Kitabı oku: «The Ice Child»

Chapter One

The horse could smell the fear even before the girl emerged from the woods. The rider urged the horse on, digging her heels into the animal’s flanks, though it wasn’t really necessary. They were so in tune that her mount sensed her wishes almost before she did.

The muted, rhythmic sound of the horse’s hooves broke the silence. During the night a thin layer of snow had fallen, and the stallion now ploughed new tracks, making the powdery snow spray up around his hooves.

The girl didn’t run. She moved unsteadily, in an irregular pattern with her arms wrapped tightly around her torso.

The rider shouted. A loud cry, and the horse understood that something wasn’t right. The girl didn’t reply, merely staggered onward.

As they approached her, the horse picked up the pace. The strong, rank smell of fear was mixed with something else, something indefinable and so terrifying that he pressed his ears back. He wanted to stop, turn around, and gallop back to the secure confines of his stall. This was not a safe place to be.

The road was between them. Deserted now, with new snow blowing across the asphalt like a silent mist.

The girl continued towards them. Her feet were bare, and the pink of her naked arms and legs contrasted sharply with all the white surrounding her, with the snow-covered spruces forming a white backdrop. They were close now, on either side of the road, and the horse heard the rider shout again. Her voice was so familiar, yet it had a strange ring to it.

Suddenly the girl stopped. She stood in the middle of the road with snow whirling about her feet. There was something odd about her eyes. They were like black holes in her white face.

The car seemed to come out of nowhere. The sound of squealing brakes sliced through the stillness, followed by the thump of a body landing on the ground. The rider yanked so hard on the reins that the bit cut into the stallion’s mouth. He obeyed and stopped abruptly. She was him, and he was her. That was what he’d been taught.

On the ground the girl lay motionless. With those peculiar eyes of hers staring up at the sky.

Erica Falck paused in front of the prison and for the first time studied it closely. On her previous visits she had been so busy thinking about who she was going to meet that she hadn’t given the building or its setting more than a cursory glance. But she would need to give readers a sense of the place when she wrote her book about Laila Kowalski, the woman who had so brutally murdered her husband Vladek many years ago.

She pondered how to convey the atmosphere that pervaded the bunker-like building, how she could capture the air of confinement and hopelessness. The prison was located about a thirty-minute drive from Fjällbacka, in a remote and isolated spot surrounded by fences and barbed wire, though it had none of those towers manned by armed guards that always featured in American films. It had been constructed with only one purpose in mind, and that was to keep people inside.

From the outside the prison looked unoccupied, but she knew the reverse was true. Funding cuts and a tight budget meant that as many people as possible were crowded into every space. No local politician was about to risk losing votes by proposing that money should be invested in a new prison. The county would just have to make do with the present structure.

The cold had begun to seep through Erica’s clothes, so she headed towards the entrance. When she entered the reception area, the guard listlessly glanced at her ID and nodded without raising his eyes. He stood up, and she followed him down a corridor as she thought about how hectic her morning had been. Every morning was a trial these days. To say that the twins had entered an obstinate stage was an understatement. For the life of her she couldn’t recall Maja ever being so difficult when she was two, or at any age. Noel was the worst. He had always been the more energetic one, but Anton was all too happy to follow his lead. If Noel screamed, he screamed too. It was a miracle that her eardrums – and Patrik’s, for that matter – were still intact, given the decibel level at home.

And what a pain it was to get them into their winter clothes. She gave her armpit a discreet sniff. She smelled faintly of sweat. It had taken her so long to wrestle the twins into their clothes so she could take them and Maja to the day-care centre, she hadn’t had time to change. Oh well. She wasn’t exactly going to a social gathering.

The guard’s key ring clanked as he unlocked the door and showed Erica into the visitor’s room. It seemed so old-fashioned that they still made use of keys in this place. But of course it would be easier to get hold of the combination to a coded lock than to steal a key. Maybe it wasn’t so strange that old measures often prevailed over more modern solutions.

Laila was sitting at the only table in the room. Her face was turned towards the window, and the winter sun streaming through the pane formed a halo around her blond hair. The bars on the window made squares of light on the floor, and dust motes floated in the air, revealing that the room hadn’t been cleaned as thoroughly as it should have been.

‘Hi,’ said Erica as she sat down.

