Missing (11 page)

S
he had almost reached Vetlanda when the police stopped her. A red light was blinking at her from the middle of the road. She pulled over, two policemen materialised outside her window and she opened it. One of them leant inside, stopped the engine and pulled the key out. He withdrew, glancing to check her face.

‘Now then … what have you been up to?'

She didn't feel scared. She felt nothing at all.

‘Step outside for a moment, please.'

He opened the door and she stepped out. A car was pulling up behind the De Soto and Mick jumped out, running towards her. Maria Johansson stayed where she was, in the passenger seat.

‘You fucking slut! I'll kill you if you've buggered up my car.'

One of the policemen put a hand on Mick's shoulder, telling him to calm down. Mick pulled himself free and climbed into the De Soto. The policeman handed him the keys. After checking what he could, Mick got out, turning to look at her with intense disgust.

‘You're one insane cunt.'

She noted that the policemen were leading her over to their car, pushing her into the back seat with a hand on her head. One of them sat next to her and the other drove the car. Neither said a word to her from then on.

‘Is your name Sibylla Forsenström?'

What was the funny smell in the room?

‘Why did you take the car?'

What if it was gas?

‘Have you got a driving licence?'

How come there were cracks in that wall?

‘Can't you speak?'

The man on the other side of the desk sighed and began leafing through some papers. Four men dressed in black stepped through the cracked wall. They fixed their eyes on her.

‘We can't find you anywhere in our records. Is it the first time you've done this sort of thing?'

The men in black were coming towards her. One of them held out a red-hot socket-spanner. They were going to unscrew her, take her apart.

‘We shall have to contact the social services in due course, but first of all we'll call your parents. They can come and take you home now.'

They were going to keep bits of her as spare parts to fix smarter models. The man with the socket-spanner seemed to speak, his lips
were moving but she couldn't hear what he said.

She looked at the man behind the desk instead, but his face had sort of disappeared. There was nothing there, just a hole going straight through his head.

Now she couldn't see anything at all, and what was she doing on the floor?

She heard the sound of a chair being pushed back and a voice shouting.

‘Lasse, come here! I need a hand!'

Steps came hurrying along.

‘I've no idea what's wrong with her. Better get the ambulance.'

S
he came to because someone was kicking her in the ribs, not violently but hard enough to wake her. Thomas was standing next to her, wearing nothing except a pair of underpants. She took in the scene in one second flat. He was drunk and he was holding a wad of notes in his hand, approximately twenty-nine thousand kronor.

Instinctively she put her hand to her neck, but where the money should have been was only her skin. In fact, she was naked. He was grinning menacingly at her, waving the purse in his other hand.

‘You'd be looking for this, right?'

Her mouth felt like a sandpit. It was years since she'd drunk hard liquor. She couldn't actually remember drinking a lot, but the bottle on the table was empty.

‘You cunt! Sending me off to the post office to get you more dosh! And snivelling because you can't manage, dear oh dear!'

She tried to think. Meanwhile she was too slow reaching out for her bra. A flick with his
foot and it flew across the room. She covered herself with the flap of the sleeping-bag.

‘Please listen, Thomas …'

He twisted his face into a grimace and spoke in a piping voice.

‘Please, Thomas.'

His eyes had narrowed into slits.

‘What got into you, fucking around with me like that? I was running a bloody big risk, the police could've got me for aiding-and-abetting or some shit. Meanwhile you've a sodding fortune up your jumper!'

He was scrunching the notes in his hand.

‘I've been saving that for years.'

‘Oh yeah. And?'

She was almost whispering now.

‘For a house.'

At first he just stared at her, then leaned back, laughing. The movement almost unbalanced him and he had to reach out for the ladder. This sudden weakness angered him even more.

Before he had time to speak, she folded back the sleeping bag flap. Then she spoke as sweetly as she knew how.

‘Thomas. Let's not fight. I was going to show you the money anyway.'

He was still holding onto the ladder. She felt nauseous.

‘Thomas, I came here because I've been missing you.'

His eyes were glued to her breasts. She felt his
gaze touching her like hands and she had to steel herself not to shudder. He dropped her purse on the floor. She tried to keep smiling. Next he scattered her hopes for the future with one careless movement, the notes floating slowly towards the filthy floor.

The next second he had come down on her. She prayed that he would be quick.

L
ord, give me strength to survive from hour
to hour, from one day to the next. Help
me face these empty days, the remainder of the
vacant time left to me here
.

He will be waiting for me somewhere in the
great beyond. I shall go to him, find my treasure
again. My heart will always be with him
.

