ON TUESDAY, the fourth day after Erik’s disappearance, Sandra was so hyped up that she struggled to sit still. Her body protested—it needed to rest when it was awake, and above all else it needed to sleep at night. But she knew that if she stopped this work, if she allowed herself to sleep, she wouldn’t be able to get up again. In that case she might as well lie down in bed and await the final news, and that would be akin to giving up.
She thought about Kerstin, who had also had to wait four days for something that would later turn out to be news of a death. Those days must have been unbearably long and comfortless, and Kerstin had been completely alone. Like Jeanette in a way, abandoned by the one she had otherwise shared her troubled times with. She had waited for days and weeks, experienced loving and longing, which then transformed into hatred; she had felt her body and soul breaking down, before finding out more than four years later that everything she had thought and felt had been wrong.
At least Sandra was surrounded by people who loved and cared for her, even if each and every one of them had their own suffering to contend with.
After having spent the best part of the night writing, she had to get some exercise and breathe some fresh air. It was raining again, but that didn’t matter—the gloomy weather reflected her state of mind. Everything had gone to hell, and she only had herself to blame. The knowledge that it was her own stupid ideas and conclusion, her own naive approach that had put them all in this situation was a dreadful thing to live with.
She couldn’t even bring herself to speculate how Erik was doing. Either he was alive or he wasn’t—she didn’t allow herself to go any deeper than that. Not right now, when she might run into someone else at any moment. She wanted to be alone in the dark when she unleashed that particular worry.
She pulled on her anorak and walked to work. It was very early in the morning, but there was always someone in the newsroom, no matter what time it was. The odd time of day meant she didn’t risk running into more than one or two of her colleagues, which meant she would avoid having to endure all her colleagues’ apologetic looks aimed at her at once.
It was just the head of news who was in, and he was tactful enough not to inquire after her emotional state. He settled for asking whether there was anything he could do, or anything new to report, but there wasn’t. She glanced through the day’s headlines and reviewed the pieces about Erik. She made sure that the serial was running as it was supposed to, and that it was being given the prominence it needed. Her eye settled on Kerstin’s name, which reminded her that Kerstin had asked her a favour.
She couldn’t remember what it was. Kerstin had rung at some point over the weekend, and she should probably have dealt with whatever it was sooner. But the days had merged into one, and nothing seemed all that important any longer. Oh yes, she reminded herself—the serial was important. Whatever the outcome of the awful thing that was happening just now, the book would avenge Erik. It would get redress for her, too, as well as for Kerstin and Karl-Erik. Jeanette and Peter Norling deserved to have their story told; not everything was black and white.
Peter Norling—that was it. Sandra had promised to find out whether he owned any properties, and that was no more difficult than checking up on him in the InfoTorg database. The head of news was already at his computer, so she asked him to do it for her. It was quick to accomplish—Sandra took a photo of the page of results and forwarded it to Kerstin. Then she set off home again to carry on writing.
She changed her mind en route however and decided that she wanted to see whether Hallin was really under surveillance with her own eyes. Maybe that policeman had never believed her, and had only been playing along to calm her down. Maybe they didn’t have the necessary resources. And maybe they had called off the operation when the surveillance had turned up nothing. Or because there was no longer any hope of Erik being found alive.
Four hours, Sandra thought to herself. It was something she was sure she had heard in these situations. If the child wasn’t found within four hours, the chances of doing so before it was too late minimised drastically.
It had been almost four days.
There were no cars on the street outside Hallin’s house that might contain surveillance officers. Sandra preferred not to think that the policeman had lied straight to her face, but perhaps that was the way they dealt with unstable family members. Or perhaps they were busy curtain-twitching somewhere nearby, so well concealed that not even Sandra—who knew what she was looking for—could manage to spot them.
Then she remembered that what he had actually said was that they’d had eyes on Hallin for forty-eight hours without spotting anything suspicious. That didn’t necessarily mean that they would incur the expense of another forty-eight hours of man-marking. They had probably done their jobs, but now the Hallin-trail had gone cold, and inquiries had been directed elsewhere.
Sandra felt winded, and she sat down on the kerb. She knew that it was Hallin who had staged the disappearance, but her theories didn’t have enough credibility for the police to put everything else to one side. She knew that, and it was in a way understandable that they weren’t listening too much to single points of view, but were instead justifying their methods on the basis of their experience. And if you thought about it, it might even be the right approach in this case, given that if Hallin hadn’t behaved suspiciously then Erik was either dead or something else, entirely different from what Sandra imagined, had befallen him. The top priority was finding him, and Hallin didn’t seem to have any plans to lead them to the right place.
That was what was going through Sandra’s head as she sat there despairing, watching raindrops splatter onto the asphalt, creating trickles of water that combined to form torrenting streams gushing down the street. She felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up, thinking that it might be a police officer who had caught sight of her and was going to ask her to leave.
To Sandra’s surprise, it was Hallin’s wife, standing there in her dressing gown beneath an open umbrella.
“You shouldn’t be sitting out here in the rain,” she said. “Come inside and warm up over a cup of coffee.”
“No,” Sandra said in horror, standing up. “That’s out of the question.”
She had obviously seemed to be angling for it, sitting here in the pouring rain looking vulnerable. It wasn’t even six o’clock yet—she’d not given a thought to the fact that someone might spot her from inside the house.
“I insist,” the woman said with a smile, although at their last meeting she had not been particularly accommodating.
“Absolutely not,” Sandra said firmly. “I was just leaving.”
“But why did you come here? If you haven’t got anything particular to do, I mean?”
“I . . .” Sandra began.
She couldn’t think how she was going to get out of this. What on earth had she been thinking when she had sat down outside Hallin’s house, of all places?
“I understand,” said Gunilla Hallin. “You want to see Jan.”
“No,” Sandra countered. “I was just out and . . .”
That sentence didn’t have a predetermined end to it either, but fortunately she was interrupted.
“I’m sorry for my behaviour last time we met. For slamming the door in your face. It was unnecessary. I don’t have anything against you as such. It’s Jan I ought to be angry with. Am angry with.”
Sandra nodded with gritted teeth, mostly feeling self-conscious. She had no desire to even brush up against that subject, let alone discuss the presumed extramarital affair with the rapist’s wife. The time when Sandra had thought that she could reach Hallin through his wife was over. The last—and only—attempt had resulted in disastrous consequences.
“I promised I would never look him up again,” said Sandra. “And I intend to keep that promise, so I’ll go now. I don’t know how . . . I don’t know why I ended up here. I’m sorry.”
She nodded in farewell and started to walk away.
“I’m sorry about the thing with the boy,” the woman called out behind her. “I hope it works out.”
Sandra half-turned around to avoid seeming too obviously rude.
“Thanks,” she said, half-jogging away from the embarrassing situation.
But something good might have come out of the unplanned meeting anyway, she thought to herself. Gunilla Hallin had received the message loud and clear that Sandra wasn’t going to bother them again. Even if what had just happened wasn’t the most successful example of Sandra’s intentions in that regard. She could hardly have missed Sandra’s despair as she sat there, either—staring emptily into space in the rain. That was something that in all certainty would reach her husband, with an implied wish that the boy would be released.
Just as long as it wasn’t too late.
Four days of this suffering was an inconceivable period of time. Sandra didn’t know how much longer she could cope. At the same time, she had brought this on herself. All she could do was stand there and take it, she thought to herself as the rain whipped her face. She had to hold fast until she died in battle.