Unwanted Read Free

they should, they went missing far less often. At least that was what Alex had concluded.
    The clouds hung thick and dark in the sky and a faint rumble presaged thunder as they got out of the car. The air was incredibly heavy and humid. It was the sort of day when you longed for rain and thunder to make the air more breathable. A flash of lightning etched itself dully on the clouds somewhere over the Old Town. There was another storm approaching.
    Alex and Fredrika hurried in through the main entrance to Stockholm Central. Alex took a call from the mobile of the third member of the investigating team, Peder Rydh, to say he was on his way. Alex was relieved. It wouldn’t have felt right starting an investigation like this with no one but a piece of office furniture like Fredrika.
    It was after half past three by the time they got to platform seventeen where the train had pulled in to become the subject of a standard crime scene investigation. Swedish National Railways had been informed that no precise time could be given for the train to be put back in service, which in due course led to the late running of several trains that day. There were only a few people on the platform not in police uniform. Alex guessed that the red-haired woman looking exhausted but composed, sitting on a large, blue plastic box marked ‘Sand’ was the missing child’s mother. Alex sensed intuitively that the woman was not one of those parents who lose their children. He swallowed hastily. If the child hadn’t been lost, it had been abducted. If it had been abducted, that complicated matters significantly.
    Alex told himself to take it easy. He still knew too little about the case not to keep an open mind.
    A young, uniformed officer came along the platform to Alex and Fredrika. His handshake was firm but a little damp, his look somewhat glazed and unfocused. He introduced himself simply as Jens. Alex guessed that he was a recent graduate of the police training college and that this was his first case. Lack of practical experience was frightening when new police officers took up their first posts. You could see them radiating confusion and sometimes pure panic in their first six months. Alex wondered if the young man whose hand he was shaking couldn’t be said to be bordering on panic. He was probably wondering in turn what on earth Alex was doing there. DCIs rarely, if ever, turned up to conduct interviews themselves. Or at any rate, not at this early stage in a case.
    Alex was about to explain his presence when Jens started to speak, in rapid bursts.
    ‘The alarm wasn’t raised until thirty minutes after the train got in,’ he reported in a shrill voice. ‘And by then, nearly all the passengers had left the platform. Well, except for these.’
    He gave a sweeping wave, indicating of a clump of people standing a little way beyond the woman Alex had identified as the child’s mother. Alex glanced at his watch. It was twenty to four. The child would soon have been missing for an hour and a half.
    ‘There’s been a complete search of the train. She isn’t anywhere. The child, I mean, a six-year-old girl. She isn’t anywhere. And nobody seems to have seen her, either. At least nobody we’ve spoken to. And all their luggage is still there. The girl didn’t take anything with her. Not even her shoes. They were still on the floor under her seat.’
    The first raindrops hit the roof above them. The thunder was rumbling somewhere closer now. Alex didn’t think he’d ever known a worse summer.
    ‘Is that the girl’s mother sitting over there?’ asked Fredrika with a discreet nod towards the red-haired woman.
    ‘Yes, that’s right,’ said the young policeman. ‘Her name’s Sara Sebastiansson. She says she’s not going home until we find the girl.’
    Alex sighed to himself. Of course the red-haired woman was the child’s mother. He didn’t need to ask such things, he knew them anyway, he sensed them. Fredrika was entirely lacking in