Cinderella Girl (20 page)

‘This doesn’t look very good for you, Joakim,’ Sjöberg summed up.

‘No.’

‘It was stupid of you to lie to start with.’

‘I know,’ said Joakim.

‘But now you’re telling the truth?’

‘Yes.’

‘Nothing you want to add or change?’

‘Not that I can think of.’

‘You know,’ said Sjöberg forgivingly, placing a hand on Joakim’s shoulder, ‘I hope this holds up for you. Understand, we don’t want to catch you in any more lies.’

Joakim nodded gloomily.

‘You should move away from here,’ said Sjöberg, getting up from the chair.

When he left the apartment Joakim was still sitting, staring blankly into space. Sjöberg made his way down the stairs with heavy steps and out on to the street.

Jenny had been heartbroken when they visited her on Monday evening in the apartment at Brommaplan. Extremely sad, but not unreasonable. Together with Sonja and her younger sister, Jessica, Sandén had finally got Jenny to understand that a life with Pontus was a bad life. That he really didn’t care about her, but was only using her as it suited him. He was a disagreeable character who abused her. Sandén did not say a word about the fact that it was him who had asked Pontus to pack his things and never show his face again, that he had actually paid him to do it. It was hard enough for Jenny to be abandoned by her great love believing that he had simply got tired of her. She didn’t need to know the whole story; all three of them were in agreement about that.

They took turns sitting with her, consoling and explaining.

At the same time they cleaned up the apartment, eradicating all traces of Pontus. They invited her to sleep in her room at home on Önskeringsvägen, but she would not have it. She wanted to stay in the apartment, even though Pontus was gone. She did not even agree to have one of them stay with her overnight; she was sad but not incapable of taking care of herself.

At last she asked them to leave her alone. After glancing incessantly at the clock on the wall, she said she needed to sleep, that she couldn’t bear any more talk about Pontus and the future. Sandén was struck by a suspicion that Pontus might show up again anyway, that they had arranged something and that she was waiting for him to come. He asked her, nicely but firmly, if that was the case, and she looked him in the eyes and promised it was not.
He was content with that, because Jenny could not lie. Sandén smiled to himself at the memory of Jenny as a child, when you occasionally discovered that all was not as it should be in the pantry.

‘Jenny, some sweets have disappeared. Did you take some?’

And then those glistening blue eyes, with a glimpse of worry in them, would honestly meet his. ‘Yes, Daddy, I took eleven.’

‘Eleven sweets? How could you do that when you knew I would be angry?’

‘I was so hungry. I couldn’t stop myself.’

And you can’t lie either, little Jenny, he thought. It had never occurred to her that she could blame her little sister or simply deny it. It was part of her disability. It was hard enough to understand the world around her. Trying to describe events that had never taken place was beyond her.

For that reason he was not worried as he got out of the car on Spinnrocksvägen at Brommaplan on Tuesday morning. If Jenny said that Pontus did not intend to show up again, that’s how it was. Seen from her perspective at least. He opened the front door with the code, made his way up to the second floor and rang the doorbell to his daughter’s apartment. Or his apartment, to be more exact. He and Sonja were listed as owners of the studio flat – a precautionary measure when they had bought it for her that they did not regret now.

Jenny did not open the door for him, and he could hear nothing from inside the apartment when he put his ear to the door. He rang once more without getting a response
and then he tried the door to reassure himself that it was locked, which they had carefully instructed her that it must be, whether she was out or at home. It was not. The door glided open and he took a step into the hall and called his daughter’s name. Still no answer. He carried on into the room without taking off his shoes and looked anxiously around. He noticed that the bed was unmade; then the bathroom door suddenly opened and Jenny came out in a bathrobe with her hair wrapped in a towel.

‘You have to lock –’ he began before catching sight of the man behind her.

Sandén was completely taken aback. Jenny had not lied to him; it was not Pontus who looked him in the eye with a smile that should have been self-conscious but was not. It was a completely different man who, naked, squeezed past her in the doorway and, totally unconcerned, walked over to the living room couch where he started pulling on his clothes. He was tall and muscular, dark and unshaven.

‘Who the hell are you?’ Sandén said at last, a thousand thoughts buzzing through his mind.

‘Who the hell is that?’ he then asked Jenny, who stood frozen, looking both terrified and desperate.

‘Daddy, you can’t just come here without calling first,’ she answered pitifully. ‘I have to have a life of my own.’

