IT WAS THE first day after Midsummer, and Sandra put Erik in the back seat to drive him to day care in Visby before she went on to work. The call with Kerstin had continued well into the small hours. Sandra felt tired and worn-out. Above all she was afraid.
The pieces of the jigsaw had slowly fallen into place, and together Kerstin and Sandra had managed to create a complete picture of what had happened that January afternoon four years ago, as well as what had followed. Of course they could have gone to the police with it, and of course the police would have been forced to take the accusations seriously and start an investigation. This would probably have shaken Hallin up a fair bit, but it would have been enough for him to deny everything completely and the investigation would have collapsed like a house of cards. Plus there was the fact that they would never persuade Jeanette to join them on that approach, and she was the only one who could testify as a witness to the accident. Everything that Kerstin knew or thought she knew was hearsay, apart from the grainy photos that possibly indicated something, but didn’t actually prove anything. Not even the money was around to support the theories that they could have championed without Jeanette’s help.
In summary, filing a police report wouldn’t be of any great use, but there were other ways. And now she had Kerstin with her on the journey, and that was a tremendous relief. Not least because Kerstin had filled in the gaps in Sandra’s reasoning and corrected the errors, lending far more weight to their future plans for Hallin.
So far, everything was under control, but the same errors had made her think that she would be able to corner Hallin at no risk to herself. With that kind of attitude, she might have met the same fate as Peter Norling, and that was a frightening prospect for the future, to put it mildly.
She had brushed aside those lilies as a form of minor, crude encouragement to withdraw her demands for support payments, but Hallin had succeeded with his ridiculous scare tactics. Sandra was beginning to feel really frightened, almost terrified. Hallin was clearly not a man to be toyed with, and Sandra had pushed it too far. She had a small child to care for—nothing could be allowed to happen to her.
That was what filled Sandra’s thoughts as she shifted down a gear to third; Erik was singing in the back seat and she eased her foot off the accelerator as she entered the bend by the ravine. Coming towards her from the other end was a lorry, so she braked slightly to be on the safe side.
What the hell? It seemed like her brakes weren’t working properly. Oh well, no harm done—she was already going slow enough that nobody would be in danger. She had her right foot on the brake pedal, which meant that her speed wasn’t increasing at any rate. The two vehicles passed each other without difficulty and the lorry vanished in her rearview mirror. Erik finished Little Ida’s Summer Song and moved on to Pippi Longstocking. Both were fixtures in the rather unoriginal singing repertoire of the beautifully voiced children at the final assembly before the kindergarten’s summer holidays a couple of weeks ago.
When Sandra exited the second bend, there was a short straight lying ahead of her before a long downhill section. She tried again—several times—but the brakes really were not working. And now she had reached the crest of the hill, and her speed was guaranteed to pick up on the run downhill—she had no idea how much, but it was clear to her that she would be going faster than she felt comfortable with.
And that was exactly how it was: the speedometer crept up from 30 to 40 to 50 mph. “And all the sweet mosquitoes, I want them too,” Erik sang while panic took hold of Sandra. Over and over, she pushed the pedal to the floor without the brakes responding. What the hell was she meant to do?
When she reached the bottom of the hill she was doing well over fifty, and that was much too fast because she was about to reach the crossroads where there was a stop sign, and where she could already see that there were cars approaching from left and right. She needed to bring the car to a halt—how was she going to do that?
She vainly pumped on the brake pedal, but the brake system did nothing—it was definitely not working. Erik’s song drowned out her own thoughts and panic took hold. There was one thing she could do to avoid a crash up at the crossroads. Granted, it meant putting her and Erik in danger, but it wasn’t as serious as the alternative. She had to leave the road. It was lined by ditches that weren’t all that deep. It would be okay. It had to be.
But doing over fifty—would it definitely be okay? She imagined wrecking the car and having to call for roadside assistance and take an ambulance and arrive late for work. Erik continued to screech away unconcernedly about tanned legs and freckles, while unintelligible thoughts rushed through Sandra’s head. She swore silently and struck the palms of her hands against the wheel.
And then she thought of it. It was so obvious . . . Fear had paralysed her and indecision had almost sent her into the crossroads with Erik sitting innocently in the back seat. She was such an idiot, she thought to herself as she pressed the clutch and shifted down to first so that the engine brake kicked in.
Then she drove the car calmly and in a controlled manner into the ditch, without causing any injury to life or property.