Cinderella Girl

by Carin Gerhardsen

  Those of Jennifer’s teachers that he had an opportunity to meet during the morning seemed to share that perception. They also told him that although she had the capacity to get good grades, she totally lacked the motivation to achieve them. Which did not surprise Sjöberg in the least. Nor did his consultation with the school counsellor, whose contribution only reinforced what Sjöberg already knew about Jennifer.

  Tuesday Midday

  Sjöberg was now back on Östgötagatan and had just concluded a rather boring interview with a congenial furniture dealer from Bålsta, whose only purpose for the trip had been to have a little fun, to ‘put his dancing shoes on’, as he put it. He had achieved this aim so successfully that he could provide the address and phone number of a female passenger he promised could confirm that he hadn’t been up murdering young girls at three o’clock in the morning.

  Just as the recently divorced fifty-eight-year-old closed the door behind him, the police commissioner called and offered reinforcements in the form of human resources. Leadership was usually stingy with that type of offer and Sjöberg always strove to manage the workload with the personnel he already had at his disposal. It was a question of trust. He had no interest in relying on the judgement of an unknown colleague, however talented. Extra staff tended to take on too much or else nothing at all. Sjöberg had no problem delegating responsibility, but he was not prepared to lose control of the investigation just to speed it up.

  ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ he answered curtly. ‘On the other hand,’ – Sjöberg grasped the opportunity – ‘I know that Lotten in reception would really like a little help with simpler tasks. Sandén’s daughter has slight learning difficulties and is looking for work right now. Give her a chance.’

  The police commissioner muttered something incomprehensible at the other end and changed the subject. ‘And the Vita Bergen case?’ he asked. ‘How’s that moving along?’

  That was quick, thought Sjöberg. Brandt not being particularly interested in personnel issues was one thing, but he had so little interest in the murder of Jennifer Johansson that he dropped it after half a minute. No insightful, detailed questions that might lead Sjöberg’s thoughts in a fruitful direction, no proposals for action. Roland Brandt, in Sjöberg’s opinion, was an incompetent pen pusher, if that. He seemed mostly to like showing off and looking important. But that was both good and bad. He had to assume that Brandt was relying on Sjöberg’s ability to lead investigations, and it was nice not to have the police commissioner sniffing at his heels.

  ‘You’ll have to speak to Westman about that,’ Sjöberg replied, ‘but I guess it’s roughly the same situation there.’

  ‘Yes, that was just what I wanted to talk to you about,’ continued Brandt. ‘How is she conducting herself actually, that Westman?’

  Actually? Sjöberg became wary. What was he after now?

  ‘Very well,’ Sjöberg answered quickly. ‘Petra Westman always conducts herself very well. Otherwise I wouldn’t have turned the responsibility for the investigation over to her. Besides, she usually works longer days than anyone else, so it’s likely the investigation will move ahead faster than if someone else were responsible. Like me, for example,’ he added with a laugh, to take the edge off the tension that he instinctively felt radiating from the receiver.

  Brandt laughed too. In a ‘between us guys’ way, thought Sjöberg, who had no intention of cultivating any such relationship with the police commissioner.

  ‘But I think she gives a somewhat unstable impression, don’t you?’

  ‘Not at all!’ Sjöberg replied sharply.

  Not that tone, he said to himself. Don’t make an enemy of the police commissioner over some silly misunderstanding.

  ‘That interview yesterday,’ Brandt continued. ‘In Aftonbladet –’

  ‘I thought she dealt with it admirably,’ Sjöberg interrupted, but in a rather friendlier tone.

  ‘I don’t know about that. The rhetoric was a little iffy, I would say. From what she said you might get the impression that the police aren’t doing their job properly. And Conny, you know what I think about that warped view of the police.’

  ‘It was quite clearly the journalist who chose to take that angle. Petra obviously expressed herself quite differently.’

  ‘You trust her?’

  ‘Completely,’ Sjöberg answered honestly.

