Cinderella Girl

by Carin Gerhardsen

  ‘Jens Sandén,’ said Sandén, extending his hand to Margit Olofsson.

  ‘Yes, I recognize you too,’ said Margit, still smiling. ‘Are you out celebrating a solved murder, or …?’

  ‘We’re celebrating Conny’s recovered youth,’ Sandén answered quickly. ‘He’s a temporary bachelor and enjoying his freedom without five snot-nosed kids around his ankles.’

  ‘And you?’ Sjöberg added.

  ‘We’re a group of nurses celebrating a birthday. Not mine,’ she added, raising her hand in a deprecatory gesture.

  ‘Is he here, that eighty-year-old guy in a nurse’s uniform?’ Sandén asked in his customary outspoken manner.

  ‘Gunnar? Sure! He’s not one to say no to a party,’ Margit laughed. ‘He’s sixty-three, I should point out, and it’s his birthday. He wanted to go to a piano bar and this seems to be the last one in town.’

  Sjöberg treated her to an Irish coffee and the three of them remained standing, chatting for a good while in a relaxed manner. Now and then one of Margit Olofsson’s co-workers came over and exchanged a few words, but then quickly left again. When all three finally started thinking it was time to go home, Margit’s colleagues had already left. Sandén got into a taxi, and Sjöberg and Margit Olofsson accompanied each other in the direction of the Old Town.

  As soon as Sandén left them, the mood changed. They talked about her and him, about him and her. Sjöberg felt as if they were in a bubble, screened off from the world, from reality. The romantic undercurrent was tangible now, with Sandén’s boisterousness gone, but this time it did not feel wrong. Now there was no sober self deciding what he could and couldn’t talk about, nothing to determine how long his smile could last. When he placed his arm around her as they were walking it felt like a completely natural gesture.

  When a little later he pulled her to him and kissed her, nothing stopped him or warned him. In some strange way he felt as if he had come home. He sniffed her beautiful hair, with a fresh scent of shampoo and cool September night air. He suddenly felt completely relaxed. They remained standing like that for a long time; he with one hand around her waist and the other somewhere in her long hair, his mouth pressed against her forehead. Just then Sjöberg was not speculating about motives; not his own, not Margit’s. A group of teenage girls on bicycles passed them shrieking loudly, but Sjöberg took no notice of them. He was still in his bubble and he did not want to come out. He took her face in his hands and turned it up towards his own. He looked for a long time into Margit’s glistening green eyes before he kissed her again.

  He followed her to Slussen and there they separated without a word.

  Early Sunday Morning

  It must have been extremely late because almost everyone had gone to bed. A dreary atmosphere had settled over the large vessel. Here and there budget travellers and drunks were sitting or lying down.

  Jennifer did not have a watch, but she was tired and needed to sleep. Her legs felt unsteady, so it took her a while to make her way back to the cabin. Even though her head was surprisingly clear, she did not really know whether she was in the right end of the boat. A wave of nausea passed over her and she looked around for a toilet. Behind the one-armed bandits and video games she caught sight of one. She staggered there as quickly as she was able, but had to swallow several times so as not to vomit on the wall-to-wall carpet.

  She rushed into one of the cubicles and did not have time even to close the door behind her. The vomit came cascading out of her mouth. As much ended up outside as in the toilet. It was only liquid; she had not eaten for hours. The effort made her sweaty and she reached for a roll of toilet paper that someone had set on the cistern. She needed to wipe off the sweat and blow her nose, but the paper on the roll was damp and crinkled. Hoping it was only water, she managed to poke loose a piece of wet tissue and wiped her face.

  Suddenly she heard the door slam behind her, but in her foggy condition she did not have the energy to turn around.

  She felt a movement by her left ear and heard a voice hiss, ‘You shouldn’t be so nosy, you fucking little cunt.’ Just as she started with terror and was about to turn around, she felt warm hands in a rock-solid grip around her throat.

