“No, but I’m being honest and serious now. I’d love to hand out loads of cautions, but I also want to keep my job. You can’t just march up and fling a car door open. Or arrest somebody for looking shady and standing under a tree next to a children’s playground.”

“But you think about it.”

“It struck me this morning at the nursery school just how vulnerable little kids are, and older ones too, come to think of it. All that watching, and all that goes with it. And what it leads to. But the danger as well. Real danger.”

“Yes.”

“I’d love to hand out no end of cautions, but it’s difficult. And we need more police.” He poured himself some more wine after all. “In that respect we’re in the same position as the staff at the nursery school,” he said with a smile.

She gave a shiver, as if the window looking out over the courtyard was wide open instead of just a narrow crack letting in a little wisp of night air.

“You know, Erik, you give me the creeps with all this.”

He didn’t reply.

“Elsa goes to a nursery school,” she said. “Elsa’s one of a group of children with too few staff to look after them properly. I can’t get that out of my mind now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, no. It’s just as bad for you too.” She suddenly burst out laughing, short but loud. “God, it’s ridiculously easy to be worried when you are a parent.” She looked at him. “What should we do? Send her to a different nursery school? Get a nanny? Hire a bodyguard for Elsa?”

He smiled again.

“There is a fence around the place, as you pointed out a few minutes ago. And Elsa loves her nursery school.”

She drank up the rest of the water in her glass. “You’ve certainly gotten me thinking, Erik.”

“Oh hell, it was stupid of me to go on about all the dangers.”

“At least about all those sick weirdos hanging around outside schools,” said Angela. “What’s going to happen when she starts school?” She stood up. “No, that’s enough for one night. I’m going to take a shower.”

4

INSPECTOR JANNE ALINDER ANSWERED THE FIRST CALL OF HIS evening shift three seconds after it had started. He hadn’t even sat down.

“Police, Majorna-Linnéstaden, Alinder,” he said, flopping down onto his swivel chair. It creaked under his weight.

“Hello, is that the police for Linnéstaden?”

Come on, didn’t I just say that? he thought. It was always the same. Nobody ever listened. Was it his fault, or the caller’s? What did they want confirming? It would be better just to say “hello” since the question was bound to come anyway.

“This is the police station in Tredje Långgatan,” he said, spelling it out in detail.

“It’s my little girl,” said the voice: it could belong to a young woman, or a middle-aged one. He was not very good with voices. Especially women’s voices. He’d often spoken to somebody on the phone who sounded like what’s-her-name, that sexy newsreader on channel 4, only to find out when he met her, the caller that is, that she looked like Old Mother Hubbard and had been using a bus pass for years. And vice versa. A voice like gravel and a body like Marilyn Monroe.

“Who am I speaking to?” he asked, pen poised. She introduced herself as Lena Sköld.

“Something odd has happened,” said Lena Sköld.

“Start from the beginning and let’s hear all about it,” said Alinder, the usual routine.

“I can’t understand it.”

“What happened?”

“It’s my little daughter… Ellen… She told me she met somebody this afternoon.”

“Go on.”

“When she was out in the woods, a nursery-school outing. At Plikta. The children’s playground. It’s at the inter-”

“I know where it is,” said Alinder.

Only too well, he thought. He’d spent years there when the children were little. He’d stood there, usually feeling frozen stiff, sometimes hungover, but he’d gone there with the kids even so because Plikta was closest to their apartment in Olivedalsgatan and he couldn’t think of any reason to say no. He was glad he hadn’t said no. Those who don’t say no get their reward in due course. Those who do say no get their punishment from the children later on when they flee the nest without so much as a backward glance.

“She says she met a man there. A mister, as she put it. She sat in his car.”

“What do the staff say?”

“The nursery-school staff? Well, I called one of the girls who was with them but she didn’t notice anything.”

Alinder waited.

“Is it normal for them not to notice anything?” asked Lena Sköld.

It depends if anything has happened, thought Alinder.

“Where is your daughter now?” he asked.

“She’s sitting at the table here in front of me, drawing.”

“And she told you she was in a car with a man. Have I understood that correctly?”

“That’s how I understand it, in any case,” said Lena Sköld.

“So she went off with somebody? Without the staff noticing?”

“Yes.”

“Is she injured?”

Straight to the point. It’s better to come straight to the point.

“No, not as far as I can see. I have actually looked. Just now. It was only an hour ago that she mentioned it.”

“An hour?”

“Well, two maybe.”

“How does she seem?”

“Well, happy, I suppose. As usual.”

“I see,” said Alinder.

“I didn’t have anybody to ask about what I should do,” said Lena Sköld. “I’m a single parent and my husb… er, my ex is not somebody I’d turn to about anything at all.”

I’ll take your word for it, Alinder thought. This town was full of real bastards, and their exes were better off keeping as many miles away from them as possible. The children as well.

“Do you yourself believe what Ellen says?” he asked.

“Er, well, I don’t really know. She has a vivid imagination.”

“Children do. So do a lot of adults.”

“Are you referring to me?”

“No, no, it was just something that slipped out. A throwaway comment.”

“I see.”

“What did you say about Ellen’s imagination?”

He could hear the girl now. She must be sitting right next to her mother at the table. He heard the word “imagination” and heard Lena Sköld explaining what it meant, and then the girl asked another question he couldn’t catch. Then the mother’s voice was back on the line.

“Sorry about that, but Ellen was listening to what I said. She’s gone to her room now to get some more paper.”

“Her imagination,” said Alinder again.

“She makes up quite a lot, to be honest. Imaginary things, or imaginary people. People she says she’s been talking to. Even here, at home. In her room. It’s not unusual for children, I suppose.”

“But you decided to call here.”

“Yes, I suppose that does sound a bit odd. But it was different somehow. As if she hadn’t made it up this time. I don’t really know how to explain it. But I sort of believed it. Not that she said much, though.”

“And the ‘it’ you say you believed was that she’d been in a car with a strange man, is that right?”

“Basically, yes.”

“Anything else?”

“Candy, I think. I think she was given some candy.”

“How old is Ellen?”

“Four.”

“Does she speak well?

“Pretty well.”

“Has she said any more about the car? Or about the man?”

“No. But then we haven’t spent the whole evening talking about it. She said something when she came home, after I picked her up, and then I asked her something, and I started thinking, and then I called the woman from the nursery school, and then I phoned the police and… Well…”

Alinder looked at the sheet of paper in front of him. He’d noted her name and address and her day and evening phone numbers, and a summary of what she’d said. There was nothing else he could do now. But he took it seriously, as much as he could. The girl might well have been with somebody, in a real car. That was possible. Or she might just have been in a big wooden car. There was one like that at Plikta. Perhaps she’d suddenly enlarged one of her friends at the nursery school ten times over. Perhaps she’d been dreaming about candy, millions of bags of candy, just like he could dream about marvelous meals and dishes, now that eating was more important to him than sex.