  ‘Then I would like you to take a look at an e-mail I got from her the other day,’ said Brandt and Sjöberg was certain he could hear Schadenfreude in his voice. ‘I’m forwarding it to you now.’

  He felt his palms starting to sweat as he turned on the computer monitor. What in the world could Petra have done? His e-mail pinged and Sjöberg double-clicked to open the message from Brandt. He started by checking the original sender and time of the forwarded e-mail. Petra was the sender; there was no doubt of that. And the message was sent last Friday at 11.58 p.m. That worried Sjöberg even more. It was undeniably a time of night when perhaps not the most sensible decisions were made.

  He took a deep breath, moved his eyes down to the message field and read the text. It seemed inconceivable that Petra could have written this. But evidently she had. Brandt sat quietly on the other end of the phone, obviously waiting for a reaction. Without a word Sjöberg clicked on the attached document and studied it for approximately three seconds while his brain processed what he was seeing. Then he closed the document again as quickly as he could and let out a deep sigh.

  ‘Well?’ he heard Brandt’s expectant voice say in the receiver.

  ‘I … I don’t know what to say,’ Sjöberg stammered. ‘I don’t believe my eyes.’

  ‘No, it’s not surprising that you start to wonder,’ the police commissioner agreed.

  ‘Was she even in the building when this was sent?’ The thought struck Sjöberg. ‘We have to investigate that. It may have been someone else who –’

  ‘I’ve already done that,’ Brandt interrupted. ‘The log from her pass card shows that she came in at 11.44 p.m. and left the building at 12.06 a.m.’

  Sjöberg wiped his palms on his trouser legs, sighed again and turned off the monitor. He could not bear to look at it.

  ‘I’ll talk to her,’ he said tiredly. ‘I’ll be in touch when I’ve investigated this.’

  * * *

  The weather was not as nice today, but it was still relatively warm and it did not look like it would rain. During the morning she had managed to investigate the buildings around the allotments on Långholmen but that had taken longer than one might expect. For one thing there was a lot of walking, and another – above all – the investigation process itself. She had to visit every building that might conceivably have the slightest view of the garden cottages and then assess whether they could really be visible from any of the apartments in the building.

  Searching for the name Bergman on the directory in every stairwell was not exactly straightforward either. Sometimes the directory could not be seen from outside the door. Then she had to either wait until someone showed up or call on the entryphone to be let in. As a rule if anyone was home they were unwilling to open the door for her, so now she pretended she was the postwoman and the code wasn’t working. A few times she had been able to see the directory from outside but the text was too small for her to read. That was why she had brought binoculars with her today, to at least solve that problem.

  And could the old prison building from the 1840s be perceived as a castle in a little girl’s eyes? It was possible, but nowhere had she found a building with a view of both the garden area and the ‘castle’, in which there also lived an apartment dweller named Bergman. When she had finished Långholmen her legs were so tired and she was so hungry that she was forced to take a lunch break, even though only one allotment area remained before she completed the search of Södermalm. Now she directed her steps towards her last destination in that part of the city, the Barnängen allotments by Vitabergsparken.

  She realized that sooner or later she w
ould be forced to start taking public transport. She considered having a taxi drive her around to the various allotments, but decided that was not really financially feasible for her. There was not much of her small pension left over for such extravagances, and just the thought of being rushed by a ticking taxi meter while she inspected stairwells left her in a cold sweat. And she did not own a bicycle. Cycling around among hot-tempered Stockholm motorists was not for a woman in her seventies. As the plan stood, she would walk as much as possible and take the bus and metro as needed.

  The little girl’s voice echoed in her head. She had spoken so well! She spoke quite clearly and formulated her ideas remarkably well. She was certainly a talented little child. Precocious. She could take care of herself, find food when she got hungry. But she didn’t know what her last name was. She could not say how old she was or where she lived. How could you leave such a small child at home alone? It was just not possible. Hanna was a little devil, a child with a very lively imagination. She had discovered the telephone and started pushing buttons, making crank calls when her parents turned their backs. That’s how it must be. The alternative seemed implausible. What was she doing, chasing all over the city on the basis of a three-year-old’s prank? Pure madness. But that’s how it was with intuition. It told her something different.

