The Ice Child. Camilla Lackberg

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СКАЧАТЬ his children so near. For a few seconds everything was perfect, but then the bickering started.

      ‘Hey!’ Anton screamed. ‘Noel pinched me!’

      ‘No!’ cried Noel. And as if to show that he hadn’t, he gave his brother a pinch. Anton howled and flailed his arms about.

      ‘All right now …’ Patrik separated the boys and tried to look stern. Maja stood off to one side, imitating his expression.

      ‘No pinching!’ she said, wagging her finger at her brothers. ‘If you keep fighting, you’ll get a dime-out.’ Patrik had to stop himself from laughing. When she was much younger, Maja had misunderstood the expression ‘time-out’, and it had been impossible to get her to say it correctly.

      ‘Thanks, sweetheart. I’ll handle this,’ he said, getting up and holding the twins by the hand.

      ‘Mamma, the twins are fighting,’ called Maja as she ran to Erica in the kitchen. Patrik followed with his sons.

      ‘Really?’ said Erica, her eyes wide. ‘They’re fighting? Never!’ She smiled and kissed Patrik on the cheek. ‘Dinner is ready, so let’s stop all the fuss. Maybe pancakes will improve everyone’s mood.’

      That did the trick. After the children had finished eating and settled in front of the TV to watch Bolibompa, Erica and Patrik were able to enjoy a rare moment of peace and quiet at the kitchen table.

      ‘How’s it going?’ asked Erica, sipping her tea.

      ‘We’ve hardly begun.’ Patrik reached for the sugar bowl and dumped five teaspoonfuls into his cup. Right now he didn’t want to think about any diet rules. Erica had been watching his food intake like a hawk ever since he’d developed heart problems at the same time the twins were born. But tonight she didn’t say a word. He closed his eyes, savouring the first taste of the piping hot and very sweet tea.

      ‘Half the town was out in the woods today helping us, but we didn’t find anything. And then there was the press conference this afternoon. Have you already seen the news about it online?’

      Erica nodded. She hesitated as if debating her next move, then got up and took the last of Kristina’s homemade buns out of the freezer. She put them on a plate and stuck it in the microwave. A minute later the delicious fragrance of butter and cinnamon filled the kitchen.

      ‘Isn’t there a risk of destroying evidence with half of Fjällbacka tramping through the woods?’

      ‘Sure. Of course. But we have no idea how far she walked or where she came from, and by this morning the snow had already obliterated any footprints. I thought it was worth the risk.’

      ‘So how did the press conference go?’ Erica took the plate out of the microwave and set it on the table.

      ‘There’s not much we can tell the press. Mostly it was reporters asking questions that we couldn’t answer.’ Patrik reached for a bun but swore and quickly dropped it back on the plate.

      ‘Let them cool off a bit.’

      ‘Thanks for telling me.’ He blew on his fingers.

      ‘Was it because of the ongoing investigation that you couldn’t answer?’

      ‘I wish that was the reason. But the fact is we haven’t got a clue. When Victoria disappeared it was like she went up in smoke. Not a trace left behind. No one saw anything, no one heard anything, and there were no links to the other missing girls. Then all of a sudden she just reappeared.’

      Neither of them spoke as Patrik touched the buns again and decided they had cooled off enough to eat.

      ‘I heard something about her injuries,’ said Erica cautiously.

      Patrik paused before saying anything. He wasn’t supposed to discuss the girl’s injuries, but obviously word had already spread, and he needed to talk to someone. Erica was not only his wife, she was also his best friend. Besides, she had a much keener mind than he did.

      ‘It’s all true. Although I don’t know what you heard.’ He was buying himself a little time by chewing on a cinnamon bun, but suddenly he lost his appetite, and it didn’t taste as good as it should.

      ‘I heard she had no eyes.’

      ‘Yes, her eyes were … gone. We don’t know how it was done. Pedersen is doing the autopsy early tomorrow morning.’ He hesitated again. ‘And her tongue had been cut out.’

      ‘Good Lord,’ said Erica. Now she lost her appetite too. She set a half-eaten bun back on the plate.

      ‘How long ago did it happen?’

      ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘Were the injuries new or had they healed?’

      ‘Good question. But I don’t know. I hope to get all the details from Pedersen tomorrow.’

      ‘Could it be some religious thing? Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth? Or some horrible expression of hatred for women? She wasn’t supposed to look at him, and she was supposed to keep quiet.’

      Erica waved her hands about as she talked, and as always Patrik was impressed with the shrewdness of his wife’s mind. Such thoughts hadn’t occurred to him when he was trying to speculate about a possible motive.

      ‘What about her ears?’ Erica went on.

      ‘What about her ears?’ He leaned forward, getting crumbs on his hands.

      ‘Well, I was just wondering about something … What if the person who did this, the one who took away her ability to see and speak, also damaged her hearing? If so, she would have been in a sort of bubble, without any means to communicate. Think about what power that would give the perpetrator.’

      Patrik stared at her. He tried to imagine what Erica had just described, but the mere idea made his blood run cold. What a horrifying fate. If that was true, then it might have been a blessing that Victoria hadn’t survived, even though it seemed cold-hearted to think such a thing.

      ‘Mamma, they’re fighting again.’ Maja stood in the kitchen doorway. Patrik glanced at the clock on the wall.

      ‘Oh, it’s time for bed.’ He got up. ‘Shall we do rock, paper, scissors?’

      Erica shook her head and got up to kiss him on the cheek.

      ‘If you put Maja to bed, I’ll take care of the boys tonight.’

      ‘Thanks,’ he said and took his daughter by the hand. They headed for the stairs as Maja chattered about what she had done during the day. But Patrik wasn’t listening. His thoughts were on the girl inside the bubble.

      Jonas slammed the front door so hard that Marta came rushing out of the kitchen, then stood leaning against the doorjamb with her arms folded. He could tell that she’d been expecting this conversation, and her calm demeanour made him even angrier.

      ‘I just talked to Molly. What the hell were you thinking? Shouldn’t we be making decisions like this together?’

      ‘Yes, we СКАЧАТЬ