Silenced (41 page)

‘So do we,’ said Fredrika, and thought to herself: they deceived Jakob and Marja and lots of other people. The murder of Jakob and Marja was never a matter of dangerous secrets and people needing to be silenced. It was just a clever front for the real motive: personal vengeance.

The house lay dark and deserted as Karolina parked the hired car in the driveway. Without the slightest hesitation, she opened the car door and got out into the snow. She tramped as quickly as she could round the house and in through the basement door. A few moments later she was back out again and unlocked the front door on the other side of the house. A wave of memories overpowered her as she stepped inside and closed the door behind her, still in the dark.

This was where the story had started, and this was where it would reach its conclusion.

First they had destroyed everything for her and Måns. Weakened him to a point where he could no longer be counted on, so any relationship with him became impossible. After that they had carried on working through their plan, so methodically and purposefully that it had scared her witless.

She moved towards the living room. She stretched out an arm and ran her fingertips along all those dear photographs as she passed them. She was the one who had once helped her mother put them up.

Everything had started falling apart right back when she was a child, she realised that now.

But there were other things she could not make head nor tail of, and she would demand answers from her sister about those, as soon as she turned up. Karolina crouched down by one of the big windows and scanned the darkness in front of the house. With all the lights off, she would be invisible to anybody trying to look in, but have a better view of the garden herself.

She kept a tight hold on the shotgun she had loaded in the basement, which was now resting in her lap. She was ready to meet her sister, any second now.

The flying squad minibus was having trouble gripping the slippery road surface, but the driver accelerated even so. Fredrika’s call came through to Alex when they were about ten minutes from the house.

‘Elsie’s confirmed almost everything we thought, and told me more besides,’ she reported. ‘Hiding the migrants was a joint project of Viggo and Sven’s from the word go, but unlike Sven, Viggo carried on in Ragnar Vinterman’s expanded operation. It was Viggo who took the Ljungs’ car and reported it stolen so they’d be in the clear if there were suspicions it had been used to commit a crime.’

‘Well I’ll be . . .’ began Alex.

‘There’s more,’ Fredrika broke in. ‘Elsie’s sure that Viggo killed Jakob and Marja and that he and Johanna staged the whole thing. They’ve been together for several years, but they didn’t let on to anybody. Oh, and it turns out it was Karolina who was raped at the holiday house, not Johanna.’

Fredrika paused for breath as Alex tried to slot all this new information into the tragic framework. Two brothers, two sisters. Two disintegrating families, and strong individuals who broke loose and demanded redress.

‘Could she tell you anything about Viggo’s reasons for murdering his girlfriend’s parents?’ he asked briskly.

‘Revenge,’ Fredrika said. ‘Viggo and Måns were with their parents on a surprise visit to Ekerö the evening Karolina was raped and heard all about it from Johanna. What nobody realised was that both boys were in love with the same girl, Karolina. To start with it wasn’t a problem because she didn’t want either of them. But later on, when she’d left home to study, she got interested in Måns. In a crazy attempt to outdo the competition, Viggo located the man who raped Karolina, who turned out still to be in the country.’

A gust of wind caught the minibus and tried to knock it off the road. Alex had to concentrate hard to hear what Fredrika was saying.

‘His confrontation with the rapist ended very violently: Viggo was knifed in the face and fled. He’s apparently had a terrible scar ever since.’

‘I thought it was a cleft-palate operation that had gone wrong,’ Alex said, bitterly recalling what Tony Svensson had said to Peder and Joar:

It’s not somebody like me you’re looking for . . . I haven’t got a name . . . just a fucking ugly face.

‘That was what everybody who met him later thought,’ Fredrika said eagerly. ‘And the family let them think it, because they were ashamed of the real reason for the scar. The incident was never reported to the police; Karolina’s rapist had too many motives for keeping out of judicial hands.’

‘I don’t suppose Karolina was very impressed by Viggo’s bit of bravado?’ Alex guessed.

