The Disappeared (11 page)

The property register provided Peder with more information: Gustav Sjöö owned a summer cottage in Nyköping.

Was that where you took her to dismember the body?

Peder felt his pulse rate increasing. Gustav Sjöö must be interviewed at the earliest opportunity. Perhaps he had raped Rebecca and forced her to keep quiet about it? Peder’s vision clouded over, his palms felt sweaty. A young woman’s body, hacked in half with a chainsaw. Stuffed into plastic sacks and buried in south Stockholm.

Håkan Nilsson or Gustav Sjöö. Or a person or persons as yet unknown.

Who did you cross, Rebecca?

The evening came, and the night came, and it was time for Alex to go home. The night was far too long, in spite of the fact that the dark time of the year had been left behind. He sat alone in his living room, a glass of whisky in his hand. He had sworn that he wouldn’t turn into a tragic figure when he was alone; he had promised both Lena and the children.

‘You’re not to turn into one of those B-movie cops on TV,’ his son had said. ‘Sitting at home drinking, then going to work to beat up the bad guys.’

Alex looked at the whisky glass. Lena would have understood; she would have trusted him enough not to begrudge him a drop of the hard stuff. It helped to calm him, allowed him to relax. The road to a good night’s sleep was long; the road to a warm smile was endless.

I will never be happy again.

Nor would Diana Trolle.

He put down the glass, realising that he couldn’t push aside thoughts of Diana. What was she doing right now? Was she also sitting at home alone? She must be paralysed with grief. And shock.

Alex thought back to when Rebecca had first been reported missing. It had started off as a routine inquiry. People didn’t realise how many individuals of Rebecca’s age went missing in Sweden every year – and turned up safe and well. But Rebecca didn’t turn up safe and well. She had disappeared without a trace. Sometimes the leads were so vague that Alex began to wonder if she had ever existed. When he spoke to her family and friends he felt closer to her, got an impression of her character, the essence of her. After two weeks, he was absolutely convinced that Rebecca had not disappeared of her own free will. And that she was probably dead.

He had had many conversations with Diana. Sometimes she would call him in the middle of the night.

‘Tell me you’re going to find her, Alex. Promise me that, otherwise I won’t be able to sleep.’

He had promised. Over and over again. However, he was always careful not to promise that Rebecca would be found alive. Diana must have known, because she had never demanded that assurance.

‘There has to be closure,’ she had said. ‘A grave to visit, a breathing space in this purgatory of speculation.’

And now, two years later, she would have her closure and her grave.

Alex had given so many people a grave to visit over the years.

Too many.

Lena had pointed it out.

‘Sometimes, Alex, I think it would have done you good to work with the living as well, so that you could dilute all that black grief with something more life-affirming.’

She had thought he couldn’t cope with it on his own; sometimes she had seen that he was on the brink of going under, and had helped him to rediscover a balance in life. Fear clutched at his heart. Who would help him now?

Fredrika Bergman couldn’t stop thinking about Rebecca Trolle. When she closed her eyes to go to sleep, she could see the young woman in her mind’s eye, running for her life with a madman chasing after her with a chainsaw in his hand. But it couldn’t have been like that, surely? She couldn’t have been alive when he cut her body in two, could she?

Fredrika felt sick. Shortly before midnight she gave up, got out of bed and went into the kitchen. She made some coffee and read the previous day’s newspaper without taking in what she was reading. Restlessness drove her to the nursery; she had to check that Saga was asleep, that she was all right. She was fine. Through talking to the mothers in the parents’ group – which was actually a mothers’ group – she had realised that Saga’s ability to sleep soundly was a blessing. She went down after she had been fed in the evening, and didn’t wake until half past six in the morning. At the earliest.

As she stood there in her daughter’s bedroom, Fredrika could hardly believe that it was only a few days since she had been on full time maternity leave. Had it gone too fast, she asked herself? Would Saga be damaged by Fredrika’s abrupt disappearance from her life? She didn’t think so. It wasn’t as if she had put Saga into day care; she was at home with her father.

