Back downstairs he rang his daughter's mobile. She answered after the second ring.
'Hi, Moa, it's your dad here.'
She didn't answer. Perhaps she's nodding, he thought.
'Do you know where your mum is?'
'Yes.'
'I tried to phone her but there was no reply, and when I got home there was nobody here.'
'Yes.'
'Where is she, then? Has she gone shopping?'
Ringmar could hear her rapid breathing.
'She's gone away for a bit.'
'Eh? Gone away? Where to? Why? What's going on?'
That was a lot of questions, and she answered one of them.
'I don't know.'
'Don't know what?'
'Where she's gone.'
'Didn't she say?'
'No.'
'What the hell is this?' said Ringmar. I'd better sit down, he thought. 'I don't understand a bloody thing,' he said. 'Do you, Moa?'
She didn't reply.
'Moa?' He could hear a noise in the background, as if something was moving fast. 'Moa? Where are you?'
'I'm on the tram,' she said. 'On my way home.'
Thank God for that, he thought.
'We can talk when I get there,' she said.
He waited on edge, opened a beer that he didn't drink. The thousand lights in the neighbour's garden suddenly started flashing. What the hell, he thought. They're winking like a thousand compound eyes, like stars sending messages down to earth. Before long I'll have to call round and pass on an unambiguous message to that stupid bastard.
The front door opened. He went into the hall.
'It's probably not all that bad,' was the first thing his daughter said. She took off her coat.
'Is this a nightmare?' asked Ringmar.
'Let's go into the living room,' she said.
He trudged after her. They sat down on the sofa.
'Martin rang,' she said.
'I understand,' he said.
'Do you?'
'Why didn't she talk to me first?'
'What do you understand, Dad?'
'It's obvious, isn't it? He wants to see her but on no account does he want to see me.' He shook his head. 'And she had to promise not to say anything to me.'
'I don't know anything about that,' said Moa.
'When's she coming back?'
'Tomorrow, I think.'
'So he's not all that far away?' said Ringmar.
She didn't answer. He couldn't see her face, only her hair, which was speckled with the flashing lights from the idiot's garden.
'So he's not all that far away?' Ringmar said again.
'She's not going to meet him,' Moa said eventually.
'I beg your pardon?'
'Mum isn't going to meet Martin,' said Moa.
'What do you know that I don't know?'
'I don't know much more than you do,' she said. 'Mum phoned me and said that Martin had been in touch and she would have to go away for a short while.'
'But what the hell did he say, then? He must have said something that made her clear off!'
'I don't know.'
'This is the kind of thing that happens to other people,' he said.
She said nothing.
'Aren't you worried?' he asked.
She stood up.
'Where are you going?' he asked.
'Up to my room. Why?'
'There's something else, isn't there?' he said. 'I can see it in your face.'
'No,' she said. 'I have to go to my room now. Vanna's going to ring me.'
He stood up, went to the kitchen and fetched the bottle of beer, went back to the living room and sat down on the sofa again. Birgitta didn't have a mobile: if she did, he could have sent her a message, said something, done something. This is a situation I've never been in before. Is it a dream? Or is it something I've said? Something I've done? What have I done?
Why had Martin rung? What had he said? What had he said to make Birgitta pack a bag and go off? Without telling her husband.
He took a swig of beer and the illuminations outside continued to flash and twinkle. He looked out of the window and saw that some kind of portal in lights had been created outside the neighbour's front door. That was new. He clutched the bottle in his hand and stood up. He saw the neighbour come out and turn round to admire his garden of light. Ringmar heard the phone ring and Moa's voice when she answered. He waited for her to shout down to him, but she continued talking. Vanna, no doubt, a fellow student who wore flowery shirts. Would do well as a lawyer.
He carried on staring at his idiotic neighbour. It looked as if the stupid bastard were fixing up several more floodlights in one of the maple trees. Ringmar slammed the bottle down on to the glass table with a loud bang and went out on to the veranda facing the lights. He didn't feel the frost through his socks.
'What the hell are you doing now?' he yelled straight across the flashing Plough and the Great Bear and the Little Bear and the Devil and his grandmother.
The neighbour's discoloured and mentally deficient face turned to look at him.
'WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?' screeched Ringmar, and even as he did so he recognised that this was not the way to behave, that you didn't take out your own frustration or worries on other people, he knew that full well, but just then he didn't give a toss about that.
'What's the matter?' asked the neighbour, who Ringmar knew was some kind of administrator in the health service. A real butcher, in other words, as Winter's Angela would have said. I'll bet that bastard administrates fucking light therapy at the hospital, Ringmar thought.
'I can't take any more of your bloody lights in my fizzog,' said Ringmar, and thought of Halders. I haven't used the word fizzog for nearly forty years.
The neighbour stared back with his stupid fizzog. How can anybody like that be allowed to live? Where are you, God?
'The whole of my house is bathed in light all night long from your bloody garden, and it only gets worse,' said Ringmar in a voice that was rather louder than usual, to make sure the administrator heard. 'Thank God Christmas will soon be over.' He turned on his heel, went back inside and slammed the door behind him. He was shaking. I managed that quite well. Nobody got injured.
He was woken up at midnight, out of a dream brightly lit.
'Bertil, it's Erik. I need your help. I know it's late, but it can't be helped.'
He could see the light was on in Winter's office as he crossed the car park. It was the only lit window in the north wall of police headquarters.
A man was sitting on the chair opposite Winter.
'This is Bengt Johansson,' said Winter. 'He's just arrived.'
Ringmar introduced himself. The man didn't respond.
'Have you been there?' Ringmar asked, turning to Winter. 'To Nordstan?'
'Yes,' said Winter. 'And I wasn't the only one searching. But the place is empty.'
