Authors: Hakan Ostlundh
“No, everyone’s here.”
The first police officers had arrived before Malin had time to ask Matilda about the car she had seen. There were four of them and they came in two regular police cars. Malin thought that everything was going frightfully slow. They had come sauntering into the school as if they had all the time in the world. As if nothing in particular was at stake. Leisurely and cumbersome, loaded down with guns and apparatus around their waists. Shouldn’t they have been running? Shouldn’t they already be out looking, calling in the national guard for a search party, sending out a missing person bulletin?
Only a few minutes later Fredrik Broman and Sara Oskarsson came along with a third detective. When they found out that Matilda had seen a car outside the school when Ellen disappeared they walked over to speak with the girl—just as Malin wanted, but didn’t have time to.
Malin had been present at the conversation. The only sensible thing they got out of Matilda was that the car was white. However they twisted and turned the questions, it ended at that. A white car. Matilda seemed shy and mumbled her answers to the questions. Malin could not help feeling that the girl knew more than she was saying. That for some reason she could not spit it out. Because she was shy, afraid, a little dense, or perhaps did not understand that she ought to tell.
Several times Malin had to restrain herself from taking hold of Matilda, shaking her and yelling at her that she should tell what she knew.
After they had spoken with Matilda, they went out on the playground to see where Ellen had been the last time anyone had seen her. That was where they were standing now, or to be more precise, on the sidewalk outside: Malin, Henrik, Anita, the four police officers in uniform, Fredrik Broman, Sara Oskarsson, and the third plainclothes officer. It felt a little more secure in some way that Fredrik and Sara were there. After all.
“No other place?” Fredrik continued. “Any store where you stop?”
“That would be ICA in that case,” said Henrik. “But we don’t shop there that often.”
“And she couldn’t have taken the ferry because she wanted to go home for some reason?” Sara Oskarsson suggested.
“Perhaps she could have,” said Henrik. “But I have a hard time imagining it. It’s much too far to walk; she probably understands that.”
“Okay,” said Fredrik.
One of the uniformed policemen, the one who was named Knutsson and appeared to have no hair under his blue cap, turned to Fredrik.
“We’ll drive down to the ferry landing and stop at ICA on the way, then we’ll check the nearby blocks.”
Fredrik nodded at him and they exchanged a few brief words that Malin could not hear. Finally something was happening, she thought. Anita had printed out copies of Ellen’s school photo on the school’s color printer. Knutsson was holding them in his hand.
“I know it hasn’t been very long, but I think we should get a search going,” said the plainclothes officer; he was in a suit and had a well-tended beard.
Knutsson looked at him, pressing down on the edge of his cap over his neck.
“Considering the threats,” the officer in the suit added.
Knutsson answered, but Malin was no longer listening to him. Something quite different had caught her attention. Two hundred feet away along the road a small figure approached with tired steps. She was too far away to say for sure who it was, but Malin felt her heart almost stop in her chest, and then immediately beat so fast that she was afraid it would be torn loose from its moorings. She placed one hand against her chest and took a long step in the direction of the child who came tramping along the road. Could it possibly be … surely it was …
She stood completely still and waited, sharpened her gaze. The child came closer and closer, a little girl with dark hair, jeans, and a red-checkered top with short sleeves.
Malin could not hold back a loud howl.
Henrik, the police officers, and Anita stared at her with fright. She did not care about them. She was quite certain now and started running in the direction of Ellen. She felt the tears running down her cheeks, her chest felt hot and painful in a strange way, and when she wanted to shout Ellen’s name her throat tightened up and not so much as a whisper came across her lips.
She saw how Ellen stopped and then the next moment came rushing toward her.
“Mommy.”
Ellen ran with her arms outstretched, leaning forward in a way that seemed to defy the law of gravity. Malin saw how she fell. Again and again her daughter lost her footing, whirled forward through the air and struck the ground headlong. The soft, unspoiled face against the rough asphalt. But it was only in Malin’s mind that Ellen fell. As if it was too good to be true that she was back, that something had to happen at the last trembling moment. All the emotions she had been forced to hold back to be able to be nice to the police, to be able to function at all during the last half hour of her life, rushed ahead and played out the terror in brutal fantasies.
