Cinderella Girl

by Carin Gerhardsen

  He turned on to a side street. On one side were several slumbering houses with the lights turned off, and on the other a number of sweet little allotment cabins. It was calm and deserted; there was no one out and about at this time of day. In the turning area where Vitabergsparken started he stopped and turned off the engine. When the car lights were turned off it became almost completely dark around them. Elise did not know what to do. The situation was completely new to her, but she did not want to appear inexperienced. He turned slowly towards her and looked at her with empty eyes. Not at her face; his gaze swept across her body.

  ‘The money first,’ she managed to say.

  Her heart was pounding in her chest, but for some reason she did not feel the least bit afraid. He did as she said and pulled the wallet out of the inside pocket of his jacket, took two hundred-kronor bills out and put them in her outstretched hand. She quickly put them in her jacket pocket while he set the wallet down by the gearstick, between them. She followed his hand with her eyes and it came towards her and settled on her bare thigh. He moved it a few times up and down along her leg and she heard him begin to breathe more intensely.

  ‘How old are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Sixteen,’ Elise lied, not really knowing why.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Jennifer,’ she answered, as if to further confirm her age.

  ‘Pull up your sweater,’ he ordered her, and she did as she was told.

  ‘Turn this way,’ he said, and she turned towards him.

  It felt stupid to just sit there, with her sweater up to her neck, and watch as the strange man started touching himself outside his trousers to the sound of heavy breathing. She remained sitting like that for several minutes and she did not move an inch during that time. Then he unbuttoned his trousers and pulled down his zip, then raised himself up a little on the seat and with some effort pulled his trousers and pants down to his knees. This was a strange sight: a man exposing himself in a dark car and she herself beside him with bare breasts.

  ‘Take off your knickers and sit so I can see you,’ he ordered her.

  Elise wriggled the knickers off under her skirt and put them in her pocket. She crawled up with both feet on the seat and legs tight together, but his hand was there at once prying her knees apart. She stayed seated that way, with her back resting uncomfortably against the door and her legs parted, while he started stroking himself back and forth and moaning as if he were in pain. He wanted to touch her and again and again his free hand groped between her legs. But Elise stuck to her guns and pushed his hand away each time.

  ‘Not that,’ she said firmly.

  ‘What the hell?’ he complained, while his hand worked faster and faster and the expressionless, introverted gaze fixed on her crotch.

  Elise thought he was repulsive with his nasty moaning and she tried to think about something other than the image of herself together with that creep. Her eyes moved from his hard dick and the hairy hand’s rhythmic movements to the wallet lying there at her feet. It would be so easy, she thought, just to take it and run away. With her head start she would be gone by the time he got his trousers on and ran after her or got the car started.

  Now his moans were louder and more drawn out. She realized that it was almost over and just as it started squirting, her hand was there grabbing the wallet. Before he could react she had the door open and was on her way out of the car. She did not bother to slam the car door behind her, just took to her heels and ran, ran for all she was worth.

  ‘You little whore!’ she heard from inside the car behind her. ‘What the hell are you doing? I’m going to …’

  That was the last thing she heard him say. She ran and ran and not until she was a fair distance away did she hear a car engine gunning. The tyres squealed and the car thudded; maybe he drove into a lamp post or something. Then it was quiet. Before she disappeared around the street corner she turned around and looked back at him one last time. Now he was out of the car and looked as if he intended to chase after her on foot. But she was faster. After a span of time that felt like an eternity, a car, a green Toyota, came slowly from a cross street, and she rushed out in front of it and waved her arms at the astonished driver who stopped the car. She banged hard on the window on the passenger side and pulled open the door.

  ‘You have to give me a ride; I’m in a hurry to get home!’ she commanded breathlessly, throwing herself on to the seat and pulling the door shut.

  The driver eyed her curiously without making any move to do as he was told.

  ‘Just drive, damn it!’ she screamed, surprised at her own assertiveness.

  ‘Well, well,’ the man sighed, letting the car start to roll. ‘So what do I get for it?’

  ‘I’ll show you my pussy, you dirty old man!’ Elise screamed, creeping up in the seat in the way she had just done, with legs parted and with no knickers on under her skirt.

  It did not feel nearly as dramatic this time; now it was more like a punishment, a punishment for all the sick bastards out there in the world who didn’t care how she was doing. She remained sitting like that for a long time and the man studied her now and then while he drove, but he drove away from Vitabergsparken, away from the white Opel and that was all she cared about. When her pulse started to normalize and the adrenaline subsided, she put her feet on the floor, cleared her throat and said in as normal a voice as she could manage, ‘You can let me off at Ringen, please.’

  He did not answer, but drove her where she wanted without further comment.

  ‘I don’t know what got into me,’ Elise ended her story, drying her cheeks with the back of her hand.

  ‘You were drunk,’ Sjöberg observed calmly. ‘You’re fourteen years old and fourteen-year-olds should not drink alcohol.’

  ‘What will you do with me now?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Sjöberg replied. ‘Your future is in your own hands. But if you need someone to talk to, I can help you with that.’

