Camilla Lackberg - The Ice Child

‘Helga! Helgaaaa!’

She closed her eyes as she stood next to the worktop. Einar’s voice filled every nook and cranny of the house, enveloping her and making her clench her fists. But she no longer had the will to flee. He had beat it out of her years ago. Even though he was now helpless and completely dependent on her, she was incapable of leaving him. That wasn’t something she considered any more. Because where would she go?

‘HELGAAAA!’

His voice was the only thing left that still retained its former strength. The illnesses and then the amputation of both legs as a result of neglecting his diabetes had robbed him of his physical strength. But his voice was as commanding as ever. It continued to force her into submission just as effectively as his fists used to do. The memories of all those blows, the cracked ribs and throbbing bruises, were still so vivid that the mere sound of his voice could provoke terror and the fear that this time she might not survive.

She straightened up, took a deep breath, and called out:

‘I’m coming!’

Briskly she climbed the stairs. Einar didn’t like to be kept waiting, he never had, but she didn’t understand why there was always such a hurry. He had nothing else to do but sit and grumble, his complaints ranging from the weather to the government.

‘It’s leaking,’ he said when she came into the room.

She didn’t reply. Simply rolled up her sleeves and went over to him to find out how great the damage might be. She knew he enjoyed this sort of situation. He could no longer use force to hold her captive. Instead he relied on his need for care and attention, which she should have bestowed on the children she’d never had, the ones he had beaten out of her body. Only one had lived, and there were times when she thought it might have been best if that child had also been expelled in a rush of blood between her legs. Yet she didn’t know what she would have done if she hadn’t had him. Jonas was her life, her everything.

Einar was right. The colostomy bag was leaking. And not just a little bit. Half his shirt was soaked through.

‘Why didn’t you get here faster?’ he said. ‘Didn’t you hear me calling? I suppose you had something more important to do.’ He glared at her with his watery eyes.

‘I was in the bathroom. I came as quick as I could,’ she said, unbuttoning his shirt. Carefully she pulled his arms out of the sleeves, not wanting to get even more of his body wet.

‘I’m freezing.’

‘I’ll get you a clean shirt. I just need to wash you off first,’ she said with all the patience she could muster.

‘I’m going to catch pneumonia.’

‘I’ll be fast. I don’t think you’ll catch cold.’

‘Oh, so now you’re a nurse too, huh? I suppose you even know better than the doctors.’

She said nothing. He was just trying to throw her off balance. He liked it best when she cried, when she begged and pleaded with him to stop. Then he was filled with a great sense of calm and satisfaction that made his eyes shine. But today she wasn’t going to give him that pleasure. These days she usually managed to avoid such scenes. Most of her tears had been shed years ago.

Helga went into the bathroom to fill a basin with water. The whole procedure had become routine: fill the basin with water and soap, wet the rag, wipe off his soiled body, put him into a clean shirt. She suspected that Einar purposely made the bag leak. According to his doctor, it was impossible for it to leak so frequently. Yet the bags kept on leaking. And she kept on cleaning up her husband.

‘The water’s too cold.’ Einar flinched as the rag rubbed at his stomach.

‘I’ll make it warmer.’ Helga stood up, went back to the bathroom, put the basin under the tap and turned on the hot water. Then she returned to the bedroom.

‘Ow! It’s scalding! Are you trying to burn me, you bitch?’ Einar shouted so loud that she jumped. But she didn’t say a word, just picked up the basin, carried it out, and filled it with cold water, this time making sure that it was only slightly warmer than body temperature. Then she carried it back to the bedroom. This time he didn’t comment when the rag touched his skin.

‘When is Jonas coming?’ he asked as she wrung out the rag, turning the water brown.

‘I don’t know. He’s working. He went over to the Andersson place. One of their cows is about to calve, but the calf is in the wrong position.’

‘Send him up here when he arrives,’ said Einar, closing his eyes.

‘Okay,’ said Helga quietly, as she wrung out the rag again.

Gösta saw them coming down the hospital corridor. They were hurrying towards him, and he had to fight his impulse to flee in the opposite direction. He knew that what he was about to tell them was written all over his face, and he was right. As soon as Helena met his eye, she fumbled to grab Markus’s arm and then sank to the floor. Her scream echoed through the corridor, silencing all other sounds.

Ricky stood there as if frozen in place. His face white, he had stopped behind his mother while Markus carried on walking. Gösta swallowed hard and went to meet them. But Markus passed him with unseeing eyes, as if he hadn’t seen the same bad news in Gösta’s expression that his wife had seen. He kept on walking along the corridor with no apparent goal in mind.

Gösta didn’t move to stop him. Instead, he went over to Helena and gently lifted her to her feet. Then he put his arms around her. That was not something he usually did. He had let only two people into his life: his wife, and the little girl who had lived with them for a brief time and who now, through the inexplicable workings of fate, had come into his life again. So it didn’t feel particularly natural for him to be standing there, embracing a woman whom he’d known for such a short time. But ever since Victoria disappeared, Helena had rung him every day, alternating between hope and despair, anger and grief, to ask about her daughter. Yet he’d been able to give her only more questions and more worry. And now he had finally extinguished all hope. Holding her in his arms and allowing her to weep on his chest was the least he could do.

Gösta looked over Helena’s head to meet Ricky’s eye. There was something odd about the boy. For the past few months he had been the family’s mainstay, keeping them going. But now he stood there in front of Gösta, his face white and his eyes empty, looking like the young boy he actually was. And Gösta knew that Ricky had lost for ever the innocence granted only to children, the belief that everything would be okay.

‘Can we see her?’ asked Ricky, his voice husky. Gösta felt Helena stiffen. She pulled away, wiped her tears on the sleeve of her coat and gave him a pleading look.

Gösta fixed his gaze on a distant point. How could he tell them that they wouldn’t want to see Victoria? And why.

Her entire study was cluttered with papers: typed notes, Post-it notes, newspaper articles, and copies of photographs. It looked like total chaos, but Erica thrived in this sort of working environment. When she was writing a book, she wanted to be surrounded by all the information she’d gathered, all her thoughts on the case.

This time, however, it felt as if she might be in over her head. She had accumulated plenty of background details and facts, but it had all been obtained from second-hand sources. The quality of her books and her ability to describe a murder case and answer all the questions readers might have relied on her ability to secure first-hand accounts. Thus far she had always been successful. Sometimes it had been easy to persuade those involved to talk to her. Some had even been eager to talk, happy for the media attention and a moment in the spotlight. But occasionally it had taken time and she’d been forced to cajole the person, explaining why she wanted to dredge up the past and how she intended to tell the story. In the end she had always won out. Until now. She was getting nowhere with Laila. During her visits to the prison she had struggled to get Laila to talk about what happened, but in vain. Laila was happy to talk to her, just not about the murder.