Stalker

130

When he was allocating work earlier that day, Ramon Sjölin, commanding officer of the Norrtälje Police, decided that Olle and George Broman could take one of the patrol cars.

They’re father and son, and don’t often partner each other. Their colleagues joked that at last Olle, the father, would get a lesson in proper police work.

Olle loves his colleagues’ banter, and is immensely proud of his son, who is a head taller than him.

As usual the day passed peacefully, and towards evening they drove out to Vallby industrial estate, seeing as there had been several reports of break-ins there in the past six months. But everything was calm and they didn’t call in, and carried on towards Rimbo after a wee-break.

Olle’s back is hurting, and he tilts the seat back a bit further, looks at the time, and is about to say they’ll give it half hour then head back to the station when a call from the regional communications centre comes in.

SOS 112 received a phone call thirty minutes ago.

A man called from a phone with very bad reception.

The operator could barely hear anything, but analysis of the recording of the short conversation suggested that the man needed help, and described a location involving a ruined factory somewhere in the vicinity of Rimbo.

They had been able to identify the place as the house that had been built after the big fire at Solbacken Glassworks.

‘We’re on our way back to the station,’ Olle mutters.

‘You haven’t got time to take this first?’ the operator asks.

‘OK, we’ll take it,’ he replies.

Large drops of rain are falling on the roof of the car. Olle shivers and closes his window, managing to squash a brimstone butterfly.

‘Suspected domestic down in Gemlinge,’ he tells his son.

George turns the car round and heads south, past large farms that open up the landscape in the middle of the black forests.

‘Mum reckons you don’t eat enough vegetables, she was going to make carrot lasagne,’ Olle says. ‘But I forgot to buy the carrots, so we’re having beef patties instead.’

‘Sounds good,’ George grins.

The fields are completely dark now. One wing of the butterfly falls down the inside of the window and drifts on the warm air from the vent.

They stop talking when they turn off and start heading along the narrow track. The deep potholes make the suspension creak, and branches scrape the roof and sides of the car.

‘For God’s sake, this place is derelict,’ George says.

The car’s headlights open up a tunnel through the darkness and make the swirling moths and the tall grass at the side of the track shine like brass.

‘What’s the difference between a cheese?’ Olle asks, absurdly.

‘I don’t know, Dad,’ George says, without taking his eyes off the track.

‘There are holes in the cheese, but no cheese in the holes.’

‘Brilliant,’ his son sighs, and drums his hands on the wheel.

They turn into a large yard and see a huge chimney etched against the night sky. The tyres roll slowly over crunching gravel. Olle leans closer to the windscreen, breathing through his nose.

‘Dark,’ George mutters, turning the wheel.

The headlights sweep across bushes and rusting machine parts when they are suddenly reflected back at them.

‘A number plate,’ Olle says.

They drive closer and see a car with its boot open parked in the yard among the ruins of the glassworks.

The two men look towards the yellow house. It’s surrounded by tall stinging nettles, and the windows are black.

‘Do you want to wait and see if they carry out a television?’ Olle asks quietly.

George turns the wheel to the left and lines the car up so that the headlights are pointing straight at the veranda before putting the handbrake on.

‘But the call was about a suspected domestic,’ he says, and opens his door. ‘I’ll go and take a look.’

‘Not on your own,’ his dad says.

The two police officers are wearing light protective vests under the jackets of their uniforms, and on their belts they’re carrying their service pistols, extra magazines, batons, handcuffs, torches and radios.

Their thin shadows stretch out over the ground, reaching all the way to the house across the nettles.

George has pulled out his torch, and suddenly imagines he’s seen something move behind the broken glass of the ruins.

‘What is it?’ Olle asks.

‘Nothing,’ George replies with a dry mouth.

The leaves rustle in the darkness, and then they hear a strange noise, like someone crying out in anguish from within the forest.

‘Bloody deer, scaring people like that!’ Olle says.

George shines his torch at a deep shaft between some collapsed brick walls. There are fragments of glass scattered among the weeds.

‘What is this place?’ George whispers.

‘Just stick to the path.’

The flat disc of the torch moves over the dirty windows of the house. The glass is so filthy that it reflects no more than a grey shimmer.

They wade through the tall nettles and George makes a joke about the garden being greener than his dad’s.

One pane in the veranda has been nailed over with plywood, and there’s a rusty scythe leaning against the wall.

‘The row was probably about whose turn it was to do the cleaning,’ Olle says quietly.