‘Go to Jerusalem,’ she said. ‘You have to go.’
‘That means you’ll be on your own with the kids for two weeks.’
Or for the rest of my life, if I suffocate you.
‘It’ll be fine. I’ll ask Mum to help out.’
His face broke into a smile.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘Don’t thank me,’ Fredrika said. ‘You can return the favour some time.’
He got up and moved around the table. Placed a hand on her shoulder.
‘Are you coming to bed soon?’
‘I’m just going to check my phone first.’
Spencer wasn’t the only one who worked at strange times.
The job.
She yawned and picked up her phone to see if Alex had called about the murdered teacher. Perhaps something new had come up during the evening that she ought to know about before she went into work tomorrow.
God, it was cold outside. The winter chill seemed to find its way in through the walls and the floor, making her shiver. The snow was falling heavily now, covering everything in its path. Fredrika curled up on the kitchen chair and read a message from Alex.
Two ten-year-old boys had gone missing. Alex’s team would probably be working on the case tomorrow if the boys hadn’t turned up by then.
As she read the message she was transported back four and a half years. She had been the new recruit, and for several terrible days that summer they had worked against the clock to find a little girl who had disappeared from a train. Fredrika still remembered her name.
Lilian Sebastiansson.
Fredrika’s first difficult case with Alex’s team.
Back then she had been the enigmatic single woman approaching thirty-five who never said a word about her private life. The woman who was sleeping with her former university professor, pretending that he wasn’t the man in her life. The only member of the team who had a civilian background rather than police training.
Resolutely she got to her feet. She hoped the missing boys were at least somewhere indoors, in the warmth. If they were outside they wouldn’t survive the bitterly cold night.
CONCLUSION: FRAGMENT II
The detective inspector who thought he had seen everything is standing in the bedroom, frozen to the spot. He cannot take his eyes off the man lying on the bed with his two children. Around them a handful of people are trying to work a miracle. Anything else would be of no use. The inspector has seen enough dead bodies during his career to know that no one on that bed is alive.
There are paper bags on the floor. Without saying it out loud, he knows that someone has drawn on them.
He hears a commotion, shouting from the stairwell.
‘She got away! Stop her!’
But the inspector knows that it is not possible to stop the woman who is on her way up the stairs. Standing in her way would constitute attempted suicide.
Let her come, he thinks. After all, this moment is un avoidable.
And then she is standing in the doorway, and he turns to face her.
Snow in her hair, snow on her clothes, a violin case in her hand.
No one moves, apart from those who are trying to bring the dead back to life. The woman doesn’t move either. At first it looks as if she is about to take a step towards the bed, but then she changes her mind. Stays exactly where she is. Slowly she puts down the violin.
Someone pulls out a chair, asks if she would like to sit down.
She doesn’t answer; she simply stands there. She doesn’t scream, doesn’t shed a tear. Perhaps because it is impossible to take in what she sees before her? A future without her family. A life without the man the inspector believes she regarded as the love of her life. Probably a life without children, because how long does a woman remain fertile? Not long enough for her to have more children than those she has already given birth to, the children who are now lying dead in her bed.
‘Do you know her?’ a colleague says, nodding towards the woman in the doorway.
Oh yes, they know one another. Well enough for the inspector to realise that it is best not to approach her.
‘Is there anyone we can call?’
He can’t answer that. Is there?
Then one of the paramedics by the bed says:
‘I’ve found a pulse! She’s alive!’
A miracle has happened.
One of the children is alive.
EARLIER
The snowstorm was over.
Simon blinked into the light as the man told him to get out of the van. Frozen stiff. He was enclosed in a bubble of fear, and he couldn’t make a hole in it. He didn’t think he had ever been so cold in his whole life. The night had felt like an eternity. He and Abraham had lain very close to one another, covered by a blanket that was far too thin. Neither of them had slept. They had both wept, shaking with cold.
All night.
‘Where’s Abraham?’ Simon asked.
His legs could hardly hold him up, and his voice was so thin, destroyed by tears and exhaustion.
There wasn’t a sound to be heard. No wind whispering in the tree tops, no animals moving around.
Simon didn’t know where he was. A little while ago someone had got in the van and started the engine. The vehicle had begun to move, and the two boys had looked at one another in a panic.
After just a few minutes, the van had stopped.
The man had come for Abraham first. Simon had heard the snow crunching beneath their feet as they walked past the side of the van, then everything had gone quiet. He had remained motionless for a long time, his body rigid with fear.
Until a loud gunshot made him leap to his feet as quickly as if it had been fired inside the van. Warm piss trickled down his legs. Simon had gone hunting with his father several times, and knew the sounds that went with such expeditions. But the shot he had just heard had nothing to do with the hunt. He could feel it in every fibre of his ten-year-old body.
He waited and waited.
Exhausted and even more terrified, he sank to the floor. At long last the man came back.
Without Abraham.
The man didn’t answer his question.
‘Tell me where he is!’
Simon’s voice was weak as he tried to shout.
He couldn’t control himself any longer. Tears poured down his grubby cheeks.
‘I want to go home,’ he sobbed. ‘Please let me go home.’
The man just looked at him. Then he took a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. He gazed around in the way that people do when they don’t really have anything to look at. His eyes roamed across the bare trees without alighting anywhere.
By the time he eventually spoke, Simon had dropped to his knees in the snow, his arms wrapped around his body. Where had Abraham gone?
He gave a start when he heard the man’s voice.
‘Has your father told you about the Paper Boy?’ the man said, staring at him.
Simon nodded.
‘Answer me!’
Simon wiped the snot and tears from his face with the back of his hand.
‘Yes, he has.’
The man took a long drag of his cigarette.
‘Good. In that case you know why you’re here.’
Did he?
Simon didn’t understand a thing.
The cigarette smoke smelled strong, making him cough. The piss in his pants made them feel stiff.
‘Get up.’
Automatically he did as he was told. His legs were so cold they hurt.
The man threw his cigarette down on the snow and slowly turned to face him.
Simon took a step backwards.
It looked as if smoke was coming out of the man’s mouth as he breathed. He ran a hand over his chin.
‘Your father had the greatest respect for the Paper Boy when he was little. As you know, the Paper Boy is happiest in the warmth and the darkness. He sleeps during the day, and comes to the children at night. But this time he has made an exception, and has come in the cold and the daylight instead.’