'So I've gathered.'
'What do you say, then?' he said, checking his watch.
'Can't you leave people alone just for once?'
'What do you mean?'
'Like that poor woman yesterday afternoon in Linnégatan. We wouldn't have needed to be there at all if it hadn't been for your statistics.'
'She didn't stop,' he said.
'She tried to let you pass.'
'She was lucky to get away with it,' he said.
'Get away with what?' asked Serimov.
He didn't answer.
'Get away with what?' she asked again.
'Arrogant bitches,' he said.
'You have a problem, Billy,' she said.
'So, shall we wait here for a bit and see what we can do?' he said.
'Certainly not. They live up there, and that's where we're going,' she said, pointing.
'In that case there was no need for me to drive down here first,' he said.
'I wanted to see the sea,' she said.
'The sea, the sea! I could kiss the sea!' he said.
Kiss my arse, she thought: she was good at swearing. She had a Russian background after all. The Russian language was world champion when it came to swearwords. We talk about rude words, but lots of the Russian swearwords don't sound rude at all; they are beautiful, she thought, gazing out to sea again.
They got back into the car and drove up the steeply sloping streets.
'Here we are,' she said, and he pulled in.
'I'll wait out here,' he said.
'Don't harass the neighbours,' she said. She got out of the car and rang the doorbell.
Kristina Bergort answered after the second ring. Larissa could see Maja peeping out from behind her mother.
'Come in,' said Mrs Bergort.
'I hope this isn't too inconvenient for you,' Larissa said, aware of how silly it sounded. She had phoned in advance and Kristina Bergort had said that it was OK.
The girl was clinging on to her mother.
'Magnus rang to say that he couldn't get away from work,' said Bergort.
You are the one I want to talk to anyway, Larissa thought, feeling awkward in the kitchen wearing her police uniform.
Maja looked at her belt and the gun sticking out like . . . like a . . . well, sticking out. Larissa realised that she hadn't spoken to the girl yet.
'Hello, Maja,' she said.
The girl looked up shyly, smiled quickly and then looked down again.
'You can go back to your games,' said her mother.
Maja turned round and Larissa could see a scratch on her upper arm, like a line of chalk. Larissa watched her walk away. She crossed over the threshold. Larissa was still watching. There was something odd. But what? There was something about the way she moved. What was it? Her leg? It was . . .
Maja was out of sight now.
'Is there something wrong with her leg?' Larissa asked.
'What? Her leg?'
'Maja's leg. She seemed to be limping.'
'Limping? Maja? I haven't noticed anything.' Kristina Bergort looked at her with an expression that could have been construed as worried. 'Surely I would have noticed?'
Larissa Serimov wondered what to say next. She ought to know. She knew why she'd come here.
'Would you like a cup of coffee?' asked Mrs Bergort.
Larissa thought about Billy Brorsson waiting outside, said, 'Yes please', and then her mobile rang.
'Are you going to be in there long?' asked Brorsson.
'Ten minutes, a quarter of an hour.'
'I'll go for a little drive.'
She hung up and thought about the plight of humanity exposed to assault by Brorsson, and turned to Kristina Bergort.
'I've been thinking a bit more about that story Maja told you,' she said.
17
They were served coffee, cheese rolls and three kinds of biscuits. The rooms were full of Christmas decorations, an excess of them. The children had been allowed to do whatever they liked. Angela recognised Elsa's paintings because Elsa had shown them to her before. There were lines and circles that could symbolise most things. Or just represent them. Not everything was symbolic.
There was a smell of candle wax and hot punch. Parents were circulating and discussing the Christmas atmosphere that had arrived here about three weeks early.
There were no children present this evening. No overtime for them, Angela thought. Elsa can relax at home with Erik. Rolling the ball over the floor until he's too stiff to stand up again. No. It's not as bad as that. But obviously, being a father at forty is not the same as being a father at twenty-five.
