Åke Edwardson: Frozen Tracks

When he went back to work after his paternity leave, he felt a sort of… hunger, a peculiar feeling, something he almost felt ashamed of. As if he were ready for battle again, ready for the war that could never be won but had to be fought well, regardless. That’s the way it was. If you chopped an arm off the beast, it promptly grew another one, but you just had to keep on chopping.

As Winter fell asleep he was thinking yet again about that remarkable wound on the back of the student’s head.

IT WAS A QUIET NIGHT AT THE EMERGENCY DESK, AND IT FELT LIKE the calm before the storm. But there won’t be any storm tonight, thought Bengt Josefsson, the duty officer, gazing out at the trees that were also still, like they are before an autumn gale. But it’s too late for autumn gales now, he thought. Soon it’ll be Christmas. And after that maybe we won’t be around anymore. They’re talking about closing down this station, and Redbergsplatsen will be handed back to the enemy.

The telephone rang.

“Police, Örgryte-Härlanda, Josefsson.”

“Ah, yes. Well. Er, good evening. Is this the police?”

“Yes.”

“I called the police switchboard and they said they’d connect me to a station close to Olskroken. Er, that’s where we live.”

“You’ve got the right number,” said Josefsson. “How can I help you?”

“Well, er, I don’t really know what to say.”

Josefsson waited, pen at the ready. A colleague dropped something hard on the floor in the locker room at the end of the corridor.

“Just tell me what it’s about,” he said. “Who am I talking to?”

She gave her name and he wrote it down. Berit Skarin.

“It’s about my little boy,” she said. “He, er, I don’t know… He told us tonight, if we understood him correctly, er, that he’s been sitting in a car with a ‘mister,’ as he put it.”

Kalle Skarin was four, and when he got back home from the nursery school he’d had a soft-cheese sandwich and a cup of hot chocolate-he’d mixed the cocoa and sugar and a splash of cream himself, and then Mom added the hot milk.

Shortly afterward he’d said he’d been sitting in a car.

A car?

A car. Big car, with a radio. Radio talked and played music.

Did you and your friends go out on a trip today?

Not a trip. Playground.

Are there cars there?

The boy had nodded.

Toy cars?

Big car, he’d told her. Real car. Real, and he’d moved his hands as if he were holding a steering wheel. Brrrrm, brrrrmm.

Where?

Playground.

Kalle. Are you saying you went for a ride in a car at the playground?

He’d nodded.

Who did you go with?

A mister.

A mister?

Mister, mister. He had candies!

Kalle had made a new gesture that could have been somebody holding out a bag of candy, or maybe not.

Berit Skarin had felt a cold shiver run down her spine. A strange man holding out a bag of candy to her little boy.

Olle ought to hear this, but he won’t be back until late.

And Kalle was sitting there in front of her. She’d held him when he’d jumped up to go and watch a children’s program on TV.

Did the car drive away?

Drove, drove. Brrrrrrmm.

Did you go far?

He didn’t understand the question.

Was your teacher with you?

No teacher. Mister.

Then he’d run off to the TV room. She’d watched him go and thought for a moment, then gone to get her handbag from a chair in the kitchen and looked up the home telephone number of one of the nursery-school staff, hesitated when she got as far as the phone, but called anyway.

“Ah. Sorry to disturb you in the evening like this, er, it’s Berit Skarin. Yes, Kalle’s mom. He’s just told me something that I have to ask you about.”

Bengt Josefsson listened. She told him about the conversation she’d had with one of the nursery school staff.

“Nobody noticed anything,” said Berit Skarin.

“I see.”

“Can that kind of thing happen?” she asked. “Can somebody drive up in a car and then drive off with one of the children without any of the staff seeing anything? Then bring the child back again?”

Much worse things than that can happen, thought Josefsson.

“I don’t know,” he said. “The staff didn’t notice anything, you say?”

“No. Surely they would have?”

“You’d think so,” said Josefsson, but in fact he was thinking something else. Who can be on the lookout all the time? Thinking who’s that man standing under the tree over there? Sitting in that car?

“How long does your boy say he was away?”

“He doesn’t know. He’s a child. He can’t distinguish between five minutes and fifty minutes if you ask him afterward.”

Bengt Josefsson pondered this.

“Do you believe him?” he asked.

No reply.

“

Fru Skarin?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I just don’t know.”

“Does he have, er, a lively imagination?”

“He’s a child. All children have lively imaginations if there’s nothing wrong with them.”

“Yes.”

“So what should I do?”

Bengt Josefsson looked down at the few sentences he’d jotted down on his notepad.

Two colleagues came racing past his desk.

“Robbery at the newspaper kiosk!” one of them yelled.

He could already hear the siren from one of the cars outside.

“Hello?” said Berit Skarin.

“Yes, where were we? Well, I’ve noted down what you said. Anyway, nobody’s missing. So, if you want to report it, then, er-”

“What should I report?”

That’s the point, thought Josefsson. Unlawful deprivation of liberty? No. An attempted sexual offense, or preparation for one? Well, perhaps. Or the imagination of a very young man. He evidently hadn’t come to any harm be-

“I want to take him to a doctor now,” she said, interrupting his train of thought. “I take this very seriously.”

“Yes,” said Josefsson.

“Should I take him to a doctor?”

“Have you, er, examined him yourself?”

“No. I called right after he told me.”

“Oh.”

“But I will now. Then I’ll see where we go from there.” He heard her shouting for the boy, and a reply from some distance away. “He’s watching TV,” she said. “Now he’s laughing.”

“Can I make a note of your address and phone number?” said Josefsson.

There were the sirens again. It sounded as if they were heading east. Chasing the robbers. A couple of thugs from one of the ghettos north of the town, drugged up to the eyeballs. Dangerous as hell.

“OK, thank you very much,” he said, his mind miles away, and hung up. He made his handwriting clearer in a couple of places, then put the page to one side, ready for keying into the computer. Later on he’d put his notes into the file, if he got around to it. Filed under… what? Nothing had happened. A crime waiting to be committed?

There were other things that had already happened, were happening right now.

The phone on his desk rang again, phones were ringing all over the station. Sirens outside, coming from the south. He could see the flashing blue light on the other side of the street, whirling around and around as if the officers in the patrol car were about to take off and fly over to where all the action was.

Jakob, the student, was conscious but very groggy and in a world of his own. Ringmar by his side, wondering what had happened and how. There were flowers on the bedside table. Jakob was not alone in this world.

Somebody entered the ward behind Ringmar. Could that be a flash of recognition in Jakob’s eye? Ringmar turned around.

“They said it was alright for me to come in,” said the girl, with a bunch of flowers in her hand. She seemed to be about the same age as his own daughter. Maybe they know each other, he thought, getting to his feet as she walked over to the bed, gave Jakob a cautious little hug, and then put the flowers down on the table. Jakob’s eyes were closed now; he’d probably nodded off again.