But Ellen did not fall. She ran and Malin ran, and she heard Henrik’s voice calling Ellen’s name. Now he had understood, too, everyone understood.
Then she threw her arms around her. Leaned down toward the little body and enclosed it in her arms.
“Ellen.”
The tears were flowing out of her. Floods. She sobbed and snuffled and emitted a crazy laugh.
“Mommy.”
The little fingers that groped and squeezed on her back.
“She said she would drive me back.”
The white car. So it was true. Malin felt her legs getting very soft below her and she sank down on her knees on the asphalt with her arms around Ellen.
“She said she would drive me back, but she didn’t,” Ellen sobbed.
Someone had lured her daughter into a car and taken her away. Right under the noses of teachers and schoolmates. A female. Ellen had said she. And now she had brought her back. Right under the noses of her parents and seven police officers. She could not be far away. Had not been far away.
“I had to walk super far.”
Ellen sobbed against her neck. Malin heard steps behind her, felt a hand on her shoulder. It was Henrik. He sank down on his knees beside them. Placed his other hand on their daughter’s head.
“Ellen,” he said gently.
Malin did not understand how he could sound so controlled. Emotional, but still controlled. She herself had just died and been born again. She tore her eyes from Ellen briefly to meet Henrik’s. She felt calmness coming back when he looked at her. This was her life. This was for real. Henrik, Ellen, and Axel. She never wanted to let them go again. She wanted to go into the day care right now, pick up Axel, and go directly …
There the thought ran into resistance. Go where? Home to the house in Kalbjerga? The house where some strange person had struck out their eyes on the family portraits, the house where a stranger used the children’s toy box as a toilet and intentionally scattered broken glass over the floor. A stranger.
Malin looked at Ellen.
She said she would drive me back.
She.
Malin looked over her shoulder toward the police. Anger flared up in her when one of the uniformed officers rolled his eyes at Leif Knutsson. She did not actually see more than the last part of the movement, but it was more than enough. She understood exactly. Everything was already clear to them. Ellen had sneaked off to buy candy at the ICA store where they were customers and seven police officers had driven all the way from Visby for no reason.
She could not stop herself anymore. She stood up abruptly with Ellen by the hand and walked quickly toward the police officers.
“Malin?” Henrik asked behind her.
But Malin kept walking.
“She was taken away,” she said loudly in the direction of the police. “Ellen was lured away by a woman in that car. She was kidnapped, damn it, so don’t stand there and sneer at us.”
All seven police officers looked at her with stern expressions.
“Damn it, she was kidnapped,” she repeated.
Fredrik Broman said something to the others and started walking in her direction. Only then did she realize that she was too far away for them to be able to hear what she said.
It was like Malin said, thought Sara. The woman in the car had dropped Ellen off right under their noses. They might very well have met her on their way up.
Sara sat with Ellen and her parents while Fredrik and Gustav talked with the teachers and the schoolchildren. Sara was the only one who had both training and experience in questioning children.
Leif Knutsson and the others were searching for witnesses who might have seen a white car with a blond woman and a dark-haired girl moving around in the area. There was not much to go on, but on the other hand there were not many cars on the road in Fårösund on a Thursday at the end of August. With a little luck Fårösund residents might have noticed a strange car sneaking around in the neighborhood.
Ellen’s teacher had shown them to a room in the school office. It was stuffy in there and Malin opened the window after the teacher left.
Ellen and Malin were sitting across from Sara at the narrow white table. Ellen seemed to have recovered after the excitement. The first thing they had done, naturally, was to make sure that Ellen had not been subjected to any type of assault. Ellen seemed mostly shaken up by the fact that the lady in the car promised to drive her back to the school, but then left her off by the big road all the way up by the Statoil gas station. It had been a long walk.
