Silenced (32 page)

He paused.

‘So what does that tell us?’

‘Either she’s dead, or for some reason she can’t get in touch. Maybe she’s being held somewhere, against her will?’ said Peder.

‘Or she’s in on the conspiracy,’ said Joar.

Fredrika cleared her throat.

‘There’s got to be some reason for her to go along with being declared dead, as it were. We’ve been to her flat and it looks as if it’s been standing empty for weeks.’

‘But wasn’t she missed at work?’ queried Ellen, who seldom said anything at the meetings.

‘She’s a freelance journalist,’ replied Fredrika. ‘Or trying to be. She wasn’t doing very well out of it financially, if her latest tax return’s anything to go by. Which ties in quite well with the profile of her as a drug addict, incidentally.’

‘Be that as it may, someone’s gone to a lot of trouble – with or without her consent – to build up a story round her death,’ observed Joar. ‘But why?’

‘To make the next death, that is, the Ahlbins’ so-called suicide, more plausible,’ suggested Peder.

‘Or to kill two birds with one stone?’ said Fredrika, brain-storming. ‘If we go back to our working hypothesis that Jakob was murdered to keep him quiet, maybe there was good reason to keep Karolina quiet, too. Various informants have told us how close she was to her father.’

Alex sighed and kneaded his face with his hands.

‘But why Marja?’

Nobody responded.

‘Why do you also kill the wife of the man you’re trying to silence? And the argument that the murderer was taken by surprise to find her at home doesn’t hold water, because he could just have taken care of Jakob some other time.’

‘Maybe it was urgent?’ Peder said. ‘And if you want it to look like suicide, there aren’t that many places besides the victim’s own home to choose from.’

‘What about the suicide note?’ asked Fredrika. ‘How did it look? Do we think it was written in advance, or what?’

‘It was printed out from Jakob’s computer,’ replied Joar. ‘The document had been saved onto the hard disk and it was dated the same day, and saved at about the time of the murder, according to the computer.’

‘Let’s sketch ourselves a profile of the murderer,’ said Alex with a degree of excitement in his voice. ‘Someone stages the Karolina death on the Thursday. Someone goes out to Ekerö and gets into the house unnoticed to fetch the murder weapon. Someone goes round to Jakob and Marja’s flat on the Tuesday with a plan all worked out, and shoots them both in the head after first forcing Jakob to sign his own suicide note. What conclusions can we draw from all that?’

Before anyone could say anything, he started answering his own question:

‘One. The murderer knows the Ahlbin family extremely well. Two. The murderer has some level of access to the Ahlbins’ flat and their daughters’ house; he’s patently been able to get into both without any visible damage to the front doors, and it’s only in the latter case that someone could have let him or her in voluntarily. Three.’

Alex paused.

‘Three. The murderer must have known the family for some time, since he or she was able to play on both Jakob’s state of health and the fact that Karolina was the daughter he was closest to.’

He stopped.

‘Four,’ said Fredrika. ‘The murderer thought – or at least had reason to think – that Karolina Ahlbin wouldn’t come forward and reveal that she wasn’t really dead.’

The others looked at her.

‘Quite right,’ Alex said slowly, with a nod of approval, but Peder just looked confused.

‘Why didn’t they just kill her?’ queried Alex. ‘If it was vital for her to disappear, and I think we can assume it was, why not get her out of the way permanently?’

Fredrika went pale.

‘Maybe they did. Maybe that’s why we haven’t heard from her.’

Joar shook his head.

‘No, that doesn’t make sense. Why go to the bother of killing her twice? Why not do away with her straight away and then use her actual death to explain why Jakob killed his wife and then himself? To my way of thinking, it seems much more plausible that she was in on the plot.’

‘Because there was no opportunity, or because she’s part of the set-up,’ Alex declared. ‘Nothing else fits.’

‘In view of her good relations with her father,’ said Fredrika with her head on one side and a hand resting on her stomach, ‘perhaps the most likely answer is that they couldn’t get hold of her when they needed to kill her.’

‘True,’ said Alex. ‘But that still leaves us with the question: where was she then, and where is she now? Have we talked to many of her friends?’

