a castle from my window. A nice, yellow castle with a tower for the princess and red and blue squares on it. And letters …’

  ‘I know where you live,’ a husky voice suddenly said in the receiver.

  ‘You do?’ said Hanna surprised. ‘Then come and save me, please, please! I won’t be noisy, I’ll be good.’

  ‘That sounds nice,’ the man said in a slightly drawling voice.

  ‘What’s your name?’ asked Hanna.

  ‘Björn,’ the voice replied.

  Hanna did not know that a man could be called that. She thought it sounded sweet, and a little strange too. But she didn’t say so. She did not want to make the man sad.

  ‘What’s your name?’ asked the man.

  ‘Hanna. Do you think that’s a nice name?’

  ‘I think it’s a very nice name,’ the man said politely. ‘Are you the only one home?’

  ‘But I already said that! Are you coming now?’

  ‘I can’t come this evening, because it’s already too late. But maybe tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes!’ Hanna cheered. ‘Will it take long?’

  ‘Well,’ the voice answered hesitantly, ‘that depends on what you think is a long time. First you sleep all night and then it’s tomorrow. I’ll come when it’s dark outside.’

  ‘But Mummy locked me in and I can’t open the door,’ Hanna suddenly realized.

  ‘We’ll figure that out tomorrow. I have a lot of keys. I’m sure one of them will fit your lock. Do you have any food?’

  ‘I’ve been eating meatballs that I found in the freezer. And liver pâté. But there are no more sweets.’

  ‘Then I’ll bring some sweets with me when I come tomorrow. And maybe hamburgers, would you like that?’

  ‘Yes, that’s good! I like that!’

  ‘You must be very dirty, Hanna. Are you?’

  ‘I took a bath, but I got water in my nose and –’

  ‘You shouldn’t do that,’ said the man. ‘We can take a bath tomorrow, you and me. I’ll bring hamburgers and sweets, then we’ll have a little party and then we’ll take a bath so you get really clean and nice.’

  ‘Yes, we’ll do that,’ said Hanna.

  ‘But listen, don’t tell anyone about this. It will be our little secret …’

  ‘Okay,’ said Hanna. ‘I promise to do just what you say. I will never be naughty again, I’ve decided that.’

  ‘That’s good. Bye for now, Hanna.’

  The call was over, but Hanna was as happy as a lark. Once again she had something to hope for, and she was so exhilarated that she stayed up late that evening. Not until the voices and the music that had been streaming out of the TV all day were replaced by an angry buzzing did she withdraw to the bedroom, curl up in a foetal position in the big double bed and fall asleep.

  * * *

  She never would have believed she could feel this way. She, who always had such a hard time concentrating in school, now had nothing in her skull besides this one incident; those moments when she had done the stupidest thing possible. How could she be so dense? Nothing was worth this anxiety. And all for a couple of stupid hundred-kronor bills.

  She had barely slept since it happened. She pictured those empty, hazy eyes, eyes that wandered back and forth over her but never met hers, that gaze that looked at her without seeing. The hand that moved up and down, up and down. Those strange sounds, repeated, again and again. The fingers that pawed her, that sought their way between her thighs as she sat with her legs parted, her skirt pulled up and her knickers in her jacket pocket. Again and again she had to say no, to push back; again and again there he was.

  At last, after an eternity, that drawn-out, smothered shriek, the gaze turned inside out, the wallet lying there begging to be stolen, the disgust, and a moment’s inspiration. The voice that echoed in her head long afterwards, the words that were still hanging there: ‘You damn little whore! What the hell are you doing? I’ll –’

  And then her jump, the screeching tyres and car door slamming. But she was already away from the car, running for all she was worth. Before she turned the corner she looked back towards him one last time – suddenly he was out of the car, intending to run after her instead. Then she was out of earshot, could no longer see him. She had run incredibly fast and he could not catch up with her.

  Still he was there all the time. She was so afraid that she hardly dared leave the apartment. What if she ran into him again, what would she do? When she did go out she took the back way, out towards Tjurberget. She did not dare set foot on Götgatan. She took long detours to avoid the area around the cursed Pressbyrån shop.

  The wallet was burning a hole in the wire basket of clothes under the bed. She did not even dare open it, did not dare take the money she had wanted so badly that she had committed her first crime. She had no idea what she would do with it. She could not get rid of it, because what if he found her and demanded the wallet back. She could not imagine keeping it either; she was having a hard enough time as it was, without having to share a room with the cause of her misfortune too.