She looked round. She was at a sort of middle age when it came to parenting, not too young and not too old. Waiting until you turned thirty before having a child was no sensation nowadays. Lots of women waited. But she wouldn't have wanted to wait any longer. Nevertheless, Erik had waited until she couldn't accept it any longer. And she hadn't accepted it any longer. No more waiting.
The future was not over. Just wait and see, Erik.
They assembled in the big hall. The nursery manager welcomed them to the annual Christmas get-together. This day nursery is a bit special, she said. Inner-city dwellers and inner-city children.
Angela could see the house by the sea in her mind's eye. An avenue, trees on all sides, gravel paths and a kitchen garden.
The future was not over.
But the flat at Vasaplatsen wasn't something you could just discard. At the moment it seemed to be the best place for Elsa. Big shiny floors. Easy to roll a ball over them.
It was afterwards, when there were fewer parents still present, that the matter cropped up. Several people spoke up. Lots of them had been thinking about it all evening, the staff as well of course, but one of them said:
'We didn't really know how to bring it up.'
'Which day nursery was it?' somebody asked.
'Hepatica.'
'Where's that?'
'In Änggården.'
'But that's not very far from here.'
'They were in Slottskogen.'
'It's terrible.'
'Yes, awful.'
'Has anything like this happened before?'
'Not to my knowledge.'
'How's the boy?'
'I don't know.'
Angela listened, but said nothing. She had seen the boy the evening it happened, and then again today. One day after. Simon. His parents. His father had said 'fuck' at one point, maybe a couple of times.
Angela was sitting on the edge of the group, next to the window, on a chair that was intended for a much shorter and younger person. A street lamp illuminated the swings and the slide. Car headlights lit up the street down the slope. She thought about the hole in the fence. Had it really been mended?
She could see the church tower in the park on the other side of the street; that was lit up as well.
A woman sat down on the other little chair.
'It remains to be seen if we'll be able to stand up again,' she said.
'I daren't try yet,' said Angela.
'Lena Sköld,' said the woman, reaching out her right hand.
'Angela Hoffman.'
Angela had never met Lena Sköld before. It was usually Erik who took Elsa to the day nursery, and collected her. But come to think of it, she did recognise her after all. And she thought she could remember what her child looked like. A girl with dark hair.
'I'm Ellen's mum,' said Lena Sköld.
'I'm Elsa's mum,' said Angela.
'Yes, of course.' She picked up her cup. 'We – Ellen and me – haven't been here for very long.' She took a sip of coffee. 'We used to use a different nursery before.'
'I think I can remember what Ellen looks like,' said Angela.
'She's in the picture behind you.'
Angela turned to look at the little photograph behind her, stuck on to a bigger sheet of paper. The girl was standing on a beach, laughing out to sea. It was windy. The photograph was framed by all colo
urs of the rainbow. Arrows with the girl's name pointed at the picture. A little exhibitionist.
'She wanted to make it clear that she was the one in that picture and nobody else,' said Lena Sköld with a smile.
'She's evidently got plenty of self-confidence,' said Angela.
'Hmm . . . I don't know about that.' She took another sip of coffee. 'We'll find out about that eventually, I suppose.' She looked at Angela. 'I'm a single parent.' She put down her cup and smiled. 'As they call it.'
Angela nodded. Through the window she could see people leaving the nursery on their way home. She checked her watch.
'Yes, I suppose it's time we were making a move,' said Lena Sköld. 'If we can stand up.' She made an effort with her legs. 'Huh, I failed at the first attempt.'
'I don't think I'm even going to try,' said Angela.
Lena Sköld also stayed put, looking through the window in which her face was mirrored.
'I keep thinking about what we were talking about earlier,' she said.
'About the boy who, er, disappeared?' said Angela.
'Yes.' She looked as if she wanted to say more, and Angela waited.
'Something odd happened to me not long ago. Or rather, to Ellen.' She looked at Angela. 'It feels almost creepy. Yes, it certainly does. What with what happened to the boy and all that. But I mean this incident with Ellen. In view of the rest of it.'
What on earth is she talking about? Angela wondered.