‘We haven’t had time yet,’ said Peder, sounding tired. ‘We haven’t been treating it as a priority, because we thought she was dead, plain and simple. And it’s been quite hard to track them down; we haven’t had access to her phone records or emails. And she’s got no formal place of work, either, has she?’

‘If we tell the media we’re looking for her and issue a description, we’re going to look like idiots,’ said Alex, thinking hard about what best to do next. ‘But I wouldn’t mind betting it’ll leak out anyway.’

‘Not if we keep a tight lid on things,’ objected Joar.

‘If it doesn’t leak out from here, it will from the hospital,’ Alex said wryly. ‘There’s not a chance it won’t be out by the end of the evening.’

Fredrika leant forward.

‘So let’s pre-empt them,’ she said.

‘How?’

‘We hold a press conference,’ she said. ‘Then we’re first with the news. Classic media logic. If you want ownership of how a story’s presented and followed up, you have to be the one to break it.’

Alex looked in Ellen’s direction. It was going to be a long working day.

‘Can you get together with the information department and write a press release? Meanwhile, I’ll try to get some support for this among the higher echelons.’

He looked at his watch again.

‘Say we’ll hold it two hours from now, at six. Until then let’s all try to make sure nothing leaks out.’

Media training was evidently increasingly popular these days, but any opportunities of that kind had unfortunately passed Alex Recht by. So he felt pretty lost when he took his place on the platform for the meeting with the press.

He made a short statement of which the gist was: the police had received new information to prove beyond doubt that it was not Jakob and Marja Ahlbin’s daughter who had died the Thursday before they were found shot dead in their flat. It would therefore be appreciated if anyone with any information about the current whereabouts of either Karolina or Johanna Ahlbin could come forward. Neither of them was suspected of any crime; the police merely wanted their help in order to reach a better understanding of the circumstances surrounding their parents’ deaths.

‘But what about Johanna?’ asked one of the reporters. ‘How can you not suspect her of any crime? She must have known it wasn’t her sister that she came to hospital with and identified.’

Alex took a sip of water even though he was not in the least thirsty.

‘That’s just the kind of point we need the opportunity to clarify,’ he said, trying to sound authoritative. ‘We need to know exactly what the circumstances were that led to an unknown woman being identified as Karolina Ahlbin a week ago.’

Fredrika was standing right at the back, observing her boss throughout the short press conference. On the whole she thought he made a pretty good job of it.

Just as Alex was winding up the conference, her mobile vibrated in her jacket pocket. She quickly left the room so she could speak undisturbed.

A faint hope of it being Spencer crept over her from nowhere. They had not been in touch with each other that day and she was missing him.

To hell with that, she thought wearily. Missing Spencer was like wishing for a white Christmas. If it happens, it happens, but it’s not worth getting your hopes up.

When she was able to answer the phone, it wasn’t Spencer, of course, but a colleague from the national CID. He introduced himself as one of the investigators working on the series of security van robberies to which the man Yusuf, run over at the university, could be linked.

‘We’ve found something that I thought you’d like to know about,’ he said.

Fredrika was all ears.

‘When the case came to us we did another scene-of-crime investigation,’ he said, ‘and we found a mobile phone with the dead man’s prints on. It was almost twenty-five metres from the body, so it was probably flung out of his jacket pocket when the car initially rammed into him.’

There was a crackle on the line; reception was not very good just where Fredrika happened to be standing.

‘We took all the information off it and got hold of details of the calls made to and from it, from the phone company. It had only been used a few times, and in all cases the incoming calls were from unregistered pay-as-you-go accounts.’

‘Yes?’

There was a sound of paper rustling.

‘Sven Ljung,’ he said eventually.

‘Sven Ljung?’ Fredrika echoed in astonishment.

‘Yes, he’s the listed subscriber to the phone which the hit-and-run victim’s mobile had been in touch with. It was Ljung he rang; two short calls.’

Fredrika was thinking furiously, trying to fathom how it all fitted together.

‘When were these calls to Sven Ljung made?’

‘Two days before the robbery was committed.’

