Black Ice

by Ian Giles

  “I swear I’ll never bother you again,” she said. “Or your wife. I’ll never demand a paternity test, never demand child support, and never get the police involved in what happened four years ago. I haven’t done so far, so why would I now? If the boy is found, then things will be for the best for everyone involved and the matter will be forgotten.”

  “Well, that’s marvellous news,” said Hallin with a warmth that felt anything other than genuine. “Then let me wish you and the boy the best of luck.”

  And with that the call was over.

  The question was whether they had reached the desired arrangement, or whether he had simply put off the evil hour in his usual way. Unfortunately, it felt like the latter was the more probable of the two.

  54

  Jan

  SINCE GUNILLA WORKED on Monday evenings, Jan had to eat dinner alone. That meant the menu was a little plainer than usual—instant mashed potato and tinned Pilsner sausages weren’t what his beloved wife usually laid out on the table. Nevertheless, it tasted good and it took less than ten minutes to make. While he was eating, the phone call from Sandra resurfaced in his thoughts.

  He couldn’t have cared less about her accusations—they were just something she had reeled off for the sake of it. She had no idea what had happened to the boy, and the question was whether she ever would. According to the papers, the police had nothing to go on, and despite hundreds of volunteers joining the search they hadn’t come even a millimetre closer to a resolution. And now seventy-two hours had elapsed, so it was no bloody surprise she was desperate.

  She had been unable to hide her desperation, and even though she had tried to sound cool and businesslike, he could practically hear her heart beating like a piston hammer down the phone line when she withdrew her demands for child support. It must have hurt, given how infernally pigheaded she had been about that money. The fact that she had now given up that battle was yet another confirmation of how scared she was. An observation that he made with a degree of schadenfreude, he had to admit.

  When it came to the boy, there had been a small degree of uncertainty at the very beginning. It had been possible that Sandra might lose her head entirely and tell the press and the police and anyone else who would listen how the boy had been conceived through rape, as she chose to describe it. But that kind of behaviour had still seemed unlikely, because—just as she herself had put it on the phone—why would she bring it up now when she had kept quiet for so long? And who the hell wanted to publicise that their firstborn son had been conceived through rape, as she put it? That he was unwanted? It would have been almost the same as saying that it didn’t matter all that much if he didn’t come back, and that would have been blown out of all proportion by the media.

  Jan had shaken off pretty quickly his misgivings that the boy’s disappearance would set those particular hares running. For good reason, it had turned out, given that the question of the boy’s conception—there was only an outside chance of anyone considering that—hadn’t been touched. There was nothing to worry about; on the contrary, most things were going Jan’s way. Three days had already passed, and it was probably only the boy’s nearest and dearest who hadn’t given up all hope. And as far as Jan was concerned, a dead boy had two good qualities: he didn’t need any child support and he didn’t need a father. Two birds with one stone.

  On the other hand, there was something else which had cropped up that—no matter how silly it seemed—concerned him just a little. At least it awakened his curiosity in a not altogether positive way. The ladies at work—who would gossip like mad as soon as they got a chance, usually by the coffee maker—had had a standing topic of conversation as of about a week ago whenever they were in the kitchenette. Since Jan, due to a lack of interest, hadn’t been involved from the beginning, he wasn’t completely up to speed about what was being discussed, but it seemed they all watched the same TV show or something. Jan didn’t waste his time on that kind of thing; he was more interested in news and sports, especially right now, given the football World Cup was on.

  They had been yakking on about this for a while, and everyone was super into it: which was most immoral . . . doing this or doing that? Did such and such place really exist? Have we ever heard of anything like that event? Did it work out in the end? Where did he go then? Might it be her, the dark-haired one? Do we know anyone called that—what if it’s him? But was it actually a true story?—no, surely it must just be fiction?

  And it had carried on gnawing away like that, every single day. “Ravine” was a frequently reoccurring word, but he hadn’t paid much heed to it. He had also encountered the occasional “drunk driving” and “hit-and-run,” but nothing more than that. When “rape” had become increasingly common in their conversations a few days later, he had begun to wonder what it was that had captured their interest so intensely. But he hadn’t wanted to ask; he had hoped he’d figure it out by himself without anyone discovering that he too had begun to take an interest in this. Whatever it might be. But he hadn’t been able to ascertain what, and soon enough he had become both impatient and a little bit worried.

  Over the weekend he had therefore dug out the TV guide for the previous week and had scrutinised each and every channel every day all week—but nowhere had he been able to find anything that was even reminiscent of what he had overheard during the eager conversations in people’s coffee breaks at work.

  But then the chance had presented itself. Probably because for once he hadn’t been standing to one side with his back turned, but was standing with them during their conversation and looked engaged. The engagement had been genuine, but the reason why was different than the one they might have expected—at least he had hoped so.

  “You’re following it, aren’t you, Jan?” one of the girls had said, a craving for sensation shining in her eyes.