Truly, truly I say to you, he who hears my word
and believes Him who has sent me, has eternal
life; he does not come into judgement, but has
passed from death to life
.

Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming
when all who are in the graves will hear His
voice and come forth, those who have done
good, to the resurrection of life, and those
who have done evil, to the resurrection of
judgement
.

I can do nothing on my own authority; as I
hear, I judge; and my judgement is just, because
I seek not my will, but only the will of He who
has sent me
.

G
od failed to hear her yet again. Thomas was taking his time. Finally, he had had enough and fell asleep on top of her like a suffocatingly heavy quilt. With infinite care, she managed to ease herself out from under him and stand up.

Still naked, she picked up her scrunched-up notes from the floor. She tried to flatten them against her thigh before putting them back into the purse again.

Thomas was sleeping on his side with his mouth open. A string of saliva was dribbling from his mouth into his bushy beard and soaking into the mattress. She was grateful that she hadn't used her own roll-up mat, because she would have had to leave it. Her sleeping bag had slipped off them and she retrieved it easily after lifting one of his legs.

She dressed quickly, longing for a shower to wash off the trail left by his eyes crawling over her body. It was unbearable – she must find a tap with running water to wash under. Packing her things, she noticed that her towel
and panties smelled sour after being packed while damp. They needed another wash.

Where? Where could she go?

She wanted to get out and away as soon as possible, but was thirsty enough to risk staying a little longer. She drank from the plastic bottle and then let the water run over her face and hands to wash them. The sawdust on the floor was turning into a sodden slurry, brown with coffee grounds.

Thomas shifted the leg she had been pulling at and she stood stock-still until she was certain he was deeply asleep. She must hurry up the ladder and out into … into what, exactly? Not ‘freedom', that was not an option any more.

Fuck them all.

It was dark outside. Old reflexes made her look at her unhelpful watch.

All the lanes of the South Mälarstrand carriage-way were empty and the windows in the big blocks of flats were almost all dark. Maybe it was still too early for people to be up and about.

Good. The less she was seen, the better.

She tiptoed across the deck and climbed onto the Navy vessel. Once back on the quay, she started walking towards the bridge. Her legs seemed to have a will of their own. Her head was empty. She had no idea where she should be going.

Still, that was quite normal.

In her world, not knowing where you were heading was the rule, not the exception. She sometimes asked herself if her block against planning ahead was connected to the illness of her youth. Perhaps it had damaged some part of her nervous system which was meant to deal with foresight. In her new life, finding something to eat every day and a sheltered place for her sleeping bag every night were the only things that demanded any thought at all.

Fair enough, you could live without any expectations higher than holding onto the freedom to move. This freedom was the basis for the way she lived. No one could tell her what to do. Her will was her only directive and she went only where she wanted to go.

Now all that had changed. She no longer knew where she wanted to go, not even where she could safely go.

She was walking along Heleneborg Street and then, where the rows of houses ended, turned into Skinnarvik Park. The sky was growing lighter. A man seemed to combine admiring the view with watching his dog defecate. Man and dog both looked up when they heard her steps on the gravel path. Then the man dutifully bent down to pick up the turd in a plastic bag, peering over his shoulder at her, as if she might object.

She walked on. There was a newly delivered
box of bread outside a restaurant at the corner of Horn Street. They surely wouldn't miss one of the loaves.

What she needed now was somewhere safe to shelter for a couple of days. A place where she would be left in peace, where no one would think of looking for her. Fear of pursuit had become her constant companion and it was exhausting. She needed rest. From experience she knew that without proper sleep her brain functioned less and less well. She would become easy prey if she lost her sense of judgement.

In her mind she was going over all the places she had ever slept in. Few had been as safe and quiet as the hide-out she had to find now.

By now there were more cars around. To avoid meeting the morning rush-hour traffic she decided to walk up Horn Street Rise. Passing St Mary's Church, she looked at the clock.

At exactly that moment she realised where she could hide.

D
ays and nights, flowing into each other. The same faceless people speaking to her in alien tongues, oblivious of the dangers threatening her.

The ones without faces were wandering in and out of her room, holding out tiny cups with poison-tablets that they made her swallow. Meanwhile, voices were addressing her from inside the radiator and the Devil was hiding under her bed, waiting for her to get up. If her feet so much as touched the floor he would grab her, dragging her down into the big hole down there. Underneath, in the cellar, his black men would be waiting to work her over with their burning hot instruments.

She didn't want to sleep, didn't dare to. The pills they gave her made her lose consciousness all the same. When she was asleep there was no telling what they did to her. That was the reason they put her to sleep.

One unending nightmare.

