Frozen Moment

by Camilla Ceder

  Tell nodded. He was familiar with this pattern.

  'To cut a long story short, we did what we could to motivate Cecilia to accept some help. The couple separated just before Olof was born. I remember I regarded it as a step in the right direction. She had cut down drastically on her amphetamine use during the pregnancy. This is quite a positive report from the assessment home.' She showed Tell a yellowing typewritten report subheaded 'Hasteviken Assessment Home'. 'If there's one time when a woman using drugs is likely to pull herself together, it's when she's pregnant, and when Magnus disappeared I saw it as a real chance for Cecilia.'

  She took a box of throat sweets from the top drawer of her desk.

  'Unfortunately, we often discount the father at an early stage in families such as this,' she said. 'We tried various tactics, but after Olof was born Cecilia started using heavily again, and she also lost her grip when it came to looking after Susie - you can see here I've made a note about the fact that she'd stopped taking her to nursery. She broke off all contact with both social services and the childcare authority. If I remember rightly, Olof was about six months old when Susie was taken into care.'

  'So the girl was taken into care but not the boy,' said Tell in surprise.

  'Yes, the judgement we made at the time was that the girl was suffering the most. It isn't uncommon for weak mothers to be able to cope with a small baby reasonably well, but then lose control as the child gets older. When it begins to defy her and make demands. That's exactly how it was with Cecilia. In spite of everything, we were prepared to give her a chance with Olof. I'm sure you can understand how easy it is to be wise after the event.'

  Her expression became defensive.

  'I must stress that in contrast to what people think, we don't take children into care unnecessarily. I don't think we do it often enough, if you ask me. Anyway, through a combination of promises and threats we managed to get Cecilia to accept a place in a home for mothers and children. It was somewhere north of here - Dalarna, I think. Cecilia and Olof lived there for a year.'

  'What are they like, these places?' asked Tell.

  Sundin didn't have time to answer the question because a knock on the door was followed by a corpulent man in his thirties. He informed her that the youth team was sitting in the conference room awaiting their briefing.

  'Just a moment, Peter,' said Sundin brusquely. 'I'll be finished with the inspector shortly.'

  She glanced at her watch, but remembered Tell's question.

  'The staff at the home observe the mother and child and report continuously on the mother's parenting ability, the bond between them, or whatever the client has asked the home to focus on. These days most homes tailor their services according to the client's wishes. And of course the market is getting tougher for them too, partly because they charge a fortune.'

  She cleared her throat and leafed further through Olof s file, before closing it with an apologetic expression.

  'To summarise, everything went well for a while. They had faith in her in Dalarna. She was given a rented flat of her own when she moved back to town. And she did stay off the drugs for a couple of years, even if it was with frequent intervention and a great deal of support from social services. However, when Olof was about five she met a new man, who was already well known to us - a complete bastard, if you want my opinion. He dragged her straight back down again, and it happened very quickly. When Olof ended up in A E the following year, badly beaten and with a broken arm, he was immediately taken into care. It was impossible to find out whether it was Cecilia or Marko who had hurt him, since they blamed each other.'

  'Where did Olof go then?'

  'First of all to an emergency placement, then to a permanent foster home. The family lived in Ockero, and they had many years' experience of fostering children. Olof lived there until he was just ten, when the husband unexpectedly died of a heart attack. His wife couldn't cope with the job on her own.'

  'The job?'

  'Yes, she couldn't cope with the foster-children any more. She was grieving and… Olof was moved to a family in Bergum, Olofstorp.'

  Christian Tell brightened up.

  'Olofstorp?'

  'Yes, somewhere around there. The family's name began with J. Jid… Jidbrandt perhaps. They were very experienced too. When Olof arrived they already had a girl staying with them who'd been placed there some time before.'

  Tell leaned forward.

  'Can you tell me any more about these two families? The foster- families, I mean.'

  She shook her head. 'No, it's such a long time ago. There could have been more than two foster-families, and I think there might also have been a short stay in some kind of institution for Olof, but I wouldn't put money on it.'

  Tell pointed to Olof Bart's notes.

  'But all the information should be in here?'

  Birgitta Sundin nodded.

  'It should, or at least all the information the social services board takes into consideration will be there - a family care home investigation of each family, a report on why the social worker and the family care home worker are recommending that a particular child be placed with a particular family. You'll be able to find out more if you read through these.'

  She got up and quickly picked up a notepad and her Filofax.

  'I have to dash. I hope I've been of some help.'

  Tell nodded and shook her outstretched hand.

  'Thank you for your time. Just one more thing: who can I contact with regard to Susanne Pilgren? Is there someone who might know where she is?'

  'Do you know if she lives here in Angered?'

  'Here? No, I don't know. Her last recorded address was in Hogsbo, I think.'

  'Then she's not in our area; you'll need to contact Hogsbo. I really do have to go.'

  She was just about to close the door of her office when she paused.