Fredrika took a deep breath. The circle appeared to be closing, but she still did not understand what she had in front of her.

‘Oh, there’s one other thing,’ said the detective. ‘We were able to secure traces of metallic silver paint on the victim’s clothes, which also happens to be the colour of Sven Ljung’s Mercedes.’

‘Have you been able to match them?’ asked Fredrika, suddenly unsure what was technically possible.

‘We thought about that – it isn’t necessarily significant, there are loads of cars that colour, but when we discovered Sven Ljung had reported his car stolen the evening before the murder took place, we thought it was all getting more interesting.’

Thoughts were whirring round in Fredrika’s head and anything to do with Spencer found itself relegated to a kind of mental waiting room.

‘Have you spoken to him? Sven Ljung, that is?’ she asked, her voice husky with suspense.

‘Not yet, but we’re working on it,’ replied the detective.

They had a few more exchanges about the likelihood of Sven Ljung being an accessory to the hit-and-run murder, and thus possibly also the murder of Jakob and Marja. Then they ended the call and Fredrika pocketed her phone.

People came crowding out of the room she had just left. The press conference was clearly over. Then her phone rang again.

Spencer, thought Fredrika automatically.

She was wrong again.

‘This is very peculiar,’ said her contact in the technical division. ‘I checked Jakob Ahlbin’s emails again and he had one from his daughter, several days after she died. As if she was still alive.’

Fredrika gripped her phone tightly.

‘From which daughter?’ she asked, quietly so none of the reporters would hear what she was saying.

‘From Karolina,’ said the technician, sounding baffled. ‘But she’s dead, isn’t she?’

Fredrika ignored his objection.

‘Can you read me out the email, please?’ she said.

‘
Dad, sorry to have to tell you this by email, but I get no answer when I try ringing your mobile. It’s all a complete disaster here. Stuck in Bangkok in a terrible fix. Need help right away. Please answer as soon as you get this! Love, Karolina
.’

Bangkok
. So it was Karolina who tried to ring her mother. Fredrika felt tears coming into her eyes.

‘So she didn’t know,’ she whispered, mainly to herself.

‘Hello?’ the technician broke in. ‘It can’t have been Karolina who sent the email, can it? Because she’s dead.’

In Fredrika’s head there was only one answer to his question:

‘Lazarus.’

BANGKOK, THAILAND

Still oblivious of her own death and resurrection, Karolina Ahlbin boarded a flight from Bangkok to Stockholm later that evening. Paralysed by the belief that she was returning to her home city to bury her entire family, she was scarcely able to feel the pressure of the situation facing her. According to the smuggler, a nationwide alert had been issued and her picture had been in all the Thai newspapers. So she could not leave the flat and had to resign herself to being cut off from the flow of news about the murder of her parents and sister in Sweden.

Her ally, the people smuggler, had worked fast since she asked him for help. But he freely admitted that it was a tricky challenge. His usual modus operandi when helping migrants get from Bangkok to Sweden was to get hold of the passport of an individual as similar in appearance to the migrant as possible. If the migrant travelled in possession of a genuine passport indicating citizenship of an EU country, there was nothing to prevent them entering Europe.

The fact that there was a widespread trade in passports was not much help to Karolina’s smuggler. The passports he was able to buy on the second-hand market were those not of Swedish citizens with blond hair and blue eyes but of people originally from other countries. So when Karolina sought him out in desperation and begged for a way of leaving Thailand ‘in the next few days’, he was faced with a problem. After a few hours of brooding, the smuggler decided the only thing to do was to identify a Swedish tourist who looked vaguely like Karolina and then steal her passport.

She scrutinised the picture suspiciously when he handed her the passport.

‘You can’t leave the country except in disguise, anyway,’ the smuggler assured her when he saw how downcast she looked. ‘They’ll be on the look-out at the airport for you and anyone else wanted by the police. Change your hairstyle and colour, and get some new glasses. At least then you’ll have a shadow of a chance.’

As mechanically as if she were a clockwork toy, she took the steps he suggested. Cut her hair short and dyed it. Then she sat apathetically on the edge of the bed for hours. Now she had even lost her own appearance. And she still did not know why.