LITMIR.BIZ

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      She raised her eyeglasses dangling on a cord around her neck and set them on the tip of her nose. Siv loved bright colours, and today her red glasses matched her clothing. She’d had the same hairdo as long as he’d known her. A page-boy style cut straight as an arrow that reached to her jawline, and a short fringe cut just above the eyebrows. Her hair was a shiny copper-red, and the bright colours made Patrik feel more lively just by looking at her.

      ‘It was one of my old cases you wanted to look at, you said? Jan Norin?’

      Her voice was still sounding strained. She had already fetched the material before he arrived, and a thick folder lay on the desk.

      ‘Well, we have a good deal of material on this individual, as you see,’ she went on. ‘Both parents were addicts, and if they hadn’t died in an accident we would have had to intervene sooner or later. They let the boy run wild, and he basically had to raise himself. He showed up at school in dirty, ragged clothes and was bullied by his schoolmates because he smelled bad. Apparently, he had to sleep in the old stable and then go to school in the same clothes he slept in.’

      She looked at Patrik over the top of her glasses.

      ‘I assume you’re not coming here to abuse my trust, but to procure the requisite authorization, if only after the fact, so that you can acquire the data on Jan?’

      Patrik merely nodded. He knew that it was important to follow regulations, but sometimes investigations required a certain efficiency, and then the wheels of bureaucracy would have to turn after the fact instead. Siv and he had always had a good, pragmatic working relationship, but he knew she had to ask that question.

      ‘Why didn’t you step in earlier?’ Patrik asked. ‘How could the situation have been allowed to get so bad? It sounds as if Jan had been neglected since birth, and yet he was ten years old when his parents died.’

      Siv gave a deep sigh. ‘Yes, I know what you mean, and believe me, I’ve had the same thought many times. But times were different when I started working here, no more than a few months before the fire actually. It took extreme circumstances before the state would step in and restrict the right of parents to raise their children as they saw fit. Many people were advocating a liberal form of child-rearing as well, and unfortunately it was children like Jan who suffered. There were never any traces of physical abuse found on him. To be crass, perhaps the best thing would have been if he were beaten, so that he could have gone to the hospital. Then at least we would have started to keep an eye on the family situation. But either he was abused so that it was never outwardly visible, or else his parents “simply” neglected him.’ Siv wiggled her fingers to indicate quotation marks around the word ‘simply’.

      Patrik felt a sudden wave of sympathy for the boy Jan. How the hell could somebody be a normal human being after growing up under such circumstances?

      ‘But you haven’t heard the worst of it. We never had any proof, but there were indications that his parents let men abuse Jan in return for money, or narcotics.’

      Patrik felt his jaw drop. This was much worse than he could ever have imagined.

      ‘As I said, we could never prove anything, but today we can see that Jan followed the standard pattern that we now know is associated with children who have been sexually abused. For one thing, he had big disciplinary problems at school. The other children may have bullied him, but they were also afraid of him.’

      Siv opened the folder and leafed through the papers until she found what she was looking for.

      ‘Here it is. In the fourth grade he brought a knife to school and used it to threaten one of the worst bullies. He actually cut him in the face, but the school administration hushed the whole thing up. As far as I can see, he wasn’t punished. Several such incidents followed when Jan displayed excessive aggression towards his classmates, but the incident with the knife was the most serious. He was also reported to the principal on several occasions because he had acted inappropriately towards the girls in the class. For such a young boy, he showed a knowledge of extremely advanced sexual behaviour and allusions. The reports never resulted in any actions either. No one knew quite what to do with a child with such disturbing ways of relating to the people around him. Today, we would definitely react to such blatant signals and take action of some sort, but you must remember that this was in the early Seventies. It was a whole different world back then.’

      Patrik felt nearly faint with sympathy and rage. How could anyone treat a child that way?

      ‘After the fire … were there other incidents like this?’ he asked.

      ‘No, that’s the strange thing. After the fire he was placed immediately with the Lorentz family, and after that we had no reports that Jan ever had a problem again. I drove over to their house a few times to follow up on the situation, and I found a completely different boy. He sat there in his suit with his hair slicked down and stared at me without blinking as he replied politely to all my questions. It was quite horrible, actually. A person doesn’t change overnight like that.’

      Patrik gave a start. It was the first time he’d ever heard Siv hint at anything negative regarding one of her cases. He understood there was something worth digging into further. There was something she wanted to say, but he would have to ask the right question.

      ‘With regard to the fire …’

      He let the words dangle in the air a moment and saw that Siv sat up straighter in her chair. That meant he was on the right track.

      ‘I heard certain rumours about the fire.’ He gave Siv a questioning look.

      ‘I can’t be responsible for rumours. What was it you heard?’

      ‘That the fire was arson. In our investigation it’s even listed as “probable arson”, but no trace of the perpetrator was ever found. The fire started on the ground floor of the house. The parents were asleep in a room upstairs and never had a chance. Did you ever hear anything about who might have hated the Norins enough to do something like that?’

      ‘Yes.’ Her reply was monosyllabic and so quiet that he wasn’t sure he’d really heard it.

      She repeated in a louder voice, ‘Yes, I know who hated the Norins enough to want to set fire to them.’

      Patrik sat silently and let her continue at her own pace.

      ‘I accompanied the police out to the house. The fire department were the first on the scene. One of the fire-fighters had gone to examine the site, to check whether any sparks had blown away from the house and might be smouldering somewhere else. The fireman found Jan in the stable. When the boy refused to leave, they contacted us here at social services. I was a new social worker, and in retrospect I have to admit that I thought it was very exciting. Jan was sitting in the stall, all the way at the back, leaning against the wall, under the watchful eye of a fireman, who was extremely relieved to see us arrive. I shooed off the police and went in to try to console Jan, as I thought I should, and then take him out of there. His hands kept moving in the dark where he was sitting, but I couldn’t see what he was doing. When I got closer I saw that he was sitting there fidgeting with something in his lap. It was a box of matches. With undisguised glee he was sorting the matches: burned black ones in one half of the box and new red ones in the other half. The expression on his face was sheer joy. He actually seemed to be glowing from within. It was the most horrid thing I’ve ever seen in my life, Patrik. I can still see that face before me sometimes when I go to bed at night. I went over to him and carefully took the box of matches away. Then he looked up at me and said, “Are they dead now?” That was all. “Are they dead now?” Then he giggled and willingly let me lead him out of the old stable. The last thing I saw as we left was a blanket, a pocket torch and a pile of clothes in a corner of the barn. That’s when I understood that we were complicit in his parents’ death. We should have taken action many, many years earlier.’

      ‘Have you ever told anyone about this?’

      ‘No, what would I say? That I thought he murdered his parents because he was playing with matches? No, I’ve never said anything until you came and asked me

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