Free The Steel Spring by Per Wahlöö Page A

people who did, but …’
    ‘But what?’
    ‘They never came back.’
    ‘Have you been out since then?’
    ‘Oh yes. They only brought in the total curfew a week ago, last Wednesday. The day before that, the water was cut off. The electricity had gone a few days before that, on the Saturday.’
    ‘How did you receive all these communications?’
    ‘Leaflets were delivered.’
    ‘Who delivered them?’
    ‘Soldiers and nursing staff. And then they went round in loudspeaker vans shouting nobody was to go out and blood donors were urgently needed, and to only take orders from doctors and medical professionals.’
    ‘Did the buses go on running?’
    ‘No, no. The buses stopped long before that. At the same time as they gave up publishing the newspapers.’
    ‘How many people are there left here?’
    ‘Don’t know. A few.’
    ‘Where are the rest?’
    The man gave Jensen a long stare. Eventually he said:
    ‘Don’t you know?’
    ‘No. Where are they?’
    ‘I’ve no idea. No idea at all.’
    ‘When did they move out?’
    ‘They didn’t move out,’ said the woman. ‘They were taken.’
    ‘Taken?’
    ‘It’s odd that you don’t know. We thought it must be the same all over the city.’
    ‘Were they all taken at the same time?’
    ‘First it was the children. That was the evening before the state of emergency and curfew came in. A bus turned up outside here. I saw it from the window.’
    ‘What sort of bus?’
    ‘An ordinary red, public service bus. There were four of them in it. Two men and two women. They went from door to door and took all the children under twelve. There weren’t very many round here.’
    ‘Didn’t you open the door?’
    ‘Oh yes. It was the last time we opened the door to anybody. One of the women, it was. She wanted to take him with her.’
    The man gestured towards the boy.
    ‘But we refused. Then she got angry and said that if she’d been able to, she’d have taken him from us by force. She even tried it, but I kicked her out.’
    ‘Why did she want the child?’
    ‘She said it was in his own best interests. She said we didn’t fully appreciate the situation. She said that if they’d been allowed to, they’d have taken us, too.’
    ‘Who was this woman?’
    ‘Don’t know. We’d never seen her before. Some sort of nurse, I think. She didn’t say. But she had some kind of uniform on. Green overalls.’
    ‘Where were they going to take the children?’
    ‘To a safe place,’ she said. ‘When I asked where, she said she didn’t know. We didn’t dare let him go.’
    ‘What about the others round here?’
    ‘Lots of them went. I saw them putting them on to the bus and driving away.’
    ‘How many children were there?’
    ‘Twenty-five, maybe thirty.’
    Jensen did a rapid calculation. That would have been virtually all the children in a district like this.
    ‘Poor parents,’ said the woman. ‘What monsters, taking the children.’
    ‘And you don’t know who these people were?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Did they have armbands?’
    ‘No, nothing like that.’
    ‘Were any of the children ill?’
    ‘Not as far as I know.’
    ‘And what happened after that?’
    ‘The next day they brought in the curfew. The state of emergency. The children had gone by then.’
    ‘But other than that, people were still here in their flats?’
    ‘Yes, but nobody went out. The next morning, it was the Thursday of last week, three ambulances and four buses came charging in to the car park down there with sirens and the whole works.’
    ‘What kind of buses?’
    ‘Army ones, I think. There were several doctors or healthcareworkers with white coats, and then there must have been a dozen sanitation soldiers. I recognised the uniforms. I was in the medical corps when I did my military service.’
    ‘No police?’
    ‘We didn’t see any, but we were only peering out of the window, trying not to be seen. Oh, you asked about armbands. Well this lot had blue armbands. All of them. A