Fredrika couldn’t help smiling. Spencer as a father. She would never have believed it that first time she and Spencer met outside the university, and he went home with her. Not then and not later on. She had loved him, but she had never counted on him. Not until now.

The last year had been unimaginably turbulent. Spencer had taken the step from being her secret lover to becoming her partner with astonishing ease. After some initial hesitation, her parents had understood how important he was to her, and had accepted him. On one occasion when Fredrika had gone away for the weekend to visit a friend in Malmö, Spencer had actually gone to dinner at her parents’ on his own.

‘Why not?’ Fredrika had said. ‘You’re the same age, after all.’

Age wasn’t an issue for Fredrika, but she knew perfectly well that few people shared that view. The mothers in the group looked horrified when Fredrika talked about Saga’s daddy. They smiled, but their eyes betrayed sheer panic. They found her life choices challenging; she made them feel insecure about what they had.

Fredrika went back to the kitchen. The mothers’ group was the last thing to provide her with peace of mind. If she wanted to sleep, she needed to think about something else.

But not Rebecca Trolle.

Those pictures again, almost like a film. The chainsaw raised in the air, cutting and slicing and hacking. Fredrika covered her eyes with her hands; wanting the images to disappear.
Think about something else, think about something else.

If Rebecca Trolle had lived and had chosen to carry her baby to full term, she would have been a young mother in Stockholm. More than ten years younger than Fredrika. Rebecca hadn’t wanted to keep the child; Fredrika could feel it in every fibre of her body. She had gone to the clinic, discussed a termination. She hadn’t told a single friend. Was she so lonely, or was there another reason why she kept quiet about such an important matter?

Peder and the other officers had asked around among Rebecca’s circle of friends, reminding each one that this was a confidential matter. They didn’t want the media to find out about the pregnancy yet. No one had heard that Rebecca was pregnant, but several had heard that she was selling sex over the Internet. How was that possible?

The answer was simple: it wasn’t possible.

The two were incompatible. A person with secrets of that magnitude would not be so involved in their studies, the church choir, friends, the mentoring network, teaching babies to swim.

The pregnancy was indisputable; it was a medical fact. But the rumour that Rebecca had been selling sex was not. It was an alien concept; it just didn’t fit.

Her mind full of anxious thoughts, Fredrika returned to the bedroom and lay down next to Spencer.

‘Can’t you sleep?’ he murmured.

She didn’t answer, but crept closer and laid her head on his arm.

She was thinking about Rebecca Trolle.

About the body in the plastic sacks.

About the violence to which she had been subjected.

The chainsaw. It said something about the murderer, something Fredrika just couldn’t grasp. She was struck by a sudden, unstoppable thought:
routine
. He kills as a matter of routine.

INTERVIEW WITH FREDRIKA BERGMAN, 02-05-2009, 17.30 (tape recording)

Present: Urban S, Roger M (interrogators one and two). Fredrika Bergman (witness).

Urban: In spite of the fact that you found a second victim, you still subscribed to the theory that Håkan Nilsson was the killer?

Fredrika: We didn’t subscribe to any particular theory; we were keeping an open mind.

Roger: And the second victim, what happened there?

Fredrika: It took time to secure an identification.

Urban: Because you made mistakes.

Fredrika: Because we stuck to facts.

Roger: And Peder Rydh? Did he stick to the rules?

Fredrika: All the time.

Urban: And Alex Recht?

Fredrika: He stuck to the rules as well.

Urban: I was thinking more in terms of his mental state.

Fredrika: He was fine throughout.

Roger: And what about you?

Fredrika: I was fine too.

Urban: We were thinking more of the issue of sticking to the rules.

(Silence.)

Fredrika: I don’t understand the question.

Urban: We’re wonder if you followed the letter of the law and stuck to the rules when you were carrying out your work.

Fredrika: Of course.

Roger: You didn’t suppress any evidence?

(Silence.)

Urban: Not when you went through Rebecca’s things in the garage?

Fredrika: No.

(Silence.)

