Watching You(81)

Sandra let out a deep sigh and got in the back seat. Blom drove off slowly and parked nearby.

‘Our cave,’ Sandra said. ‘It was our secret place when we were younger. I don’t know for sure if she ever showed it to Simon.’

‘You were close when you were younger?’ Blom said.

‘Yes,’ Sandra said. ‘We lived with the same foster family for a couple of years. The cave was where we used to hide from the world. Then Jonna was moved on and we didn’t see each other so much. I’ve only met Simon a couple of times.’

‘Do you think she’s likely to have shown Simon the cave?’

Sandra nodded. ‘I think that’s where they escaped to, every so often,’ Sandra said. ‘When there was too much shit going on. Like we used to.’

‘Have you been there recently?’

‘I’ve only just got back from Australia. I was away for nearly a year. And before that it had probably been a couple of years. I don’t run away any more.’

‘Can you show us the cave, Sandra?’ Berger asked.

She nodded and they set off, heading into the forests of V?rmland on narrowing roads. The increasingly heavy rain hammered on the car roof. They reached a hillier part of the forest, where waterlogged roads rolled up and down the hills. They nearly got stuck several times.

Eventually Sandra pointed straight ahead, towards a sign indicating a passing place.

‘That’s where the path starts,’ she said.

Blom drove the car halfway into the bushes next to the sign, where the muddy road was slightly wider. The front wheels span their way a few centimetres into the mud before she stopped.

‘It’s about five hundred metres in from here,’ Sandra said. ‘The path isn’t very obvious.’

‘It’s very wet out there,’ Blom said. ‘You stay in the car.’

‘Fuck that,’ Sandra said, and opened the door.

She led them along a track they would barely have noticed without her. The wet branches kept hitting them or dripping water. After just a dozen metres their clothes were soaked. The only consolation was that they couldn’t get any wetter.

After a while the terrain got more hilly. They were walking along the side of a fairly steep rock face where even the moss and algae seemed to have trouble finding a foothold. The rock face veered away from the track and they followed it. Eventually Sandra stopped and pointed. An improbable amount of mascara was running down her cheeks.

‘The bushes have grown a lot,’ she said.

They followed her finger. In one place the even growth along the base of the rock became irregular.

Sandra started to walk towards the uneven bushes. Blom put a hand on her shoulder, and Sandra turned round with a look of irritation.

‘Wait here,’ Blom said.

‘You can take cover under that pine,’ Berger said, gesturing towards a tall tree that he hoped was a pine.

With obvious reluctance, Sandra went and stood by the trunk of the pine as Blom and Berger set off. When Berger cast a quick glance back over his shoulder she looked like a ghost from Norse mythology. Her pale face was streaked with black, her big eyes wide open.

The bushes, whatever kind they were, were covered in thorns and in places were so tall that it was hard to imagine two young girls – on the run from a hostile world – managing to get through them. The bushes must have grown like mad in the past few years.

The question was whether someone had managed to get through, not half a decade ago, but about eight months ago. In the middle of February.

When Jonna Eriksson and Simon Lundberg vanished without trace from the face of the earth.

The fact that Berger was leading the way was more than Blom could bear. She made her own way through the thick undergrowth instead. When lightning flashed across the metallic sky Berger considered shouting back to Sandra, telling her to move away from the tree, but when the first clap of thunder rang out, heavy and deep, it struck him that she was probably far more confident in the wild than he was. Besides, it felt wrong to shout. Only when he could make out the opening to the cave did he realise why. It felt peculiarly occupied.

It was entirely possible that William Larsson was hiding in there with Ellen Savinger strapped to a huge clock mechanism.

As he drew his pistol, Berger saw that Blom, positioned further along in the undergrowth, already had hers out. By the time the next crack of lightning shot its branching pattern across the sky she had disappeared into the oddly hostile greenery. And when the thunder came – louder this time, right after the lightning – he realised that she was going to get there first. As if that mattered.

She was waiting for him by the entrance to the cave. It wasn’t much more than head-high, and rain-damaged spiders’ webs hung in front of the dark opening like a natural curtain. Faint chirping noises were coming from the gloom. The barely perceptible walls appeared to move slightly in the unsteady shadows. Berger raised his torch to get a closer look, but Blom grabbed his hand and pushed it down.

‘Not a good idea,’ she whispered.

Then she set off into the cave with the beam of her torch aimed carefully at the ground. Berger followed her, doing the same. The floor of the cave was covered with stones that had come loose from the roof over the years, sucked down inexorably by gravity. But there was something else as well. It looked like droppings of some sort. Small ones. Possibly rats’ droppings.