The Crow Girl (40 page)

The man stumbles and falls helplessly to the ground.

He gets up, and his face has been scratched by the grit on the path.

Some children are crying.

‘Daddy!’

A little girl, no more than six years old, with pink candyfloss in her hand.

‘Can we go? I want to go home.’

The man doesn’t answer, just looks around, trying to find his opponent, someone to vent his frustration on.

Jeanette’s police reflexes make her act without thinking. She takes the man by the arm. ‘OK,’ she says gently, ‘take it easy.’ Her intention is to get him to think about something else. Not to sound reproachful.

The man turns round, and Jeanette sees that his eyes are glazed and bloodshot. Sad and disappointed, almost ashamed.

‘Daddy …’ the little girl says again, but the man doesn’t react, just stares ahead of him without focusing.

‘And who the fuck are you?’ He pulls free of Jeanette’s grip on his arm. ‘Fuck off!’

His breath smells bitter, and his lips are covered with a thin, white film.

At that moment she hears the cradle up above being released, and the delighted cries of fear mixed with pleasure make her lose her train of thought, lose concentration.

She sees Johan, his hair all over the place, his mouth open in a roar.

She hears the little girl. ‘No, Daddy! No!’

But she doesn’t notice the man next to her raising his arm.

The bottle hits Jeanette on the temple, and she staggers. She feels blood running down her cheek. But she doesn’t lose consciousness, almost the reverse.

With a practised movement she twists the man’s arm up behind his back, drops him to the ground and is soon joined by the fair’s security guards.

And now, five minutes later, she discovers that both Johan and Sofia have vanished.

Three hundred seconds.

JUST AS PEOPLE
who have been denied happiness all their life still manage to cling onto hope, Jeanette Kihlberg has always had a uniformly negative view in the course of her work towards the slightest hint of pessimism.

That’s why she never gives up, and that’s why she reacts the way she does whenever Police Constable Schwarz complains in provocatively loud terms about the weather, or how tired he is, or how little progress they’re making in their search for Johan.

Jeanette Kihlberg sees red.

‘For fuck’s sake! Go home, you’re no fucking use to us here!’

It has an impact. Schwarz flinches like a shame-faced hound, while Åhlund stands neutrally alongside. Her anger makes the wound on her head throb under the bandage.

Jeanette calms down, sighs and gestures dismissivelys towards Schwarz. ‘Understood? You’re relieved of duty until further notice.’

Soon Jeanette is alone. She stands hollow-eyed and frozen beside the rear deck of the Vasa Museum, waiting for Jens Hurtig, who interrupted his holiday the moment news of Johan’s disappearance reached him, in order to take part in the search.

When she sees an unmarked police car approaching across the park, she knows it’s Hurtig, and that he’s got someone else with him. A witness who claims to have seen a young man alone down by the water the previous evening. From what Hurtig said on the radio, she knows she shouldn’t harbour any great hope about the testimony. But she still tries to convince herself that she must keep hoping, however vain it might be.

She tries to gather her thoughts and reconstruct the events of the past few hours.

Johan and Sofia had vanished; suddenly they were just gone. After half an hour she had a call put out for Johan over the fair’s public address system, while she waited anxiously at the information desk.

Then some security guards appeared and together they resumed her aimless search of the fair. That’s when they found Sofia lying on one of the paths, surrounded by a crowd that Jeanette had to elbow her way through until she could look Sofia in the eye. But the face that until recently had been synonymous with release only turned out to underline her anxiety and uncertainty. Sofia was completely out of it. Jeanette doubted that Sofia was even capable of recognising her, let alone saying where Johan was. Jeanette hadn’t stayed with her; she felt compelled to keep looking.

Another half-hour had passed before she contacted her colleagues in the police. But neither she nor the twenty officers who had dragged the water close to the fair and painstakingly searched across Djurgården had found Johan. Nor had any of the police patrols that were searching the city centre after being given his description.

After that an alert had been broadcast on local radio. Without result, until forty-five minutes ago.