She wondered why Laila had agreed to see her again. This was their third meeting, and Erica had made no progress at all. Initially Laila had refused to meet with her, no matter how many imploring letters Erica had sent or how many phone calls she’d made. Then a few months ago Laila had suddenly acquiesced. Perhaps the visits were a welcome break from the monotony of prison life. Erica planned to keep visiting if Laila continued to agree to see her. It had been a long time since she’d felt such a strong urge to tell a story, and she couldn’t do it without Laila’s help.

‘Hi, Erica.’ Laila turned and fixed her unusual blue eyes on her visitor. At their first meeting, Erica had been reminded of those dogs they used to pull sleds. Huskies. Laila had eyes like a Siberian husky.

‘Why do you want to see me if you don’t want to talk about the case?’ asked Erica, getting right to the point. She immediately regretted her choice of words. For Laila, what had happened was not a ‘case’. It was a tragedy and something that still tormented her.

Laila shrugged.

‘I don’t get any other visitors,’ she said, confirming Erica’s suspicions.

Erica opened her bag and took out a folder containing newspaper articles, photos, and notes.

‘Well, I’m not giving up,’ she said, tapping on the folder.

‘I suppose that’s the price I have to pay if I want company,’ said Laila, revealing the unexpected sense of humour that Erica had occasionally glimpsed. She had seen pictures of Laila before it all happened. She hadn’t been conventionally beautiful, but she was attractive in a different and compelling way. Back then her blond hair had been long, and in most of the photos she wore it loose and straight. Now it was cropped short, and cut the same length all over. Not exactly what you would call a hairstyle. Just cut in a way that showed it had been a long time since Laila had cared about her appearance. And why should she? She hadn’t been out in the real world for years. Who would she put on make-up for in here? The nonexistent visitors? The other prisoners? The guards?

‘You look tired today.’ Laila studied Erica’s face. ‘Was it a rough morning?’

‘Rough morning, rough night, and presumably just as rough this afternoon. But that’s the way it is when you have young children.’ Erica sighed heavily and tried to relax. She noticed how tense she was after the stress of the morning.

‘Peter was always so sweet,’ said Laila as a veil lowered over those blue eyes of hers. ‘Not even a trace of stubbornness that I remember.’

‘You told me the first time we met that he was a very quiet child.’

‘Yes. In the beginning we thought there was something wrong with him. He didn’t make a sound until he was three. I wanted to take him to a specialist, but Vladek refused.’ She shivered and her hands abruptly curled into fists as they lay on the table, though she didn’t seem aware of it.

‘What happened when Peter was three?’

‘One day he just started talking. In complete sentences. With a huge vocabulary. He lisped a bit, but otherwise it was as if he had always talked. As if those years of silence had never existed.’

‘And you were never given any explanation?’

‘No. Who would have explained it to us? Vladek didn’t want to ask anyone for help. He always said that strangers shouldn’t get mixed up in family matters.’

‘Why do you think Peter was silent for so long?’

Laila turned to look out of the window, and the sun once again formed a halo around her cropped blond hair. The furrows that the years had etched into her face were mercilessly evident in the light. As if forming a map of all the suffering she had endured.

‘He probably realized it was best to make himself as invisible as possible. Not to draw attention to himself. Peter was a clever boy.’

‘What about Louise? How old was she when she started to talk?’ Erica held her breath. So far Laila had pretended not to hear any of the questions that pertained to her daughter.

It was no different today.

‘Peter loved arranging things. He wanted everything to be nice and orderly. When he was a baby he would stack up blocks in perfect, even towers, and he was always so sad when …’ Laila stopped abruptly.

Erica noticed how Laila had clenched her jaws shut, and she tried to use sheer willpower to coax Laila to go on, to let out what she had so carefully locked up inside. But the moment had passed. The same thing had happened during Erica’s previous visits. Sometimes it felt as though Laila were standing on the edge of an abyss, wishing deep in her heart that she could throw herself into the chasm. As if she wanted to pitch forward but was stopped by stronger forces, which made her once again retreat into the safety of shadows.

It was no accident that Erica was thinking about shadows. The first time they’d met, she had a feeling that Laila was living a shadow existence. A life running parallel to the life she should have had, the life that had vanished into a bottomless pit on that day so many years ago.

‘Do you ever feel like you’re going to lose patience with your sons? That you’re about to cross that invisible boundary?’ Laila sounded genuinely interested, but her voice also had a pleading undertone.

It was not an easy question to answer. All parents have probably felt a moment when they approached that borderline between what is permitted and what isn’t, standing there and silently counting to ten as they think about what they could do to put an end to the commotion and upheaval exploding in their heads. But there was a big difference between acknowledging that feeling and acting on it. So Erica shook her head.

