The Silent Girl (Sebastian Bergman 4)

by Michael Hjorth

  Torkel had increased security following the events of the previous night. Two uniformed officers accompanied them in the lift up to Nicole’s new room, away from the ground floor. Nicole was in a wheelchair, silent and somehow smaller than ever, with Sebastian by her side and Maria behind. The double doors leading to a corridor identical to the one they had just left swung open automatically as the little group approached. Torkel and Vanja were waiting further along; Sebastian glanced in through the open door of Nicole’s new room. Same off-white walls, same scratched grey-green vinyl floor. Two beds. But there was also an orange two-seater sofa and an armchair arranged around a small table in one corner, with big windows overlooking the corridor.

  ‘I need to have a word with my colleagues,’ Sebastian said, turning to Nicole. ‘But we’ll stay here, so you’ll be able to see me through the window all the time.’

  There was no reaction from the girl, nor had he expected one, but she was obviously happy with the arrangement because she went with Maria without protesting or clinging on to him.

  ‘Leave the curtains open, please,’ Torkel said to Maria’s back, and she nodded in response. The two uniformed officers stationed themselves on either side of the door.

  ‘So what do we know about last night?’ Sebastian asked as soon as the door closed.

  ‘The hospital has CCTV cameras in the main foyer and outside the entrance for those who are brought in by ambulance. Billy’s gone to see if he can get hold of the films,’ Torkel replied. ‘How’s Nicole?’

  ‘Hard to say, but she’s started drawing, which is a step in the right direction.’ Sebastian gestured with his right hand, in which he was carrying Nicole’s pictures.

  ‘Can I have a look?’ Vanja said, and Sebastian passed her the drawings.

  ‘But she’s still not talking?’ Torkel went on.

  ‘She hasn’t said a word.’

  ‘Do we know how she got past Dennis?’

  ‘He says he went to get a cup of coffee at eleven thirty, but it’s not impossible that he might have nodded off at some point.’

  Sebastian sighed. He looked into the room where Nicole had just got out of the wheelchair and climbed into bed. Maria tucked her in, took a book out of the bag hanging on the back of the wheelchair and sat down on the edge of the bed. Nicole was lying on her side, her eyes fixed on Sebastian. He gave her a little wave.

  ‘How’s Ursula, by the way?’ Vanja wondered, looking up from the drawings.

  ‘She’s having a new eye fitted, so I guess … she’s as well as can be expected,’ Torkel replied, turning to Sebastian. He should have been the one to enquire, to show interest and concern, but needless to say that was too much to ask. ‘Nothing unusual about the Carlstens’ finances so far either – we haven’t been able to find any major deposits or withdrawals.’

  ‘What’s this?’ Vanja said, holding up one of the pictures.

  ‘It’s the cave,’ Sebastian explained. ‘She’s started with what happened most recently, and she’s moving backwards. You’ve got the ambulance in the first one, and the second one is inside the cave. She’s gradually getting closer to the house and what happened there.’

  Vanja nodded, and looked at the drawing again. Torkel noticed that she was frowning slightly.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I was at the cave, but I must have missed …’ She held up the piece of paper again and pointed to a man with a yellow ‘V’ beaming from his head. ‘Who was wearing a head torch?’

  ★ ★ ★

  ‘Erik confirmed that none of his team was wearing a head torch at the cave.’

  Torkel’s expression was grim as they gathered outside Nicole’s room fifteen minutes later. ‘Our killer was in the cave, and he was here in the hospital. He seems to have decided to silence Nicole.’

  ‘How did he know she was in the cave?’ Vanja asked no one in particular.

  ‘He knows the area, he’s local,’ Sebastian said, looking in through the window. Nicole was lying on her back with her eyes closed. Maria put down the book and went over to the sofa. ‘Just as I said,’ he added.

  ‘So is Erik Flodin, and the rest of his team,’ Vanja said. ‘They didn’t work it out.’

  ‘Flodin is a klutz,’ Sebastian said, turning back to his colleagues. ‘We’re dealing with an intelligent and very determined individual here.’