Henrik Kjellander sat at the short end of the table in a wrinkled black cotton suit jacket and a long dark blue shawl wrapped a couple of turns around his neck. His eyes oscillated nervously between Ellen and Sara. In a display case behind him were three table-sized Midsummer poles, a countless number of small yellow chickens, and two gnomes.
Sara turned to Ellen.
“Do you remember anything else from the car? I mean, whether there was anything on the seat, was there anything hanging on the rearview mirror, maybe there was a sticker somewhere. That sort of thing. Do you understand what I mean?”
Ellen nodded and her gaze wandered off while she thought.
“I got gum.”
Sara saw how Malin winced. She appeared to want to say something to Ellen, but held back.
Ellen glanced at her mother as she continued.
“I said I couldn’t, but she said it was healthy. Sugar-free.”
Malin forced a smile toward Ellen, but seemed about to burst into tears at any moment.
“I see,” said Sara. “And the lady in the car, did she also have some gum?”
“Yes,” said Sara, nodding exaggeratedly. “She had some gum, too.”
It seemed as if that information calmed Malin. She leaned back a little and her shoulders lowered an inch or two.
“You said that the lady seemed young. Do you think, like your mom, approximately, or how old do you think she was?”
Asking children about the age of adults was tricky, not to say borderline meaningless.
“I don’t know,” said Ellen. “At first I thought she was a girl. I know that she was big, but I still thought that she was a girl, but then after a while I didn’t think that anymore. Then she was more like a regular grown-up.”
“Like me?” Malin asked.
“Hmm, but still a little more like a girl,” said Ellen.
“Younger than me?”
“Yes, maybe.”
What did that mean? Was this a very young person, or someone who tried to make herself childish to ingratiate herself and get close?
“You said she was blond with hair down to here.” Sara imitated Ellen’s gesture from before with a hand a few inches below her shoulder. “Was there anything else you can think of about how she looked?”
Ellen ran her fingers along the neckline of her checkered top.
“She was thin and had a green jacket.”
Sara waited. It appeared as if Ellen was searching for something in her memory.
“Her name was Ellen.”
She sounded almost excited as she said it, wriggling on the chair and kicking her dangling legs.
“Her name was Ellen just like me.”
Sara and Malin exchanged a glance over the girl’s head.
“I see,” said Sara. “Imagine that, her name was Ellen, too.”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember who said their name first? Was it her or you?”
“She asked me what my name was. Then I said it and then she said that her name was Ellen, too.”
Ellen lowered her eyes, talked down to her lap.
“But I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?” said Sara.
“I think she was fooling.”
“About that her name was Ellen?”
“About everything. She was strange.”
“In what way was she strange, do you think?”
“Tricky.”
“Tricky?”
“Yes.”
Ellen turned abruptly toward Malin, threw her arms around her, and pressed her face right into her flower-patterned blouse. Malin stroked her hair and looked in anguish at Henrik.
“I think that will be enough,” said Sara.
Malin leaned over and kissed Ellen on the top of her head. Sara could not decide whether Ellen was crying or if she just wanted to hide.
“It was nice that you could answer all my questions,” she said to Ellen’s neck. “We’re done now. I won’t ask anything else.”
Ellen peeked carefully at her, still with her head pressed against Malin.
“If you think of anything else, you can tell your mom. Shall we say that?”
Ellen nodded.
* * *
They stood up. Malin left first with Ellen, Sara and Henrik right behind them.
“Yes, one thing…” said Sara, stopping in the corridor.
Henrik stopped, too. Malin turned to look at them.
“You two go ahead,” said Sara. “We’ll be there in two seconds.”
Henrik looked at her, perplexed, and nervously ran his fingers through his shiny combed-back hair.
“It’s good if you talk with Ellen about what happened. You don’t need to torment her with it, but if she brings it up herself it’s good if you follow along and clarify things. Call me if anything new comes out. All details are important.”
“I understand,” said Henrik.