Free The Crow Girl by Erik Axl Sund Page B

than a city with a million inhabitants. The fact that one of the lanes on the Western Bridge was closed for roadworks did nothing to help the situation, and it took Jeanette over an hour to get home to Gamla Enskede. Under more favourable circumstances it took less than fifteen minutes.
    As she stepped through the door she almost bumped into Johan and Åke. They were going off to a football match, and were wearing identical shirts and carrying matching green-and-white scarves. They looked confident and expectant, but Jeanette knew from experience that they’d be back in a few hours with all their hopes in ruins.
    ‘We’re going to win today!’ Åke gave her a quick peck on the cheek, and herded Johan out of the door. ‘See you later.’
    ‘I probably won’t be here when you get back.’ Jeanette saw Åke’s mood change. ‘I need to go out on a job, I should be back sometime after midnight.’
    He shrugged, looked up at the ceiling, then went out to join Johan.
    This wasn’t the first time they had met briefly in the doorway, only to part a moment later. Two entirely separate lives under the same roof, she thought. Smiles transformed into looks of disappointment and irritation.
    She and Åke. On their way in different directions, with different dreams. More friends than lovers.
    Jeanette shut the door after them, kicked off her shoes, and went into the living room, where she threw herself down on the sofa in the hope of getting some rest. In about three hours she’d have to set off again, and hoped she might manage a short nap at least.
    Thoughts drifted aimlessly in her head, aspects of the case blurring into practical matters. Grass that needed cutting, letters to be written, interviews to be arranged. She was supposed to be a mum who kept an eye on her child. A woman with the capacity to love and feel desire.
    And alongside that she was supposed to have time for her life. Dreamless sleep without any real respite. A short break in the otherwise perpetual motion. A brief period of calm in the lifelong business of moving her body from one place to another.
    Sisyphus, she thought.

Central Bridge
     
    THE TRAFFIC HAD thinned out, and as she parked the car she could see from the clock above the entrance to Central Station that it was twenty to ten. She got out of the car, shut the door and locked it. Hurtig was standing by a fast-food stall with a hot dog in each hand. When he caught sight of Jeanette he gave her an almost embarrassed smile. As if he were doing something forbidden.
    ‘Dinner?’ Jeanette nodded at the impressively large sausages.
    ‘Here, have one.’
    ‘Have you seen if there are any of them here?’ Jeanette took the proffered hot dog and gestured towards the Central Bridge.
    ‘When I got here I saw one of the City Mission’s vans. Let’s go over and have a word.’ He wiped a dribble of sauce from his cheek with a napkin.
    They walked past the car park beneath the slip road from Klarastrandsleden, with Tegelbacken and the Sheraton Hotel on the other side of the street. Two different worlds in an area no bigger than a football pitch, Jeanette thought as she caught sight of a group of people in the darkness beside one of the grey concrete pillars.
    Twenty or so young people, some of them no more than children, gathered around a van with the City Mission logo on its side.
    Some of the children pulled back when they noticed the two new arrivals, vanishing under the bridge.
    The two volunteers from the City Mission had nothing useful to tell them. Children came and went, and even though they were there almost every evening, very few of them ever opened up. Just a succession of nameless faces. Some of them went back home, some moved on elsewhere, and a not inconsiderable number of them died.
    That was just fact.
    Overdoses or suicide.
    Money was one problem all the youngsters shared, or rather the lack of it. One of the volunteers told them there were restaurants where the children were occasionally