The Ice Child
No. 1 international bestseller and Swedish crime sensation Camilla Lackberg’s new psychological thriller featuring Detective Patrick Hedstrom and Erica Falck – irresistible for fans of Stieg Larsson and Jo Nesbo.SEE NO EVILIt’s January in the peaceful seaside resort of Fjällbacka. A semi-naked girl wanders through the woods in freezing cold weather. When she finally reaches the road, a car comes out of nowhere. It doesn’t manage to stop.HEAR NO EVILThe victim, a girl who went missing four months ago, has been subjected to unimaginably brutal treatment – and Detective Patrik Hedström suspects this is just the start.SPEAK NO EVILThe police soon discover that three other girls are missing from nearby towns, but there are no fresh leads. And when Patrik’s wife stumbles across a link to an old murder case, the detective is forced to see his investigation in a whole new light.
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CAMILLA LACKBERG
The Ice Child
Translated from the Swedish by Tiina Nunnally
This is entirely a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organizations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters and incidents are either the product of the authorâs imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.
HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016
Copyright © Camilla Lackberg 2014
Published by agreement with Nordin Agency, Sweden
Translation copyright © Tiina Nunnally 2016
Originally published in 2014 by
Bokförlaget Forum, Sweden, as Lejontämjaren
Camilla Lackberg asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2016
Cover photographs © Richard Boll/Getty Images (girl); Paul Bucknall/Arcangel Images (trees); Shutterstock.com (path)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books
Ebook Edition © MARCH 2016 ISBN: 9780007518357
Source ISBN: 9780007518333
Version: 2017-05-09
For Simon
Table of Contents
The horse could smell the fear even before the girl emerged from the woods. The rider urged the horse on, digging her heels into the animalâs flanks, though it wasnât really necessary. They were so in tune that her mount sensed her wishes almost before she did.
The muted, rhythmic sound of the horseâs hooves broke the silence. During the night a thin layer of snow had fallen, and the stallion now ploughed new tracks, making the powdery snow spray up around his hooves.
The girl didnât run. She moved unsteadily, in an irregular pattern with her arms wrapped tightly around her torso.
The rider shouted. A loud cry, and the horse understood that something wasnât right. The girl didnât reply, merely staggered onward.
As they approached her, the horse picked up the pace. The strong, rank smell of fear was mixed with something else, something indefinable and so terrifying that he pressed his ears back. He wanted to stop, turn around, and gallop back to the secure confines of his stall. This was not a safe place to be.
The road was between them. Deserted now, with new snow blowing across the asphalt like a silent mist.
The girl continued towards them. Her feet were bare, and the pink of her naked arms and legs contrasted sharply with all the white surrounding her, with the snow-covered spruces forming a white backdrop. They were close now, on either side of the road, and the horse heard the rider shout again. Her voice was so familiar, yet it had a strange ring to it.
Suddenly the girl stopped. She stood in the middle of the road with snow whirling about her feet. There was something odd about her eyes. They were like black holes in her white face.
The car seemed to come out of nowhere. The sound of squealing brakes sliced through the stillness, followed by the thump of a body landing on the ground. The rider yanked so hard on the reins that the bit cut into the stallionâs mouth. He obeyed and stopped abruptly. She was him, and he was her. That was what heâd been taught.
On the ground the girl lay motionless. With those peculiar eyes of hers staring up at the sky.
Erica Falck paused in front of the prison and for the first time studied it closely. On her previous visits she had been so busy thinking about who she was going to meet that she hadnât given the building or its setting more than a cursory glance. But she would need to give readers a sense of the place when she wrote her book about Laila Kowalski, the woman who had so brutally murdered her husband Vladek many years ago.
She pondered how to convey the atmosphere that pervaded the bunker-like building, how she could capture the air of confinement and hopelessness. The prison was located about a thirty-minute drive from Fjällbacka, in a remote and isolated spot surrounded by fences and barbed wire, though it had none of those towers manned by armed guards that always featured in American films. It had been constructed with only one purpose in mind, and that was to keep people inside.