'It was very strange,' said Lena Sköld. 'What happened to Ellen. She came home and, well, I suppose you could say she told a story. About how she'd met somebody while her group was on an outing.'
'What do you mean, met somebody?'
'A man. A mister, as she called him. She said she'd met this mister and been sitting with him for a while. In a car. If I understand it rightly they were sitting in a car.'
'That's what she told you?'
'That's how I understood it, at least,' said Lena Sköld. 'And there was another thing. She had something that disappeared that day.'
'What was it?' Angela asked.
'A little silver charm that she had in her jumpsuit pocket. It had vanished. The police asked me to check if there was anything missing, and it was that charm.'
'The police?'
'That evening when Ellen came home, I mean, when she said she'd met somebody, I phoned the police about it.'
'The police where?'
'What do you mean?'
'Did you phone the local police station, or the communications centre?'
'I don't know what it's called. I looked up a number in the phone book and got through to a call centre and they passed me on to another number.' She put her cup down on the floor. 'It was a police station quite close to where I live.'
'Your local station,' said Angela.
'Yes.' She looked at Angela. 'You seem to know about these things. Are you a police officer?'
'No.'
'I think they said it was the Majorna and Linnéstaden police.'
'What else did they say?'
'The man I spoke to wrote down what I said. At least, it sounded as if he did. And then he said that stuff about me checking to see if anything was missing, and I did and I phoned back to tell him about the charm.'
'Have they been in touch with you again? The police, I mean?'
'No.'
'How's Ellen?'
'Same as ever. I expect it was just her imagination.' She looked round the playroom, which was neat and tidy. All the toys were in big boxes along the walls. There were drawings pinned all over the walls. Most of them depicted Christmas. And the symbols of Christmas, Angela noticed.
There was still a smell of candle wax and hot punch, anticipating Christmas. There was a sound of voices from the other rooms, but fewer now.
'But when you hear what happened to that poor boy, it makes you wonder.'
Angela said nothing.
'What do you think?' asked Lena Sköld.
'Have you tried talking to Ellen about it again?'
'Yes, several times.'
'What does she say?'
'More or less the same thing. I've been thinking about that. She doesn't seem to have forgotten about it. It's the same little story. Or maybe it's just a fairy story. A fantasy.'
18
Angela walked home deep in thought. Father Christmas was in most of the shop windows, but there was no snow on the ground. The pavements glistened damply in the electric light from the street lamps and windows. She thought about the injured boy and his parents. She thought about Lena Sköld, who had told her about her life as a single parent. No man in her life now, and no father for Ellen. Later, perhaps.
She paused outside the front door. Vasaplatsen was quiet this evening, but a wind was getting up from the north and blowing along the Allé. She raised the collar of her overcoat and paused to take in the scene. A tram stopped on the other side of the street, then trundled off again in the same direction as the wind. She could see two people in the front carriage, but nobody at all in the second one. A way of travelling for someone who wanted to be alone. She had noticed the driver looking at her as he drove past.
Driving a tram was one way of seeing Gothenburg. Any driver who always took the same route would get to know all the surrounding streets and the crossroads and the parks. And the trams didn't go fast either. In fact, they went annoyingly slowly, and she was glad she had her Golf; but there again, she also had the usual guilty conscience about being one of those who ruined the quality of the air that everybody was forced to breathe, whether they wanted to or not.
She would leave the car at home. Occasionally.
Elsa has to breathe this air. Vasaplatsen isn't the best place to be, from that point of view. Elsa is still a tender rosebud. What ought we to do? Do we have any choice but to move house? We'll have to discuss it again, Erik and I, seriously.
She had shouted from the hall but there was no reply, so she'd gone to the bedroom. They'd fallen asleep in the double bed. There were about ten picture books scattered around them in a rough circle.
Elsa mumbled in her sleep when Angela picked her up and put her to bed in her own room, where the light was on.
Winter was in the kitchen now, and had switched on the kettle.
'How about a cup of tea?'
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