Unwanted Read Free Page A

that sort of intuition. She asked about everything and she questioned even more. Alex felt his irritation level rising. Detecting simply didn’t work that way. He only hoped she would soon realize how wrong she was for the profession she had decided was suitable for her.
    ‘Why did it take thirty minutes for the police to be alerted?’ Fredrika continued her interrogation.
    Alex immediately pricked up his ears. Fredrika had finally asked a relevant question.
    Jens braced himself. Up to that point, he had had answers to all the questions the senior police officers had asked him since they arrived.
    ‘Well, it’s a bit of an odd story,’ Jens began, and Alex could see he was trying not to stare at Fredrika. ‘The train was held at Flemingsberg for longer than usual, and the mother got off to make a phone call. She left her little girl on the train because she was asleep.’
    Alex nodded thoughtfully. Children don’t vanish, people lose them. Perhaps he had misjudged Sara the redhead.
    ‘So anyway, a girl came up to her, to Sara that is, on the platform and asked her to help with a dog that was sick. And then she missed the train. She rang the train people right away – a member of staff at Flemingsberg helped her – to tell them that her child was on the train and that she was going to take a taxi straight to Stockholm Central.’
    Alex frowned as he listened.
    ‘The child had gone by the time the train stopped at Stockholm, and the conductor and some of the other crew searched for her. People were flooding off the train, you see, and hardly any of the passengers bothered to help. A Securitas guard who normally hangs round outside Burger King downstairs gave them a hand with the search. Then the mother, I mean Sara over there, got here in the taxi and was told her daughter was missing. They went on searching; they thought the girl must have woken up and, like, been one of the first off the train. But they couldn’t find her anywhere. So then they rang the police. But we haven’t found her either.’
    ‘Have they put out a call over the public-address system in the station?’ asked Fredrika. ‘I mean in case she managed to get off the platform and onto the concourse?’
    Jens nodded meekly and then shook his head. Yes, an announcement had been made. More police and volunteers were currently searching the whole station. Local radio would be issuing an appeal to road users in the city centre to keep an eye out for the girl. The taxi firms would be contacted. If the girl had walked off on her own, she couldn’t have got far.
    But she had not been spotted yet.
    Fredrika nodded slowly. Alex looked at the mother sitting on the big blue box. She looked like death. Shattered.
    ‘Put out the announcement in other languages, not just Swedish,’ said Fredrika.
    Her male colleagues looked at her with raised eyebrows.
    ‘There are a lot of people hanging about here who don’t have Swedish as their mother tongue, but who might have seen something. Make the announcement in English, too. German and French, if they can. Maybe Arabic, as well.’
    Alex nodded approvingly and sent Jens a look that told him to do as Fredrika suggested. Jens hurried off, probably quailing at the prospect of somehow getting hold of an Arabic speaker. Cascades of rain were coming down on the people gathered on the platform, and the rumbling had turned into mighty claps of thunder. It was a wretched day in a wretched summer.

P eder Rydh came dashing along the platform just as Jens was leaving it. Peder stared at Fredrika’s beige, double-breasted jacket. Had the woman no concept at all of the way you broadcast that you were part of the police when you weren’t in uniform? Peder himself nodded graciously to the colleagues he passed on his way and waved his identity badge about a bit so they would realize he was one of them. He found it hard to resist the urge to thump a few of the younger talents on the back. He had loved his years in the patrol