The Crow Girl by Erik Axl Sund

allowed to do the dishes. For a whole day’s work, twelve hours, they got a warm meal and one hundred kronor. The fact that several of the children also provided sexual services came as no surprise to Jeanette.
    A girl of about fifteen ventured forward and asked who they were. The girl smiled and Jeanette saw that she had several teeth missing.
    Jeanette wondered what to say. Lying about what they were doing there wasn’t a good idea. If she was going to stand any chance of gaining the girl’s trust, it was just as well to say it straight out.
    ‘My name’s Jeanette, and I’m a police officer,’ she began. ‘This is my colleague Jens.’
    Hurtig smiled and held out his hand.
    ‘Oh. And what do you want?’ The girl looked Jeanette straight in the eyes, giving no indication that she’d noticed Hurtig’s outstretched hand.
    Jeanette told her about the murder of the young boy, and said they needed help identifying him. She showed a picture that one of the police artists had drawn.
    The girl, whose name was Aatifa, said she usually hung out in the city centre. According to the volunteers, she was in no way atypical. Her parents had fled from Eritrea and were both unemployed. She lived in an apartment in Huvudsta with her parents and six siblings. Four rooms and a kitchen.
    Neither Aatifa nor any of the others recognised or knew anything about the dead boy. After two hours they gave up and walked back towards the car park.
    ‘Little adults.’ Hurtig shook his head as he took out his car keys. ‘Christ, they’re no more than children. They ought to be playing, making forts.’
    Jeanette could see how upset he was.
    ‘Yes. And evidently they can just disappear without anyone missing them.’
    An ambulance flew past, blue lights flashing, but with no siren. At Tegelbacken it turned left and vanished into the Klara Tunnel.
    Jeanette pulled her jacket more tightly around her.
     
    Åke was snoring on the sofa, and she wrapped a blanket around him before going to the bedroom, getting undressed and curling up naked under the duvet. She switched the light off and lay there in the dark with her eyes open.
    She could hear the wind against the window, the sound of the trees in the garden rustling and the distant rumble from the motorway.
    She felt sad. She didn’t want to sleep.
    She wanted to understand.

Mariatorget – Sofia Zetterlund’s Office
     
    SOFIA FELT DRAINED as she left Huddinge. Her conversation with Tyra Mäkelä had taken its toll, and Sofia had also agreed to take on another job, which looked likely to be fairly demanding. Lars Mikkelsen at National Crime had asked her to join the investigation into a paedophile who was going to be charged with the abuse of his own daughter and dissemination of child pornography. The man had confessed when he was arrested.
    There’s never any end to it, she thought with a heavy heart as she pulled out onto Huddingevägen.
    It was as if she were being forced to bear Tyra Mäkelä’s experiences. Memories of humiliation, the scarring inside her that really just wanted to break out and reveal its own feebleness. The awareness of how much pain a person can cause someone else becomes a sort of impenetrable armour.
    Armour that can’t let anything out.
    Her despondency followed her all the way back to her office and the meeting she had arranged with social services in Hässelby. The meeting with Samuel Bai, the former child soldier from Sierra Leone.
    A conversation she knew would revolve around insane violence and appalling abuse.
    On days like this there was no chance of lunch. Just a short period of silence in the break room. Eyes closed, lying down, trying to regain some sort of equilibrium.
     
    Samuel Bai was a tall, muscular young man who at first seemed reserved and uninterested. But when Sofia suggested that they talk in Krio instead of English, he opened up and immediately became more communicative.
    During her three months in Sierra Leone she had learned the West