'Oh my God,' said Bengt Johansson.
'Tell us your story one more time,' said Winter, sitting down.
'This isn't the first time,' said Johansson. 'It's happened once before. They phoned from the kiosk. It was only a few minutes that time.'
Ringmar looked at Winter.
'Tell us about what happened,' said Winter.
'She was supposed to collect Micke,' said Johansson. 'And she did. Huh! We'd agreed that they'd go off for an hour or so and buy some Christmas presents, and then she'd bring him back home to me.' He looked at Ringmar. 'But they never turned up.' He looked at Winter. 'I phoned her at home, but there was no answer. I waited and phoned again. I mean, I'd no idea where they might go.'
Winter nodded.
'Then I phoned round to various people I – we – know, and then I rang the hospital.' He mimed a phone call. 'And then, well, then I rang here. Criminal emergency, or whatever they call it.'
'They phoned me,' said Winter, looking at Ringmar. 'The mother – Carolin – had left the kid at H & M, near the entrance, and vanished.'
&n
bsp; 'And vanished?' said Ringmar.
'Shortly before six. Loads of people. They closed at eight.'
Winter looked at Johansson. The man seemed as if he had come face to face with a horror that must have been worse than anything Ringmar had dreamt recently.
'Bengt here started ringing round when they didn't turn up. And eventually got through to us, as he said.'
'Where's the boy?' Ringmar asked.
'We don't know,' sighed Winter. Johansson sniffled.
'Where's the mother?' asked Ringmar. 'Is the boy with her?'
'No,' said Winter. 'Bengt mentioned a few places he hadn't got round to phoning, and she was in one of them.'
'What kind of places?'
Winter didn't answer.
'Pubs? Restaurants?'
'That kind of place, yes. We found her and identified her, but the boy wasn't with her.'
'What did she have to say?'
'Nothing that could be of any help to us at the moment,' said Winter.
Johansson showed signs of life.
'What shall I do now?' he asked.
'Is there somebody close to you who can keep you company in the immediate future?' Winter asked.
'Er, yes. My sister.'
'One of our colleagues will give you a lift home,' Winter said. 'You shouldn't be on your own.'
Johansson said nothing.
'I'd like you to go home and wait,' said Winter. 'We'll be in touch.' Maybe somebody else will be in touch as well, he thought. 'Could you phone Helander and Birgersson, please, Bertil?'
'What the hell's going on?' asked Ringmar. They were still in Winter's office. Winter had tried to get in touch with Hanne Östergaard, the police vicar, but she was abroad on Christmas leave.
'A family drama of the more difficult sort,' said Winter. 'The mother left the boy on his own and hoped that some kind soul from the staff would look after him. Or some other generous passer-by.'
'Which might be what happened,' said Ringmar.
'It looks like it.'
'But now he's disappeared,' said Ringmar. 'Four years old.'
Winter nodded, and drew a circle with his finger on the desk in front of him, and then another circle on top of that.
'Where's the mother now?'
'At home, with a couple of social workers. She might be on her way to the Östra hospital by now – I expect to be informed at any minute. She'd been drinking at the pub, but not all that much. She's desperate, and very remorseful, as you might say.'
'As you might say,' said Ringmar.
'She went back after a while, she couldn't say how long, but the boy was no longer there and she assumed he'd been taken care of by the authorities.'
'Did she check via the emergency police number?'
'No.'
'And she never phoned her husband? Bengt Johansson?'
Winter shook his head.
'They are divorced,' he said. 'He has custody.'
'Why did she do it?' Ringmar asked.
Winter raised both arms a little.
'She can't explain it,' he said. 'Not at the moment, at any rate.'
'Do you believe her?' asked Ringmar.
'That she abandoned the boy? Yes. What's the alternative?'
'Even worse,' said Ringmar.
'We have to work with all possible alternatives,' said Winter. 'We need to check the father's alibi as well. The important thing is that the child is missing. That's what we need to concentrate on.'
'Have you been to their home? The Johanssons? The father?'
'Yes,' said Winter. 'And we're tracking down everybody who was working in that part of Nordstan last night. First priority.'
'So somebody might have abducted the kid?' said Ringmar.
'Yes.'
'Is this a pattern we recognise from before?'
'Yes.'
'Exactly,' said Ringmar. 'But it doesn't really fit in with the previous cases. The others.'
'It might do,' said Winter. 'This boy, Micke, went to a day nursery in the centre of Gothenburg. Not all that far away from the others we are concerned about, including mine – or, rather, Elsa's.'
'And?'
'If there's somebody stalking the day nurseries from time to time, keeping them under observation, it's not impossible that the person concerned could follow somebody after they'd picked up their child.'
'Why?'
'To see where they live.'
'Why?'
'Because he or she is interested in the child.'
'Why?'
'For the same reason as in the earlier cases.'
'Calm down now, Erik.'
'I am calm.'
'What's the reason?' Ringmar asked.
'We don't know yet.'
Ringmar eased off. He recognised Winter's fervent involvement, and his own.
'Perhaps it's easier to abduct a child if you've been keeping it under observation for some time,' said Ringmar.
'Perhaps.'
'Instead of just marching up and wheeling the pushchair away. I mean, the mother might have been within reach.'
Winter nodded. He tried to picture the situation, but wasn't very successful. There were too many people in the way.
'For Christ's sake, Erik, we could be dealing with an abducted child here.' Ringmar rubbed away at his eye. 'Or I suppose it's possible that the lad woke up and staggered off all by himself?' He peered out from underneath his rubbing. 'It's a possibility.'
'We have lots of officers searching,' said Winter.
'Down by the canal?'
'There as well.'
'Do you have a picture of the boy?'
Winter pointed at his desk, where a little photograph must have been lying all the time.
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