with the school and at the time of the disappearance. That was enough for us; a major alert went out. We mobilised members from the local Working Dog Owners' club to search the woodland between the school and Enkoping. Two helicopter crews are scanning the Lake Malaren beaches near here. A team is lined up for a detailed area search. They'll get going soon, but we're holding off for the moment. The dogs need to check out the scents, before half Strangnas starts combing the place.'
She apologised and went off to speak to the dog owners next, a group set apart by having the club emblem sewn on to their anoraks.
Sven and Ewert looked at each other; both held back from starting work, both reluctant to enter into the waiting darkness. Then Ewert cleared his throat and turned to Lauritzen.
'The parents of the missing child. Where are they?'
Lauritzen pointed at a man wearing a brown corduroy suit and with his long hair gathered in a ponytail, who was seated near the end of a bench by the school gate. He rested his elbows on his knees and leaned his head in his hands, staring at the gate or maybe at a shrub just behind it. A woman was sitting next to him, her arm round his shoulders, now and then stroking his cheek.
'That's the girl's father, the man who phoned to say he'd seen Lund. Seen him twice, in fact, with some fifteen to twenty minutes between the sightings. Lund sat on that seat, in full view.'
'His name is?'
'Fredrik Steffansson. Divorced. Agnes Steffansson, the girl's mother, lives in Stockholm. She's got a flat in Vasastan, I believe.'
'And who's the woman?'
'Micaela Zwarts. She works here in the school, and lives with Mr Steffansson. The missing girl, Marie, sometimes stays with one parent, sometimes with the other, officially half-and-half, but during the last year or so she has apparently preferred to have her main home here in Strangnas, with Zwarts and Steffansson. She goes to her mother over most weekends. The parents have agreed to this, the girl's welfare matters most to them. I must say I wish there was more of that attitude about. I mean, I'm divorced myself and…'
Ewert was not interested.
'Leave it. I'll have a word with Steffansson.'
The man on the bench was still leaning forward, his empty eyes gazing blindly ahead. He looked drained, as if the wound inside him had allowed all his strength to leach away and any residual joy of living drip into the grass, creating an ugly stain.
Ewert Grens did not have any children and had never wanted any. He realised that he would never understand fully what the man in front of him was feeling. But he didn't need to understand, not now.
What his eyes told him was enough.
Rune Lantz would be sixty-six on his next birthday. His first year in retirement had almost passed. In July, a year ago, late one afternoon, he had emptied the big container of the apple juice mixer for the last time. He had done the usual, turned the switch to off, washed the drum out, waited for the night shift and for the mixer guy to put on earmuffs and hairnet. The hard bit of the job was adding the right amount of sugar. 'Right' depended on where the juice was going. The least sweetened juice went to Germany, a sweeter mix to Great Britain, an unbelievably sweet one to Italy and an undrinkably sticky concoction to Greece.
By now he had had the time to discover that his workmates of thirty-four years' standing were nothing but tea-break friends, bad-mouthing-the-boss friends, doing-the- pools-in-the-lunch-break friends. None of them had been in touch since he had left, but then he hadn't sought them out either, and he wasn't sure that he missed any of them. It's odd, he reflected, how you can pass a lifetime in the company of folk you care so little for and need no more than you need the sitting-room telly on. They're around because they're around, become habit. Being with them is almost like a ritual, it covers up emptiness and silence. It reassures you that you exist for them, but they really mean sweet FA. And vice versa, of course. You leave, but nothing changes; they carry on mixing juice and doing the pools and chaffing away over their tea-mugs.
He held her hand harder.
He saw her much more clearly now.
His Margareta was still at work in the factory on the site next to his. She had two years left before retirement, two more years of leaving the house every weekday. He had never realised until now how much he needed her; their time together meant life and the courage to grow old.
Walking close together and never too far away from home, they followed more or less the same route over the bridge and into the woodland and then back; it was their daily stroll late in the afternoon after she had come home from work. He would wait for her with his outdoor clothes on; the last hour alone was the worst because he longed for her so very much, longed to walk together, stepping out a little and breathing in a shared rhythm. During the dark months of the year they'd follow one of the set tracks marked by little posts with coloured signs, but between late spring and early autumn, when the evenings were light, they strayed, walking on mats of blueberry plants between the tall spruce trees. Life was fading for them both, but it was still fun to try and find new ways on your own.
They had done just that this afternoon. Holding hands, they left the proper path and set out across the bone- dry, rustling forest floor. The summer had been too hot, for too long. This year would be terribly poor for mushrooming.
They didn't talk much, there was no need to after forty- three years of marriage. But they watched. A roe deer. A couple of hares. Birds, one looked like a hawk of some kind. One of them would point, both stopped and waited until the animal moved on. They weren't in a hurry. Then the ground changed, became hillier, and they breathed more vigorously, enjoying the sense of oxygen-rich blood flowing faster in their veins. They were scrambling up a hillside cluttered with large scree when the air filled with noise.
It was a helicopter, staying low and circling among the tops of the trees. Then another one. Both carried police markings.
Rune and Margareta watched, staring without knowing why they did, nor why both of them felt a surge of unease and anxiety. It had something to do with the machines' intrusiveness and intense engine noise. The police were after something in a hurry, looking for it right here.
Margareta stood very still, her eyes following the helicopters until they disappeared from the sky above them.
'I don't like them,' she said.
'Neither do I.'
'Let's not walk on.'
'Not until they're well and truly gone.'
'Not even then.'
She had held her husband's hand but now she pulled at his arm until it was round her waist; that was where she wanted it to be. He kissed her cheek lightly. The two of them stood together against the world with its helicopters and uniforms and noise. But she wanted to leave at once, and in her anxiety she needed him to hold her close. He looked at her full of concern, because she was never usually afraid. She was the more courageous of the two of them, he thought.
Then, far away where the trees were thinning, he saw them, a policeman and his dog. They were moving slowly, the dog was looking for something, leading the man westwards, in the same direction as the helicopters had flown.
'Goodness. One of those as well.'
'It mightn't be about the same thing.'
'Come on, it's got to be.'
Now they were convinced that something had happened, here in their wood, during their private break from the outside world.
They hurried down the slope and through the dense shrubs at its base, their measured pace and breathing rhythm broken; all that was gone now. They wanted to get out of the way of someone else's hunt, someone else's misery.
It was Margareta who saw it first.
