‘Who are you and what do you want?’
Children would make excellent police officers if only they were allowed to start work before they turned ten. The little girl practically filled the doorway as she stood there with her hands on her hips.
‘I’m here to see one of the teachers,’ I said.
‘Which one?’
‘Susanne.’
‘Ha! There’s no one called that here.’
She turned on her heel and ran through the cloakroom into the playroom.
‘There’s a man here! He wants to see someone called Susanne!’
I hurried after her. In my eagerness I forgot to take my shoes off. I smiled broadly and warmly towards the horrified teacher who was staring at me from across the room. There were fewer than ten children there. Some of them were sitting drawing at a table behind the teacher. A few more were playing with a car track. And then there was the girl who had met me at the door.
‘There’s no one called Susanne working here,’ the teacher said.
‘Would you like to double-check that?’ I said, still smiling. ‘Because I’m quite sure. Someone here must know her.’
The teacher shook her head slowly. I took a few steps towards her and heard the sound of someone moving off to my right. An older woman was approaching, trailing yet another child.
‘This man is looking for someone called Susanne,’ the younger woman said.
‘There’s no one of that name working here,’ the older teacher said.
‘Perhaps in a different section?’ I said.
‘There’s only one other room open during the summer,’ the older woman said. ‘There’s no Susanne there either.’
‘I might go and ask for myself,’ I said.
‘No need. I—’
I interrupted her.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘But it really is very important. Either one of you goes over to the other room and asks if anyone either is called or knows Susanne, or I do it myself. I’m a lawyer, and I’m looking for Susanne in connection with an extremely sensitive matter.’
The older woman straightened up.
‘I see,’ she said. ‘I can go and ask. But I can tell you now that you’re mistaken.’
The children watched as she disappeared the way she had come, off down a short corridor. They were no longer drawing or lying down, just sitting quite still.
‘Who’s Susanne?’ one boy asked another.
‘No one,’ the other boy whispered.
The younger teacher looked at me warily and then went over to the children who were playing with the car track. I stood where I was in the middle of the floor, as if I’d just dropped from the heavens. Perhaps I would end up regretting my excursion, but I didn’t think so. The teachers seemed cool enough, and appeared to have accepted the reason for my visit. As long as the older woman wasn’t calling the police. That wouldn’t be good.
She came back a minute or so later. I could have shouted out loud with joy. The look of surprise on her face told me all I needed to know.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Apparently you’re right. One of the teachers in the other room does know this Susanne you were asking about. She’s waiting for you out in the playground.’
She was standing in the shade of a tree. Her face reflected a mixture of suspicion and anger. I stopped a couple of metres away from her. Relief spread through my body. I recognised her from the passport photographs Lucy had found. Short hair, side parting and a birthmark on her right cheek.
‘Susanne?’ I said.
I knew that wasn’t her name, but I couldn’t remember the name of the woman in the photograph.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ she said.
Her anger gave way to another emotion just below the surface. Sheer, utter terror.
‘I’m sorry to show up like this, but you wouldn’t tell me your phone number. Or your name.’
She shook her head hard.
‘I was very clear about why. I find it unbelievable that you can’t respect that.’
Should I be feeling guilty? I didn’t think so. To a very large extent she herself was responsible for the situation she was in. Besides, she bore a lot of the blame for what had happened to Mio. The more I thought about it, the harder it was to understand her decision not to go to the police.
‘I don’t give a damn if you find it unbelievable,’ I said. ‘Can’t you just start by telling me your name? Or am I going to have to ask your colleagues? At the same time as I tell them about the jewellery you stole, perhaps?’
She lowered her gaze and leaned heavily against the tree-trunk. From a distance we probably looked like a couple who were in the middle of breaking up. She looked so tired she couldn’t stand up, I looked so agitated I couldn’t stand still.
‘Nadja,’ she said. ‘My name is Nadja Carlsson.’
That name had been on Lucy’s list, but not in the police’s preliminary investigation, just as Susanne, or Nadja, had told me before.
‘I’ve got a few more questions about Mio,’ I said.
‘I doubt I’ll be able to help. I didn’t really work with him that much.’
‘But you might know if he suffers from epilepsy?’
She looked up quickly.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He did. Or does. If he’s alive.’
Of course he was alive.
‘Did it cause him much trouble? Did he often have fits?’
‘No, thank goodness. It only happened once here at preschool, I think.’
I nodded to myself. I was wondering why whoever had removed Mio from Rakel’s house had left his medication behind. Stesolid isn’t the sort of thing you can just pick up from the chemist. You need a prescription, and a prescription requires a doctor. The sort of thing you’d prefer to avoid with an abducted child. A surge of anxiety was making me breathe harder. Surely the reason why we’d found the medicine couldn’t be that Mio was dead? Because dead children don’t have fits?
I shook my head to clear my thoughts.
‘Does the name Herman Nilson mean anything to you?’
‘No.’
I took my phone out and Googled a picture of him. There was one on his employer’s website.
‘Sure?’
