Karsten ran round the corner. He saw her contorted on the ground, and noticed the blood, slick and nearly black. He reached the pram in four steps, grabbed Margrete and held her against his chest. Shouted at Lily to get the car.
‘Go, Lily!’ he shouted. ‘Go!’
She moaned in response. He shouted louder. He roared like a wild animal, and the roar forced her, finally, to act. She rose and ran to the garage. Realised she needed the keys. Continued into the house and found them on a hook in the hallway. Then she was behind the wheel, backing out. With Margrete in his arms, Karsten yanked open the door and got in. He examined her body, looked under the clothes.
‘I think she’s bleeding from the mouth,’ he gasped. ‘I can’t tell. I don’t know how to make it stop! Can’t you drive any faster? Drive faster, Lily!’
Later, neither would remember the drive to the Central Hospital. Karsten had some vague memories of running past the reception desk and pushing open the glass doors. A wild sprint through the corridors with his daughter bleeding in his arms, searching for help. Lily remembered nothing. The world spun so fast it made her dizzy. She ran after Karsten, dashing like a hunted hare that knows the end is near.
They were stopped by two nurses. One of them took Margrete and disappeared through a door. ‘Stay here!’ she shouted.
It was an order.
Then she was gone.
The doors were made of mottled glass, the kind you can’t see through. Here, at the end of the corridor, was a small waiting area, and they sat on separate chairs. There was nothing to say. After a few minutes, Karsten walked to the water cooler by the window. He pulled a paper cup from the machine, filled it and held it out to Lily. She knocked it out of his hand with a scream.
‘She was making sounds,’ he said. ‘You heard it. She was breathing, Lily. I’m absolutely sure of that.’ He paced the room. ‘They have to stop it! She’ll get a blood transfusion. We made it here quickly.’
Lily didn’t respond. A teenager with his arm in a sling walked up and down the corridor. Clearly curious about the drama unfolding just a few metres away, he stared openly at them.
‘Why is it taking so long?’ Lily whispered. ‘What are they doing?’
It was as though she were inside a wire drum rotating at high speed. It wasn’t life, and it wasn’t death. Later they would both refer to these minutes as pure hell, a hell that ended when a nurse came through the glass doors with Margrete in her arms. She was wrapped in a white blanket. To his amazement, Karsten saw that she jabbed at the air with her hands.
‘She’s completely unharmed,’ the nurse said.
Karsten took her from the nurse. Felt her little body in his arms. It was warm all over.
With nervous hands he began unfolding the blanket. Margrete, wearing a disposable nappy, was otherwise naked in the blanket.
‘She’s completely unharmed,’ the nurse repeated. ‘It wasn’t her blood. We’ve called the police.’
Chapter 2
Karsten and Lily Sundelin were led to another room where they could wait undisturbed. Lily wanted to go home. She had no desire to talk to anyone. She wanted to go back to her house and her bedroom; she wanted to retreat into a corner. She wanted to lie in her queen-sized bed with her husband and child, and remain there. Never again would she let the child sleep in the pram under the maple tree, never again let her sleep without supervision. Never again shut her out of her mind.
But they had to wait.
‘What are we going to say?’ she asked anxiously. ‘I get so nervous.’
Karsten Sundelin looked uncomprehendingly at his wife. Unlike Lily, who was filled with fear, he felt, first and foremost, a boiling rage. Any charity and understanding he’d felt for others had evaporated, and left him out of breath and hot-tempered. Though he’d never had anything to do with the police, he’d never been particularly fond of them. To him, they were coarse and simple-minded people who trampled about in black boots and silly hats. They reminded him of stocky handymen with a cluster of tools clattering on their belts; they were young and uneducated and knew nothing about the nuances of life — the details, Karsten Sundelin thought: what makes this crime against Margrete and against us particularly heinous. They won’t appreciate it; they’ll think it’s an act of vandalism. If they find it’s a teenage punk pulling a stunt, he’ll get off with a warning — because the poor kid probably hasn’t had an easy life. But I’ll give them a piece of my mind, he thought, and sipped the bitter coffee the nurse had brought.
Lily clutched the child with an urgency that made her tremble. She studied the pictures on the walclass="underline" one of some pastel water lilies floating in a pond, another of the Norwegian mountains and endless blue skies. On a table she saw health magazines with information about what you should avoid, what you should eat and drink — or not eat and drink — and how you should live.
If you wanted to live a long life.
Karsten paced the room, extremely impatient, like an angry bull. The police station was a couple of minutes away, but because of the bureaucracy it took a while.
‘Maybe they have to write a report first,’ he said, with tired sarcasm in his voice. He stood in front of Lily with his feet apart, his hands on his hips.
‘I’m sure they write it afterwards,’ Lily said, stroking the child’s cheeks. After all the commotion, Margrete slept soundly.
At last two men strolled down the corridor. Neither wore a uniform. One man was tall and grey-haired, perhaps sixty years old; the other man was young and curly-haired. They introduced themselves as Sejer and Skarre. Sejer looked down at the sleeping child. Then he smiled at Lily. ‘How are you doing?’
‘We won’t let her sleep in the garden any more,’ Lily said.
Sejer nodded. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘You know what’s best.’
Skarre pulled a notebook from his pocket and found a chair. He seemed bright and eager, Lily thought, like a runner at the starting block.
‘We have to ask you a few questions,’ he said.
‘I should hope so,’ Karsten Sundelin said. ‘Whoever’s behind this should pay for it, even if I have to take matters into my own hands.’
At this, Skarre looked up, while the older inspector raised an eyebrow. Tall and muscular, with powerful fists, Karsten’s temperament was evident in his eyes, and in his outraged voice. The young mother sat scrunched up in the chair, closed off to the world. In an instant, Skarre had mapped out the couple’s power balance: raw power versus feminine vulnerability.
‘Have you been married before?’ he asked Lily affably.
She looked at him, surprised. Then she shook her head.
‘Boyfriends? Live-in partners?’
Now she grew slightly embarrassed.
‘I’ve had boyfriends,’ she admitted, ‘but I also have good sense.’
Of course you do, Skarre thought, but sometimes life shocks you.
‘And you,’ he said, turning to her husband. ‘Anything from a previous relationship? I’m thinking of jealousy. Or revenge.’
‘I’ve been married,’ Karsten said in a measured tone.
‘I see.’
Skarre made a note, then turned his blue-eyed gaze once more on Karsten. ‘Was it an amicable divorce?’
‘She died. Cancer.’
Without losing his composure, Skarre absorbed the information. He ran his fingers through his hair, tousled it. ‘Have either of you had disagreements with anyone? Recently or in the past?’
Karsten leaned against the wall. As if he maintained the upper hand. Like Inspector Sejer, he was impressively tall and broad-shouldered. He glanced down at the two people for whom he was responsible, Lily and Margrete, and something rose in him, something he’d never felt before. He liked the taste of it, the rush. It’s no doubt some kid, he thought. I can’t wait to get my hands on him.