  She tried to scream, but she could not get out a sound. Her larynx was being pressed into her throat with great force. Through her bulging eyes, the white tiles on the bare wall in front of her turned first pink, then red. At last it felt as if her eyes had burst. The hands released their hold, and she collapsed over the vomit-covered toilet.

  Sunday Morning

  Petra Westman was running through the fog on the cobblestones along Norra Hammarbyhamnen, from the police building at the far end of Östgötagatan over to the Danvik canal and back. She ran past one boat after another, some with pretty bunting and others with colourful lanterns hanging above well-tended decks. Right before Barnängsbryggan there was a fishing boat for sale. She looked out over the black water, rippling in the wind. In the distance she saw Hammarbybacken; the hill looked green and desolate, at this time of year just a reminder of the winter activities several months away. Except for the distant roar of early morning traffic, it was completely silent.

  It was only six-thirty but she had already been running for twenty minutes. Now she was on her second round and turned off in the direction of Vita Bergen, running up Tengdahlsgatan towards the allotments. The air was cool and damp with a scent of autumn, even though the trees had not yet started losing their leaves. Garden furniture and barbecues were still out; summer flowers adorned the pots outside the houses.

  A door shut somewhere behind her and instinctively she twisted her head. She didn’t see anyone. She never used to be like this. Before, she would have just forged ahead, possibly noting that she was not the only one awake at this hour on Sunday morning, but paying no attention to the sound.

  Peder Fryhk was in safe custody at the Norrtälje prison and would not get out for at least three years, probably more. Petra had not been involved in the arrest, had not been questioned by the police, had not testified at the trial. Her name did not figure at all in the investigation of Fryhk and his systematic rapes. Besides her, only the prosecutor Hadar Rosén, forensic technician Håkan Carlberg in Linköping and Fryhk himself knew that Petra was one of his victims.

  And one other person. The Other Man. Carlberg had found that the semen in the condoms she took with her to Linköping after the rape belonged to two different men, one of whom was Peder Fryhk. The other was unidentified.

  Petra had had plenty of time to think since she had been drugged and raped last November. She had revealed her first name to Fryhk, no more. She said she worked as an insurance agent at Folksam; he had no reason not to believe her. Presumably he had gone through her wallet; he must have wanted to know who he was dealing with. So okay, he had her surname too, and personal identification number. But he had probably been content with that. He hadn’t examined her wallet carefully enough to find her police identification – well hidden behind her driver’s licence – had he? Maybe he had, but there was still no reason for him to suspect that Petra was behind the arrest. She had played her part well, blamed herself for being hungover and given him a tender farewell in the morning. Without leaving any traces after her personal crime scene investigation.

  But there were still a few things that pointed to a different conclusion. Peder Fryhk’s basement was full of video recordings of his other rapes. He must have preserved his souvenir of the one of Petra too, but no such film had been found. Why? Where had that tape gone?

  Fryhk was a former foreign legionnaire. Intelligent, educated, cunning. Senior anaesthetist at Karolinska Hospital with a great deal to lose: nice house, high position in society and a good reputation. And yet he did it, again and again. Raped. In his own home, videotaping the whole thing besides. And he finally lost. Everything.

  The Other Man held the camera. Artfully panned the scene, changed angle to capture the action from various perspectives, zoomed in. And raped. But
without ever allowing himself to be filmed. He was more careful than Fryhk, not as self-sacrificing. Perhaps he had more to lose? Could you lose more than Peder Fryhk? Hardly. But the Other Man was not prepared to lose everything.

  Fryhk duped his victims, lured them home. He risked being recognized in town, but relied on his charm and on the memory gaps and the feelings of guilt of the victims. The Other Man never left any memories with his victims. And Fryhk was obviously loyal; he had not uttered a word about a co-perpetrator. A real soldier. His lips had been sealed when he was questioned about who held the camera during the rapes in his house. Despite false promises of a reduced sentence, he had kept his mouth shut.

