Missing by Karin Alvtegen Read Free Book Online Page A

on the key to the victim’s room and in her hotel room, where a glass with the victim’s prints was also found.
    The police are baffled as to her whereabouts. In 1985 she escaped from a mental hospital in southern Sweden where she was an in-patient treated for psychological problems. Since then she has not been in contact with any state or local authority agency. No one seems to know anything about her life during the intervening fourteen years. Police records of her fingerprints were kept after an incident involving a car theftand illegal driving in 1984. Sibylla Forsenström grew up in a well-to-do family, based in a small industrial town in east SmÃ¥land.
    As she has been without a fixed address since 1985, the public are asked to let the police have any relevant information. However, the police also warn that she is likely to be confused and violent. Forensic psychologists, currently examining a diary found in her briefcase, claim that several notes are of a disturbed, incoherent character. The photograph, as the police are anxious to point out, is over sixteen years old. The waiter who served the woman and her alleged victim on Thursday evening described her as polite and well groomed. He is assisting a police artist with the creation of a more up-to-date image. Information about the wanted woman should be given to the police, either at the nearest police station or by phoning 08-401 0040.
    She could feel the sick taste in her mouth. It came from deep down in her stomach, where some part of her had already taken in what her brain was still refusing to analyse.
    They were going to take control over her. Again.
    She felt as if she was being suffocated. It was a familiar, frightening sensation that came back from the past to take her over. A hostile spirit was emerging from a hiding-place where it had been waiting and watching. It was ready for her now. In spite of all her efforts, she had failed to exorcise it after all.
    Anybody who fancied reading all about her in the paper could go right ahead. What had they all been saying back then? Silly-billy Sibylla. Something odd about that girl. Always reckoned she’d go downhill.
    She clenched her fist in her pocket.
    Was it her fault that she didn’t fit in? She had never been one of them, but managed all the same. What more could they ask? She was a survivor, a survivor in spite of everything .
    Now they would take her apart again, seeing her strength as madness and her unconditional existence as a loner’s misery. They were poised to crush her plans to build a life of her own.
    She wasn’t going to let them, no way – not now.

‘I t wasn’t me!’
    She was phoning from a telephone booth in Stockholm Central Station. The line went silent, so she said it again.
    â€˜It wasn’t me who killed him.’
    â€˜Killed whom?’
    â€˜Jörgen Grundberg.’
    A brief pause.
    â€˜Who’s that speaking, please?’
    She was scanning the great station hall. It was a Saturday and the hall was full of people, leaving and arriving, ready to meet or to separate.
    â€˜I’m Sibylla. The person you’re looking for. But I’m not the killer.’
    A man carrying a briefcase was standing just a few metres away. He looked demonstratively first at his watch and then at her. Obviously, he was in a hurry and would like her to finish her call. Presumably he too had discovered that this was the only phone around that was still coin-operated. She turned her back on him.
    â€˜Where are you?”
    â€˜It doesn’t matter. The important thing I want you to know is that it wasn’t me who …’
    She fell silent and looked out again. The man was still there, staring irritably at her. She turned her head away again and lowered her voice.
    â€˜â€¦ not me who did it. That’s all I’ve got to say.’
    â€˜Wait a minute!’
    She had intended to put the receiver down but stopped. She could sense