  ‘If he’s local, then I suggest we get Nicole out of here,’ Torkel said firmly. ‘We’ll move her to one of our safe houses in Stockholm.’

  ‘Can she be moved?’ Vanja wondered, glancing at the pale, thin figure in the bed.

  ‘I’ll check with the doctors, but as I understand it there’s nothing physically wrong with her, and after all she comes from Stockholm, so in a way she’ll be going home.’

  ‘I’ll go with her,’ Sebastian stated in a tone which he hoped made it clear that this was not a matter for discussion. However, Torkel raised an eyebrow.

  ‘She’s a traumatised witness, I’m a psychologist,’ Sebastian clarified in an exaggeratedly pedagogical voice, as if he was explaining something to a small child. ‘She came out of the cave because she trusts me. I can do more good by spending time with her than by sitting in an office checking bank accounts or going through CCTV tapes or searching for footprints in caves, or whatever it is you’re planning on doing.’ He turned back to the window. Nicole’s dark hair spread across the pillow. Her little hands resting on her stomach, the fingertips almost touching. Even, steady breathing. He was filled with an indescribable tenderness as he gazed at her – tenderness and a desire to protect her. He could do that only if he was where she was.

  ‘She trusts me, even more than she trusts her mother right now. And I promised I wouldn’t leave her,’ he said in conclusion, surprising himself with how emotional he sounded.

  In spite of the fact that he had just been spoken to as if he was an idiot, Torkel recognised the logic in what Sebastian was saying.

  The priority was to remove the girl from Torsby.

  ★ ★ ★

  She had fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder.

  Sebastian had intended to sit in the front passenger seat, leaving Maria and Nicole to spread out in the back of the car, but as they were about to get in it became clear that Nicole wanted both of them beside her. So now they were all squashed in the back of the brown Opel Zafira Tourer, heading for Stockholm.

  Once they decided to move Nicole, everything else moved fast. Just after nine o’clock an unmarked police car had pulled into the ambulance bay, which had a roof and was partially hidden from view from the rest of the hospital. Sebastian, Maria and Nicole had quickly got in, and no reporters had noticed their departure, as far as they could tell.

  They had been travelling for about an hour. Fredrika was driving, sticking to a steady 110 kilometres per hour as they headed east along the E18. Just after Sunne she had asked if anyone minded if she put the radio on, but otherwise she hadn’t said a word. Sebastian thanked his lucky stars that he hadn’t slept with her; that would have made the silence uncomfortable rather than welcome.

  Billy had offered to take them to Stockholm, but Torkel wanted him to stay in Torsby. They had got nowhere with the tapes from the CCTV cameras at the hospital, but at least they had a time frame to work on; Dennis had glanced at his watch just before he was attacked.

  They were now working on retrieving images from the cameras covering the roads leading to the hospital in the hope of spotting a car within the relevant period. There were unlikely to be many vehicles around at that time of night. Unfortunately Torsby didn’t have all that many cameras either, and if the person they were looking for had excellent local knowledge, as Sebastian believed, he had probably managed to avoid the cameras that were in place – but they had to try.

  Vanja and Fabian, the forensic technician, were going back to the cave to see if they could find any trace of the man who had been there before Erik and Sebastian arrived. Both of them were adamant that they hadn’t
seen a car parked nearby, so whoever it was must have made their way to the cave on foot. Partly, at least. An appeal had been issued, asking for anyone who had seen a parked car within a few kilometres of the cave last Saturday morning to contact the police. Nothing so far.

  ‘Anyone need me to stop?’ Fredrika asked as they passed a sign showing that there was a service station coming up in one kilometre. Sebastian and Maria looked at one another, and Maria shook her head.

  ‘We’re fine, thanks,’ Sebastian said, adjusting his position a fraction while taking care not to disturb Nicole. He was tired; he had had only a couple of hours’ sleep last night. The good thing about the eventful night and their hasty departure was that he hadn’t seen anything of Malin Åkerblad.

  When he nipped back to the hotel to pack his things, he had something of a surprise. As he was going up the stairs to his room, the receptionist had spoken to him.

  ‘I hope it was OK to let your colleague into your room last night.’