When she refused to get up they stuck a tube
into her down there. They wanted to pump in more poison that way too. The stuff was yellow and they kept it in a plastic bag next to her bed. Then the Devil could top it up whenever he wanted to. When she tore the tube out, they tied her hands.

There was a man dressed in white who came to make her talk. He pretended to be kind but was only after her secrets. He would pass on what she told him to the men in the cellar.

Darkness and light following each other. Time ceased to be. New hands made her swallow the white poison-pills.

Then, one day, she suddenly understood what they were saying to her. They sounded kind, concerned to make her feel comfortable. They were protective and listened to her. One of them wheeled her bed across the room to let her see that there was no hole underneath it. Afterwards she agreed to be taken to the toilet and they removed the tube from her private parts and the yellow poison-bag from beside her bed.

The next day, everyone who came to see her had a face and smiled. They fixed her bed, plumping her pillows and chatting to her all the time. They still wanted her to take poison, though. She was ill and in hospital,
they told her. She had to stay until she got better.

Then where would she go? She tried not to think of the ‘afterwards'.

More days and nights passed. The voices from the radiator stopped speaking so much and finally left her in peace.

Sometimes she would go outside her room. There was a TV set at one end of the corridor. None of the other patients spoke to her, because they were all enclosed in their own worlds. Often she simply stood at the window in her room, leaning her forehead against the cold bars and observing the traffic outside. Everyone was getting on with life without her.

They took her for walks in the hospital park sometimes, but never let her out alone. The winter snow was melting by then and there were snowdrops growing in the borders.

Beatrice Forsenström came to visit her. The man who wanted to make Sibylla talk came as well. Beatrice was immaculately groomed, but there were dark shadows under her eyes. She kept her handbag in her lap when she and the man settled down next to the bed.

The man looked nice. He smiled at her.

‘How are you feeling now?'

Sibylla was watching her mother.

‘I'm much better, thank you.'

The man seemed pleased.

‘Do you know why you're here?'

Sibylla swallowed.

‘Maybe because I did something silly?'

The man was looking at her mother, who had lifted her hand to her mouth. Sibylla had made the wrong answer and her mother would be sad. No, disappointed.

‘Don't worry, Sibylla. You've been ill. That's why you're here,' the man said.

She kept looking at her hands. No one said anything for a while. Then the man rose and spoke to her mother.

‘I'll leave you two alone now, but not for long.'

They were on their own in the room. Sibylla was still looking at her hands.

‘Please forgive me.'

Her mother suddenly got up.

‘Stop that at once.'

Oh no, she had made Mummy angry as well.

‘You have been ill, Sibylla. There's no need to apologise for that.'

Then she sat down again. For a brief moment their eyes met, but this time her mother looked away first. Not soon enough. Sibylla had a perfectly clear idea of what was going on behind those eyes. Beatrice was furious at her daughter for putting her in this situation, which was beyond her control.

Sibylla went back to studying her hands. There was a knock on the door. The man who wanted her to speak came back in, carrying a brown folder. He came to the end of her bed and spoke to her.

‘Sibylla, there's one special thing both your mother and I want to talk to you about.'

He glanced at Beatrice, but her eyes were fixed on the floor and she was clutching her handbag so hard her knuckles were going white.

‘Sibylla, do you have a boyfriend?'

She stared blankly at him.

‘Do you have a boyfriend? I have a reason for asking.'

She shook her head. He came to sit next to her on the edge of the bed.

‘This illness you've been suffering from, it can have physical causes, you see.'

Is that so?

‘We've tested some samples we've taken from you.'

Yes, I know.

‘The results show that you're pregnant.'

The last word went on echoing though her head. She had a vision of the brown checked blanket.

She alone would be his. Only his. And he hers.

Together.

Anything for just a second of such closeness.

Anything at all.

She glanced at her mother. Beatrice must have known all along.

The man who wanted her to speak put his hand on hers. His touch triggered a pulse of emotion that flowed through her body.

‘Do you know who the father of the baby is?'

The two of them, together. Linked forever.

Sibylla shook her head. Her mother kept looking towards the door, her whole being longing to open it and get out of there.

‘Your pregnancy is already in its twenty-seventh week, so a termination is not really an option for you.'

Sibylla put her hands on her stomach. The man who wanted her to speak smiled at her, but somehow didn't look happy.

‘How do you feel?'

How did she feel?

‘Your mother and I have been discussing this.'

Somebody started screaming in the room next door.

‘Because you've not yet come of age and your parents know you better than anybody else, their views are taken very seriously. As your doctor, I fully support their decision.'

She stared at him. What decision? They couldn't do things to her body, could they?

‘We all agree that adoption would be the best thing for your baby.'