Missing

while, listening to someone on the other end of line. She glanced at Sibylla, who promptly looked the other way.
    ‘I see … yes. No, I won’t. And if you don’t accept my complaint I’ll take it elsewhere.’
    The woman pocketed her mobile. Her dog got up.
    ‘Kajsa, come on!’
    The woman and her dog crossed the street. Sibylla still did not move.
    ‘Don’t go in there.’
    Sibylla smiled at the woman.
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘It’s crawling with police in there, but out of sight. You don’t know they’re there until you get a gun shoved in your face. No idea what they’re up to. Made me furious, I can tell you.’
    Sibylla nodded.
    ‘Sure, thanks. I think I’d rather avoid all that.’
    The woman and her dog wandered off, leaving Sibylla breathing deeply. It must have been Uno Hjelm. The allotments’ own little old Judas. Fuck him.
    She had to get away. Fast.
    * * *
    How long could she stand living like this? Surviving, that’s one thing. She could do that. She had done it. But being on the run … ?
    She was hurrying now, feeling that they were already at her heels. God, how could Hjelm have spotted her? Surely he couldn’t have recognised her from the photo in the newspapers? If so, she was lost, unsafe anywhere.
    She had to change her hair. She was close to Ringen now. There were plenty of people about and she could just mingle with the crowds. But weren’t people staring at her? How odd it was. What about the man walking towards her, why did he look at her like that? Her heart was beating hard. She looked down and the man walked past her.
    If she told them the truth, would they believe her? Couldn’t they understand that she had simply wanted to sleep in a proper bed, just for once? She would have paid him later. Of course she would have! She had … lost her wallet. Really.
    Lots of people were converging on the underground station. She kept walking.
    But – where was she going?

    Once on Renstierna Street she changed direction and walked up the steps leading to the Vitaberg Park with Sofia Church towering above her like a fortress. She was tired and needed to sit down for a while. Turning, she checked the deserted path sloping down towards the street. No one had followed her.

    The silence inside the church seemed solid, tangible. Just inside the door was a glass-fronted cubby-hole. An elderly man peered at her through the glass and nodded. He seemed friendly. She nodded too, before taking her rucksack off and stepping inside.
    The church was empty apart from someone sleeping in one of the pews, a man with his hair in a pony-tail. The pony-tail guy was vaguely familiar, she’d seen him a couple of times at the City Mission Centre. Now he was in a deep sleep, his jaw drooping toward his chest. She sat down in a pew at the back with her rucksack at her feet. Closed her eyes.
    Peace and quiet, simply. It was all she wanted.
    The man in the cubby-hole coughed. The sound reverberated between the walls. Then the silence solidified again.
    God hears your prayers. It said so on a poster near the door.
    She opened her eyes again and spent some time examining the huge altarpiece. Over very many years, very many people had put their lives in His hands. They built enormous edifices for the worship of their God and turned to Him in their prayers. When she was little, she too prayed to Him. ‘If I should die before I wake, I pray to God my soul to take.’ Then: ‘Dear God, look after mummy and daddy and make it so they don’t die.’ He must have heard that bit, since they were apparently getting on very nicely, thank you. ‘When I lie down and go to asleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.’ Keeping my soul seems to have slipped His mind. Maybe He is wholly on their side?
    Well, on all their sides, the sides of those who fit in.
    Where did the stationmaster’s prayers end up? He jumped off Väst Bridge last month, after realising that his fourth detox treatment had failed. Was anyone up there listening to Lena? She used to be on the Salvation Army’s food vans, but she had to stop because she had an inoperable brain tumour. Exactly what had Lena done to deserve that? What about Tova? Or Jönsson? Or Smirre? All dead, after subsisting for years in his or her own special living hell. Presumably none of their prayers were ever heard.
    God, this prayer story of Yours simply doesn’t wash.
    Come to think of it, what about Jörgen Grundberg? Whatever he might have been punished for, why bring me into