years old. If she’d been anywhere close by, she would have showed up sometime during the day. If nothing else, she would have come home when she got hungry. So she must have got lost. Or …’
He left the word dangling in the air.
‘It’s such a strange coincidence,’ said Patrik. Thoughts he didn’t want to acknowledge kept creeping into his mind.
‘I know. The same farm,’ said Gösta, nodding. ‘And the girl is the same age. It’s impossible not to think about that.’
‘I assume we’re not working solely on the premise that she got lost. Right?’
Patrik was careful not to look at the parents as he spoke.
‘Right,’ said Gösta. ‘As soon as possible we’ll start talking to all the neighbours around here, at least those who live along the road leading to the farm. We need to find out whether they saw anything last night or today. But first we need to focus on the search. It gets dark a lot sooner now that it’s August, and I can’t stand the thought of her sitting somewhere in the woods, all alone and scared. Mellberg wants us to contact the media, but I think it would be better to wait.’
‘Good God, yes. But of course that’s what he’d want,’ said Patrik with a sigh.
Their boss was looking quite full of himself as he welcomed the volunteers who were starting to arrive.
‘Okay, we need to get organized. I brought along a map of the area surrounding the farm,’ said Patrik, and Gösta’s face lit up.
‘Let’s divide the search area into sections,’ he said, taking the map from Patrik.
He placed it on the patio table, took a pen from his shirt pocket, and began drawing.
‘What do you think? Is this about the right size section for a group? If we assign three or four people to each group?’
‘Sure, that’s good,’ said Patrik, nodding.
Over the past few years he and Gösta had worked well together, and even though Patrik’s usual partner was Martin Molin, he enjoyed teaming up with the older police officer. That had not been the case back in the days when Gösta’s partner was Ernst, their now deceased colleague. But it turned out it actually was possible to teach an old dog new tricks. Gösta’s mind still had a tendency to drift to the golf course instead of focusing on police work, but when it really mattered, like now, his mind was razor-sharp and completely focused.
‘Want to give everyone a briefing?’ asked Patrik. ‘Or do you want me to do it?’
He didn’t want to tread on his colleague’s toes by taking over.
‘You do it,’ said Gösta. ‘The main thing is to prevent Bertil from saying anything.’
Patrik nodded. It was seldom a good idea to allow Mellberg to speak to the public. Invariably he’d upset or offend someone, and they’d have to waste time on crisis-management instead of getting on with the task at hand.
He glanced over at Nea’s parents, who were now standing in the middle of the farmyard, still holding on to each other.
‘I’ll go say hello to the parents first,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll brief everybody who’s here so far, and we’ll have to repeat the briefing as more people arrive. Volunteers are going to be turning up the whole time, so it’ll be impossible to get everyone together at once. And we need to see about getting the search under way as soon as possible.’
He cautiously approached the girl’s parents. It was always difficult to deal with family members at times like this.
‘I’m Patrik Hedström. From the police,’ he said, shaking hands with them. ‘As you can see, we’ve started bringing in volunteers for the search party, and I’m planning to give them a quick run-down on what’s happening so we can begin the search.’
He realized he sounded very official, but that was the only way he could keep his own emotions in check and focus on what needed to be done.
‘We’ve called our friends, and Peter’s parents, who are in Spain, said they’d be here,’ Eva explained quietly. ‘We told them it wasn’t necessary, but they’re terribly worried.’
‘We have search dogs on the way from Uddevalla,’ said Patrik. ‘They’ll need an item that belongs to your daughter …’
‘Nea,’ said Eva, swallowing hard. ‘Her name is actually Linnea, but we call her Nea.’
‘Nea. Nice name. Do you have something belonging to Nea that the dogs can sniff so they’ll be able to track her scent?’
‘The clothes she wore yesterday are in the hamper. Would that do?’
Patrik nodded.
‘Perfect. Could you go and get them? And would you mind making some coffee for the volunteers?’
He could hear how stupid it sounded to suggest serving coffee, but he had two reasons for making the request. He wanted to be undisturbed while he was giving the volunteers instructions, and he wanted to keep the parents occupied. That usually made things easier.
‘Shouldn’t I go with them?’ said Peter. ‘On the search, I mean?’
‘We need you to stay here. When we find her, we have to know where you are, so it’s best if you stay here at the farm. We’ll have more than enough volunteers out there.’
Peter seemed to hesitate, so Patrik placed his hand on the man’s shoulder.
‘I know how hard it must be to stay here and wait. But believe me, that’s the most useful thing you can do.’
‘Okay,’ said Peter quietly. Then he and Eva headed for the house.
Patrik gave a loud whistle to draw the attention of the three dozen or so people who had already gathered in the farmyard. A man in his twenties who was filming the scene stuffed his mobile in his pocket.
‘In a few minutes we’ll be sending you off to start searching. Every minute counts when such a young child is missing. We’re looking for Linnea, known as Nea, who is four years old. We don’t know exactly how long she’s been missing, but her parents haven’t seen her since they put her to bed last night around eight o’clock. Each thought she was with the other parent all day today, an unfortunate misunderstanding, so it wasn’t until about an hour ago that they discovered she was missing. One of the theories we’re working on, and it’s the most likely one, is that the little girl has got lost in the woods.’
He pointed towards Gösta, who was still standing next to the patio table with the map spread out in front of him.
‘We’re going to divide you up into groups of three or four, and then my colleague Gösta will assign you to a specific area. We don’t have any extra maps to give you, so you’ll have to do the best you can. Perhaps use your mobile phone to take a picture of your section on the map so you can keep tabs on your search area.’
‘We can also pull up a GPS map of the area,’ said a bald man, holding up his phone. ‘If anyone needs a good app, come and see me before we leave, and I’ll show you which