  Sebastian had stopped dead, completely taken aback; the young man on the desk had realised he needed to explain.

  ‘Your colleague, Billy Rosén – he said he’d left his laptop in your room, and you’d gone out.’

  Sebastian tried to make sense of what he had just heard, but without success. Billy hadn’t even been in his room since they arrived, let alone left his laptop there. However, there was no point in making a big thing of it with the receptionist, so Sebastian had merely nodded emphatically.

  ‘That’s perfectly OK. Absolutely. No problem at all.’

  As he quickly gathered up his things, he tried to work out why Billy would have wanted to get into his room. He couldn’t think of any reason. Nothing seemed to be missing. Had he planted a bug? A hidden camera? But why? The only thing Billy could expect to see or hear was the odd bout of hotel-room sex, and that seemed highly unlikely. So why had Billy been in here?

  He didn’t have time to worry about that now; at least he knew it had happened, and he could think about the reason at a later stage.

  Now he started to wonder once more, but he was too tired to concentrate. The temperature inside the car was a steady twenty-one degrees, the engine was purring, the music was playing quietly and Nicole’s head was resting on his shoulder.

  Sebastian leaned against the window and fell asleep.

  ★ ★ ★

  Three hours later they stopped on Sofielundsvägen in Enskededalen, south of Stockholm. Fredrika informed them that this was the first time she had seen the Globe arena in real life, and for a moment Sebastian was worried that she might crash as she leaned forward over the wheel to see as much of the building as possible for as long as possible.

  When they arrived she waited in the car while Sebastian, Maria and Nicole went up to the first-floor apartment. Three rooms, light and fresh, with parquet flooring in the hallway which continued into the living room on the left, beyond two white closets with sliding doors, and a seat upholstered in green corduroy.

  ‘Just bring what you need for the next day or so,’ Sebastian said as he slipped off his shoes and went inside. ‘Then you can make a list and we’ll send someone over.’

  Maria nodded and took Nicole by the hand.

  ‘Shall we start in my room?’ she suggested, and they disappeared into the room at the end on the right. Sebastian went into the living room. Bookshelves along one wall. A beige corner sofa with brightly coloured cushions under the large window, on a shaggy brown rug. A round coffee table with metal legs. A flat-screen TV on the wall opposite. Books and DVDs along the shelves, interspersed with photographs in IKEA frames. Sebastian picked up one of them: a younger Nicole, perhaps four or five years old, standing between Maria and a man with a Latin-American appearance. Her father, presumably. The separation obviously hadn’t been unpleasant enough for Maria to want to erase him from their everyday lives. On the other hand, she hadn’t contacted him since she came back to Sweden, as far as Sebastian knew, so he guessed that their relationship could best be described as neutral.

  He put down the photograph and left the room. He could hear Maria’s voice, and walked past the bright kitchen towards the sound.

  He stopped in the doorway of Nicole’s room. She was standing by the bed putting three books into a small rucksack, while Maria was taking clothes out of the wardrobe. The images came from nowhere, without warning, taking him back ten years.

  To another little girl, another bed, another rucksack.

  With Bamse the bear on it.

  Sabine, packing for the holiday in Thailand with the concentration and care only a four-year-old could summon up. Books, hair slides, pink hairbrush, plastic tiara with a picture of Cinderella on it, surrounded by plastic diamonds, a little purse containing the ice-cream money Grandma had given her, plus Dragon, her favourite cuddly toy. He was orange with green spines all along his back and down his tail; he had been a present on her second birthday, and she never went anywhere without him.

  Sebastian hadn’t thought about Dragon since … since when? Since Boxing Day 2004. Dragon had stayed in the hotel room when Sebastian and Sabine went down to the beach. He didn’t like swimming. ‘He breathes fire, you see,’ Sabine had explained, her voice full of a four-year-old’s wisdom as she tucked Dragon up in her bed. ‘So it’s not good for him if he gets wet.’ Then they had left the room.

  Gone down to the beach.

  To the wave.