‘Who the hell is that?’ he asked again, turning towards the man, who seemed to be in no hurry.

‘Get out of here,’ he said then, surprising himself with the decisiveness in his voice. ‘There’ll be no breakfast here. Out!’

‘Sure, I’m leaving,’ said the man. ‘Take it easy.’

Sandén watched in silence until a minute or two later he
left the apartment with a wave in Jenny’s direction. She responded with a distressed smile and sat down on the edge of the bed. Sandén sat down beside her and put his arm around her. It had never been easy for him to scold his oldest daughter, and this time he was not sure it was necessary.

‘What are you doing, Jenny?’ he asked gently. ‘What was that?’

‘That was Dejan,’ said Jenny.

‘Dejan? Where did you find him?’

‘He’s a friend of Pontus,’ she answered, not looking at him.

‘A friend of Pontus? What the …? You were sitting here crying last night, because you were so sorry that Pontus had left. And then you drag home one of his buddies? And maybe it wasn’t the first time either.’

Jenny shook her head.

‘Pontus is not allowed to hit you, but I could understand him being angry about this. Can’t you see that, Jenny?’

She did not answer, but leaned her head against his shoulder. He caressed her gently on the cheek.

‘You can’t carry on like that,’ Sandén continued. ‘It’s not love, if you have two guys at the same time. And he seems to be a real dodgy type. Don’t see him any more, Jenny, promise me that.’

He turned her face up so that he could look her in the eyes.

‘Can you promise me you won’t see Dejan any more?’

‘I think so,’ Jenny answered, looking as if she meant it.

‘And you have to promise to keep the door locked. Always.’

‘I promise. But you can’t show up here without calling first.’

‘Okay,’ Sandén answered dejectedly. ‘But it was lucky I did this time, otherwise I wouldn’t have found out about this Dejan. And then I couldn’t have helped you.’

‘I don’t want help.’

‘I’m your dad. I’ll help you when I think you need it.’

‘Get me a job then.’

‘I’m trying, Jenny, you know that. And Mum too. It’ll work out. It just takes a little while.’

After spending a little more time with his daughter, and eating his second breakfast of the morning, he had to leave her. Gloomily he got in the car; the endless traffic on Drottningholmsvägen did not put him in a better mood.

She finally made up her mind. She thought about talking to Nina about it, tell her about the mess she was in and ask for advice. But there would be no point. With Nina you could talk about everyday things: school, friends, gossip, clothes, parties. But serious things she just shook off with a laugh. For her, nothing was serious enough for anyone to get hung up on, or ‘harp on about’ as she would put it. And Elise was probably perceived the same way because they were almost always together.

Nina had called when she heard about Jennifer, but it was a brief conversation, she had had to rush off somewhere. Elise could picture Nina in the centre of things, eagerly answering everyone’s questions about the murder between classes. But she couldn’t be bothered to find out how Elise was doing. And she would just laugh at this wallet story, Elise was sure of that. But Elise was having a hard time shrugging the whole thing off. She felt guilty about the crime itself, and shame about the whole prostitution thing, or whatever you wanted to call it.

After a lot of back and forth and yet another sleepless night, she finally came to a decision. For once she was going to do the only right thing. She would go to the police with the damn wallet and turn it in; she would say that she had found it, that it was full of money but she hadn’t touched anything. Not stolen a krona. She hadn’t either.
She’d had the wallet for days; she’d thought about the money but hadn’t taken it. She’d halted her criminal career almost before it started. Now she would erase her stupid act, delete it from her memory once and for all.

With renewed courage she entered the police station in Hammarbyhamnen. She looked around the enormous lobby before she went up to the reception desk.

‘Hi,’ said the receptionist. ‘How can I help you?’

‘I want to hand in a wallet I found,’ Elise answered, trying to look self-confident.

‘I see, then you need the lost property department. Go along the corridor over there and turn right. Then just follow the signs.’

‘Thanks very much,’ said Elise, starting off in the direction she had been shown.

Just as she was passing the stairs she glanced up and caught sight of a familiar face. One of those cops from yesterday, the dark one, was heading right towards her. Before she could turn away, he noticed her and smiled in recognition. What should she say? He would wonder what she was doing there, and she could not tell him the truth. He would assume that someone from a family like hers would keep any money she found.

‘Hi, Elise,’ said Hamad, extending his hand towards her as if they were business acquaintances.

