Did you and your friends go out on a trip today?

Not a trip. Playground.

Are there cars there?

The boy had nodded.

Toy cars?

Big car, he’d told her. Real car. Real, and he’d moved his hands as if he were holding a steering wheel. Brrrrm, brrrrmm.

Where?

Playground.

Kalle. Are you saying you went for a ride in a car at the playground?

He’d nodded.

Who did you go with?

A mister.

A mister?

Mister, mister. He had candies!

Kalle had made a new gesture that could have been somebody holding out a bag of candy, or maybe not.

Berit Skarin had felt a cold shiver run down her spine. A strange man holding out a bag of candy to her little boy.

Olle ought to hear this, but he won’t be back until late.

And Kalle was sitting there in front of her. She’d held him when he’d jumped up to go and watch a children’s program on TV.

Did the car drive away?

Drove, drove. Brrrrrrmm.

Did you go far?

He didn’t understand the question.

Was your teacher with you?

No teacher. Mister.

Then he’d run off to the TV room. She’d watched him go and thought for a moment, then gone to get her handbag from a chair in the kitchen and looked up the home telephone number of one of the nursery-school staff, hesitated when she got as far as the phone, but called anyway.

“Ah. Sorry to disturb you in the evening like this, er, it’s Berit Skarin. Yes, Kalle’s mom. He’s just told me something that I have to ask you about.”

Bengt Josefsson listened. She told him about the conversation she’d had with one of the nursery school staff.

“Nobody noticed anything,” said Berit Skarin.

“I see.”

“Can that kind of thing happen?” she asked. “Can somebody drive up in a car and then drive off with one of the children without any of the staff seeing anything? Then bring the child back again?”