  ‘I’ll wait in the car,’ Sebastian managed to say, in spite of the lump in his throat. Nicole looked up at him, immediately anxious. She glanced at Maria, then back at Sebastian, as if she couldn’t decide where she wanted to be.

  ‘Actually,’ Sebastian began when he saw the child’s reaction, ‘I might as well wait in the living room. I’m not going anywhere.’ He smiled at Nicole. ‘You finish off your packing.’

  In fact he ended up in the kitchen. A table and four chairs, fridge, freezer, built-in microwave at a comfortable height. Photographs, drawings and Post-it notes stuck on with brightly coloured magnets. Neat and tidy shelves. A kettle and a milk frother in one corner, several cookery books in another. The draining board had been wiped clean, and there were no dirty dishes in the sink. A kitchen that had been prepared for a lengthy absence. Sebastian opened the shiny white cupboard doors until he found a glass. He let the cold water run for a little while, then filled the glass and drank deeply. He leaned against the sink and gazed at the poster on the wall above the table: the animals of Scandinavia. In his head he started to go through the ones he recognised and could name.

  Ten minutes later they were back in the car.

  ★ ★ ★

  The ‘safe house’ in Farsta was also a three-room apartment, but that was where the similarities ended. Maria and Nicole’s place was a home – personal, well thought out, cosy. This was functional at best. There was a stale smell as they opened the door, and as soon as they walked in the sense of dilapidation increased, mainly due to a big hole in the plaster on one wall, presumably because something far too heavy had been hung up and come crashing down. Nicole slipped her hand into her mother’s as they went from room to room.

  The furniture was clean and nothing appeared to be broken, but it was just a collection of random pieces, giving the impression that whoever had lived there before had gradually thought of things they needed, and bought whatever it was without paying any attention to what was already in the apartment. The whole place looked a bit like a car boot sale.

  A female plain-clothes officer who introduced herself as Sofia had met them outside the block and escorted them up the three flights of stairs. She was now sitting in the armchair opposite the sofa, where Nicole was curled up next to Maria. Sofia explained that the threat to their safety was now regarded as low level, since they had moved to a secret address in Stockholm, but that the police would patrol the area every two hours around the clock. They had decided it was best not to draw attention to the situation by visiting on a regular basis, or posting a guard outside the building or i
n the stairwell.

  Maria was given an alarm to wear around her wrist, and a pre-programmed mobile; she only had to press one button and the police would respond, 24/7.

  After taking a short tour of the apartment and visiting the bathroom, Sebastian came into the living room just as Sofia stood up to leave. She shook hands with Maria and nodded to Sebastian in passing.

  ‘You need to do some shopping,’ Sebastian said when the front door had closed. ‘There’s not much in the kitchen.’

  Maria nodded wearily, then leaned back on the sofa with a deep sigh.

  Sebastian could see that the events of the past couple of days were beginning to hit home. She hadn’t had a minute’s peace since she landed at Landvetter. Learning about the deaths of her sister’s family, the worry about her missing daughter, the events at the hospital and then their abrupt departure, as if they were on the run. At last she had the chance to sit back and process what had happened.

  ‘How do you feel?’ Sebastian asked, taking a step closer as he realised she was fighting back the tears.

  ‘I feel as if … as if the whole thing is totally unreal.’ Maria let out a joyless laugh. ‘My sister has been murdered and Nicole saw who did it.’ She drew her daughter closer. ‘And now she won’t talk.’

  ‘She will,’ Sebastian said, sitting down beside her. ‘I promise.’

  Maria merely nodded and stroked Nicole’s hair. Sebastian wondered what to say, what he could say, and realised there wasn’t much that hadn’t already been said, or would make a difference. This was something Maria had to get through, and if she needed to talk he would be there, but offering words of consolation without being asked could easily appear clichéd and intrusive. Particularly as they didn’t know each other very well – or at all, to be honest.

  ‘I’ll go and do some shopping, then I’ll cook dinner,’ Sebastian said, getting to his feet. ‘I won’t be long,’ he added reassuringly as Nicole raised her head from Maria’s chest. He could feel her eyes following him as he left the room, but at least she stayed put, with Maria’s arm around her.