  Jan had shaken his head a little hesitantly and looked quizzical.

  “It’s set here, among us,” she had explained. “It’s really fascinating, because it leads to so much speculation and so many questions.”

  “Here?” Jan had said. “On Gotland?”

  She had confirmed that, which didn’t feel one hundred percent okay, but he had maintained his mask.

  “I guess this must be some TV series that you’re all discussing so much?” he had said.

  “No, it’s a book,” several people had said.

  A book? Then surely it must have an ending? Or were they members of the same book club—maybe they were only allowed to read one chapter at a time or something?

  “You follow a book?” he had said in confusion.

  “We’re talking about the summer serial, Jan.”

  He had remembered something from the summers of his childhood.

  “On the radio, you mean?”

  “No, in Gotlands Allehanda.”

  “Aha,” he had said, stirring his coffee cup to ensure the feeling of discomfort gnawing at him wasn’t visible. “Should I be reading it then?”

  Everyone in the kitchenette had agreed that he should.

  As soon as dinner was over, Jan locked himself in the study and found the first part of the serial online. The author was called Sting, who to Jan’s knowledge was a British pop star. When he did a search on it, he didn’t find any authors with that name, so he concluded it must be a pseudonym. Not exactly something that set his mind at ease.

  Jan didn’t normally read works of fiction, so it took him a while to get going. But once he got started, he was pretty quickly wrapped up in a description of a car accident that felt very familiar. It was depicted from several people’s perspectives. One of which seemed reminiscent of his own.

  It wasn’t as bad as he had feared, and it was really time for him to go to bed now. But something kept him up. Where exactly was this going? Who were all these people that the reader got to follow? And what was it about this story that captured his colleagues to the extent that they couldn’t stop talking about it?

  So he downloade
d more issues of the newspaper and read more chapters. The person who seemed a bit like him was no longer part of the plot, but it had to be assumed that it was he who had died in the crash. Instead, a lot of it was about some alky and her friends. Jan was truly sorry about the outcasts of society and their difficult situation, but he didn’t know whether he was up to reading a whole book about their welfare.

  So he brought his reading project to a close for the day, and, in Gunilla’s absence, he spread out in their double bed.

  55

  Sandra

  ON TUESDAY, the fourth day after Erik’s disappearance, Sandra was so hyped up that she struggled to sit still. Her body protested—it needed to rest when it was awake, and above all else it needed to sleep at night. But she knew that if she stopped this work, if she allowed herself to sleep, she wouldn’t be able to get up again. In that case she might as well lie down in bed and await the final news, and that would be akin to giving up.

  She thought about Kerstin, who had also had to wait four days for something that would later turn out to be news of a death. Those days must have been unbearably long and comfortless, and Kerstin had been completely alone. Like Jeanette in a way, abandoned by the one she had otherwise shared her troubled times with. She had waited for days and weeks, experienced loving and longing, which then transformed into hatred; she had felt her body and soul breaking down, before finding out more than four years later that everything she had thought and felt had been wrong.

  At least Sandra was surrounded by people who loved and cared for her, even if each and every one of them had their own suffering to contend with.

  After having spent the best part of the night writing, she had to get some exercise and breathe some fresh air. It was raining again, but that didn’t matter—the gloomy weather reflected her state of mind. Everything had gone to hell, and she only had herself to blame. The knowledge that it was her own stupid ideas and conclusion, her own naive approach that had put them all in this situation was a dreadful thing to live with.

  She couldn’t even bring herself to speculate how Erik was doing. Either he was alive or he wasn’t—she didn’t allow herself to go any deeper than that. Not right now, when she might run into someone else at any moment. She wanted to be alone in the dark when she unleashed that particular worry.

  She pulled on her anorak and walked to work. It was very early in the morning, but there was always someone in the newsroom, no matter what time it was. The odd time of day meant she didn’t risk running into more than one or two of her colleagues, which meant she would avoid having to endure all her colleagues’ apologetic looks aimed at her at once.

  It was just the head of news who was in, and he was tactful enough not to inquire after her emotional state. He settled for asking whether there was anything he could do, or anything new to report, but there wasn’t. She glanced through the day’s headlines and reviewed the pieces about Erik. She made sure that the serial was running as it was supposed to, and that it was being given the prominence it needed. Her eye settled on Kerstin’s name, which reminded her that Kerstin had asked her a favour.

  She couldn’t remember what it was. Kerstin had rung at some point over the weekend, and she should probably have dealt with whatever it was sooner. But the days had merged into one, and nothing seemed all that important any longer. Oh yes, she reminded herself—the serial was important. Whatever the outcome of the awful thing that was happening just now, the book would avenge Erik. It would get redress for her, too, as well as for Kerstin and Karl-Erik. Jeanette and Peter Norling deserved to have their story told; not everything was black and white.