Roger: So what about Thea Aldrin? You must have found her by this stage?

Fredrika: No, we hadn’t.

Urban: Isn’t that a bit odd?

Fredrika: The investigation was complicated by the fact that the victims had been in the ground for such a long time. We were constantly waiting for test results and analyses. It took a while.

Urban: That’s obviously a downside of being meticulous; everything is so slow.

Roger: What happened next? You were about to bring in both Håkan Nilsson and Gustav Sjöö. But you went off on a tangent of your own as usual. Isn’t that correct?

(Silence.)

Urban: It was your idea to go through Rebecca’s belongings in the garage, wasn’t it?

Fredrika: Yes.

Roger: And what did you find?

(Silence.)

Urban: Answer the question, please.

(Silence.)

Roger: That was when you found Spencer, wasn’t it?

Fredrika (whispering): Yes.

FRIDAY

13

A second body buried next to the first one. Thea drank her coffee out of the same stupid mug as always, then banged it down on the table. The shock was making her chest feel tight. Who was the man who had been laid to rest just a few metres away from Rebecca Trolle? The police were refusing to comment; they had merely stated that the deceased was a man, and that he had probably been lying there for at least two decades, possibly three.

Two decades. That was a long time to be missing.

Thea reached for the morning paper. The discovery of the two bodies was a major story. The editorial team dealt with a lot of news, but rarely anything as exciting as a double murder. The press were asking if there might be a link, in spite of the time that had elapsed between the deaths. And the police were saying nothing.

They were saying nothing because they knew nothing.

Thea’s father had been a police officer, which was why she believed she knew how the police thought. He had visited her in prison just once. She couldn’t make up her mind whether the number of visits was a measure of his inadequacy as a father or a judgement on her.

‘You have to start speaking, Thea,’ he had said. ‘If there’s anything you want to put forward in your defence, you must speak now.
Now.
Otherwise it will be too late.’

Her silence had provoked him.

‘The evidence is overwhelming. There is
nothing
to suggest that you are innocent. I just don’t understand. How did you become so . . . disturbed?’

Darling Daddy, children become what you make them.

‘I’ve told your mother I don’t want her to visit you. Not while you’re behaving like this. Do you understand what I’m saying, Thea? You’re going to be horribly lonely.’

I have been lonely for as long as I can remember.

Eventually, he had got to his feet, looked at her for the last time.

‘I’m ashamed of you,’ he had whispered. ‘I’m ashamed because my daughter is a murderer.’

And I am ashamed because my father is an idiot and my mother is a milksop.

Thea’s hands shook, making the newspaper rustle. She thought she knew who the dead man was. The man who could have made a difference, but who had vanished when she needed him the most. The police had believed he had disappeared because he wanted to, but Thea had always known that he was dead. She had longed for him to return, been unable to understand why no one could find him. How deep do you have to bury a man so that no one will find his grave? About two metres, according to the police. That was how far down he had been lying. How many feet had walked over him, unaware of what lay hidden beneath the moss and the fallen branches?

She closed her eyes, wishing her thoughts would leave her in peace. The police would need more time to work out who he was, and what his connection with Rebecca Trolle was. And with Thea.

She wondered if they realised that they would find more bodies in that accursed grave.

14

‘We’re digging day and night, but it’s difficult to keep all the bloody journalists away,’ said the DS.

Alex listened, along with his colleague Torbjörn Ross, who had been first on the scene when Rebecca’s body was found.

‘Do you need more manpower?’

‘At least another five, if we’re going to get anywhere. We daren’t use mechanical diggers; we’re doing everything by hand. But it’s starting to feel unsustainable. The lads can’t carry on much longer.’

Torbjörn thought for a moment.

‘Could we get some help from the Local Defence Volunteers?’

‘Check out the possibilities,’ Alex said. ‘If there are any more bodies in there waiting to be discovered, I want them out over the weekend.’

The DS headed back to the site, which was growing steadily. He promised to do his best; if there were more bodies, they would see the light of day before Sunday night.