‘No he wasn’t, and that seems to have been one of the things that pushed him into helping Johanna with her plan. He never forgave Karolina’s family, or his own, for condemning what he’d done. Johanna was part of the Vinterman network as well, and she got her mother to join, too, because Marja had strong objections to her husband’s idea of starting up his voluntary work again. She felt the refugees had cost her so much personally that she never wanted to help them for free again. Ragnar tempted her with money and I’m sure Johanna had some strong arguments, too.’

Fredrika swallowed.

‘Lots of people were damaged for life that midsummer eve.’

‘And Elsie and Sven knew this all along,’ Alex said dully.

‘We have to understand them,’ Fredrika said. ‘They’ve been fearing for their own lives since they found Jakob and Marja. The only thing they dared give us was their conviction that Jakob hadn’t done it himself. They hoped we’d find out the rest.’

Alex paused.

‘Good God, what a betrayal on Marja’s part,’ he said in a voice that Fredrika had never heard him use before.

‘I don’t think so, Alex,’ she said. ‘I’m sure Johanna convinced her mother there was no risk in the project. Maybe she played on her feelings of guilt about the past, too.’

‘And when she realised the full ghastliness of it . . .’

‘. . . it was too late. But she tried anyway. We know she sent those threats to Jakob, and I think we can assume she sent them with the best of intentions. She was trying to save what could still be saved.’

Alex stared out of the minibus window at the whirling snow. He thought ahead to the Ekerö house, where the sisters must be gearing up for their final battle.

‘She could have done more,’ he said sternly. ‘Then maybe she and Jakob would still be alive today.’

‘But they might not. She was a pawn in Johanna’s game, and
she
presumably wanted nothing better than to see her parents dead. She was just waiting for the right opportunity.’

Initially Karolina could not be sure if it was her sister walking up the road towards the house. She leant up against the window, pressing her forehead to the cold glass to try to see better. When the figure turned in at the driveway, Karolina’s heart missed a beat. It really was her sister.

She did not slow her steps as she walked. In fact she almost strode, very upright, with her long hair hanging loose down the back of her coat, across the garden and up the steps to the front door. Then Karolina heard her pause, and saw the door handle slowly press down. The door opened and Johanna stepped inside, tall and slender and covered in snow. As if she had known all along that Karolina was crouched on the floor by the big window, she slowly turned towards her.

The bright ceiling light went on as Johanna flicked the switch on the wall.

‘Sitting here in the dark?’ she said, observing her sister and the gun.

Karolina leapt to her feet, raising the weapon.

‘I need to know why,’ she said grimly, clutching the gun in her chilled hands.

Not once on all those hunting trips with her father had she ever dreamt she would have to use her skills to defend her own life one day. Against her own sister.

‘Betrayal.’

Karolina shook her head.

‘You’re sick. You’ve had your whole family wiped out and you have the gall to say you’re the one who feels betrayed.’

Her sister’s face twitched.

‘I did everything for you after that goddamn midsummer’s eve,’ she hissed. ‘
Everything
. I even had the daisy tattoo done as an everlasting reminder of what you’d been through. And what did you do? Turned your back on me and turned Dad against me.’

Karolina felt the tears prick her eyes.

‘You’ve never done anything for anyone but yourself, Johanna. And you turned Dad against you yourself.’

‘You’re lying,’ Johanna yelled with such force that Karolina flinched. ‘Just like the lie that you didn’t care about Måns or Viggo.’

‘We were so young,’ whispered Karolina impotently. ‘How can you still be blaming me for that?’

‘Viggo tried to take revenge for your sake,’ Johanna went on loudly. ‘And you thanked him by choosing his brother instead.’

Mention of Viggo frightened Karolina. She had not realised he was mixed up in all that happened, but of course he must be. Bit by bit the truth dawned on her, and she felt her strength draining away as the picture became clear.

‘So now you understand,’ Johanna said gently. ‘I must say you impress me, Lina. You not only extricated yourself from that unpleasant state of affairs in Thailand, you also managed to get back to Sweden and find out the truth.’

‘Måns,’ whispered Karolina.

‘Quite right,’ smiled Johanna. ‘It was stupid of you – very stupid, in fact – not to realise who Måns would turn to when you rang and asked him for help. We were one step ahead of you the whole way. I wanted you for once in your life to experience what it was like for me, invisible to everything and everyone.’