She shook hands with him and hoped that her uncertainty was not too obvious as she returned his smile.

‘What’s on your mind?’ he wanted to know.

Of course he thought it was him or his colleague she was looking for. She could not spit out a word.

‘Was there something you wanted to tell us? Did you happen to think of something we ought to know about?’

‘I … I just wanted to know how things are going,’ she said.

‘We’re doing our best,’ said Hamad. ‘Will you come up to my office for a moment, so we can talk?’

He put his hand on her shoulder and it felt as if he were pushing her into something she was not at all prepared for. But now there was no turning back. Now she could only do as she was told, so she followed him up the stairs, along a corridor and into an office. He showed her a chair, and she sat down. He sat down behind the desk and looked at her with his brown eyes, trying to look friendly.

‘Would you like anything?’ he asked. ‘Tea, coffee?’

She shook her head. She just wanted to get out of there – as quickly as possible.

‘Don’t you go to school?’

‘I can’t handle it right now,’ she answered. ‘It’s a little tough, with everything.’

What she said was true, but not the way he thought.

‘I understand,’ he said. ‘It’s going to take time to get back into your normal routine again. But it’s probably good if you go to school anyway, so you have something else to think about. See people.’

That compassionate look – how she loathed it. She recognized it from certain teachers, the school nurse, the social worker. She didn’t ask for compassion, but certain people could not look at her any other way. There was something unpleasant about that look: he wanted to break her, coax out something small and weak in her that wasn’t
there. He wanted to get her to cry – which she never did – and then uncover it all, revelling in her bad upbringing. She shuddered and squirmed a little in the chair to cover it up. She did not want to be seen as a victim; she had to get that man to look at her as something else: an adult who didn’t need that velvety tone of voice and his compassionate looks.

‘How’s it going? Have you caught the murderer?’ she asked, more curtly than she intended.

He straightened up and put his fingertips together.

‘No,’ he answered. ‘Not yet. But we will. We have lots of people to question, perhaps hundreds, so that will take time, but we’re going to get him.’

‘Him?’

‘Yes, we believe it’s a man. You have to be strong to strangle a person with your bare hands.’

He studied her in silence for a few seconds, no doubt waiting for some kind of reaction, but she didn’t intend to give him the satisfaction.

‘You haven’t thought of anything new?’ he continued. ‘Something you wanted to tell us? Did Jennifer have any enemies? Did she maybe do something really stupid, something that someone made her pay for?’

Jennifer, she thought, never did anything stupid. Jennifer knew what you could and couldn’t do; she never went over the limit. She was always just right, never too much, never too little.

‘No, I can’t think of anything,’ said Elise. ‘I just wanted to find out whether you’ve made any progress.’

‘We have,’ said Hamad. ‘The investigation’s moving forward all the time, but not as quickly as we’d like, perhaps.’

‘I guess I’ll go then,’ said Elise, starting to get up.

‘Don’t hesitate to call or drop in if you want to tell us anything or if you just need to talk.’

Need to talk? thought Elise. I don’t need to talk to you, you slimy creep.

At last she was out of there. She went back along the corridor and down the stairs. Took a look over her shoulder to reassure herself that no more unpleasant surprises awaited her, before she went to the lost property department. She handed in the wallet anonymously, saying that she did not remember where she had found it. With a light shudder as the doors closed behind her, she left the police building and walked rapidly up towards Skanstull.

* * *

The mood among Jennifer Johansson’s classmates and teachers was subdued. In the room where he met the class and their tutor, there was a framed photograph of Jennifer and a candle had been lit for her. A beautiful bouquet of flowers added a touch of warmth to the arrangement, and Sjöberg could not help wondering whether Jennifer had ever been given flowers during her lifetime.

This day, like the one before, would be devoted to discussion and counselling rather than the timetabled subjects – which Sjöberg imagined was as educational as regular lessons. After saying a few words to the whole class, he spent a few minutes with each of them separately, and the picture was consistent: Jennifer Johansson had been popular and in some understated way a leader,
without making too big a show of herself in the process. And the idea of any possible threat to her was dismissed as pure nonsense.

Those of Jennifer’s teachers that he had an opportunity to meet during the morning seemed to share that perception. They also told him that although she had the capacity to get good grades, she totally lacked the motivation to achieve them. Which did not surprise Sjöberg in the least. Nor did his consultation with the school counsellor, whose contribution only reinforced what Sjöberg already knew about Jennifer.