  Peter Norling—that was it. Sandra had promised to find out whether he owned any properties, and that was no more difficult than checking up on him in the InfoTorg database. The head of news was already at his computer, so she asked him to do it for her. It was quick to accomplish—Sandra took a photo of the page of results and forwarded it to Kerstin. Then she set off home again to carry on writing.

  She changed her mind en route however and decided that she wanted to see whether Hallin was really under surveillance with her own eyes. Maybe that policeman had never believed her, and had only been playing along to calm her down. Maybe they didn’t have the necessary resources. And maybe they had called off the operation when the surveillance had turned up nothing. Or because there was no longer any hope of Erik being found alive.

  Four hours, Sandra thought to herself. It was something she was sure she had heard in these situations. If the child wasn’t found within four hours, the chances of doing so before it was too late minimised drastically.

  It had been almost four days.

  There were no cars on the street outside Hallin’s house that might contain surveillance officers. Sandra preferred not to think that the policeman had lied straight to her face, but perhaps that was the way they dealt with unstable family members. Or perhaps they were busy curtain-twitching somewhere nearby, so well concealed that not even Sandra—who knew what she was looking for—could manage to spot them.

  Then she remembered that what he had actually said was that they’d had eyes on Hallin for forty-eight hours without spotting anything suspicious. That didn’t necessarily mean that they would incur the expense of another forty-eight hours of man-marking. They had probably done their jobs, but now the Hallin-trail had gone cold, and inquiries had been directed elsewhere.

  Sandra felt winded, and she sat down on the kerb. She knew that it was Hallin who had staged the disappearance, but her theories didn’t have enough credibility for the police to put everything else to one side. She knew that, and it was in a way understandable that they weren’t listening too much to single points of view, but were instead justifying their methods on the basis of their experience. And if you thought about it, it might even be the right approach in this case, given that if Hallin hadn’t behaved suspiciously then Erik was either dead or something else, entirely different from what Sandra imagined, had befallen him. The top priority was finding him, and Hallin didn’t seem to have any plans to lead them to the right place.

  That was what was going through Sandra’s head as she sat there despairing, watching raindrops splatter onto the asphalt, creating trickles of water that combined to form torrenting streams gushing down the street. She felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up, thinking that it might be a police officer who had caught sight of her and was going to ask her to leave.

  To Sandra’s surprise, it was Hallin’s wife, standing there in her dressing gown beneath an open umbrella.

  “You shouldn’t be sitting out here in the rain,” she said. “Come inside and warm up over a cup of coffee.”

  “No,” Sandra said in horror, standing up. “That’s out of the question.”

  She had obviously seemed to be angling for it, sitting here in the pouring rain looking vulnerable. It wasn’t even six o’clock yet—she’d not given a thought to the fact that someone might spot her from inside the house.

  “I insist,” the woman said with a smile, although at their last meeting she had not been particularly accommodating.

  “Absolutely not,” Sandra said firmly. “I was just leaving.”

  “But why did you come here? If you haven’t got anything particular to do, I mean?”

  “I . . .” Sandra began.

  She couldn’t think how she was going to get out of this. What on earth had she been thinking when she had sat down outside Hallin’s house, of all places?

  “I understand,” said Gunilla Hallin. “You want to see Jan.”

  “No,” Sandra countered. “I was just out and . . .”

  That sentence didn’t have a predetermined end to it either, but fortunately she was interrupted.

  “I’m sorry for my behaviour last time we met. For slamming the door in your face. It was unnecessary. I don’t have anything against you as such. It’s Jan I ought to be angry with. Am angry with.”

  Sandra nodded with gritted teeth, mostly feeling self-conscious
. She had no desire to even brush up against that subject, let alone discuss the presumed extramarital affair with the rapist’s wife. The time when Sandra had thought that she could reach Hallin through his wife was over. The last—and only—attempt had resulted in disastrous consequences.

  “I promised I would never look him up again,” said Sandra. “And I intend to keep that promise, so I’ll go now. I don’t know how . . . I don’t know why I ended up here. I’m sorry.”

  She nodded in farewell and started to walk away.

  “I’m sorry about the thing with the boy,” the woman called out behind her. “I hope it works out.”

  Sandra half-turned around to avoid seeming too obviously rude.

  “Thanks,” she said, half-jogging away from the embarrassing situation.

  But something good might have come out of the unplanned meeting anyway, she thought to herself. Gunilla Hallin had received the message loud and clear that Sandra wasn’t going to bother them again. Even if what had just happened wasn’t the most successful example of Sandra’s intentions in that regard. She could hardly have missed Sandra’s despair as she sat there, either—staring emptily into space in the rain. That was something that in all certainty would reach her husband, with an implied wish that the boy would be released.

  Just as long as it wasn’t too late.

  Four days of this suffering was an inconceivable period of time. Sandra didn’t know how much longer she could cope. At the same time, she had brought this on herself. All she could do was stand there and take it, she thought to herself as the rain whipped her face. She had to hold fast until she died in battle.

  56

  Kerstin