Frozen Tracks Read Free

help you?'
    'Well, er, I don't really know what to say.'
    Josefsson waited, pen at the ready. A colleague
dropped something hard on the floor in the changing
room at the end of the corridor.
    'Just tell me what it's about,' he said. 'Who am I
talking to?'
    She gave her name and he wrote it down. Berit Skarin.
    'It's about my little boy,' she said. 'He, er, I don't
know . . . He told us tonight, if we understood him
rightly, er, that he's been sitting in a car with a "mister",
as he put it.'
    Kalle Skarin was four, and when he got back home from
the day nursery he'd had a soft-cheese sandwich and a
cup of hot chocolate – he'd mixed the cocoa and sugar
and a splash of cream himself, and then Mum added
the hot milk.
    Shortly afterwards he'd said he'd been sitting in a
car.
    A car?
    A car. Big car, with a radio. Radio talked and played
music.
    Have you and your friends been out on a trip today?
    Not a trip. Playground.
    Are there cars there?
    The boy had nodded.
    Toy cars?
    BIG car, he'd told her. Real car. Real, and he'd moved
his hands as if he were holding a steering wheel. Brrrrm,
brrrrmm.
    Where?
    Playground.
    Kalle. Are you saying you went for ride in a car at
the playground?
    He'd nodded.
    Who did you go with?
    A mister.
    A mister?
    Mister, mister. He had sweeties!
    Kalle had made a new gesture that could have
been somebody holding out a bag of sweets, or maybe
not.
    Berit Skarin had felt a cold shiver run down her spine.
A strange man holding out a bag of sweets to her little
boy.
    Olle ought to hear this, but he wouldn't be back until
late.
    And Kalle was sitting there in front of her. She'd
taken hold of him when he'd jumped up to go and
watch a children's programme on the telly.
    Did the car drive away?
    Drove, drove. Brrrrrrmm.
    Did you go far?
    He didn't understand the question.
    Was teacher with you?
    No teacher. Mister.
    Then he'd run off to the television room. She'd
watched him go and had thought for a moment, then
gone to fetch her handbag from a chair in the kitchen
and looked up the home telephone number of one of
the nursery staff, hesitated when she got as far as the
phone, but rung even so.
    'Ah. Sorry to disturb you in the evening like this, er,
it's Berit Skarin. Yes, Kalle's mum. He's just told me
something and I thought I'd better ask you about it.'
    Bengt Josefsson listened. She told him about the
conversation she'd had with one of the nursery school
staff.
    'Nobody noticed anything,' said Berit Skarin.
    'I see.'
    'Can that kind of thing happen?' she asked. 'Can
somebody drive up in a car and then drive off with one
of the children without any of the staff seeing anything?
Then bring the child back again?'
    Much worse things than that can happen, thought
Josefsson.
    'I don't know,' he said. 'The staff didn't notice
anything, you say?'
    'No. Surely they must have done?'
    'You'd have thought so,' said Josefsson, but in fact
he was thinking differently. Who can be on the lookout
all the time? Thinking, who's that man standing under
the tree over there? Sitting in that car?
    'How long does your boy say he was away?'
    'He doesn't know. He's a child. He can't distinguish
between five minutes and fifty minutes if you ask him
afterwards.'
    Bengt Josefsson pondered this.
    'Do you believe him?' he asked.
    No reply.
    'Mrs Skarin?'
    'I don't know,' she said. 'I just don't know.'
    'Does he have, er, a lively imagination?'
    'He's a child. All children have lively imaginations if
there's nothing wrong with them.'
    'Yes.'
    'So what should I do?'
    Bengt Josefsson looked down at the few sentences
he'd jotted down on his notepad.
    Two colleagues came racing past his desk.
    'Robbery at the newspaper kiosk!' one of them yelled.
    He could already hear the siren from one of the cars
outside.
    'Hello?' said Berit Skarin.
    'Yes, where were we? Well, I've noted down what
you said. Anyway, nobody's gone missing. So, if you
want to report it, then . . .'
    'What should I report?'
    That's the point, thought Josefsson. Unlawful