JEANETTE KIHLBERG KNOWS exactly where she was when she heard that Prime Minister Olof Palme had been murdered on Sveav?gen.
She was sitting in a taxi, halfway to Farsta, and the man next to her was smoking menthol cigarettes. Gentle rain and feeling ill from too many beers.
But the moment when Johan vanishes will always be a black stain. Five missing minutes. Stolen from her by an overly refreshed plumber from Flen on a short visit to the capital.
A step to the side, her eyes fixed upward. Johan and Sofia hanging in the cradle on the way up, and she feels dizzy even though she’s safe on the ground.
Suddenly the sound of breaking glass.
Animated shouting.
Someone crying, and Jeanette sees the cradle continue to rise.
Two men are shoving each other, and Jeanette gets ready to intervene. She glances up at Johan and Sofia. Their legs from below. Swinging.
Johan is laughing at something.
Soon at the top.
‘I’m going to kill you, you bastard!’
Jeanette sees that one of the men isn’t in control of his movements. Drink has made his legs too long, his joints too stiff, his tranquillised nervous system too slow.
The man stumbles and falls helplessly to the ground.
He gets up, and his face has been scratched by the grit on the path.
Some children are crying.
‘Daddy!’
A little girl, no more than six years old, with pink candyfloss in her hand.
‘Can we go? I want to go home.’
The man doesn’t answer, just looks around, trying to find his opponent, someone to vent his frustration on.
Jeanette’s police reflexes make her act without thinking. She takes the man by the arm. ‘OK,’ she says gently, ‘take it easy.’ Her intention is to get him to think about something else. Not to sound reproachful.
The man turns round, and Jeanette sees that his eyes are glazed and bloodshot. Sad and disappointed, almost ashamed.
‘Daddy …’ the little girl says again, but the man doesn’t react, just stares ahead of him without focusing.
‘And who the fuck are you?’ He pulls free of Jeanette’s grip on his arm. ‘Fuck off!’
His breath smells bitter, and his lips are covered with a thin, white film.
At that moment she hears the cradle up above being released, and the delighted cries of fear mixed with pleasure make her lose her train of thought, lose concentration.
She sees Johan, his hair all over the place, his mouth open in a roar.
She hears the little girl. ‘No, Daddy! No!’
But she doesn’t notice the man next to her raising his arm.
The bottle hits Jeanette on the temple, and she staggers. She feels blood running down her cheek. But she doesn’t lose consciousness, almost the reverse.
With a practised movement she twists the man’s arm up behind his back, drops him to the ground and is soon joined by the fair’s security guards.
And now, five minutes later, she discovers that both Johan and Sofia have vanished.
Three hundred seconds.
Prince Eugen’s Waldemarsudde – Island of Djurg?rden
JUST AS PEOPLE who have been denied happiness all their life still manage to cling onto hope, Jeanette Kihlberg has always had a uniformly negative view in the course of her work towards the slightest hint of pessimism.
That’s why she never gives up, and that’s why she reacts the way she does whenever Police Constable Schwarz complains in provocatively loud terms about the weather, or how tired he is, or how little progress they’re making in their search for Johan.
Jeanette Kihlberg sees red.
‘For fuck’s sake! Go home, you’re no fucking use to us here!’
It has an impact. Schwarz flinches like a shame-faced hound, while ?hlund stands neutrally alongside. Her anger makes the wound on her head throb under the bandage.
Jeanette calms down, sighs and gestures dismissivelys towards Schwarz. ‘Understood? You’re relieved of duty until further notice.’
Soon Jeanette is alone. She stands hollow-eyed and frozen beside the rear deck of the Vasa Museum, waiting for Jens Hurtig, who interrupted his holiday the moment news of Johan’s disappearance reached him, in order to take part in the search.
When she sees an unmarked police car approaching across the park, she knows it’s Hurtig, and that he’s got someone else with him. A witness who claims to have seen a young man alone down by the water the previous evening. From what Hurtig said on the radio, she knows she shouldn’t harbour any great hope about the testimony. But she still tries to convince herself that she must keep hoping, however vain it might be.
She tries to gather her thoughts and reconstruct the events of the past few hours.
Johan and Sofia had vanished; suddenly they were just gone. After half an hour she had a call put out for Johan over the fair’s public address system, while she waited anxiously at the information desk.
Then some security guards appeared and together they resumed her aimless search of the fair. That’s when they found Sofia lying on one of the paths, surrounded by a crowd that Jeanette had to elbow her way through until she could look Sofia in the eye. But the face that until recently had been synonymous with release only turned out to underline her anxiety and uncertainty. Sofia was completely out of it. Jeanette doubted that Sofia was even capable of recognising her, let alone saying where Johan was. Jeanette hadn’t stayed with her; she felt compelled to keep looking.
Another half-hour had passed before she contacted her colleagues in the police. But neither she nor the twenty officers who had dragged the water close to the fair and painstakingly searched across Djurg?rden had found Johan. Nor had any of the police patrols that were searching the city centre after being given his description.
After that an alert had been broadcast on local radio. Without result, until forty-five minutes ago.
Jeanette knows she’s been acting correctly, but like a robot. A robot paralysed by feelings. A complete contradiction. Hard, cold and rational on the surface, but governed by chaotic impulses. The anger, irritation, fear, anguish, confusion and resignation she had felt through the night are all merging into an indistinguishable mush.
The only consistent emotion is inadequacy.
And not just towards Johan.
She has no idea how to reach ?ke in Poland.
Jeanette thinks about Sofia.
How is she?
Jeanette has called her several times, but without success. If she knew anything about Johan, surely she’d have got in touch? Unless she knows something that she has to summon the courage to say?
Never mind that now, she thinks, fending off thoughts that must remain unthinkable. Focus.
The car stops, and Hurtig gets out.
‘Shit,’ he says. ‘That doesn’t look good.’ He nods towards her bandaged head.