Missing

you …?’
    His voice sounded much closer. Her breathing was still treacherous.
    Now, she could actually see him. He was walking straight towards her hiding place, as if he had been following an invisible thread through the labyrinth of trees.
    ‘I know you’re here … you must be here … somewhere …’
    Now, she could see his face. It was covered in blood. One wide-open eye was gleaming white.
    Fifty feet … thirty feet …
    Then, in one blessed instant, the moon disappeared behind a cloud. She was saved. She heard him groan, realising that he’d stumbled and had tried to hold himself upright using his wounded hand.
    Serves you fucking right! You insane cunt!
    She smiled. The disappearance of the moon gave her hope again. She wasn’t doomed to lose this battle. For a while, he had almost made her believe she had lost.
    ‘You haven’t got a hope … sooner or later we’ll find you …’
    His voice was more distant now. Just for that moment she was safe.

    Perhaps she fell asleep on and off. She couldn’t be sure. The darkness was so dense that she couldn’t tell if her eyes were open or closed. When dawn broke and the first glimpses of contours became clearer, she crawled out from her hiding place to try to find a road.
    She couldn’t go back, but then there was no telling how far the forest stretched ahead. She decided to try to keep at a right angle to her first escape route. She should reach the road sooner or later, but well away from his house.
    She was frozen, shivering with cold. Now that she had time to herself, the pain came back to haunt her. The broken rib ached angrily with each step.
    The light was getting stronger every minute. Around her the forest was thinning. Tall, bare pine trunks rose around her, with hardly any undergrowth. He could see her easily here. Surely she would reach the road soon.
    She heard a branch crack and stopped, trying to locate the sound. Another crack now, but from a different direction.
    Then she saw them. One of them shouted at her.
    ‘Lie down!’
    He was in uniform and aiming at her with his handgun, gripping it with both hands. If she hadn’t been so scared, she would have felt pure happiness to see them. She had never thought that she would be so utterly delighted at being surrounded by policemen.
    She did as she was told, lying down, face against the ground, moving cautiously to minimise the pain. When she turned her head to look, four armed policemen were approaching her, all aiming their guns at her. She tried to speak to them.
    ‘I don’t know where …’
    ‘Shut up! Just don’t fucking move!’
    Then, in one dizzying insight, she knew what had happened.
    One of them pushed her face into the mossy ground, another frisked her body. One of them hissed at her.
    ‘Murdering bitch!’
    So he had got there first, ahead of her again.

S he obeyed orders, keeping her mouth shut during the whole journey to Vimmerby police station. When she stepped out of the car, a camera flashed in her face. When she could see again, she caught a glimpse of a young man with an enormous camera in front of his face. Somebody asked her a question.
    ‘Why did you do it?’
    She was not given a chance to answer. Hard hands pushed her into the entrance hall of the police station. The whole room was full of people, civilians and uniformed staff, all observing her closely, with disgust in their eyes.
    ‘Move along. This way.’
    The man who had been sitting next to her in the back of the car was now walking ahead, forming a small passage though the crowd. Someone pushed her from behind, hitting the broken rib. She grimaced with pain. A door opened and she stepped through it.
    ‘Sit down.’
    She obeyed, pulling back the chair with her handcuffed hands. Two men came in and sat down behind the desk. One of them introduced himself.
    ‘Roger Larsson.’
    His colleague pushed a red button on a tape-recorder and checked that it was recording. Then he nodded.
    ‘Interrogation of Sibylla Forsenström on the third of April 1999, starting at 8.45 a.m. Present in the room are the charged woman, Sergeant Mats Lundell and Inspector Roger Larsson.’
    Larsson turned to her.
    ‘You are Sibylla Forsenström?’
    She nodded.
    ‘I must insist that you answer every question loudly and clearly.’
    ‘Yes, I am.’
    ‘Tell us what you are doing in Vimmerby.’
    She stared at the moving wheels in the tape-recorder, while they observed her intently. Someone knocked briskly on the door and