Åke Edwardson - Frozen Tracks

He touched her again. The man on the radio was saying something. He found it difficult to breathe, rolled down the window, and found some air he could breathe. He touched the girl again, that down, all those tiny bones. She said something.

Evening was closing in. Clear outlines. The sun lingered there between the houses, like a memory that Winter breathed in. He could feel the late autumn air between drags as he stood smoking. Winter was closing in. He looked down on Vasaplatsen, and watched people heading off, gradually leaving the square deserted. Everybody was going home, by bus, streetcar, or car, and leaving him and his family behind, here where they belonged.

Angela hadn’t said anything about buying a house for ages, and he knew she felt as he did, always had. They were city dwellers, and the city was for them. The city of stone, the heart of the city. The heart of stone, he thought, taking another pull on his cigarillo. A beautiful heart of stone. It was easier to live here. In the classy suburbs down toward the sea you became worn out more quickly, past it, over the hill. For God’s sake! He’d turned the corner already. Forty-two. Or forty-three. He couldn’t remember right then, and that was just as well.

He shivered, standing on the balcony in his shirtsleeves, the cigarillo in his hand fading away just like the evening out there. A few young people sauntered past down below, full of self-confidence. He could hear them laughing even at this distance. They were all set for a good time.

He went back in. Elsa saw him coming and presented him with the drawing she’d made. A bird flying in a blue sky. These last few weeks all her drawings had been of blue skies and yellow sands, green fields and then lots of flowers in every color in her crayon box. Nonstop summer. Autumn hadn’t sunk in for Elsa yet. He’d taken her down to the park and helped her to collect fallen leaves, carried them back home, dried them. But she’d put off depicting autumn till the very end. Just as well.

“A bird!” she said.

“What kind of a bird?” he asked.

She seemed to be thinking it over.

“A gull,” she said.

“Let’s let the bird have a laugh,” he said to Elsa, and burst out laughing himself. “Ha-ha-ha-ha.” She looked a bit frightened at first, but then she couldn’t stop herself from giggling.

Winter picked up a crayon and a blank sheet of paper, and drew something that could just possibly be construed as a seagull laughing. There was even a name for this gull, and he announced it in the top right-hand corner of the picture. “Blackie the Blackhead.” His bequest to posterity. The first drawing he’d made for thirty years.

“It looks like a flying piglet,” said Angela.

“Yes, isn’t it amazing? A pig that can laugh and fly as well.”

“But pigs can fly,” Elsa said.

They were sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of red wine each. Elsa was asleep. Winter had made some anchovy sandwiches, which they’d just finished eating.

“Those things make you thirsty,” he said, getting up for some more water.

“I bumped into Bertil on our ward today,” said Angela.

“Yes, he was there.”

Angela rubbed the base of her nose with her finger. He could see a faint shadow under one of her eyes, only the one. She was tired, and so was he. Not excessively so, but the way you feel after a day’s work. She couldn’t always relax at home and forget about her job as a doctor, but she was better at it than he was. Still, he was better than he used to be-not good, but better. He often used to sit with his laptop, working on a case until he fell asleep in his chair. He was no longer that solitary, and he didn’t miss the old ways.

“That boy got a nasty blow,” she said. “He could have died.”

“Like the other two.”

She nodded. He could see the shadow under her eye deepen when she bent forward. When she leaned back it almost disappeared.

Their… everyday work overlapped. He wasn’t sure what to call it. Their professional activities, perhaps. Was that preordained? He sometimes thought so. When they first met Angela had just decided to study medicine. He’d recently joined the CID as a raw recruit.

Nowadays she saw right into his world, and he into hers. The injured and dying and sometimes even the dead came from his world into hers, and he would follow them, and then everybody would move back and forth between the two worlds, just like Bertil earlier that day, who’d bumped into Angela when he’d been trying to extract some words from a battered body that Angela was simultaneously trying to heal. Fucking hell. He drank the remains of his red wine. She poured some water into his glass. The radio was mumbling away on the counter. It was almost night.

“They seem to be in a bind at the nursery school,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Lots of children and not many staff.”

“More and more of one, and fewer and fewer of the other.”

“Yes.”

“Is there something in particular that made you think of that just now?”

“Well, this morning I suppose, when I dropped off Elsa. They didn’t seem to be able to keep an eye on all the children.”

“Is that the police officer in you talking?”

“If it is, doesn’t that make it all the more important? All the more serious? The police officer in me sees the shortcomings in the security.”

“Shortcomings in the security? You sound like you’re responsible for President Bush’s safety.”

“Bush? He can look after himself. It’s those around him that need protecting.”

“You know what I mean.”

“And what I mean is that you can’t risk a child wandering off. There was a little boy who ran through a gap in a hedge and would have disappeared if it hadn’t been for the fence on the other side.”

“But Erik, that’s why the fence is there. So that the children can’t get out. Can’t disappear.”

“But nobody noticed him wandering off through the bushes.”

“They don’t need to worry about that. The staff knows there’s a fence on the other side.”

“So there’s no problem, is that it?”

“I didn’t say that. I seem to remember saying a couple of minutes ago that there are more and more children and fewer and fewer staff. Of course that’s a problem, for heaven’s sake.” She took a sip of water. “A big problem. In lots of ways.”

“And that brings us back, well, to security again,” he said. “What a responsibility it is for the ridiculously few staff. Keeping an eye on all those kids as they go toddling off in all directions.”

“Hmm.”

“When they go out on a trip. If they dare to go on outings at all. They don’t seem to want to risk it anymore.” He stroked his chin, making a rasping noise. “And they have good reason not to.”

He fingered the wine bottle, but resisted the temptation to pour himself another glass. She looked at him.

“You know too much about all the dangers lurking out there,” she said.

“So do you, Angela. You know all the things that can make people sick.”

“Is it anything in particular, this business of security at the nursery school?” she wondered.

“It’s really a matter of children and their safety in general,” he said. “OK, maybe I do know too much about the potential dangers. So would you if you stood outside a children’s playground and took a careful look at what was going on. Maybe you’d notice somebody walking around and devoting an unusual amount of attention to the kids. Types like that often hang around a nursery school as well. Or outside a school at dismissal. Or they might be sitting in their cars watching the girls play handball or volleyball. Gentlemen who get into their fancy cars after work or the latest board meeting and park outside the schoolyard with the morning paper over their knee and their hands around their cocks when the girls jump up under the basket.”