Unwanted (3 page)

P
eder Rydh came dashing along the platform just as Jens was leaving it. Peder stared at Fredrika’s beige, double-breasted jacket. Had the woman no concept at all of the way you broadcast that you were part of the police when you weren’t in uniform? Peder himself nodded graciously to the colleagues he passed on his way and waved his identity badge about a bit so they would realize he was one of them. He found it hard to resist the urge to thump a few of the younger talents on the back. He had loved his years in the patrol car, of course, but he was very happy indeed to have landed a job on the plain-clothes side.

Alex gave Peder a nod as they caught sight of each other, and his look expressed something close to gratitude for his colleague’s presence.

‘I was on my way from a meeting on the edge of town when I got the message that the child was missing, so I thought I’d pick up Fredrika on the way and come straight here,’ Alex explained briefly to Peder. ‘I’m not really planning to stick around, just wanted to get out for a bit of fresh air,’ he went on, and gave his colleague a knowing look.

‘You mean you wanted to get your feet on the ground as a change from being chained to your desk?’ grinned Peder, and received a weary nod in reply.

In spite of the significant age gap between them, the two men were entirely in agreement on that point. You were never so far up the hierarchy that you didn’t need to see the real shit. And you were never as far from reality as when you were behind your desk.

Both men assumed, however, that Fredrika did not share this view, and therefore said nothing more about it.

‘Okay,’ said Alex instead. ‘Here’s what we’ll do. Fredrika can take the initial interview with the child’s mother and you, Peder, can talk to the train crew and also find out if any of the other passengers who are still here can give you any information. We should really play it by the book and interview in pairs, but I can’t see there’s time to organize that just now.’

Fredrika was very happy with this division of duties, but thought she could detect some dissatisfaction in Peder’s face. Dissatisfaction that she, not he, would get to tackle the mother of the missing child. Alex must have seen it too, as he added:

‘The only reason Fredrika’s dealing with the mother is that she’s a woman. It tends to make things a bit easier.’

Peder instantly looked a little more cheerful.

‘Okay, see you back at the station later,’ said Alex gruffly. ‘I’m off back there now.’

Fredrika sighed.
‘The only reason Fredrika’s dealing with . . .’
It was always the same. Every decision to entrust her with a task had to be defended. She was a foreign body in a foreign universe. Her whole presence was questionable and demanded constant explanation. Fredrika felt so indignant that she forgot to reflect on the fact that Alex had not only entrusted her with interviewing the mother, but he’d also let her do it alone. She was virtually counting the days until her time in Alex Recht’s investigation team was over. She was planning to finish her probationary period and then leave. There were other agencies where her qualifications were more desirable, albeit less urgently needed.

I shall look over my shoulder one last time and then never look back again, thought Fredrika, seeing in her mind’s eye the day she would stride out of the police building, or HQ, as her colleagues generally called it, on Kungsholmen. Then Fredrika turned her attention to a more imminent task. To the missing child.

She introduced herself politely to Sara Sebastiansson and was surprised at the strength of the woman’s handshake. It belied the anxiety and exhaustion in her face. Fredrika also noted that Sara kept pulling down the sleeves of her top. It looked like a sort of tic or habit, something she did all the time. It was almost as if she was trying to hide her forearms.

Maybe an attempt to conceal injuries she got when she was defending herself, thought Fredrika. If Sara had a husband who hit her, that was information to be brought to the team’s attention as soon as possible.

But there were other questions to be asked first.

‘We can go inside if you like,’ Fredrika said to Sara. ‘We needn’t stand out here in the rain.’

‘I’m all right here,’ said Sara in a voice not far from tears.

Fredrika pondered this for a moment and then said:

‘If you feel you have to be here for your daughter, you have my absolute assurance that she’d be noticed by everybody else here.’

What’s more, Fredrika felt like adding, it’s not particularly likely that your daughter will turn up right here and now, but she left the thought unsaid.

‘Lilian,’ said Sara.

‘Sorry?’

‘My daughter’s called Lilian. And I don’t want to leave this spot.’

She underlined what she was saying by shaking her head. ‘No thank you, no coffee.’

Fredrika knew herself that she found it hard to be personal when she was on duty. She often failed dismally. In that respect, she was a classic desk type. She liked reading, writing and analysing. All forms of interrogation and conversation felt so alien, so hard to deal with. She would sometimes watch with pure fascination as Alex reached out a hand and laid it on someone’s shoulder as he was talking to them. Fredrika would never do that, and what was more, she didn’t want to be patted herself either, be it on the arm or on the shoulder. She felt physically unwell whenever any male colleague at work tried to ‘lighten the mood’ by slapping her on the back too hard or prodding her in the middle. She didn’t like that sort of physical contact at all. And most people realized. But not all. Fredrika gave a slight shiver just as Sara’s voice interrupted her very private musings.

‘Why didn’t she take her shoes?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Lilian’s sandals were still there on the floor by her seat. She must have been in a terrible state about something, otherwise she’d never have gone off in her bare feet. And never without saying something to somebody, asking for help.’

‘Not even if she woke up and found she was all alone? Maybe she panicked and dashed off the train?’

Sara shook her head.

‘Lilian’s not like that. That’s not how we brought her up. We taught her to act and think in a practical way. She would have asked someone sitting nearby. The lady across the aisle from us, for example, we’d chatted to her a bit on the way.’

Fredrika saw her chance to divert the conversation onto another subject.

‘You say “we”?’

‘Yes?’

‘You say that’s not how “we” brought her up. Are you referring to yourself and your husband?’

Sara fixed her gaze on a spot above Fredrika’s shoulder.

‘Lilian’s father and I have separated, but yes, it’s my ex-husband I brought up Lilian with.’

