Mari Jungstedt - The Dead Of Summer

She stood there for several seconds, uncertain what to do. Should she run downstairs and get the others and maybe risk losing the Norrströms, if they were the ones inside the cabin? They must have heard her shouting and trying to open the door.

She tried the key card again, shoving it into the slot. At last, it worked, and she pressed down the door handle.

When Karin looked into Vera Norrström’s panic-stricken, staring eyes, all the remembered images came back to her. Fragmentary, incoherent, but razor-sharp, they sliced into her consciousness. Assaulting her, ruthlessly, violently. As they always did. She stood in the narrow doorway, frozen to the spot. Breathing hard, with a fierce band of pressure on her forehead; her legs began to buckle and she could hardly stay on her feet. The images were familiar; she woke up to them every morning, and they were in her mind when she was about to fall asleep at night. Every day for twenty-five years she had struggled to make those memories disappear.

Vera Norrström lay on the narrow lower bunk. Her face was as white as chalk and contorted with pain. She was biting down on a towel, which prevented her from screaming aloud. Her legs were apart, with one foot hanging off the side of the bed. She was pressing that foot against a chair placed next to the bunk. A cotton sheet barely covered her. She was going to give birth at any moment.

Karin knew all about that. She had just turned fifteen.

The pain is wracking her body. She can hardly understand what’s happening. Both her mother and father have refused to be present at the birth. They’re waiting outside until it’s over. As if they’re pretending that she’s suffering from some serious illness. Something bad that requires an operation and has to be surgically removed, like a cancerous tumour .

A nurse dressed in green is standing next to her. Karin wants to take her hand, but she doesn’t dare. She thinks she’s going to be torn apart. Terrified. She’s only a child .

One last violent push. Her own wail is replaced by the newborn’s hesitant, tremulous voice. Hardly a scream, merely a cry. In the dimly lit room she feels the warm, alive body next to her bare skin. A piece of herself in another human being. A girl .

Karin secretly gives her the name Lydia. She closes her eyes, places her hand carefully on the baby’s back. Time stops, the world stops spinning, all activity comes to a halt. Just her and Lydia, nothing else. Just the two of them .

She doesn’t know how much time passes before the nurse dressed in green takes the baby away from her. She will never see her again. Forever miss her. Forever long for her .

Next to Vera sat her husband, Stefan, who had assaulted Karin a few hours earlier. His eyes were terrified and desperate. Karin swallowed hard, trying to pull herself together and control the dizziness.

Then she stepped inside the cabin and closed the door behind her.

THE SEARCH PROVED fruitless. After going over the ferry with a fine-tooth comb, the police officers returned to the aft salon, where they gathered to consider the situation. Jacobsson was the last to join the others. She paused in the doorway, explained that she wasn’t feeling well and needed to go home. No one even had time to react before she was gone.

The concern that Knutas felt was mixed with tenderness. She always had to be so tough and strong. Now she’d finally been forced to give in. He felt like going home himself and pulling the covers over his head. The disappointing results of the search irked him. He cursed himself for allowing the Norrströms to get away.

He turned to his colleagues as he ran his hand through his hair and said wearily, ‘The Norrströms’ car was apparently just found at the airport car park. They checked in for the last flight to Stockholm this evening. Our efforts here seem to have been in vain.’

Maybe the couple’s phone call to Destination Gotland was just a diversionary tactic. Maybe they’d been checking all the possible ways to flee when they realized that the police were on Stefan Norrström’s trail. It was a bitter feeling to have been so close to catching them; now the police would have to leave the boat empty-handed. After a two-hour delay, it would now depart for Nynäshamn.

Somehow, the story had leaked out, and the usual band of journalists was waiting on the dock. They were hoping to get pictures of the arrested couple, but that wasn’t going to happen. Instead, the reporters showered the police with questions about the failed action. Knutas pushed his way through the crowd without even glancing at the journalists.

He couldn’t help thinking about what had gone wrong. Of course, he shouldn’t have staked everything on one effort; he should have had half the police officers go out to the airport, since that was the most likely escape option. The patrol officers had discovered too late that Stefan Norrström’s car was there and then sounded the alarm. Now Knutas could only hope that the police at Arlanda airport in Stockholm would confirm that they’d taken the couple into custody.

When Knutas got back to his office at police headquarters, his mobile rang. His pulse quickened.

‘Yes?’

His colleagues out at the airport reported, to his surprise, that Vera and Stefan Norrström never boarded the plane to Stockholm. After checking in, they had vanished without a trace.

Knutas swore, cursing himself again. Thoughts whirled through his head, but nothing made sense. Should he have stopped the ferry from leaving? Every nook and cranny had been searched, and yet maybe… At any rate, it was too late now to call the boat back. But to be on the safe side, he was thinking of contacting the Stockholm police, who could take in the Norrströms if, against all odds, it turned out that they were actually on board.

The possibility that they were still on Gotland sparked new hope in Knutas. His energy revived. He ordered a continued search of all ferries leaving Gotland the following morning and sent officers over to Visby airport. In co-operation with the NCP, the other Swedish airports and border stations were also alerted. An all-points bulletin was sent out to the entire country for Vera and Stefan Norrström, and the police also made a point of contacting taxi and bus drivers. Since Vera was in her ninth month of pregnancy, all the hospital emergency rooms and maternity clinics were contacted as well. Extreme stress might send her into labour.

Maybe there was still a chance of catching Stefan Norrström. As long as there were actions to take and information to collect, Knutas had no intention of going home. Fatigue washed over him in waves, but he managed to keep it at bay with coffee and an occasional puff on his pipe.

He opened the window. Stood there, exhaling smoke. Stared out into the Visby night, pondering his failure. Had he been blind? Karin had discovered how everything fitted together during her visit to Gotska Sandön. Shouldn’t he have been able to work things out earlier? The police had made a list of all the Russians living on Gotland. On the other hand, it hadn’t been easy to discover Vera Norrström’s Russian heritage. She was from Germany, after all, and she had a Swedish surname.

He should go home. They could just as easily reach him there if anything happened, but he didn’t want to leave. Something was bothering him. He put out his pipe and went back to his desk, where he randomly picked up a document from the investigation and began wracking his brain, trying to work out what he had missed.

At two in the morning, he sat up with a jolt. He must have dozed off in his chair, but he was suddenly wide awake when he realized that the phone was ringing. His heart pounded as he reached for the receiver.