  And then she sometimes thought of Jennifer. Jennifer and her misfortune. This wallet problem had occupied her mind so much that she had not had time or really been able to start grieving for Jennifer. Jennifer was gone; she was dead. Murdered. But Elise was occupied with other things. She felt a sting of bad conscience for Jennifer’s sake. Everyone else was grieving for Jennifer. Elise missed her, of course she did. But it was also nice to be left alone. To have the room and her thoughts to herself. Jennifer would have teased her, laughed at her if she had known what she’d got herself into. If she were here.

  Who would miss Elise if she died? Absolut
ely no one. Her mum would escape that inconvenience too and could party as usual with her disgusting pals. Nina and her other friends? They might shed a few tears for the sake of appearances, but then she would be forgotten. Life had to go on. If you didn’t take up any room on earth, there was no vacuum when you died. But Jennifer had left a big vacuum behind her.

  Then she happened to think about Joakim. With his beard and those friendly eyes. Maybe he missed Jennifer. Yes, of course he did.

  If they had been together. Of course, that wasn’t crystal clear exactly. Maybe he was the one who had killed her. That’s usually how it was. Jealous boyfriends or married men or exes – they were usually the ones who murdered women. She shuddered as she pictured Joakim and Jennifer. He a head taller, with his strong hands around her throat. Jennifer terrified, spluttering, gasping for air. A long, long time later she finally gives up; he lets her go and she collapses.

  And then that wallet again. She tried to think logically. Wallets get stolen all the time. She wasn’t the first thief in the history of the world. What happened to thieves? They mostly went free. Otherwise – what then? The police arrested them and they had to serve their sentence. What might that be in her case? Prison? Not likely for a first offence. A fine? Juvenile detention? She would end up with a criminal record. So what? That was nothing to worry about.

  Still this paralysing state of terror. It was that gaze. The eyes that saw, yet didn’t see. She had no more worth than a cigarette butt under a shoe to that disgusting pervert. But yet – he wouldn’t kill her just because she stole his wallet. People weren’t that sick. Unless, it suddenly struck her … unless there was a lot of money in that wallet.

  She was lying on her back with her hands clasped behind her head, staring up at the underside of Jennifer’s bed. Years earlier she had taped a poster of Robbie Williams up there. The tape had yellowed and curled up at one corner. The room still smelled faintly of Jennifer’s perfume. It was quieter than usual. She could hear a few voices from the kitchen, but most of her mother’s friends had not shown up today. Maybe they had found some other place to hang out this evening.

  Otherwise her mother went on as if nothing had happened. It was possible that somewhere inside the fog she was grieving for Jennifer, that she had some feelings for her girls, but it didn’t show. Whenever she talked to sober people, like the two police officers who had visited them in the afternoon, she had such a hard time pretending to be sober that you could not see the person behind the awkward attempts to appear normal. All Elise noticed was how artificial and ridiculous her mum was; her efforts to precisely pronounce all her consonants made her words overly drawn out and the ‘r’s ridiculously prominent. On such occasions Elise was ashamed of her mother. She liked her better when she was really loaded, like she usually was. Then at least she was herself.

  Elise sat up on the edge of the bed. With a deep sigh she leaned over and pulled out the wire basket. She removed a few layers of clothing and there it was. A thin wallet of what looked like black leather. She weighed it in her hand as if to get a sense of what it might contain. Then she opened it very carefully, as if she were afraid it would fall to pieces or explode in her hands. It contained no credit cards, just a medical card, an ICA supermarket card, a Co-op card and a membership card for Buylando. In the bill compartment she found six five-hundred kronor notes: three thousand kronor. That was a lot of money to her, but was it to him? Was it enough for him to take the law into his own hands, hunt her down and perhaps hurt her? She did not know for sure. But now she knew who he was. He stared at her with a serious expression from his driver’s licence. She knew his name, his personal ID number and his address. But what could she do with that information?

  * * *

  Conny Sjöberg was sitting with Hamad in Eriksson’s office, ploughing through the lists of staff and passengers on the big boat. Einar Eriksson had produced new lists: lists of names sorted by gender, age and nationality, lists of families with children, lists of convicted individuals, individuals who appeared in crime investigations, who were in contact with social services, minors, and lists organized by various other criteria.

  Sjöberg realized that the time was approaching when they would have to broaden their search for the perpetrator. But it was certainly the case that with these long lists as a basis for investigation, it would take for ever before they would even get through all the interviews. One of these people had murdered Jennifer Johansson, but it was not likely that it was just a passing stranger. Whoever it was, the person in question had probably had strong reasons to take the girl’s life. It must be someone she knew from before, someone in her circle of acquaintances, someone she had met in some context, a shadow from the past who was also on the boat, perhaps for the sole purpose of killing her.