  'What's happened to Olof, anyway? Has he been murdered, or has he murdered somebody else?'

  * * *

  Chapter 35

  1995

  His room was his own private space. Despite the fact that Solveig had abandoned all sense and reason, she seemed to understand that there was only room in the apartment for one person who had completely lost their mind. And he would lose his mind too if he wasn't able to withdraw to his room without the risk of her following him, churning out her bitter accusations.

  He had been ashamed of his room for a long time: the grubby posters of racing cars, the bedspread from Ahlen's department store with pictures of Tintin and Snowy - he had loved Tintin when he was little - the embarrassing rug in the shape of a fish, which had been embarrassing right from the start, when Solveig gave it to him on his thirteenth birthday. The only reason he had kept it next to his bed in Rydboholm was because there was a pale stain on the floor underneath the fish. Then again, the stain was better when his friends came over - the fish went in the wardrobe until he was alone again.

  Right now he was grateful that when they'd moved, in spite of everything, he had more or less copied the childish decor of the old room: the ugly fish rug expressed a pure childish innocence he now found calming rather than offensive. Anyone who came into this room without knowing who he was or what he had done would see straight away that a child lived here. And a child could never be guilty of anything. Not really.

  The social worker who came to talk to his mother after Maya's disappearance clearly shared this view. His voice was impossibly monotonous, like a robot or the pre-recorded message on the speaking clock.

  'It isn't your fault, Sebastian,' over and over again, and, 'It doesn't necessarily mean that anything has happened to her, Solveig.'

  Sebastian, who knew his mother better, was waiting for the explosion. It came, and as a result the social worker ended up with a cut on his hand from the smashed vase. Solveig didn't actually throw it at him; he cut himself when he was trying to pick up the pieces from the floor. She did, however, attack him verbally, her voice as quiet and monotonous as his had been earli
er, but seething with rage. The social worker, who was presumably trained to deal with individuals in crisis, said in the same calm, monotonous tone that He could see Solveig was upset. He could hear that Solveig was upset.

  At that point Solveig threw him out, incandescent with rage. As if it were the social worker's fault that Maya hadn't come home after the party. His fault that she had set off home several hours before her younger brother but that there was still no sign of her when Sebastian - slightly the worse for wear - crept into the hallway at four o'clock in the morning, and was faced with the same fury that hit the receptionist and the person on the telephone exchange at the police station the following morning.

  The police officers who finally took the time to listen to Solveig also managed to remain calm when they felt the full force of her rage.

  'She's nineteen years old, fru Granith. You have to understand that she could have gone off of her own free will. That's what they're like at that age. Grown up enough to take care of themselves, but not mature enough to think about others who might be worried. She'll turn up soon, fru Granith, you'll see.'

  Sebastian realised that the police officers probably regarded his mother as a hysterical old woman. He was used to that. On one occasion he had accidentally overheard their landlord refer to Solveig as 'the psycho on the eighth floor'. That was the time Solveig had got it into her head that there were rats living under the floorboards. She had made Sebastian ring up because she suspected that the secretary wasn't passing her calls on to her boss.

  It didn't particularly bother Sebastian when people spoke disparagingly of his mother.

  They didn't acknowledge the extent to which Solveig's conviction influenced their actions, but the police did decide to start a search. They spoke to the people who had arranged the party at the bikers' club, who were required to give the names of all those who had attended the event, as far as they could recall. There was no official list, of course, so the police ended up with just a fraction of those who had actually attended. Only a few of those named were contacted and asked if they had seen the young woman at the party, or if they had seen or heard what her plans might have been after leaving the club. If she had been seen talking to anyone. That was as far as they got.

  The search in the nearby forest ended the same day it began, since Maya was found just over a mile from the club. She was lying out in the open, about thirty metres from the track, and the dogs found her almost at once. Her bike was in the ditch, with a puncture.

  This time different police officers came to see Solveig and Sebastian, an older man and a younger woman. The female officer wore an expression of sympathy that seemed to have been glued on.

  Solveig was certain that Maya was dead.

  'She isn't dead, fru Granith,' said the male officer. 'But she has severe hypothermia, and she's unconscious. You need to prepare yourself for the worst.'

  Sebastian tiptoed into the apartment just as Solveig closed the bathroom door behind her, releasing the drawn-out howl he had loathed since he was a child.

  The older officer jumped when Sebastian suddenly appeared at the living-room door. He cleared his throat. 'She's hit her head and she's unconscious. She… There's no guarantee she'll regain consciousness.'

  The police officers had refused to leave Sebastian alone in the apartment, despite the fact that he had clung silently to the door frame of his childish room. Now he was sitting in a consulting room with muted green lights. He could feel the doctor's hands resting heavily on his shoulders, as if he were intending to hold on to Sebastian in case he made a run for it.

  'She fell and struck her head on a stone,' explained the woman who was holding Solveig's hand.

  Two police officers, now two doctors: the female was the older of the two, but the male was some years away from middle age. Sebastian hadn't heard his name.

