Åke Edwardson - Frozen Tracks

“No, I don’t think so.”

“And this is the first time?”

“What do you mean?”

“The first time it’s been lost?” Alinder asked. A daft question, but what am I supposed to do? This is the type of conversation I don’t really have time for.

“Yes, of course.”

“What do you think happened?”

“Well, if what Ellen says is true, then it could be that the man in the car took it.”

“Have you asked Ellen about him again?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“She says more or less the same thing as before. Odd that she should remember, don’t you think?”

I have a file with notes on what was said before, Alinder thought. I guess I can add a few sentences.

“Can you describe that charm for me,” he said, picking up his pen.

“It’s a little bird, silver,” she replied.

Just a little thing. A souvenir. He’d be able to take it out and look at it, and that would be enough.

For now at least. No. No! That would be enough. Enough!

He knew that it wouldn’t be enough. He would have to make use of it.

He closed his eyes and looked toward the wall and the bureau that stood next to the bookcase with the videos.

He had that little drawer in his bureau, with the boy’s car and the girl’s little silver bird. The car was blue and black, and the bird glistened and showed off a color of its own that wasn’t like anything else.

He had in his hand the little ball that the other girl had had in her pocket. It was green, like a lawn at the height of summer. Maja, her name was. That was a name that also suggested summer. Maja. It wasn’t a name for this time of year. He didn’t like the autumn. He felt calmer in the summer, but now-now he wasn’t so calm anymore.

He would go out driving, driving around. He drove around, didn’t want to, but he couldn’t help it. Playgrounds. Day nurseries.

Being there and joining in the fun.

He dropped the ball and it bounced up as high as the top drawer in the bureau, then down again, and he leaned to one side and caught it in one hand. A one-handed catch!

When it was so dark outside that he didn’t need to draw the curtains in order to watch the video recording, he switched on the television.

Maja said something funny. He could hear himself laughing on the film. He smiled. He could see the rain on the car window behind her. The empty trees. The sky, empty. It looked so miserable out there, on the other side of the car windows. Gray. Black. Damp. Rotten. A sky that was gray or black or red like… like blood. No. Nasty. The sky is a big, nasty hole that’s bigger than anything else, he thought, and he squeezed the ball hard in his hand. Things fall from the heavens that we are afraid of, run away from, hide from. The heavens are empty, but rain comes down from there and we can’t get away from that, and that’s why heaven is just a place on earth. Heaven is a place on earth, he thought again. He used to think about that when he was a child. Uncle had come to him when he’d been crying. The light had been out, and Uncle had asked him various things and then gone away. But later, he’d come back again.

It had hurt so much. But who had it been? Had it been Dad? Or Uncle? Uncle had comforted him afterward.

Comforted him so often.

He turned to the television again. It had been warm and cozy in the car. He’d felt warm as he shot the film. He could hear the radio as well. Then came the voice, and a swear word. The child had heard it. Maja. Maja said that the man on the radio has used a bad word.

Yes indeed. It was a very bad word.

What a nice ball you have, Maja. Show it to me.

Winter was sitting on the floor by the door in the long, narrow hall with his legs spread out, and he was rolling the ball to Elsa, who was sitting at the other end. He managed to roll the ball all the way to Elsa, but she couldn’t roll it all the way back again. He stood up and sat down again a bit nearer.

“Ball stupid,” Elsa said.

“It’s easier now,” he said, and rolled it to her again.

“The ball, the ball!” she shouted as she succeeded in rolling it all the way to him. “The ball, Daddy!”

“Here it comes,” he said, rolling it back to her.

Elsa was asleep when Angela got home after her evening shift. A long day on the ward. Morning shift. A short rest. Evening shift. He heard the elevator clattering up to the landing outside, and opened the door before she had even reached it.

“I heard the elevator.”

“So did everybody else for miles around.” She took off her raincoat and put it on a hanger ready for transportation to the bathroom. “That elevator should have been retired thirty years ago.” She took off her boots. “It’s scandalous that the poor thing has to keep on working.”

“But Elsa likes Ella being here and working for us,” said Winter.

Ella Vator was Elsa’s name. Just think, all these years I’ve lived here and traveled up and down in this elevator without knowing its name, Winter had thought when Elsa christened the old girl. Ella Vator.

“How did it go today?” said Angela, heading for the kitchen.

“Another incident at the nursery school,” he said, following her.

“What this time?”

“I think it was the same little boy as before who ran off through the bushes, but this time he got out.”

“Got out? Where? Who?”

“August, I think his name is. Do you know who that is?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“There was a hole in the wire fence, and he got out into the street.”

“Oh my God.”

“I managed to catch up with him before anything happened.”

“How the hell could there be a hole in the fence?”

“Rusted away.”

“Oh my God,” she said again. “What are we going to do?”

“What do you mean?”

“What are we going to do about Elsa? You don’t think I’m going to leave her there when there’s a hole in the fence leading out onto one of northern Europe ’s busiest roads?” She looked at him and raised a hand. “It’s like a hole straight into the cruel world outside.”

“They’ve fixed it.”

“How do you know?”

“I checked.” He smiled. “This afternoon.”

“Have they replaced the whole fence?”

“It looks like it.”

“Looks? Are you not as worried as I am?”

“I called the lady in charge, but I couldn’t get through.”

“Well, I’m going to get through.”

She marched over to the telephone and called one of the numbers on a Post-it note stuck onto the refrigerator.

Angela bit his knuckle when she felt that he was as close as she was. He heard a spring complaining in the mattress underneath them, a noise that could in fact have come from Ella on the landing, but he didn’t think of that until afterward.

They lay still in the silence.

“Could you get me some water, please?” she asked eventually.

He got up and went to the kitchen. Rain was pattering on the window overlooking the courtyard. The wall clock showed a quarter past midnight. He poured a glass of water for Angela and opened a Hof for himself.

“You won’t be able to sleep now,” she said, as he drank the beer on the edge of the bed.

“Who said anything about sleeping?”

“I can’t come and go as I please like you,” she said. “I have strict working hours.”

“I can be creative at any time of day or night,” he said.

She took a drink of water and put the glass down on the wooden floor that seemed to gleam in the glow coming in from the street lighting outside. A bus could be heard driving past, tires on water. Then another vehicle. No ambulance at the moment, thank the Lord. A voice perhaps, but it could also have been a bird, hoarse from having stayed too long in the North.