  Barbro’s body was stiff and her calf muscles were sore. She was used to walking long distances, but yesterday she had walked for almost seven hours with only a few short breaks, and that was more than she and her friends usually did. Yet she did not really feel satisfied with her efforts. It would have been better if she could have checked off all of Södermalm yesterday. But that was how it was. She quickened her pace a little as she left Götgatan and moved on to Bondegatan.

  * * *

  ‘What time should the next man be coming in?’ asked Hamad.

  ‘Let’s see now … Yes, it was one-thirty,’ answered Lotten, turning towards him.

  Behind her on the notice board a number of postcards were pinned up, all depicting dogs of various breeds, but there were also serious items, such as the list of names and times that Lotten produced for him. He had already dealt with several, but none of the interviews had produced anything.

  ‘Listen, that girl you talked to before – did you know her?’ Lotten asked.

  ‘Which girl?’

  ‘That young thing, pretty, blonde … You took her up to your office.’

  ‘Right, Elise. She figures in one of our investigations.’

  ‘So what were you talking about?’

  ‘About her sister. She was the one who was murdered on the Finland ferry. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Just curious,’ Lotten said. ‘I was wondering how you knew each other, that’s all.’

  Hamad was not satisfied with that answer.

  ‘How’s that? Do you think that I … with a fourteen-year-old girl?’

  ‘Oh, Jamal! Of course I don’t think that! A grown man …’

  Hamad rolled his eyes and had started to leave when Lotten suddenly thought of something.

  ‘But listen,’ she said to his back.

  He stopped and turned towards her again.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Did you call her in?’

  ‘No,’ answered Hamad. ‘She just wanted to find out how things were going.’

  ‘But that’s not why she came here …’

  He retraced the few steps back to the reception counter and said, ‘I assume it was. What do you mean?’

  Lotten looked at him, surprised herself at her possible discovery.

  ‘She found a wallet, she told me. She asked for the lost property department.’

  Hamad did not know what to believe. First he thought just that: she found a wallet, nothing strange about that. But when he realized that Elise Johansson had lied to him, it put the matter in a different light. She had not said a word to him about a wallet. What had really happened when they met in the hall by the stairs? Yes, she really had said he was the one she was there to see; she hadn’t mentioned the wallet or the lost property department. She had looked a bit anxious, certainly, but on the other hand he had not expected anything else. The girl was here to turn in a wallet, but lied about it. What could that mean? It might mean two things, Hamad reasoned. Elise had found a wallet but suspected that he would not believe that. Or – most likely – she had acquired the wallet some other way and then regretted it.

  ‘Thanks, Lotten!’ he called, already running to the lost property department. ‘You’re worth your weight in gold!’

  ‘Yes, indeed, there was a young girl in here with this,’ Ivarsson at the lost property department confirmed, producing the wallet. ‘She found it, she said. Couldn’t remember where. But I don’t think she found it, ’cause then they usually leave their name and address. They don’t say no to a little reward at that age. And there’s a lot of money in it too. I’m guessing she got cold feet.’

  ‘Have you got hold of the owner?’ Hamad asked.

  ‘No, he hasn’t been informed yet.’

  ‘Good. I don’t want you to inform him either. I’ll take care of this for the time being.’

  Hamad went up the stairs at a half-run and into his office. He sat down at the desk and set the wallet in front of him, a thin little thing in back-pocket format, black imitation leather, with nowhere for coins. In the bill compartment he found three thousand kronor. A lot of money to a fourteen-year-old. It must have been hard for Elise to abstain from spending it, he thought. The wallet had spaces for six cards, but contained only five: a medical card, ICA and Co-op cards, a membership card for a video-rental chain, and a driver’s licence. One Sören Andersson, born in 1954, stared at him with a vapid expression. He looked ordinary, if a little dishevelled.