  'Her body temperature is very low because she was lying out in the cold for such a long time, and she's lost a great deal of blood from the wound in her head.'

  The doctor wanted to let the words sink in before she went on, but the woman opposite her was completely broken. There was hardly even a blink, and her face was ash-grey.

  'She's still alive in the sense that her heart is beating, but her brain is no longer able to function.'

  She pushed her chair closer to Solveig, so that their knees were touching. Solveig jumped. The screech of the chair's metal legs across the floor made everything in front of Sebastian's eyes go black.

  'Her brain will never be able to function again.'

  Behind him the male doctor still gripped Sebastian's shoulders, pressing Sebastian's head and body against his stomach and chest, which smelled of aftershave with a hint of disinfectant.

  'There now. There there,' he said, turning Sebastian's head so that his cheek was lying flat against his green scrubs, his nose close to the armpit. The smell was suffocating.

  Sebastian tore himself free and threw up over Solveig's trouser leg. He didn't bother looking to see whether he had caught the female doctor as well. He was out of the room in a flash.

  'I said I wanted to stay at home,' he mumbled as he hurtled down the corridor. 'I said I didn't want to come.'

  He managed to find some peace and quiet in an anonymous waiting area somewhere deep inside the vast hospital. The thing he found consoling about this particular waiting room was the fading daylight. No one had yet thought of switching on the lights to illuminate the gloomy corners. He couldn't cope with looking anyone in the eye.

  Sebastian sank down on a shabby green sofa and waited for the tears that didn't come. His eyes were dry and sore and hot, as if he had a temperature. With his heart galloping irregularly he picked up a magazine and opened it, placing it on his knee as if it were some kind of protection, something to fix his eyes on to stop them wandering.

  Someone dressed in white stepped into the tunnel that was his field of vision; it was a young woman with a ponytail. She tilted her head to one side and spoke to him, her expression conveying unease. The roaring in his ears rose and fell. Despite the fact that he was making an effort to understand - not because he cared, he just didn't want to look crazy - he was unable to grasp anything beyond the fact that she was uttering words. Combinations of words, but words didn't change a thing.

  He got up and left her stunned face behind him. Walked quickly along the corridor towards the hiss of the swing doors, out to the lifts that could take him to a different part of the hospital. He could choose the floor where his mother presumably lay sedated and probably also strapped down by now, at least until the injection took effect. By this stage she had doubtless attempted to strangle one of the doctors, and Sebastian thought that even in a situation where any normal person would be well within their rights to scream and yell and carry on, she would be incapable of containing herself within the accepted framework. No ceiling could be high enough. In the end they would have to take her to the secure unit for crazies.

  Or he could choose the floor where Maya lay, looking as if she were sleeping or dead, when in fact she was neither.

  He thought about a comic he had once read. It must have been a long time ago because he remembered spelling his way from one picture to the next with some difficulty, and sometimes, when he couldn't manage the words, he had had to make do with looking at the pictures. The cartoon was about a man who had been stabbed but survived and ended up in a coma. As he lay unconscious he hovered between life and death, in a special land: the land of transition. Most people who die instantly from a heart attack or from the splat when they land on the concrete below their block of flats only get a glimpse of it, so brief that afterwards they might think they had imagined it - if there was an afterwards, that is.

  The ghost people who populated the land of transition had a particular character: they were restless, rootless. Transient. Maya was like that now, in exile.

  Set them free was the thought that came into his head. Free the ghosts from their fear, that's the most humane thing to do. Somet
hing told him that was the real meaning of the story, if there was a meaning in comics.

  Another white coat approached seeking eye contact.

  'I'm waiting for my gran,' he said in a voice that sounded unfamiliar.

  Why was it so fucking difficult to be left in peace? He could feel the panic lurking just beneath the surface once again. Whitecoat nodded but didn't seem completely satisfied. Just as he was about to say something, the pager in his belt went off and he hurried away.

  Sebastian suddenly felt afraid: perhaps his mother's doctors had put out a call for him all over the hospital? Perhaps his description had been e-mailed to all staff: If you see a nervous fairly ugly fifteen-year- old in a denim jacket, jeans and a red sweatshirt, with his face covered in zits, please send him back to his mum and her two sickly-sweet doctors on the psychiatric ward.

  He was filled with rage at the false concern that only partly masked the accusations still visible in the eyes of the Samaritans. It was true of them all. The old bags from social services, the doctors, the counsellors, the teachers. Their contempt for Solveig because she constantly failed to cope with her own children and the crap in her life, because she kept on cracking under the pressure, always ended up washing her dirty linen in public - none of this was any guarantee that they wouldn't despise him at the same time. Sebastian, the boy who lacked any normal protective instinct towards his sister.

  He forced himself to think about it now.

  He had known it was dark, that they were miles from anywhere that night. That the place was full of drunken idiots. If it hadn't been for the band he would never have gone there, mixing with all those farm boys who shared a single brain cell.