‘I could never do anything to hurt them.’

At first Laila didn’t answer as she continued to stare at Erica with those bright blue eyes of hers. But when the guard knocked on the door to say that visiting time was over, Laila said quietly, her gaze still fixed on Erica:

‘That’s what you think.’

Erica recalled the photographs in the folder and shuddered.

Tyra was grooming Fanta with steady strokes of the brush. She always felt better when she was around the horses. She would have much preferred to be grooming Scirocco, but Molly wouldn’t let anyone else take care of him. It was so unfair. Just because Molly’s parents owned the stable, she was allowed to do anything she wanted.

Tyra loved Scirocco. She had loved him from the first moment she saw him. And the horse had looked at her as if he understood her. It was a wordless form of communication that she’d never experienced with any other animal. Or even with any person. Not with her mother. And not with Lasse. The mere thought of Lasse made her brush Fanta harder, but the big white mare didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she seemed to be enjoying the strokes of the brush, snorting and moving her head up and down as if bowing. For a moment Tyra thought it looked like the mare were inviting her to dance. She smiled and stroked Fanta’s grey muzzle.

‘You’re great too,’ she said, as if the horse had been able to hear her thoughts about Scirocco.

Then she felt a pang of guilt. She looked at her hand on Fanta’s muzzle and realized how trivial her jealousy was.

‘You miss Victoria, don’t you?’ she whispered, leaning her head against the horse’s neck.

Victoria, who had been Fanta’s groom. Victoria, who had been missing for several months. Victoria, who had been – who was – Tyra’s best friend.

‘I miss her too.’ Tyra felt the mare nudging her cheek, but it didn’t comfort her as much as she’d hoped.

She should have been in maths class right now, but on this particular morning she hadn’t felt able to put on a cheerful face and fend off her worry. She had gone over to the school bus stop but instead sought solace in the stable, the only place where she could find any respite. The grown-ups didn’t understand. They saw only their own anxiety, their own sorrow.

Victoria was more than a best friend. She was like a sister. They had been friends from the first day of school and had remained inseparable ever since. There was nothing they hadn’t shared. Or was there? Tyra no longer knew for sure. During those last months before Victoria disappeared, something had changed. It felt like a wall had popped up between them. Tyra hadn’t wanted to nag. She thought that when the time was right, Victoria would tell her what was going on. But time had run out, and Victoria was gone.

‘I’m sure she’ll come back,’ she now told Fanta, but deep inside she had her doubts. Though no one would admit it, they all knew that something bad must have happened. Victoria was not the kind of girl to disappear voluntarily, if such a person existed. She was too content with her life, and she didn’t have an adventurous nature. She preferred to stay home or in the stable; she didn’t even want to go into Strömstad on the weekends. And her family was nothing like Tyra’s. They were super nice, even Victoria’s older brother. He had often given his sister a lift to the stable early in the morning. Tyra used to love visiting their home. She’d felt like one of the family. Sometimes she’d even wished that Victoria’s family was hers. An ordinary, normal family.

Fanta gave her a gentle nudge. A few tears landed on the mare’s muzzle, and Tyra quickly wiped her eyes with her hand.

Suddenly she heard a sound outside the stable. Fanta heard it too. The mare pushed her ears forward and raised her head so swiftly that she rammed into Tyra’s chin. The sharp taste of blood filled the girl’s mouth. She swore, pressed her hand to her lips, and went outside to see what was going on.

When she opened the stable door she was dazzled by the sun, but her eyes quickly adjusted to the light and she saw Valiant coming across the forecourt at full gallop with Marta on his back. Marta pulled up so abruptly that the stallion almost reared. She was shouting something. At first Tyra didn’t understand what she was saying, but Marta kept on yelling. And finally the words made sense:

‘Victoria! We’ve found Victoria!’

Patrik Hedström was sitting at his desk in the Tanumshede police station, enjoying the peace and quiet. He’d come to work early, so he’d missed having to get the kids dressed and take them to the day-care centre. Lately that whole process had become a form of torture, thanks to the twins’ transformation from sweet babies into mini versions of Damien in the film Omen. He couldn’t comprehend how two such tiny people could require so much energy. Nowadays his favourite time with them was when he sat next to their beds in the evening and watched them sleep. At those moments he was able to enjoy the immense, pure love he felt for his sons without any trace of the tremendous frustration he felt when they howled: ‘NO, I WON’T!’