  And Petra was stuck in a limbo of uncertainty. She had been raped by a man without a name and without a face. The police did not know that this cameraman was also a rapist, and the efforts to find him had come to a standstill long ago. But now someone was calling her at night; not often, but not so infrequently that she could simply shrug it off. Once or twice a month she was woken in the early hours by the phone, but no one was there when she answered. The Other Man could not know her number; it was unlisted and so he couldn’t have found it in the phone book. Yet that was just what worried her. That it was him calling, that he wanted to punish her for putting Fryhk in jail. Frighten her into silence. Crush her to show his power. Wasn’t that what rape was about? Power. That was what worried Petra Westman. And the fact that he existed. Was out there, alive and kicking. Free. The Other Man.

  She had been running for longer than usual now, but still did not feel especially tired in the dew-fresh September morning. She flowed along at an easy pace; the half-awake paper boy she encountered was startled as she zipped past. Otherwise, as far as she could see, the area was completely deserted. When she had almost reached the allotment area she left the street and took the small stairway between the apartment buildings up to Vitabergsparken. She ran on the gravel path between muddy, well-used lawns, past the amphitheatre and the closed outdoor café over to the turning area by Stora Mejtens Gränd. There was a smell of rosehips and wet tarmac.

  In the fog she could still not see Sofia Church up on the hill, but suddenly she caught sight of something else. To her left there were dense thickets next to a Falun-red wooden house, and deep inside the thicket was something big and blue, almost entirely covered by branches and leaves. Curiosity made her change direction and she jogged over to the bushes, leaned down and pushed the branches apart. It was a baby’s pram insert, upholstered in navy-blue cloth with small white dots. It looked nice, not much used, and her initial thought was that some self-obsessed, pimply adolescent marauders had taken the frame of the pram and thrown the insert into the bushes. She took hold of the edge on one side with both hands and pulled it firmly towards her. She managed to get it halfway out through the resistant branches, and got ready for another tug just as she took a look down into the insert.

  There was a little person inside, with closed eyes and a light-blue cap, tucked into a foot muff. Instinctively she rose from her crouching position and threw all her weight into the bushes. Thorny branches tore through her thin leggings and scratched her skin. She held the branches away from the child with her body while she leaned over and carefully picked up the whole foot muff, with one arm under the child’s neck and the other at the foot end. Something in the little face made her think it was a boy. She put her cheek against his but could not tell whether he was breathing.

  Then she ran, with the child in her arms and blood seeping from the scratches on her legs, over to the substantial doors that led into the garden of the house. She tore at them but they were locked. Then she rushed off towards Stora Mejtens Gränd. Despite her haste, she noticed a neatly parked pram without an insert on the grass on the other side of the turning area. With her hip she pushed open the gate to one of the houses on the street and rushed the few steps to the porch and up the outside stairs. While she kicked at the door she rang the doorbell, shouting all the while that she needed an ambulance.

  After half an eternity the door was opened by an elderly woman who immediately let her in, indicated an unmade bed in a room off the hall and hurried away to call for the police and an ambulance.

  ‘The child is suffering from hypothermia and may be injured – he may be dead!’ Petra called to the woman. ‘I found him in the park. He may have been there a long time.’

  She pulled down the zip on the foot muff and placed the boy on the bed. He showed no signs of life and felt very cold. While she puffed deep breaths on to his face, she massaged his arms and body to get him warm. She took hold of his lower leg and bent it as if to pump life into him. Finally she simply took him in her arms and tried to encircle his entire little body with her own. She was sitting like that with tears running down her cheeks when the paramedics finally showed up.

  * * *

  Ewa Tuominen was tired. A co-worker was sick, so she’d had to work a double shift and was more than an hour behind schedule. She had been cleaning on Viking Cinderella for ten years and was used to most things, but when she opened the door and saw the mess in the toilet she let out an audible sigh. And to top it off, there was a young woman lying there asleep in the midst of it all, in a very uncomfortable position besides. A bit of bare back could be seen between her jeans and her leather jacket. She shouldn’t be lying there; anyone at all could attack her.

