60

       sunday, december 13 (feast of st lucia): afternoon

      Erik gets into the car, his hands shaking so fiercely he can’t slide the key into the ignition. He knows he’s left his hat and gloves next to his burger in the diner, but he can’t be bothered to go back inside. The surface of the road shimmers in shades of grey from the wet snow as he reverses into the darkness and drives home. He parks on Döbelnsgatan and strides down to Luntmakargatan, feeling a strange sense of alienation as he walks in the door and hurries up the stairs. He rings the doorbell, waits, hears footsteps, the small click as the metal cover of the peephole is pushed to one side. He hears the door being unlocked from the inside, but it doesn’t open to admit him, so he opens it himself. Simone has moved back down the dark hallway. In her jeans and blue knitted sweater, arms folded over her chest, she looks resolute.

      “You’re not answering your phone,” says Erik.

      “I saw you’d called,” she says in a subdued voice. “Was it something important?”

      “Yes.”

      Her face cracks, revealing all the anxiety she’s been struggling to hide. She puts her hand over her mouth and stares at him.

      “Benjamin called me half an hour ago.”

      “Oh my God!” She moves closer. “Where is he?” she asks, raising her voice.

      “I don’t know. He didn’t know himself, he didn’t know anything.”

      “What did he say?”

      “He told me he was in the boot of a car.”

      “Was he hurt?”

      “I don’t think so.”

      “But what—”

      “Hang on,” Erik interrupts. “I need to borrow a phone. It might be possible to trace the call.”

      “Who are you going to call?”

      “The police. I’ve got a contact who—”

      “I’ll talk to Dad—it’ll be quicker.”

      Erik briefly considers protesting but thinks better of it. She takes the phone and he sits on the low hall seat in the darkness, feeling his face growing hot in the warmth.

      “Were you asleep?” Simone asks. “Dad, I have to … Erik’s here; he’s spoken to Benjamin; you have to trace the call … I don’t know … No, I haven’t … You’d better speak to him.”

      Erik takes the phone and holds it to his ear. “Hi.”

      “Tell me what happened, Erik,” says Kennet.

      “I wanted to call the police, but Simone said you could trace the call more quickly.”

      “She could well be right.”

      “Benjamin called me half an hour ago. He had no idea where he was or who had taken him; all he really knew was that he was lying in the boot of a car. While we were talking the car stopped, Benjamin said he could hear someone coming, he started shouting, and then everything went quiet.”

      Erik can hear the sound of suppressed sobs from Simone.

      “Did he call from his own phone?” asks Kennet.

      “Yes.”

      “Because it’s been switched off. I tried to trace it the day before yesterday; mobile phones send signals to the nearest base station even when they’re not being used.”

      Erik listens in silence as Kennet quickly explains that mobile phone operators are obliged to assist the police in accordance with paragraphs 25 to 27 of the law governing telecommunications, if the minimum punishment for the crime under investigation is at least two years’ imprisonment.

      “What can they find out?” asks Erik.

      “The precision varies—it depends on the station and the exchanges—but with a bit of luck we’ll soon have a location within a radius of a hundred yards.”

      “Hurry up, please hurry.”

      Erik ends the call, stands with the phone in his hand, and then passes it to Simone. “What happened to your cheek?” he asks.

      “What? Oh, it’s nothing.” They look at each other, tired and fragile. “Do you want to come in, Erik?”

      He nods, remains where he is for a moment, then kicks off his shoes and moves along the passageway; he sees that the computer is on in Benjamin’s room and goes in. “Found anything?”

      Simone stops in the doorway. “Some messages between Benjamin and Aida,” she says. “It seems as if they felt threatened.”

      “By whom?”

      “We don’t know. Dad’s working on it.”

      Erik sits down at the computer. “Benjamin’s alive,” he says quietly, giving her a long look.

      “Yes.”

      “It doesn’t look as if Josef Ek was involved.”

      “You said that in your message; you said he doesn’t know where we live. But he did call here, didn’t he, so he could have—”

      “That’s a different matter.”

      “Is it?”

      “The switchboard put the call through,” he explains. “I’ve asked them to do that if something sounds important. He hasn’t got our telephone number or our address.”

      “But someone’s taken Benjamin and put him in a car.” She falls silent.

      Erik reads the message from Aida in which she says she feels sorry for him, living in a house of lies. Then he opens the picture she attached: a colour photo taken with a flash at night, showing an overgrown patch of grass, bleached yellow in the harsh xenon light of the flash, curving outwards towards a low hedge. Behind the dry hedge it is just possible to make out a brown wooden fence. At the edge of the grass, there is a green plastic leaf basket and something that might be a potato patch.

      Erik looks closely at the picture, trying to understand what the subject is, whether there might be a hedgehog or a shrew somewhere that he hasn’t spotted yet. He tries to peer into the darkness beyond the camera flash to see if there is a person there, a face, but he finds nothing.

      “What a strange photo,” whispers Simone.

      “Maybe Aida attached the wrong