Everything was so much easier with Maja. In fact, sometimes he felt guilty that, with all the attention he and Erica devoted to her little brothers, Maja often ended up neglected. She was so good at keeping herself busy that they simply assumed she was happy. And as young as she was, she seemed to possess a magical ability to calm her brothers down even during their worst outbursts. But it wasn’t fair, and Patrik decided that tonight he and Maja would spend time together, just the two of them, snuggling and reading a story.

At that moment the phone rang. He picked it up distractedly, still thinking about Maja. But the caller quickly grabbed his attention, and he sat up straight in his chair.

‘Could you repeat that?’ He listened. ‘Okay, we’ll be right there.’

He threw on his jacket and shouted into the corridor, ‘Gösta! Mellberg! Martin!’

‘What is it? Where’s the fire?’ grunted Bertil Mellberg, who unexpectedly showed up first. But he was soon followed by Martin Molin, Gösta Flygare, and the station secretary, Annika, who had been at her desk in the reception area, which was the furthest away from Patrik’s office.

‘Somebody found Victoria Hallberg. She was hit by a car near the eastern entrance to Fjällbacka, and she’s been taken by ambulance to Uddevalla. That’s where you and I are headed, Gösta.’

‘Oh, shit,’ said Gösta, and he dashed back to his office to grab his jacket. No one dared venture outdoors without the proper warm clothing this winter, no matter how big an emergency it was.

‘Martin, you and Bertil need to go out to the accident site and talk to the driver,’ Patrik went on. ‘Call the tech team and ask them to meet you there.’

‘You’re in a bossy mood today,’ muttered Mellberg. ‘As the chief of this station, of course I’m the one who should go out to the scene of the accident. The right man in the right place.’

Patrik sighed to himself but didn’t comment. With Gösta in tow, he hurried outside, jumped into one of the two police vehicles and turned on the ignition.

Bloody awful road, he thought as the car skidded into the first curve. He didn’t dare drive as fast as usual. It had started snowing again, and he didn’t want to risk sliding off the road. Impatiently he slammed his fist on the steering wheel. It was only January and, given how long Swedish winters lasted, they could expect at least two more months of this misery.

‘Take it easy,’ said Gösta, clutching the strap hanging from the ceiling. ‘What did they say on the phone?’ He gasped as the car skidded again.

‘Not much. Just that there had been a traffic accident and the girl who’d been struck was Victoria. Unfortunately, it sounds as though she’s in bad shape, and apparently she has other injuries, which have nothing to do with being hit by a car.’

‘What kind of injuries?’

‘I don’t know. We’ll find out when we get there.’

Less than an hour later they arrived at Uddevalla hospital and parked at the front entrance. They hurried to the ER and accosted a doctor named Strandberg, according to his name badge.

‘I’m glad you’re here. The girl is just going into surgery, but it’s not certain she’ll make it. We heard from the police that she has been missing and, in the circumstances, we thought it best if you were the ones to notify her family. I assume you’ve already had a great deal of contact with them. Am I right?’

Gösta nodded. ‘I’ll phone them.’

‘Do you have any information about what happened?’ asked Patrik.

‘Only that she was hit by a car. She has severe internal bleeding, as well as a head injury, though we don’t yet know the extent of that injury. We’ll keep her sedated for a while after the operation in order to minimize any brain damage. If she survives, that is.’

‘We heard that she had suffered some sort of injuries prior to the accident.’

‘Yes,’ said Strandberg, hesitating. ‘We don’t know exactly which injuries are the result of the accident and which occurred previously. But …’ He seemed to be struggling for the right words. ‘Both of her eyes are gone. And her tongue.’

‘Gone?’ Patrik looked at the doctor in disbelief. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Gösta’s equally astonished expression.

‘Yes. Her tongue has been severed, and her eyes have somehow been … removed.’

Gösta covered his mouth with his hand. His face had taken on a slightly greenish tinge.

Patrik swallowed hard. For a moment he wondered whether he was having a nightmare, and hoped he would soon wake up. Then he would be relieved to find it was all a dream and could turn over and go back to sleep. But this was real. Disgustingly real.

‘How long do you think the surgery will take?’

Strandberg shook his head. ‘It’s hard to say. As I mentioned, she has massive internal bleeding. Maybe two or three hours. At the least. You can wait here.’ He gestured towards the large waiting room.

‘I’ll go and ring the family,’ said Gösta, moving away down the corridor.