Jeanette knows she’s been acting correctly, but like a robot. A robot paralysed by feelings. A complete contradiction. Hard, cold and rational on the surface, but governed by chaotic impulses. The anger, irritation, fear, anguish, confusion and resignation she had felt through the night are all merging into an indistinguishable mush.

The only consistent emotion is inadequacy.

And not just towards Johan.

She has no idea how to reach Åke in Poland.

Jeanette thinks about Sofia.

How is she?

Jeanette has called her several times, but without success. If she knew anything about Johan, surely she’d have got in touch? Unless she knows something that she has to summon the courage to say?

Never mind that now, she thinks, fending off thoughts that must remain unthinkable. Focus.

The car stops, and Hurtig gets out.

‘Shit,’ he says. ‘That doesn’t look good.’ He nods towards her bandaged head.

She knows it looks worse than it is. The wound was stitched on the scene, and the bandage is bloody, along with her top and jacket. ‘It’s OK,’ she says. ‘And you didn’t have to cancel Kvikkjokk for my sake.’

He shrugs. ‘Don’t be silly. What the hell would I do up there? Make snowmen?’

For the first time in over twelve hours Jeanette smiles. Nothing more needs to be said, because she knows he realises that she’s deeply grateful he’s there.

She opens the door to the passenger side and helps the old lady out of the car. Hurtig has already shown the woman a picture of Johan, and Jeanette has been warned that her evidence is weak. She wasn’t even able to say what colour Johan’s clothes were.

‘Was that where you saw him?’ Jeanette points towards the stony beach by the jetty where the lightship
Finngrund
is moored.

The old woman nods and shivers in the cold. ‘He was lying asleep on the stones and I shook him awake. What sort of behaviour do you call this? I asked him. Drunk, so young and already –’

‘I see,’ Jeanette said impatiently. ‘Did he say anything?’

‘No, he was just mumbling. If he did say anything, I didn’t hear it.’

Hurtig pulls out the photograph of Johan and shows it to the woman again. ‘And you’re not sure if this was the boy you saw?’

‘Well, like I said, he had the same colour hair, but the face … It’s hard to say. As I say, he was drunk.’

Jeanette sighs and walks towards the path that runs along the shoreline. Drunk? she thinks. Johan? Rubbish.

She looks across the water towards Skeppsholmen, bathed in sickly grey mist.

How could it be so bloody cold?

She goes down towards the water and walks out onto the stones. ‘Was this where he was lying? Are you sure?’

‘Yes,’ the woman says firmly. ‘Here somewhere.’

Hurtig turns towards the woman. ‘And then he walked off? Towards Junibacken?’

‘No …’ The woman pulls a handkerchief from her coat pocket and blows her nose loudly. ‘He staggered away. He was so drunk he could hardly stay on his feet …’

Jeanette feels annoyed. ‘But he went that way? Towards Junibacken?’

The old woman nods and blows her nose again.

Then an emergency vehicle passes by along Djurgårdsvägen, on its way further into the island, to judge by the noise of the siren.

‘Another false alarm?’ Hurtig says through clenched teeth, and Jeanette shakes her head disconsolately.

This is the third time she’s heard ambulance sirens, and neither of the previous occasions was anything to do with Johan.

‘I’m going to call Mikkelsen,’ Jeanette says.

‘National Crime?’ Hurtig looks surprised.

‘Yes. The way I see it, he’s best suited for something like this.’ She gets up and strides quickly across the stones to get back to the path.

‘Crimes against children, you mean?’ It looks like Hurtig immediately regrets saying this. ‘Well, I mean, we don’t really know what this is about yet.’

‘Maybe not, but it would be a mistake not to include that as a possible hypothesis. Mikkelsen’s been coordinating the search of Beckholmen, Gröna Lund and Waldemarsudde.’

Hurtig nods and gives her a sympathetic look.

When Jeanette takes her mobile phone out she sees that the battery’s dead; then the police radio crackles in Hurtig’s car ten metres away.

She feels a heavy weight inside her as she understands.

As if the blood in her body is sinking, trying to drag her into the ground.

They’ve found Johan.

AT FIRST THE
paramedics thought the boy was dead.

He was found by the old windmill at Waldemarsudde, and his breathing and heartbeat were almost non-existent.

