Camilla Läckberg - The Hidden Child

‘All right, now push with all your might,’ the midwife commanded, and Elsy pressed her chin to her chest and strained as hard as she could. It felt as though nothing happened, but the midwife gave her a curt nod to indicate that she was doing it right. ‘Wait until the next contraction,’ the woman said harshly.

Elsy felt the pressure building once more, and when it was at its worst, she was again ordered to bear down. This time she felt something loosen – it was hard to describe, but it was as if something gave way.

‘The head is out now, Elsy. Just one more contraction, and…’

Elsy closed her eyes for a moment, but all she could see was Hans. She didn’t have the strength to grieve for him right now, so she opened her eyes again.

‘Now!’ said the midwife as she stood between Elsy’s legs. With her last ounce of strength, Elsy pressed her chin to her chest and bore down with her knees drawn up.

Something wet and slippery slid out of her, and she fell back, exhausted, on to the sweat-drenched sheet. Her first feeling was relief. Relief that all the hours of torment were over. She was worn out in a way that she’d never felt before; every part of her body was utterly exhausted, and she couldn’t move even an inch – until she heard the cry. An angry, shrill cry that made her struggle to prop herself up on her elbows to see where it was coming from.

She sobbed when she caught sight of him. He was… perfect. Sticky and bloody, and angry at being out in the cold, but perfect. Elsy fell back on the pillows when she realized that this was the first and last time she would ever see him. The midwife cut the umbilical cord and carefully cleaned him off with a washcloth. Then she dressed him in a tiny, embroidered infant’s shirt that Edith had provided. No one paid any attention to Elsy, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the boy. Her heart felt as if it would burst with love, and her eyes were hungry to take in every detail of him. Not until Edith made a move to take him out of the room did she manage to speak.

‘I want to hold him!’

‘That’s not advisable, under the circumstances,’ said the midwife angrily, motioning for the aunt to go. But Edith hesitated.

‘Please, just let me hold him. Just for a minute. Then you can take him away.’ Elsy’s tone of voice was so persuasive that her aunt came over and placed the baby in Elsy’s arms. She held him carefully as she looked into his eyes. ‘Hello, sweetheart,’ she whispered, rocking him gently.

‘You’re bleeding on his shirt,’ said the midwife, looking annoyed.

‘I have more shirts,’ said Edith, giving the woman a look that silenced her.

Elsy couldn’t get enough of looking at him. He felt warm and heavy in her arms, and she stared with fascination at his little fingers with the perfect, tiny fingernails.

‘He’s a fine boy,’ said Edith, standing next to the bed.

‘He looks like his father,’ said Elsy, smiling as the baby held on to her finger.

‘You need to hand him over now. He has to be fed,’ said the midwife, taking the boy out of Elsy’s arms. Her first instinct was to resist, to grab him back and never let him go. But that moment passed, and the midwife began hastily pulling the bloody shirt off the infant and putting him into a clean one. Then she handed him to Edith, who, after a last look at Elsy, carried him out of the room.

At that moment, as she looked at her son for the last time, Elsy felt something break deep inside her heart. She did not know how she would survive such pain. And as she lay there in her sweaty, bloodied bed with an empty womb and empty arms, she decided never to subject herself to those sorts of feelings again. Never, ever. With tears running down her face, she made herself that promise while the midwife roughly helped her with the afterbirth.

‘Martin!’

‘Paula!’

They both shouted at the exact same time, each on their way to the other’s office with urgent news. Now they stood in the corridor, staring at one another, their cheeks flushed. Martin was the first to pull himself together.

‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘Kjell Ringholm was just here, and there’s something I have to tell you about.’

‘Okay, but then I’ve got something to tell you, too,’ said Paula, following him into his office.

He closed the door behind her and sat down. She sat down across from him, but she was so eager to share what she’d found out that she could hardly sit still.

‘First of all, Frans Ringholm confessed to the murder of Britta Johansson. He also hinted that he was the one who killed Erik Frankel and…’ Martin hesitated, ‘the man we found in the grave.’

‘What? He confessed to his son before he died?’ exclaimed Paula in astonishment.

Martin pushed across the desk the plastic sleeve containing the three-page letter. ‘Afterwards, actually. Kjell got this in the post today. Read it and then tell me your immediate impressions.’

Paula picked up the letter and began reading intently. After she was finished, she put the pages back in the plastic sleeve and said with a pensive frown on her face: ‘Well, his confession that he killed Britta is plain enough. But as for Erik and Hans Olavsen… He just writes that he’s the one to blame, and that’s rather an odd way of putting it, in this context, especially since he’s so unambiguous about Britta. So I don’t know. I’m not sure that he’s saying he killed the other two. And besides…’ She leaned forward and was about to tell Martin what she had found out, when he interrupted her.

‘Wait. There’s more.’ He held up his hand, and she closed her mouth, looking slightly offended. ‘Kjell has been doing some research on this Hans Olavsen. Trying to find out where he went and uncover more about him in general.’

‘And?’ said Paula impatiently.

‘He’s been in touch with a Norwegian professor who’s an expert on the German occupation of Norway. Since the professor has so much material on the Norwegian resistance movement, Kjell thought he might be able to help locate Hans Olavsen.’

‘And?’ Paula repeated, starting to look annoyed since Martin couldn’t seem to get to the point.

‘At first he didn’t find anything.’

Paula sighed loudly.

‘… but then Kjell faxed over an article with a photograph of the “resistance fighter” Hans Olavsen.’ Martin drew quote marks in the air.

‘Then what?’ Now Paula’s interest had been sparked, and for a moment she forgot about her own news.

‘The thing is, that boy was not a resistance fighter at all. He wasn’t even called Olavsen – that was his mother’s maiden name, which he took as his own surname after he fled to Sweden. It seems his Norwegian mother was married to a German named Reinhardt Wolf. When the Germans occupied Norway, Wolf was given a high position in the Norwegian SS, thanks to the fact that his wife had taught him the language. At the end of the war the father was captured and sent to a prison in Germany. Nobody knows what happened to the mother, but the son, Hans, disappeared from Norway in 1944 and was never seen again. And we know why: he fled to Sweden, pretending to be in the resistance, and then somehow ended up in a grave in Fjällbacka cemetery.’

‘That’s incredible. But how does that fit in with our investigation?’ asked Paula.

‘I don’t know yet. But I have a feeling it’s important,’ said Martin meditatively. Then he smiled. ‘Okay, now you know what my big news is. What was it you wanted to tell me?’

Paula took a deep breath and quickly explained what she had discovered. Martin gave his colleague an appreciative look.