butterfly on it and a big crack in the glass. She had found it in a bag of rubbish that somebody had thrown onto the street. Now she picked it up and held it in front of her face, pushed away a strand of hair from her forehead and inspected her dark tangled hair, her big eyes and long eyelashes.
Somebody coughed violently in the space, and the girl gave a start. She tried to see who it was, but it was difficult to distinguish peopleâs faces in the dark.
She wondered when they would arrive, but she didnât dare ask again. Papa had hushed her when she had asked the last time how long they would have to sit in this stupid iron box. Now Mama coughed too. It was hard to breathe, it really was. A lot of people had to share the little oxygen inside. The girl let her hand wander along the steel wall. Then she felt for the soft cloth from her mamaâs skirt and pulled it over her nose.
The floor was hard, and she straightened her back and changed position before continuing to run her hand along the steel wall. She stretched out her index and middle fingers and let them gallop back and forth along the wall and down to the floor. Mama always used to laugh when she did that at home and say that she must have given birth to a horse girl.
At home, in the shed in La Pintana, the girl had built a toy stable under the kitchen table and pretended her doll was a horse. The last three birthdays, she had wished for a real pony of her own. She knew that she wouldnât get one. She rarely got any presents, even for her birthday. They could hardly afford food even, Papa had told her. Anyway, the girl dreamed of a pony of her own that she could ride to school. It would be fast, just as fast as her fingers that now galloped back up the wall.
Mama didnât laugh this time. She was probably too tired, the girl thought, and looked up at her motherâs face.
Oh, how much longer would it actually take? Stupid, stupid journey! It wasnât supposed to be such a long trip. Papa had said when they filled the plastic bags with clothes that they were going on an adventure, a big adventure. They would travel by boat for a while to a new home. And she would make lots of new friends. It would be fun.
Some of her friends were traveling with them. Danilo and Ester. She liked Danilo; he was nice, but not Ester. She could be a little nasty. She would tease, and that sort of thing. There were a couple of other children on the same journey too, but she didnât know them; she had never even seen them before. They didnât like all being in a boat. Not the youngest one at any rate, the baby, she was crying all the time. But now sheâd gone quiet.
The girl galloped her fingers back and forth again. Then she stretched to one side to reach up even higher, then down even lower. When her fingers reached all the way into the corner, she felt something sticking out. She became curious and screwed her eyes up in the dark to see what it was. A metal plate. She strained forward to try and study the little silver plate that was screwed into the wall. She saw some letters on it and she tried to make out what they said. V...P... Then there was a letter she didnât recognize.
âMama?â she whispered. âWhat letter is this?â She crossed her two fingers to show her.
âX,â her mother whispered back. âAn X .â
X , the girl thought, V , P , X , O . And then some numbers. She counted six of them. There were six numbers.
CHAPTER
FOUR
THE AUTOPSY ROOM was lit up by strong fluorescent ceiling lights. A shiny steel table stood in the middle of the room and on it, under a white sheet, you could see the contours of a body.
A long row of plastic bottles marked with ID numbers were lined up on another stainless-steel table along with a skull saw. The metallic smell of meat had permeated the room.
Jana Berzelius went in first and stood across the table from the medical examiner, whose name was Björn Ahlmann. She