His body temperature was dangerously low, and they could see that he had been sick several times during the unusually cold late-summer night.

There were initial concerns about his breathing, in case any of the gastric acid had ended up in his lungs.

Just after ten o’clock Jeanette Kihlberg climbed into the ambulance that was going to drive her son to the intensive care unit of Karolinska Hospital.

The room is unlit, but the weak light of the afternoon sun finds its way through the venetian blinds and the yellow strips form a pattern on Johan’s bare torso. The pulsating artificial lights of the heart-lung machine play across the bed and Jeanette Kihlberg has a feeling that she is inside a dream.

She strokes the back of Johan’s hand and glances at the monitor at the side of the bed.

His body temperature is approaching normal.

She knows he had large quantities of alcohol in his body. Almost three parts per thousand when he arrived at the hospital.

She hasn’t slept a wink, her body feels numb, and she can’t even work out if the heart pounding inside her chest matches the pulsing sensation in her forehead. Thoughts she doesn’t recognise are echoing in her head, and they’re frustrated, angry, frightened, lost and resigned all at the same time.

She has always been a rational person. Until now.

She looks at him lying there. It’s the first time he’s ever been in hospital. No, the second time. The first time was thirteen years ago, when he was born. Back then she had been completely calm. And so well prepared that she predicted she would need a Caesarean section before the doctors decided on one.

She hasn’t prepared for this.

She squeezes his hand tighter. It’s still cold, but he looks relaxed and is breathing calmly. And the room is quiet. Apart from the electric hum of the machines.

‘Listen …’ she whispers, aware that people who are unconscious can still hear. ‘They think everything’s going to be fine.’

She breaks off her attempt to instil hope in Johan.

They think? More like they don’t know.

They were able to tell her about the ECGs, oxygen and drips, and explain how a probe in his throat is monitoring his temperature, and how a heart-lung machine is slowly raising his temperature again.

They were able to tell her about critical hypothermia, and how a prolonged period in the water followed by a night of heavy rain and strong winds could affect the body.

They were able to explain that alcohol expands blood vessels and accelerates a drop in temperature, and that there’s a risk of brain damage as a result of the decline in the blood-sugar level.

They said they thought the worst of the danger was over and they explained that his blood gases and lung X-ray looked positive at first glance.

What does that mean?

They think. But they don’t know anything.

If Johan can hear, then he’s heard everything she’s been told in this room. She can’t lie to him. She holds her hand to his cheek. That isn’t a lie.

Her thoughts are interrupted when Hurtig comes into the room.

‘How’s he doing?’

‘He’s alive, and he’s going to make a full recovery. It’s OK, Jens. You can go home.’

LIGHTNING STRIKES THE
earth one hundred times per second, which means about eight million times per day. The worst storm of the year sweeps in over Stockholm, and at twenty-two minutes past ten lightning strikes at two places simultaneously. In Bandhagen, to the south of the city, and in the vicinity of Karolinska Hospital in Solna.

Detective Sergeant Jens Hurtig is standing in the hospital car park, about to drive home, when his mobile rings. He opens the car door and gets in before answering. He sees that it’s Police Commissioner Dennis Billing, and assumes he’s calling to find out what’s been going on.

‘I heard you found Jeanette’s boy. How is he?’ He sounds worried.

‘He’s sleeping at the moment, and she’s with him.’ Hurtig puts the key in the ignition and starts the engine. ‘It doesn’t seem to be life-threatening, thank God.’

‘Good, good. So she should be back in a few days, then.’ The police chief smacks his lips. ‘And how about you?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Are you tired, or do you feel up to taking a look at something out in Bandhagen?’

‘Like what?’

‘They’ve found a woman’s body, probable rape.’

‘OK, I’m on my way.’

‘That’s the kind of thing I like. You’re a good guy, Jens. And you …’ Commissioner Dennis Billing swallows. ‘Tell Jan Kihlberg I think it’s perfectly in order for her to stay at home for a while to take care of her son. To be honest, I think she ought to take better care of her family. I’ve heard rumours that Åke’s left her.’