nice kid,” he says.
“Did you find out anything about Wailord?”
“Quite a lot.”
“Like what?”
“Hang on a minute.”
Kennet removes the steaming coffee cup from the machine, snaps on a lid, and takes it and the bag containing the bun over to one of the small round plastic tables.
“Are you still there?” he asks, sitting down on a wobbly chair.
“Yes.”
“I think this is about a group of kids who are shaking Nicky down for his money and telling him they’re Pokémon characters.”
Kennet notices a man with tousled hair pushing an oversize buggy. A big girl in a pink snowsuit—too old to be pushed, Kennet thinks—reclines inside, sucking on a dummy with a tired smile on her face.
“Does this have anything to do with Benjamin?”
“The Pokémon boys? I don’t know. Maybe he tried to stop them,” says Kennet.
“We need to talk to Aida,” Simone says resolutely.
“After school, I thought.”
“What do we do now?”
“I’ve actually got an address,” says Kennet.
“For what?”
“The sea.”
“The sea?”
“That’s all I know.” He takes a sip of the coffee, breaks off a piece of the Lucia bun, and pops it in his mouth.
“Where is the sea?”
“Close to the Frihamnen,” says Kennet as he chews, “out on Loudden.”
“Can I come with you?”
“Are you ready?”
“Give me ten minutes.”
Gathering up his coffee and the rest of his bun, Kennet heads out into the very cold afternoon to pick up his car by the hospital. A cyclist darts through traffic, slaloming in between the cars. As he stops at the crossing, Kennet feels as if he has overlooked something important, as if he has seen something crucial but failed to interpret it. The traffic thunders past. He can hear a rescue vehicle somewhere in the distance. He takes a sip of coffee and watches a woman waiting on the other side of the road, her dog trembling on the end of a short leash. A truck passes just in front of him, and the ground shakes with its considerable weight. He hears someone giggling and has just registered that it doesn’t sound genuine when he feels a hard shove in his back. He takes several steps out into the road to avoid losing his balance, turns, and sees a ten-year-old girl looking at him, her eyes open wide. She must be the one who pushed me, he just has time to think. There’s no one else there. At the same moment, he hears the screech of brakes and feels an incomprehensible force hurl itself at him. Something like a gigantic hammer knocks his legs out from under him. There is a cracking sound at the back of his neck. All at once his body is soft and faraway, in free fall, and then there is darkness.
64
monday, december 14: afternoon
Erik Maria Bark is sitting at the desk in his office. A pale light finds its way in through the window that faces the empty inner courtyard. A take-away container holds the remains of a salad, and a warm two-litre bottle of Coca-Cola sits next to the desk lamp with its pink shade. Erik is studying a printout of the photo Aida sent to Benjamin. Despite having looked at it dozens of times, he cannot grasp what the subject of the picture really is.
He considers calling Simone and having her read out Aida’s message and Benjamin’s reply word for word, but then tells himself that Simone doesn’t need to hear from him at this point. He can’t understand why he was so nasty, why he told her he was having an affair with Daniella. Perhaps it was only because he longed to be forgiven by Simone while she found it so easy to distrust him.
Suddenly he hears Benjamin’s voice in his mind once again, calling from the boot of the car. Erik takes a pink capsule out of the wooden box and washes it down with the Coke. His hand has started to shake so much that he has difficulty replacing the bottle on the desk.
Benjamin was trying so hard to be grown up, not to sound afraid. But the boy must be terrified, thinks Erik, shut in the boot of a car in the dark.
How long can it take for Kennet to trace the call? Erik is irritated with himself for handing the job over to the old man, but if his father-in-law can find Benjamin, nothing else is of any importance.
He picks up the phone. He needs to call the police and get them to hurry it up. He must find out if they’ve traced the call, if they have any suspects yet. When he calls and explains why he’s calling, he’s put through to the wrong extension. He has to call again. He’s hoping to speak to Joona Linna but is put through to a detective named Fredrik Stensund, who confirms that he is involved in the preliminary investigation into the disappearance of Benjamin Bark. He is very understanding and says he has teenage children himself.
“You worry all night when they’re out, you know you have to let go, but—”
“Benjamin is not out partying,” Erik says firmly.
“No, we have had certain information which contradicts—”
“He’s been kidnapped.”
“I understand how you must be feeling—”
“But the search for my son is obviously not a priority,” Erik retorts.
There is a silence; Stensund takes several deep breaths before continuing. “I am taking what you say very seriously, and I can promise you that we are doing our best.”
“Make sure you trace the call, then,” says Erik.
“We’re working on that right now,” replies Stensund, sounding less amenable.
“Please,” Erik begs, a weak conclusion.
He sits there with the phone in his hand. They have to trace the call, he thinks. We have to have a location, a circle on a map, a direction; that’s all we have to go on. The only thing Benjamin could say was that he heard a voice.
As if it were coming from under a blanket, thinks Erik, but he isn’t sure if he’s remembering correctly. Did Benjamin really say he’d heard a voice, a mushy voice? Perhaps it was just a murmur, a sound that reminded him of a voice, without words, without meaning. Erik rubs a hand over his mouth, looks at the photograph, his eyes sweeping across the overgrown grass, the hedge, the back of the fence, the plastic basket, all enhanced, distorted by the photographer’s powerful flash. He can’t see anything new. What’s in that basket? When he leans back and closes his eyes, the image remains: the hedge and the brown fence flash in shades of pink and the yellowish-green hillock is dark blue, slowly drifting. Like a piece of fabric against a night sky, Erik thinks, and at the same moment he realises that Benjamin