She looked at the screen.
‘Oh, him!’
Bloody hell.
‘So you do know who he is. How come?’
‘He came here to pick up his godson a few times. Extremely arrogant. All the staff used to talk about him. Handsome and horrible. It was so damn obvious that he wanted everyone to know he wasn’t the sort of person who lived in Flemingsberg.’
Sad words. Did I give the same impression? I hoped not, then realised that was something I was going to have to work at.
‘Did he have a relationship with Rakel?’
Nadja looked surprised.
‘No, I don’t think so. He’d never have been interested in anyone who worked here. Nor us in him, to be fair.’
‘Whose godfather was he?’
‘I think the boy was called Sebbe.’
‘Sebbe. Sebastian? Surname?’
‘No idea. He wasn’t in my room.’
Sebbe. Sebastian. The same nagging feeling I’d had with the address in Årsta havsbad. I knew someone called Sebastian. A child. One of Belle’s friends? An image of a red-haired boy at her preschool flashed through my mind. An unnecessary thought, seeing as that Sebastian could never have set foot in Mio’s preschool.
‘Actually, he had some . . . problems too,’ Susanne said.
I perked up.
‘Sebastian?’
‘He wasn’t here long. There was some talk about why his parents had changed preschool, and how he ended up with us in Flemingsberg. He was always so tired, always seemed to have hurt himself somewhere or other. Mostly his head. He had bruises as well. I think his former preschool reported his parents. We were all convinced they used to beat him.’
When your mind doesn’t have a clear thread to follow, everything becomes equally important. Or equally unimportant. Was what I’d just heard relevant? I didn’t think so. Even so, I said: ‘What about the staff here? What happened with the report? You must have reacted as well?’
‘Oh yes, we did. But I wasn’t involved. Anyway, the family moved away from the city early last autumn. By then Sebbe was in a bad way.’
‘Strange,’ I said.
‘What’s so strange about that? They must have been so ashamed.’
‘Where did they move to?’ I said.
‘Abroad, I don’t know where. It all happened very quickly. We weren’t really told anything about the move. Presumably they wanted to get away from the Swedish authorities so they could go on abusing their child.’
I felt a pang in my stomach to hear her talk like that. Belle has made me soppy; I can’t stand people who hit their children. Not that I used to think it was okay either – it’s more that my dislike of it has been enhanced. Dramatically.
Nadja straightened up.
‘I have to go back inside. The others will be wondering where I’ve got to.’
‘How can I get hold of you in future? If you don’t want to see me here again, I suggest you give me a telephone number.’
She grimaced.
‘Isn’t that blackmail?’
‘I don’t think so. But if you want to check, you can always ask the police when you go and tell them who took Mio.’
She turned as white as a sheet.
‘Never,’ she whispered.
I decided not to press the point. Enough people had died. No sooner had the thought occurred to me than I started looking round. If I was being followed, then I had just signed Nadja’s death warrant. Which got me wondering why she was still alive. Elias had been found dead in Rakel’s house. But Nadja had been left alive. I couldn’t help wondering: for how long? If Rakel was the murderer, her choice of victims was inconsistent.
It isn’t her, I thought. There’s someone else behind her, making the decisions. And that’s when it all ends in blood and death.
‘Give me your phone number and you won’t see me again,’ I said.
She rattled off her number and then headed back towards the school.
I hesitated, but only for a moment.
‘Hang on,’ I said.
She turned round.
‘Have you got a friend or relative outside the city you could go and stay with for a few days?’
She was just as pale as before.
‘I could sign myself off sick,’ she said. ‘And go and visit my grandmother.’
I nodded.
‘Do that,’ I said.
‘How long for?’
How could I answer that?
‘At least a week.’
She disappeared, and I walked back to the car. The road was quiet, no traffic at all. That would make it easier for me to see if I was being tailed.
I’d just closed the car door when Lucy called.
‘Martin, you need to take the Porsche back to the garage again.’
‘Why?’
‘It still smells terrible. A different sort of terrible, but still. I went down to get something from the glove compartment and . . .’
‘You didn’t drive it, did you?’ I almost yelled.
‘No, I just told you. I went to get something from the glove compartment. Either way – the car stinks. Take it back.’
‘Later,’ I said. ‘I thought I’d go and collect Belle from preschool.’
‘So early?’
‘Mm. I might take her to the office. Or go and get an ice-cream.’
As I was driving back into the city I thought about what Lucy had said. I’d driven the Porsche back from the garage myself. It hadn’t smelled then. Or had it?
Lucy’s voice echoed in my head.
It still smells terrible A different sort of terrible . . .
My mouth went completely dry. My hands clenched the wheel.
A different sort of terrible. Naturally, anything at all could be making the smell. But not in my car. Not in my garage. Not that day, that week.
I called Lucy.
‘Meet me in the garage in fifteen minutes.’
‘Why . . .?’
‘Just do as I say.’
‘What’s happened?’
I swallowed, then swallowed again, and chose my words carefully.
‘I think we might have found Elias.’