‘Have you got joint custody?’ asked Fredrika.

‘The separation’s so new for us all,’ Sara said slowly. ‘We haven’t really got into a routine. Lilian sometimes stays with him at weekends, but mostly she lives with me. We’ll have to see how it goes, later.’

Sara took a deep breath, and as she breathed out, her lower lip was trembling. Her ashen skin stood out against her red hair. Her long arms were crossed tightly on her chest. Fredrika looked at Sara’s painted toenails. Blue. How unusual.

‘Did you argue about who Lilian was going to live with?’ Fredrika probed cautiously.

Sara gave a start.

‘You think Gabriel’s taken her?’ she said, looking Fredrika straight in the eye.

Fredrika assumed Gabriel must be the ex-husband.

‘We don’t think anything,’ she said quickly. ‘I just have to investigate all possible scenarios for . . . I just have to try to understand what might have happened to her. To Lilian.’

Sara’s shoulders slumped a little. She bit her lower lip and stared hard at the ground.

‘Gabriel and I . . . have had . . . still have . . . our differences. Not so long ago we had a row about Lilian. But he’s never harmed her. Never ever.’

Again Fredrika saw Sara pulling at the sleeves of her top. Her rapid assessment was that Sara would not tell her then and there whether she had been abused by her ex-husband or not. She would have to check for officially lodged complaints when she got back to HQ. And they would certainly have to speak to the ex-husband, at any event.

‘Could you tell me more precisely what happened on the platform at Flemingsberg?’ Fredrika asked, hoping she was now steering the conversation in a direction Sara would feel more comfortable with.

Sara nodded several times but said nothing. Fredrika hoped she wasn’t going to start crying, because tears were something she found very hard to deal with. Not privately, but professionally.

‘I got off the train to make a call,’ Sara began hesitantly. ‘I rang a friend.’

Fredrika distracted by the rain, checked herself.
A friend?

‘And why didn’t you ring from your seat?’

‘I didn’t want to wake Lilian,’ came Sara’s quick response.

A little too quick. What was more, she had told the policeman she spoke to earlier that she got off the train because she was in the so-called quiet coach.

‘She was so tired,’ whispered Sara. ‘We go to Gothenburg to visit my parents. I think she was getting a cold, she never sleeps for the whole journey usually.’

‘Ah, I see,’ said Fredrika, and paused for a minute before going on. ‘So it wasn’t that you didn’t want Lilian to hear the conversation?’

Sara admitted it almost immediately.

‘No, I didn’t want Lilian to hear the conversation,’ she said quietly. ‘My friend and I have . . . only just met. And it would be a bad idea to let her find out about him at this stage.’

Because then she’d tell her dad, who was presumably still beating up her mum even though they’d separated, thought Fredrika to herself.

‘We only talked for a couple of minutes. Less than that, I think. I said we were almost there, and he could come round to my place later this evening, once Lilian was in bed.’

‘All right, and what happened next?’

Sara pulled her shoulders back and sighed heavily. The body language told Fredrika they were about to talk about something she found really painful to remember.

‘It made no sense at all, none of it,’ Sara said dully. ‘It was completely absurd.’

She shook her head wearily.

‘A woman came up to me. Or a girl, you might say. Quite tall, thin, looked a bit the worse for wear. Waving her arms and shouting something about her dog being sick. I suppose she came up to me because I was standing separately from the other people on the platform. She said she’d been coming down the escalator with the dog when it suddenly collapsed and started having a fit.’

‘A fit? The dog?’

‘Yes, that was what she said. The dog was lying there having a fit and she needed help to get it back up the escalator again. I’ve had dogs all my life, until a few years ago. And I could honestly see what a state the girl was in. So I helped her.’

Sara fell silent and Fredrika considered what she’d said, rubbing her hands together.

‘Didn’t you think about the risk of missing the train?’

For the first time in their conversation, Sara’s tone was sharp and her eyes blazed.

‘When I got off, I asked the conductor how long the train would be stopping there. He said at least ten minutes. At least.’

Sara held up her hands and spread her long, narrow fingers wide. Ten fingers, ten minutes. Her hands were shaking slightly. Her lower lip was quivering again.

‘Ten minutes,’ she whispered. ‘That was why I helped the girl shove the dog up the escalator. I thought – I
knew
– I had time.’

Fredrika tired to breathe calmly.

‘Did you see the train leave?’

‘We’d just got to the top of the escalator with the dog,’ said Sara, her voice unsteady. ‘We’d just got the dog back up when I turned round and saw the train starting to pull out.’

Her breathing was laboured and her eyes were on Fredrika.

‘I couldn’t believe my fucking eyes,’ she said, and a single tear ran down her cheek. ‘It was like being in a horror film. I ran down the escalator, ran like mad after the train. But it didn’t stop. It didn’t stop!’

Although Fredrika had no children of her own, Sara’s words aroused a genuine feeling of anguish in her.

She felt something akin to stomach ache.

‘One of the staff at Flemingsberg station helped me get in touch with the train. And then I took a taxi to Stockholm Central.’

‘What was the girl with the dog doing while this was happening?’

Sara wiped the corner of her eye.

‘It was a bit odd. She just sort of made off, all of a sudden. She bundled the dog up onto some kind of parcel trolley that had been left there at the top of the escalator, and went out through the station entrance. I didn’t see her after that.’

Sara and Fredrika stood for a while saying nothing, each absorbed in their own thoughts. It was Sara’s voice that broke the silence.

‘And you know what, I wasn’t really too worried once I’d got through to the train. It felt pretty irrational to get worked up about a little thing like Lilian being by herself for that last little bit of the journey from Flemingsberg to Stockholm.’