‘But you never were invisible,’ protested Karolina. ‘You were the one everybody could see. Good grief, I spent half my childhood hearing that I ought to be more like you.’

The air inside the house felt thick in the throat. Johanna was standing stock still, but for a repeated clenching and opening of her fists. She was seething with rage.

‘That’s exactly it.
Half
your childhood. Then things got better, didn’t they? But not for me. Nor for Viggo.’

Fear and fatigue made Karolina start to cry.

‘I thought this was all about that wretched new network of smugglers,’ she said through her tears, the gun shaking in her hands. ‘Drawing Mum into all this. How could you?’

Johanna’s face darkened still further at the sight of her sister’s tears.

‘I never intended forgiving any of you.
Not ever.
Believe me, everything that’s happened was going to happen sooner or later anyway. But when our fool of a father kept on sticking his nose in things that were none of his business, I have to admit it got more urgent than we’d originally planned. And it was so easy to pull the wool over Mum’s eyes, it was almost pathetic. She was completely convinced that only Dad was in danger.’

The room closed in as Johanna spoke. Johanna, who had both her parents murdered without feeling the slightest remorse. Karolina still could not quite accept how deranged her sister must be. Her desire for explanation was still not satisfied.

‘I read all about it in the papers,’ Karolina said. ‘And talked to Elsie. Between you all, you’ve murdered so many people.’

Johanna put her head on one side.

‘I do admit that more lives have been lost than we first calculated, but when people can’t stick to the simple rules of the game, it’s hard to be accountable for their actions. We expressly told them they weren’t to let on to anyone that they were going to Sweden, yet several of them still did precisely that. So we couldn’t send them home again.’

‘We? You and Viggo, you mean?’

Johanna sneered, but said nothing.

‘What were you thinking?’ said Karolina. ‘That Mum and Dad would die and I’d rot in jail in Thailand?’

‘I think you deserve some credit after putting us to such trouble,’ Johanna said in a businesslike tone. ‘We had hoped you’d be back home before we tackled Mum and Dad’s activities. But then we realised you’d sniffed out one of our most vital collaborators in Bangkok, and we had to take action.’

‘Just so you know, I didn’t realise how close I’d got.’

‘No, but that doesn’t really change anything, does it? You had to be dealt with on the spot, we decided that straight away. A challenge for us all, but a bit of imagination finds a solution to most things here in life. It was a piece of cake to shut down your email accounts, since you’d usefully provided Dad with your password and user name. Just think, he kept them in a notebook on his desk. So easy I was almost disappointed. And we had all the contacts we needed to make stuff happen in Bangkok. The mugging, shifting your gear to another hotel, putting the drugs in your room, tipping off the police so they mounted the raid.’

Johanna stopped for a moment.

‘Everything has its price,’ she said. ‘No one can do what you lot did to me without paying for it.’

Its price.
Words piled up in Karolina’s head, but in the wrong order. She thought about Viggo again. Viggo, who had got into her parents’ flat, raised a gun and shot them in the head. At what point had they realised they were going to die? Did they ever get time to realise why?

‘Why didn’t you tell us you were a couple?’ Karolina asked feebly. ‘You and Viggo.’

A hollow laugh echoed round the room.

‘What was there to tell, Lina? That I’d picked up the pieces you didn’t want? You and I have scarcely seen each other for years, so why should I confide in you?’

There was nothing to say, nothing to add. It was all over, and this was the end.
Everything has its price.
So Karolina abandoned the topic, and asked:

‘Where is he now? Is he waiting for you somewhere?’

‘He’s in the garden,’ Johanna answered in such a cool voice that Karolina had to take her eyes off her and turn her head to the big window at the front of the house.

And she saw his outline, out there in the falling snow. The man who had once loved her so much that he had committed a crime to take revenge for an injustice she had long since put behind her.

‘You’re never going to get away with this, the pair of you. You’ve deceived too many people, forced them into a chain of murders I refuse to believe they wanted to be part of.’