Karin Alvtegen: Missing

'I know you're here… you must be here… somewhere…'

Now she could see his face. It was covered in blood. One wide-open eye was gleaming white.

Fifty feet… thirty feet…

Then, in one blessed instant, the moon disappeared behind a cloud. She was saved. She heard him groan, realising that he'd stumbled and had tried to hold himself upright using his wounded hand.

Serves you fucking right! You deluded cunt!

She was smiling. The disappearance of the moon made her hopeful again. She wasn't doomed to lose this battle. For a while, he had almost made her believe she had lost.

'You haven't got a hope… sooner or later we'll find you…'

His voice was more distant now. Just for that moment she was safe.

Perhaps she fell asleep on and off. She couldn't be sure. The darkness was so dense that she couldn't tell if her eyes were open or closed. When dawn broke and the first glimpses of contours became clearer, she crawled out from her hiding place to try to find a road.

She couldn't go back, but then there was no telling how far the forest stretched ahead. She decided to try to keep at a right angle to her first escape route. She should reach the road sooner or later, but well away from his house.

She was freezing, shivering with cold. Now that she had time to herself, the pain came back to haunt her. The broken rib ached angrily with each step.

The light was getting stronger every minute. Round her the forest was thinning. Tall bare pine trunks rose around her, with hardly any undergrowth. He could see her easily here. Surely she would reach the road soon.

She heard a branch crack and stopped, trying to localise the sound. Another crack now, but from a different direction.

Then she saw them. One of them shouted at her.

'Lie down!'

He was in uniform and aiming at her with his handgun, gripping it with both hands. If she hadn't been so scared, it would have been pure happiness to see them. She had never thought that she would be so utterly delighted at being surrounded by policemen.

She did as she was told, lying down, face against the ground, moving cautiously to minimise the pain. When she turned her head to look, four armed policemen were approaching her, all aiming at her with their guns. She tried to speak to them.

'I don't know where…'

'Shut up! Just don't fucking move!'

Then, in one dizzying insight, she knew what had happened. One of them pushed her face into the mossy ground, another frisked her body. One of them hissed at her. 'Murderous bitch!'

So he had got there first, ahead of her again.

She obeyed orders, keeping her mouth shut during the whole journey to Vimmerby police station. When she stepped out of the car, a camera flashed in her face. When she could see again, she caught a glimpse of a young man with an enormous camera in front of his face. Somebody asked her a question. 'Why did you do it?'

She was not given a chance to answer. Hard hands pushed her into the entrance hall of the police station. The whole room was full of people, civilians and uniformed staff, all observing her closely with disgust in their eyes.

'Move along. This way.'

The man who had been sitting next to her in the back of the car was now walking ahead, forming a small passage though the crowd. Someone pushed her from behind, hitting the sore rib so that she was grimacing with pain. A door opened and she stepped through it.

'Sit down.'

She obeyed, pulling back the chair with her hand-cuffed hands. Two new men came in and sat down behind the desk. One of them introduced himself.

'Roger Larsson.'

His colleague pushed a red button on a tape-recorder and checked that it was recording. Then he nodded.

Interrogation of Sibylla Forsenström on the third of April 1999, starting at 8.45 a.m. Present in the room are the charged woman, Sergeant Mats Lundell and Inspector Roger Larsson.'

Larsson turned to her.

'You are Sibylla Forsenström?'

She nodded.

'I must insist that you answer every question loudly and clearly.' 'Yes, I am.'

'Tell us what you are doing in Vimmerby.'

She stared at the moving wheels in the tape-recorder, while they were observing her intently. Someone knocked briskly on the door and a woman came in carrying a sheet of paper, which she handed to Roger Larsson. He read it quickly and put it away on the desk, text-side down. Then he looked at her again.

I didn't do it.'

'Didn't do what?'

The question had been immediate. She was very tired and hungry. Her thoughts seemed to go all over the place. Now she had led them on to the right track.

It's the man called Ingmar who's the murderer.'

The two men exchanged knowing glances, almost smiling at each other.

'Do you mean Ingmar Eriksson? A hospital porter, resident here in Vimmerby. He was hospitalised last night, after turning up in casualty with his right hand crushed and a nail file stuck in one eye. Is that the Ingmar you've got in mind?'

By the end of all this, he sounded angry. She looked down at her hands. If she moved them to hide the chain between them, the cuffs looked like two silver bracelets. The man called Roger was putting an object on the table in front of her.

'Why did you carry this about in your jacket pocket?'

Inside a plastic bag was the crucifix. She found it hard to speak.

'He gave it to me. HE was going to murder me.' 'Why?'

'To make me take the blame.' 'Blame for what?' She sighed.

'Everything. He had a relationship with Rune Hedlund.' One corner of Roger Larsson's mouth was twitching.

'Who?'

'Rune Hedlund. He died in a car accident on the fifteenth of March last year.'

The men exchanged glances again. Neither said anything, but she realised what they were thinking. This woman was obviously deranged. Maybe they were right.

Moon or no moon, God had never been on her side.

'Phone Patrik. He knows that I didn't do it.'

'Who is Patrik?'

'Patrik… eh…'

She could not remember his surname. It had been on the door to their flat, but the memory had faded.

'His mother is in the police. They live on Sagar Street. South End.'

'South End in Stockholm – is that what you mean?'

Another knock on the door. The same woman came in with a new piece of paper. There were two curious faces peering in through the door behind her. Roger Larsson read what was on the paper, nodded and checked the time.

'Interrogation stopped at 9.03 a.m.'

Sibylla closed her eyes.

'We'll have a break now. Do you want to wait here or in a cell?'

She could barely keep her eyes open. Her whole being felt exhausted.

'Is there a bed in the cell?' 'Yes.'

'The cell, please.'

Hours passed without anything happening. The bunk was hard and she slept only in fits and starts. One longer period of sleep was more like a restless semi-conscious state, marred by obsessive dreaming about being chased and desperately trying to escape in slow motion from an invisible enemy.

They gave her food, but no one told her what they were all waiting for. She was too tired to ask. She was less troubled by the locked door than she had feared. It was actually quite nice just to lie there, freed from all responsibility. She had done her best, really done very well, if truth be told. But she had failed and all she could do now was accept her failure. They had won and she had lost.

That was all there was to it.

Later that afternoon, Roger Larsson came to see her. He told her that they were waiting to hear from the National Criminal Investigation Bureau in Stockholm. She had nothing to say to that. It seemed she must be thought such a hardened criminal that she was outside the remit of the sad little Vimmerby force. The elite team was coming to the rescue.