  * * *

  Barbro intended to stop early and rest after her adventurous few days, but thoughts of the little girl would not leave her alone. She wandered back and forth in her apartment, stopping now and then by the living-room window and looking down at the street outside. Beyond the parked cars along the pavement, the barberry hedge that surrounded the building opposite and its neglected lawn glistened in the glow of the streetlights. A quiet rain was falling over the city and she was grateful that it had held off until now. Someone had optimistically set out several paper bags full of newspapers for recycling outside the entrance, but it seemed probable they would collapse before morning.

  She wanted to call that Holgersson, but she expected he had gone home for the day and it was highly unlikely that they would give out his mobile or home number. You had to assume that the police were doing their job, she thought with a sigh. At Hanna’s no one answered. Barbro had done what she could, and it appeared that the girl was now in good hands. Whether it was the father who was with her or the police who were on their way, it was all the same; Hanna was taken care of, and that was the main thing. Barbro could let the whole thing go.

  But something wouldn’t let her. Thoughts were grinding through her head, and she could not get the last conversation straight.

  ‘Well, you’ve gone to all this trouble,’ she thought out loud. ‘You’ll just have to finish what you’ve started …’

  With sudden determination she went out into the hall and pulled on her rubber boots. She took the raincoat down from the hanger and before she had put it on she was in the stairwell locking up.

  After a fifteen-minute wait outside the building on Ploggatan she was let in by a middle-aged woman with a stressed appearance. The woman held the door open for her and, to Barbro’s great relief, did not bother to ask why she wanted to get into the building without an entry code. Instead she rushed up the stairs, leaving Barbro by herself.

  Barbro took the lift up to the fourth floor, where her eyes immediately fell on the Hedberg family�
�s name plate. She remained standing outside the door for several minutes and listened attentively for sounds from inside the apartment. There was definitely someone inside; that was unmistakable. She could make out one child’s voice at least, and a male voice besides. True, things were quiet, as far as she could judge, but at least two people were without a doubt awake in there. Barbro rang the doorbell numerous times, but no one opened up for her. She leaned down and called into the letter box, ‘Hanna! Are you there? It’s Barbro! Open for me, Hanna dear?’

  She rang again, for longer this time. No reaction. And after her attempts to make contact with the people in the apartment, she could no longer make out any sounds from inside. She took off her raincoat and folded it into a thick bundle that she set on the cold step right outside the door. There she sat down to wait, for what she did not know. But this time she did not intend to give up right away.

  * * *

  A fine, gentle summer rain was falling, even though it would soon be October. Sjöberg and Hamad were walking hurriedly in the direction of Sören Andersson’s address on Katarina Bangata.

  ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ asked Hamad, as he wiped away a raindrop that was hanging on the tip of his nose with the back of his hand.

  ‘Do you mean Vitabergsparken?’

  ‘Yes,’ Hamad confirmed.

  ‘Same place, approximately the same time … Two dead people. This sounds like almost divine intervention.’

  ‘Do you believe in such things?’

  ‘Hardly,’ Sjöberg said.

  ‘What do you think happened?’ asked Hamad.

  ‘I think poor Jennifer Johansson was murdered because she let her sister borrow her jacket,’ said Sjöberg quietly.

  ‘Because someone believed that Elise was a witness to something she never saw,’ Hamad continued.

  ‘Witness to something she still has no idea happened,’ Sjöberg filled in. ‘That Sören Andersson ran over a woman in Vitabergsparken.’

  ‘We have to call Petra.’

  ‘They’re still working on identifying the victim. We’ll take Sören Andersson first. Maybe he can enlighten us on that point.’

  ‘He hides the body and empties her pockets. And then he murders his only witness in cold blood.’

  ‘Wrong person besides,’ Sjöberg observed.

  ‘From no criminal record to double murderer in one day. That’s one cold-blooded bastard!’ Hamad exclaimed.

  Sjöberg phoned Einar Eriksson and asked for the entry code to Sören Andersson’s building. It took him forty-five seconds to supply it, and then they went in. A grey-haired woman who looked considerably older than her fifty-three-year-old husband opened up for them. Sjöberg, who knew that she was roughly his own age, assumed there were good reasons for her premature ageing.

  ‘Sören’s not home,’ she said timidly after they introduced themselves.

  ‘What time do you expect him back?’ Sjöberg asked politely.

  ‘Not later than midnight, I would think. He has to work tomorrow.’

  She blinked nervously up at the considerably taller chief inspector.

  ‘Do you know his whereabouts?’ asked Sjöberg.

  ‘He was going to visit a friend, but he didn’t say who.’

  ‘We just want to ask a few routine questions,’ Sjöberg lied, ‘but it can wait until tomorrow. Do you happen to know whether he took the car?’

  The woman turned around and glanced towards a stripped bureau by the wall with a mirror above it. On the bureau was a little ceramic bowl, and Sjöberg noted the car keys in it.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Mrs Andersson answered with some hesitation.

  ‘Where is the car parked?’

  She looked at him perplexed, but answered without objections.

  ‘He usually leaves it by Bjurholmsplan.’

  ‘What kind is it?’ asked Sjöberg with an easy smile.