  Just as Ewa gave the lifeless creature a light tap on the foot, it occurred to her that something was not right. Her position was unnatural. Even the most intoxicated person could not sleep like that. The girl did not react at all to her touch either. Ewa began to panic‚ her pulse started to race and she stood there with her hand in front of her mouth for a few seconds while her brain whirred. Then she decided to call the doctor immediately, rather than try to search for the girl’s pulse. She backed up a few steps, out into the laundry room, and dialled the emergency number, the ship’s doctor’s mobile phone.

  Doctor Magnusson, who arrived almost immediately, could tell right away that the girl was dead. When he turned her over and saw the onset of bruising on the throat, he decided to leave the girl lying there. Without a doubt this was a matter for the police. He told Ewa Tuominen to lock the toilet and contacted the ship administrators. In an hour or so they would be arriving at Åbo.

  * * *

  Hanna spent the whole night on the hall floor. Once she woke up, her head hurting and the wound on her cheek throbbing. Her mouth was tender; it felt completely swollen. The floor below her was so cold that she was shaking. She did not have the energy to get up and make her way to the nice warm bed, but she managed to crawl the short distance to the hall rug. She had been lying there in the only position that was comfortable. When she woke up early in the morning she was curled up in a foetal position, with her uninjured cheek against the rug and her hands clasped under her chin.

  She moved her burned hand carefully over her cheek, which was covered with dried blood. When she came to the wound itself she winced with pain and pulled her hand away. But she did not cry: she simply screwed her eyes shut and gritted her teeth, the way you should when things were tough. ‘The only thing to do is grit your teeth,’ Mummy always said when Hanna cried, so that’s what she did now. It was the first time she’d done this, but it was already too late. Mummy was gone. There was no point in crying when there was no one there to console her anyway. Her hand and her mouth hurt terribly too, but in comparison with the wound on her cheek and the awful headache, she barely felt them.

  What was she going to do? It felt like a lot of days had passed now. Would Daddy be coming home soon? Or did he know that Mummy and Lukas had moved? Would he maybe live with them instead? But Daddy liked Hanna very much, she thought. Daddy was not as strict as Mummy, and he always played with her when he came home from work in the evening and Mummy only paid attention to Lukas. Yes, Daddy would surely come home to Hanna when he got back from Japan.

  Then almost without her noticing it there was poo on the rug. She must
start paying more attention to that and use the toilet instead. Mummy had said so many times, but it just never happened. There were so many other things to think about all the time. But now she had to get up and put things away before Daddy came home. Forget how much it hurt all over and clean up after herself. She got up laboriously and remembered the urine-soiled nightie. She staggered into the bathroom and pulled the nightie out of the laundry basket and went back to the hall. After she dried and rubbed for a while it was still not clean, but much better, so she carried the sticky rag back to the bathroom and pushed it down into the basket again. Her hands smelled bad. When you’ve pooed you have to shower, she thought, but that would be hard. The whole bathroom would get wet, the walls and ceiling, and water might splash all the way out into the bedroom and Mummy didn’t like that. Hanna decided to take a bath instead. And wash her hair. Then Daddy would be happy when he got home and think she smelled good.

  She knew how to do it: she put the plug into the plughole and turned on the tap. At first the water was cold, but then it got warmer. Hanna sat on the toilet seat and watched the water flowing out of the tap and down into the bathtub. Her head felt very dizzy. Sometimes she had to look with one eye to see clearly. Her teeth were chattering and she longed to creep down into the warm water, but she did not dare climb in before the tub was full. She did not like the roar of the running water.

  After a while she turned off the tap and got into the bathtub. It was so nice! She sat down carefully, but just then she heard the phone ringing out in the hall. Oh, why did it have to ring right now? She had to answer, had to talk to someone. Quick, quick! Heaving herself to her feet, she skidded on the slippery bottom but managed to catch herself by pure reflex. Her chin missed the edge of the tub by a hair’s breadth. But she wasted time and now the tears were coming again, although she tried to hold them back. She tried again and stood up more carefully this time, and climbed down on to the floor. But before she had even left the bathroom the ringing stopped.