  * * *

  ‘The only thing we have to go on is that there’s a big sister,’ Petra Westman stated dejectedly.

  ‘And that doesn’t make it any more fun,’ said Sandén.

  ‘No, it will probably be harder for her than for the boy to grow up without her mother. He’s not going to remember what she was like.’

  Petra and Sandén were having a quick, fairly unhealthy lunch together at McDonald’s on Götgatan. Normally Sandén would at least try to take a longer break, but they were short on time and wanted to meet up anyway to summarize the investigation. They sat strategically located in one corner, near the street, speaking in low voices.

  ‘Have you talked to the hospital today? How’s the kid doing?’ Sandén asked.

  ‘He’s going to pull through,’ Petra answered. ‘He just has to gain some weight and get over the throat infection. But where in the name of God are the rest of this family hiding themselves? No one has missed the boy and his mother in four days. Tomorrow we’ll have to put photos in the newspapers, that’s all there is to it. We’ve been to all the children’s health centres in the entire inner city. All that’s left are a few sick or absent paediatric nurses that we’ll have to visit at home. That sort of thing takes for ever.’

  ‘We’ve knocked on virtually every door within three hundred yards of the discovery site. Same thing there: it’s the ones who don’t open the door or answer the phone who create a bottleneck in the investigation.’

  ‘It’s hard to believe you can be so anonymous in this city,’ Petra sighed.

  ‘It doesn’t surprise me a bit. It’s stranger that no one saw anything,’ Sandén muttered.

  ‘Not many people go past there at that time of night. At midnight in September it’s pitch black and the park is poorly lit. Besides, the whole thing must have happened extremely fast. Think about it: he comes towards her, driving at high speed. It’s dark; presumably he doesn’t see the woman until it’s too late. She flies headfirst right into the tree, the inset flies into the bushes, the pram in a different direction. He stops the car, rushes out to see what happened and finds her dead. Panics and decides to hide the body. Then he catches sight of that sand box and drags her over there; it’s not far. Gets her down in
to the box, for some reason decides that he should empty her pockets – maybe to get her money, or make the police’s work harder or something. Then he runs back to the car and drives off. All in less than two minutes, the re-enactment will show.’

  ‘You’re forgetting the boy,’ Sandén pointed out.

  ‘The driver didn’t even see him. I think the insert ended up in the bushes from the collision and that the pram flew or rolled off somewhere. Then a passerby discovered the pram on the grass and pushed it up to the turning area.’

  ‘Or else someone ran her over on purpose,’ Sandén suggested. ‘The father, for example. Maybe they were in a custody dispute and so he did away with her.’

  ‘As she was pushing their son in a pram?’ Petra sounded sceptical.

  ‘Maybe the children have different fathers. Maybe he was only the father of the girl.’

  ‘You don’t believe that yourself.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Sandén admitted. ‘I’ll do the rounds of the paediatric nurses who are off sick in the north and west suburbs during the afternoon; you take the rest.’

  ‘Good,’ said Petra. ‘Tomorrow we’ll release the pictures to the press and then I’ll try to put together a reconstruction in Vitabergsparken at night. I’ll talk to Conny and see whether he has any new angles.’

  ‘He probably has his hands full too, I would think.’

  ‘I haven’t seen him since Sunday.’

  ‘No, we keep missing each other. And then there’s Einar, like the spider in the web,’ said Sandén with a grin.

  Petra let out a hollow laugh and pretended to shudder.

  ‘He does what he’s supposed to anyway,’ said Sandén soothingly.

  ‘But not a bit more.’

  ‘It could be worse.’

  ‘I know, but I hardly dare give him any work.’

  ‘You’ll have to learn to, if you’re going to get anywhere.’

  ‘How can a person be so surly and bitter?’

  ‘What do we really know about what life’s like for him, what reasons he might have for his behaviour?’ Sandén philosophized. ‘If we knew what he’s experienced, maybe we’d love the guy for his positive attitude. Not everything is always as it seems, Petra, my dear.’