A giant smiling sausage has been erected on top of the diner; with one hand it gives a thumbs-up, with the other it covers itself with ketchup. Erik orders a burger with fries, sits down on one of the high stools at the narrow counter by the window, and looks out through the misty glass. There is a locksmith on the opposite side of the street; his Christmas decorations consist of knee-high elves frolicking among an assortment of safes, locks, and keys.
Four hours ago, Joona called to tell him they had missed Josef again. He had been in the cellar but had escaped. There was nothing to suggest that Benjamin had been there. On the contrary, preliminary DNA results indicated that Josef had been alone in the room the whole time.
A bone-deep fatigue comes over him. Josef Ek wants to harm me. He’s jealous, he hates me, he’s got it into his head that Evelyn and I have a sexual relationship, and now he’s determined to take his revenge on me. But he doesn’t know where I live. In the letter he demands that Evelyn tell him. You are going to show me where he lives, he wrote. If Josef doesn’t know where I live, he wasn’t the one who got into our apartment and dragged Benjamin out.
Erik opens his bottle of mineral water, takes a sip, and calls home. He hears his own voice on the answering machine, exhorting himself to leave a message. He cuts the connection and calls Simone’s mobile instead. She doesn’t answer.
“Hi, Simone,” he says to her voicemail. “Look, I do think you ought to accept police protection. Apparently, Josef Ek is very angry with me. But that’s it, as far as we know. He didn’t take Benjamin.”
He gulps down a mouthful of hamburger, aware suddenly of the gnawing emptiness in his stomach. He spears the crisply fried potatoes on his plastic fork, thinking about Joona’s face when he read Josef’s letter to Evelyn. It was as if the temperature in the room had fallen. The pale grey eyes became like ice, but with an uncompromising sharpness. Erik tries to recall Evelyn’s face, her exact words when she suddenly realised Josef had returned to the house. Mulling it over, Erik decides she didn’t deliberately fail to mention the secret room but had simply forgotten about it.
He eats some more of the burger, wipes his hands on the paper napkin, and makes another attempt to get hold of Simone. Not only does she need to be told that it wasn’t Josef Ek who took Benjamin, but he also wants to ask what else she can recall from the night Benjamin was abducted. Despite his relief at finding that his son is not in Josef Ek’s hands, he knows they have to start all over again, think the whole thing through from the beginning. He opens a notebook, writes Aida’s name on it, then changes his mind and tears out the sheet. It’s Simone he needs to talk to. She must remember more, he says to himself, she must have seen something. Joona had interviewed her, but she hadn’t remembered anything else. Of course, they’d been concentrating on Josef then.
His mobile phone rings and he puts down the burger, wipes his hands again, and answers without looking at the display.
“Erik Maria Bark.”
There is a dull crackling, roaring noise.
“Hello?” says Erik, more loudly this time.
Suddenly he hears a faint voice. “Dad?”
The hot oil hisses as the basket of potatoes is lowered in.
“Benjamin?” A half-dozen burgers are slapped on the grill. The telephone roars. “Hang on, I can’t hear you.”
Erik pushes his way past the customers queuing up to order and out into the car park.
“Benjamin?”
Snow is whirling around the yellow streetlamps. “Can you hear me now?” asks Benjamin, sounding close.
“Where are you? Tell me where you are!”
“I don’t know, Dad. I don’t get it, I’m lying in the boot of a car and we’ve just been driving forever.”
“Who’s taken you?”
“I woke up here. I can’t see anything, I’m thirsty—”
“Are you hurt?”
“Dad!” He sobs.
“I’m here, Benjamin.”
“What’s going on?” He sounds small and afraid.
“I’ll find you,” says Erik. “Do you know where you’re going?”
“I heard a voice just when I woke up; it was all mushy, like, he was talking through a blanket. What was it again? It was something about … a house …”
“Tell me more! What kind of house?”
“No, not just a house, a haunted house.”
“Where?”
“We’re stopping now, Dad, the car’s stopped, they’re coming,” says Benjamin, sounding terrified. “I can’t talk any more.”
Erik hears strange rummaging noises, followed by a creaking sound and then Benjamin’s sudden scream. His voice is shrill and unsteady; he sounds terribly frightened:
“Leave me alone, I don’t want to, please, I promise—”
Then silence; the connection has been broken.
Erik stares at his phone but does not use it; he doesn’t want to risk blocking another call from his son. He waits by the car, praying Benjamin will call again, tries to go over the conversation but keeps losing the thread. Benjamin’s fear stabs through his head, over and over again. He realises he has to tell Simone.