  ‘It’s an Opel,’ she replied. ‘An old white Kadett. Would you like to take down the registration number too?’

  They did.

  ‘We’ll put the apartment under surveillance,’ said Sjöberg when they were down on the street again. ‘Then we’ll rest a little until they arrest him. I think we both need a little sleep. But let’s just take a look at Bjurholmsplan first. See if the car is there.’

  ‘What do we do if it is?’

  ‘Call in the technicians.’

  And sure enough there it was. It was both rusty and unwashed. On one front door they immediately caught sight of a dent, but it seemed to originate from a carelessly opened car door in a car park. They walked around the car from either direction and by the right front bumper they stopped and looked at each other. It was seriously dented and Sjöberg crouched down to illuminate the damaged metal with the little flashlight he had on his key ring.

  ‘What do you say?’ he said, turning his face up towards his associate.

  ‘I say it looks like a car that ran into a pram – and the owner of a pram,’ Hamad observed. ‘Are there fragments of blue paint?’

  ‘Looks like it,’ said Sjöberg. ‘Call Hansson.’

  The technicians were soon on the scene and Sjöberg explained the situation to Gabriella Hansson.

  ‘So you have a perpetrator, a weapon and a victim,’ she said, giving Sjöberg a meaningful smile. ‘In other words, only one slight detail remains …’

  Sjöberg made an irritated grimace, took the mobile phone from his pocket and entered Petra Westman’s number.

  ‘How’s it going with the identification?’ he asked.

  ‘Not good,’ sighed Westman. ‘We still have no name for the victim. But we’re quite certain it’s a Swedish woman who lives in the vicinity. With the pictures in the paper tomorrow it should be resolved.’

  ‘I think we have the perpetrator,’ said Sjöberg. ‘And the car.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ said Westman astonished. ‘How did you –?’

  ‘Our paths cross, Petra. I think we’re working on the same case.’

  ‘What the … Have you arrested anyone?’

  ‘Not yet. He’s not at home. We have surveillance on the building, so we’ll arrest him when he shows up and question him immediately.’

  ‘Now you have to explain …’

  Sjöberg briefly recounted what he and Hamad had concluded, and when he was finished Westman sighed deeply and repeated what Hansson had just said.

  ‘Only one slight detail remains …’

  ‘To be sure,’ Sjöberg agreed, ‘but perhaps the perpetrator himself can help us with that information. Go home and go to bed, Petra.’

  Sjöberg ended the call and threw some words of encouragement to the forensics team before he left with Hamad.

  * * *

  Jens Sandén was finally on his way home to the house in Bromma after yet another fruitless day of searching for someone who recognized the unfortunate woman or her son. There still remained to visit only one person on the list, a nurse on sick leave who worked at a private paediatric clinic on Östermalm. He had left her until last, because she lived not far from him in Stora Mossen.

  All the spaces in the car park outside the small apartment building area were occupied, so he parked his car carelessly halfway on to the grass. He made his way into the building with the help of the code Eriksson had supplied him with and saw on the directory that she lived on the third floor. He went up the stairs and was about to ring the doorbell when his mobile phone rang. He considered not answering but changed his mind when he saw on the display that it was Jessica. Jenny, after many ifs, ands and buts, had let herself be talked into having Jessica stay with her overnight.

  ‘Daddy, I have to tell you something,’ she began in a tone of voice that worried Sandén.

  ‘Are you at Jenny’s?’ he asked anxiously.

  ‘Yes … or no, I went outside to phone. I didn’t want to call you while she was listening.’

  ‘Okay, get to the point.’

  ‘Jenny was extremely definite that I couldn�
��t get here until quarter past eight,’ said Jessica, ‘so I promised not to. Punctuality is important to her, you know. But I was already here by five to eight, so I decided to wait outside the front door until quarter past so she wouldn’t be upset.’

  ‘And?’ said Sandén, who feared the worst but could not imagine what that might be.

  ‘I was playing with my mobile phone and it was truly not my intention to spy or anything, but I happened to notice that at eight o’clock sharp a man came out of Jenny’s apartment.’

  ‘But I’ll be damned … Was is that Pontus?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t.’

  ‘Then it must have been that damn Yugoslavian. The one we talked about this morning …’

  Sandén sighed and was about to continue when he was interrupted by his daughter.

  ‘Yugoslavian?’ she said hesitantly. ‘What do you mean?’

  The lights in the stairwell went out and he was surrounded by darkness.

  ‘I thought Mum told you. There was some guy named Dejan there –’

  ‘She told me,’ Jessica interrupted again. ‘But this was a little old Swedish man, retirement age. His name was Kjell-Erik.’

  ‘Well then, that’s nice to hear,’ Sandén laughed in relief.

  ‘No, Daddy, I don’t think you would say that.’

  He felt his stomach knotting up without really understanding why.

  ‘When I came up at quarter past eight she had just showered,’ Jessica continued. ‘I asked her about the man I’d seen.’

  Everything was swimming before him and he felt like he had to sit down. He fumbled for the handrail in the darkness and managed to sit down on the steps without hurting himself.