Patrik didn’t envy him the task. The Hallberg family’s initial joy and relief at hearing that Victoria had been found would swiftly be replaced with the same despair and dread they’d been living with for the past four months.

He sat down on one of the hard chairs. Images of Victoria’s injuries whirled through his mind. But his thoughts were interrupted when a frantic nurse stuck her head in the door and shouted for Strandberg. Patrik hardly had time to react before the doctor dashed from the waiting room. Out in the corridor Patrik could hear Gösta talking on the phone with one of Victoria’s relations. The question was, what news would they hear next?

Ricky tensely studied his mother’s face as she talked on the phone. He strained to read every expression, hear every word. His heart was pounding so hard in his chest that he could hardly breathe. His father sat next to him, and Ricky sensed that his heart was hammering just as hard. It felt like time was standing still, as if it had stopped at that exact moment. All his senses were somehow heightened. Even as he focused his full attention on the phone conversation, he could clearly hear every other sound. He could also feel the wax tablecloth under his clenched fists, the wisp of hair that was tickling the back of his neck under his collar, and the linoleum floor under his feet.

The police had found Victoria. That was the first thing they heard. His mother had recognized the number and grabbed the phone. Ricky and his father had instantly stopped eating their food when they heard her say, ‘What’s happened?’

No courteous greeting, no ‘hello’, no mention of anyone’s name, which was his mother’s usual way of answering the phone. Lately all such things – common courtesies, social rules, what one should or should not do – had ceased to matter. Those sorts of things belonged to their life before Victoria disappeared.

Neighbours and friends had arrived in a steady stream, bringing food and awkwardly offering well-intentioned words. But they never stayed long. Ricky’s parents couldn’t bear all the questions or the kindness, concern, and sympathy in everyone’s eyes. Or the relief, always the same hint of relief that they were not the ones in this situation. Their children were all at home, safe and sound.

‘We’ll leave right now.’

His mother ended the conversation and slowly placed her mobile on the worktop, which was the old-fashioned kind, made of steel. For years she had nagged his father to replace it with something more modern, but he had grumbled that there was no need to replace anything that was clean and in one piece and still fully functional. And his mother had never insisted. She simply brought up the topic on occasion, in the hope that her husband would suddenly change his mind.

Ricky didn’t think his mother cared any longer about what sort of kitchen worktop they had. It was strange how things like that quickly lost all importance. All that mattered was finding Victoria.

‘What did they say?’ asked Ricky’s father. He had stood up, but Ricky was still sitting at the table, staring down at his clenched fists. His mother’s expression told them they wouldn’t want to hear what she had to say.

‘They’ve found her. But she’s seriously injured and in hospital in Uddevalla. Gösta said we need to get there fast. That’s all I know.’

She burst into tears and then sank down as if her legs could no longer support her. Her husband just managed to catch her. He stroked her hair and hushed her, but tears were running down his face too.

‘We need to get going, sweetheart. Put on your jacket, and we’ll leave right away. Ricky, help your mother. I’ll go out and start the car.’

Ricky nodded and went over to his mother. Gently he put his arm around her shoulders and got her to move towards the front hall. There he grabbed her red down coat and helped her to put it on, the way a parent would help a child. One arm in, then the other, and he carefully zipped up the coat.

‘All right,’ he said, placing her boots in front of her. He squatted down and helped her to put them on too. Then he quickly put on his own jacket and opened the door. He could hear that his father had the car running. He was scraping off the windows so frantically that he’d created a cloud of frost, mixed with the vapour from his breath.

‘Bloody winter!’ he cried, scraping so hard that he was probably scratching the windscreen. ‘What a damn, sodding, bloody winter!’

‘Get in the car, Pappa,’ said Ricky. ‘I’ll do that.’ He took the scraper away from his father, after first settling his mother in the back seat. His father complied, offering no resistance. They had always let him believe that he was the one in charge in the family. The three of them – Ricky, his mother, and Victoria – had a secret agreement to allow Markus Hallberg to think that he ruled with an iron fist, even though they knew he was too nice to rule even with one finger. It had always been Helena Hallberg who had ensured that everything was done as it should be done – until Victoria disappeared. She had deflated so swiftly that Ricky sometimes wondered whether his mother had always been this shrivelled and dispirited person who was now sitting on the back seat, staring blankly into space, whether she had ever possessed a sense of purpose. Yet for the first time in months he saw something else in her eyes, a mixture of eagerness and panic prompted by the phone conversation with the police.