Frozen Tracks Read Free Page A

deprivation
of liberty? No. An attempted sexual offence, or
preparing the way for one? Well, perhaps. Or the imagination
of a very young child. He evidently hadn't come
to any harm be—
    'I want to take him to a doctor now,' she said, interrupting
his train of thought. 'I take this very seriously.'
    'Yes,' said Josefsson.
    'Should I take him to a doctor?'
    'Have you, er, examined him yourself?'
    'No. I phoned straight after he'd told me.'
    'Oh.'
    'But I will do now. Then I'll see where we go from
there.' He heard her shouting for the boy, and a reply
from some distance. 'He's watching the telly,' she said.
'Now he's laughing.'
    'Can I make a note of your address and phone
number?' said Josefsson.
    There were the sirens again. It sounded as if they
were heading east. Chasing the robbers. A couple of
thugs from one of the ghettos north of the town, drugged
up to the eyeballs. Dangerous as hell.
    'OK, thank you very much,' he said, his mind miles
away, and hung up. He made his handwriting clearer
in a couple of places, then put the page to one side,
ready for keying into the computer. Later on he'd put
his notes into the file, if he got round to it. Filed under
. . . what? Nothing had happened after all. A crime
waiting to be committed?
    There were other things that had already happened,
were happening right now.
    The phone on his desk rang again, phones were
ringing all over the station. Sirens outside, coming from
the south. He could see the flashing blue light on the
other side of the street, whirling round and round as if
the officers in the patrol car were about to take off and
fly over to where all the action was.
    Jakob, the student, was conscious but very groggy and
in a world of his own. Ringmar sat by his side,
wondering what had happened and how. There were
flowers on the bedside table. Jakob was not alone in
this world.
    Somebody entered the ward behind Ringmar. Could
that be a flash of recognition in Jakob's eyes? Ringmar
turned round.
    'They said it was all right for me to go in,' said the
girl, with a bunch of flowers in her hand. She seemed
to be about the same age as his own daughter. Maybe
they know each other, he thought, getting to his feet
as she walked over to the bed, gave Jakob a cautious
little hug and then put the flowers down on the table.
Jakob's eyes were closed now, he'd probably nodded
off again.
    'Even more flowers,' she said, and Ringmar could see
she would have liked to take a look at the card with
the other bouquet, but couldn't bring herself to do it.
She turned to face him.
    'So you're Moa's dad, are you?'
    Good. Moa had done her bit.
    'Yes,' he said. 'Maybe we should go to the waiting
room and have a little chat.'
    * * *
    'I suppose he was just unlucky,' she said. 'Or whatever
it is you say. Wrong man in the wrong place, or however
you put it.'
    They sat down on their own, by a window. The
grey light of day outside seemed translucent. The room
was in a strange sort of shadow cast by a sun that
wasn't there. A woman coughed quietly on a sofa by
a low wooden table weighed down by magazines with
photos of well-known people, smiling. Well-known to
whom? Ringmar had wondered more than once.
Visiting hospitals was part of his job, and he'd often
wondered why Hello! and similar magazines were
always piled up in dreary hospital waiting rooms.
Maybe they were a kind of comfort, like a little candle
burning on the tables of such cavernous barns. All of
you in that magazine, who are photographed at every
premiere there is, maybe used to be like us, and maybe
we can be like you if we get well again and are discovered
in the hectic search for new talent. That search
was nonstop, neverending. The photos of those celebrities
were proof of that. There was no room for faded
Polaroids of crushed skulls.
    'It wasn't bad luck,' said Ringmar now, looking at
the girl.
    'You look younger than I'd expected,' she said.
    'On the basis of Moa's description of me, you mean,'
he said.
    She smiled, then turned serious