  Or else it was someone she had just met on the boat, someone she had found out too much about or someone whose feelings she had wounded and who killed her without premeditation. Whoever the killer was, Sjöberg wanted to believe that there must be a loose end to tug. There must be witnesses, he thought. There must be witnesses to something that led up to this murder.

  The Finnish police were working hard to locate the two businessmen Jennifer had been seen with in the disco. Sjöberg hoped this would produce something soon. For their part, trying to identify the solitary Swedish man in the bar seemed much harder. But if that man was the murderer, if he had made this trip purely to kill Jennifer Johansson, he had presumably had no travel companion and would therefore be easier for them to find. Eriksson was working on a compilation from Viking Line of all the single men who had reserved a ticket in a separate cabin or in a shared cabin with strangers. That list – together with the list of convicted persons – could be important. If the man in the bar really was a person of interest in the investigation, that is. There were a lot of ‘ifs’, but for the time being Sjöberg was pinning most of his hopes on this man.

  An autopsy had been performed on Jennifer Johansson. There was nothing unusual: no pregnancy, no trace of abuse, either recent or otherwise. No sign of disease, no conceivable cause of death other than strangulation. Strands of hair from a number of different persons had been found on her. They might have come from anyone at all on the boat, been snagged on her clothes in the crowd on the dance floor or been on the toilet floor where she was found. They might also belong to the murderer.

  It had also been determined that Jennifer Johansson had been sexually active during her final hours. The semen had yet to be analysed. It was most likely Joakim’s, but if not, that might suggest new approaches. Had the murderer raped her? Hardly. Not at the murder scene anyway; that would have been far too risky in a public toilet. Not to mention the cramped cubicle. But perhaps she had willingly had intercourse with him in the toilet and then been murdered? That was possible. It was also possible that she had intercourse with the murderer earlier in the evening. Or with someone else on the boat. There were many possibilities, but the semen would sooner or later lead them to an individual who had lied to them or withheld important information.

  While he gulped down the last of his coffee Sjöberg covertly studied Hamad. Jamal Hamad, the man with the phenomenal memory. There was nothing wrong with his own memory, but Hamad’s was something else entirely. He sat purposefully looking through the many pages of Eriksson’s lists. Sjöberg watched his eyes moving back and forth, back and forth across the lines with great concentration. His own eyes started to ache after a while and he wanted to discuss one or two points with his colleagues, but Eriksson was pecking away at his computer with a gloomy expression and Hamad only mumbled something brief in reply, without taking his eyes from his papers. His mobile phone beeped and when Sjöberg saw that he had a text from Åsa he took the opportunity to go out into the corridor to escape the monotonous job for a few minutes.

  ‘Kids sick, staying with Grandma. Lots of hugs, don’t work yourself to death,’ it read. Evidently he had been restored to favour. The message had been sent earlier that afternoon, b
ut there could be serious delays in forwarding text messages with that confounded provider. He deleted the message and entered the number of his in-laws.

  ‘I just now got your message,’ he apologized when he got Åsa on the line. ‘What’s going on?’

  Åsa let out a deep sigh on the other end.

  ‘Both Simon and Sara have chickenpox,’ she said tiredly. ‘We might as well stay here so I get a little help from Mum and Dad.’

  ‘But what about you? Don’t you have to work?’

  ‘I’ll take a few days’ paid leave. I’m due back at work on Thursday, but if it’s not possible, it’s not possible.’

  ‘Chickenpox,’ said Sjöberg dejectedly. ‘Doesn’t that last a few weeks?’

  ‘About a week. But it’s contagious too,’ said Åsa with an ironic laugh. ‘So if the others come down with it, it could be a month before we’re through with this.’

  ‘Everyone else has two children; why do we have to have five?’

  ‘Well, you should have thought about that before!’

  ‘But you can’t bring infectious children home on the train either. I’ll have to come down and pick you up with the van. How sick are they?’

  ‘It’s no big deal, just a slight fever,’ answered Åsa. ‘But there’s an awful lot of complaining about the itching. Take it easy for a few days anyway, then we’ll have a rethink.’

  ‘And the little brats, they’re probably healthier than ever, I’ll bet?’

  Sjöberg was referring to the two-year-old twin boys they had adopted when they were just newborns. Their biological mother had been a drug addict and completely unaware of her pregnancy when she suddenly gave birth to twins shortly before her death. Sjöberg, who had come across the mother through a case he was working on, regularly visited the babies at the hospital after they were born. He did not hesitate to add another two children to the three they already had, and Åsa had not been hard to convince. But Jonathan and Christoffer were two lively little boys, to say the least.