Åke Edwardson - Frozen Tracks

“And the ‘it’ you say you believed was that she’d been in a car with a strange man, is that right?”

“Basically, yes.”

“Anything else?”

“Candy, I think. I think she was given some candy.”

“How old is Ellen?”

“Four.”

“Does she speak well?

“Pretty well.”

“Has she said any more about the car? Or about the man?”

“No. But then we haven’t spent the whole evening talking about it. She said something when she came home, after I picked her up, and then I asked her something, and I started thinking, and then I called the woman from the nursery school, and then I phoned the police and… Well…”

Alinder looked at the sheet of paper in front of him. He’d noted her name and address and her day and evening phone numbers, and a summary of what she’d said. There was nothing else he could do now. But he took it seriously, as much as he could. The girl might well have been with somebody, in a real car. That was possible. Or she might just have been in a big wooden car. There was one like that at Plikta. Perhaps she’d suddenly enlarged one of her friends at the nursery school ten times over. Perhaps she’d been dreaming about candy, millions of bags of candy, just like he could dream about marvelous meals and dishes, now that eating was more important to him than sex.

“If she says anything else about, er, about the meeting, write it down and let us know,” he said.

“What happens now, then?”

“I’ve noted down everything you’ve said, and I’ll write a report on our conversation and file it.”

“Is that all?”

“What do you think we ought to do, Mrs. Sköld?”

“I’m not ‘Mrs.’ anymore.”

“What should we do?”

“I don’t know. I’ll talk to the staff at the nursery school again, and I might get back to you.”

“Good.”

“But, well, I suppose it is possible she’s made it all up. I mean, she’s not nervous or anything like that. Doesn’t seem to be frightened or worried or anything.”

Alinder didn’t respond. He glanced at his watch. He jotted down another note.

“What did you say your name was? Did you say?”

“Alinder. Janne Alinder.”

“Oh yes, thank you.”

Something occurred to him. Might as well do this properly, now that they’d started.

“Just one other thing. Check to see if there’s anything missing. If Ellen has lost anything.”

The city swished by on the other side of the big windows, just as naked this evening as this morning and yesterday and tomorrow. He was more or less in a dream, but he was doing his job perfectly. Nobody could have grounds for complaint about what he was doing.

Good afternoon, good afternoon.

Yes, I can open the center doors again, no problem.

Of course I can wait for half a minute while you come running from over there even though we should be on our way now if we’re going to stick to the schedule, but I’m not some kind of a monster who just drives off.

There were drivers like that, but he wasn’t one of them, certainly not.

People like that ought to get themselves another job. They certainly shouldn’t be driving passengers around, he thought, as he increased the speed of the windshield wipers. The rain was getting worse.

He enjoyed this route. He’d been driving it for so long, he knew every curve, every corner, every cranny.

He could drive buses as well. He also had his favorite bus routes, but he wasn’t going to tell anybody what they were. Not that anybody ever asked, but he had no intention of telling them even if they did.

Maybe he’d told the girl what they were. It was funny, but he couldn’t remember. Oh yes, he remembered now. He’d touched her, and it had felt like the down on a little bird, with the tiny bones just underneath, and he’d left his hand there, and he’d looked at his hand and it was trembling, and he knew, he knew at that very moment, as if he’d had second sight, could see into the future, what he could do with the g-g-g-girl if he left his hand there, and he’d hidden it then, hidden it inside his jacket and his pullover and his shirt, hidden it from himself and from her, and then he’d hidden his face so that she couldn’t see it. He’d opened the door for her and helped her out, and then he’d driven off. When he got home he had-

“Are we ever going to move, or what?”

He gave a start, and in his rearview mirror he could see a man almost leaning into the streetcar driver’s cab. That wasn’t allowed. The driver mus-

“It’s been red and green and purple and white ten times, so when are you going to move your fucking ass?” said the man, and he could smell the stench of alcohol through the protective glass shielding him from the horrible creature on the other side.

“

Get moving!” screamed the horrible creature.

Horns were sounding from behind.

Horns were sounding from the sides. He looked ahead and the lights changed and he-

“

Get moving for fuck’s sake!” yelled the horrible creature, grabbing hold of his cab door handle, and he took off faster than intended and something happened to the lights that shouldn’t have happened, and he went along with the streetcar as it moved forward, he wasn’t the one driving anymore, it was as if the other man was at the controls, the horrible creature smelling of alcohol, a smell seeping through into his cab, and he was suddenly scared that the police would come and stop them right here and smell the liquor, and would think he was driving while under the influence, that he of all people, but he never touched a drop, and if they thought that, that he was driving while under the influence, he’d never be allowed to drive again. That would be disastrous.

He accelerated through the intersection as if to get away from the threat hanging onto his glass door, but the lights had already changed for traffic coming from the east and north and south and he ran straight into the back of a Volvo V70 that had just turned off the main road, and the Volvo rammed into an Audi that had stopped for a red light. Another Volvo drove into the right-hand side of the streetcar. A BMW rammed into the Volvo. He let the streetcar stop of its own accord. He couldn’t touch the controls, he couldn’t move. He could hear the police sirens in the distance, coming closer.

“

Get moving!” screeched the horrible creature.

IT WAS ONLY IN EXCEPTIONAL CIRCUMSTANCES THAT JANNE ALINDER went out in a patrol car, but this was one of those occasions, and typically all hell broke loose as he drove sedately along the beautiful boulevard. The streetcar ahead of him suddenly ran amok and almost bounced over the intersection and became a sort of hard air bag for the cars that crashed into it from all directions.

“

Saatana perkele,” said Johan Minnonen, who was born in Finland and became a Swedish citizen and then a police officer, and seldom spoke a word of Finnish.

Alinder immediately called for reinforcements. It looked bad. Cars had gone up the sides of the streetcar and then fallen back down again. They didn’t need much speed for that to happen. He could hear somebody screaming. He could hear an engine that wouldn’t shut up despite being in its death throes. He could hear sirens. He could see the lights. Somebody screamed again, a woman. An ambulance appeared. It must have been just around the corner when he sent out the emergency call. A squad car raced up, and another, and a patrol car fitted with the new roof lights that spattered light out in circles over the whole county.

Nobody had died. It turned out that there was one broken arm and a few sprains and bruises caused by air bags inflating. A drunk who had been standing next to the streetcar driver’s cab had been thrown against the windshield without smashing it. On the other hand, the drunk’s forehead had been smashed, but none of his brains had run out as far as they could see.