The Disappeared (20 page)

A life that I would rather have – but it wasn’t to be.

Was that still true? Did she really want a different life? Wasn’t she satisfied with what she had? With Spencer and Saga? Her love for them both had changed so many things that she could no longer count them. As far as her job was concerned, it wasn’t perfect, but things had got better. Much better, in fact.

She curled up in the armchair with her legs tucked underneath her. The computer was on the table beside her. She glanced at it, well aware that she shouldn’t open it up. She shouldn’t start working in the middle of the night. Once she got the job in her system, she would never sleep. Curiosity won, and she lifted the laptop onto her knee. It sounded like a purring cat as the fan came to life.

Her colleague had done as she asked and sent over the photographs of Rebecca Trolle. She opened them one by one, feeling revulsion at the fact that she was sitting here in the middle of the night looking at photographs of a naked Rebecca. What was it she had recognised but been unable to place?

She looked at them again, searching for the detail that had triggered her memory. Rebecca lying on her side on a wide bed. The white sheet against her body. Her hair falling over her cheek, her mouth half open. Such a betrayal, to take photographs of a person who was sleeping. One arm outstretched, one leg drawn up. Fredrika had seen other pictures on the website, and these photographs of Rebecca just didn’t fit in. They were simply too tasteful. Too discreet.

And there it was.

Fredrika leaned closer to the screen, clicking to zoom in on the detail that had caught her attention. A single framed photograph on the otherwise bare wall behind the bed where Rebecca lay. A face filling the entire picture, a young boy with a stern expression, staring directly into the camera. When the image was sufficiently enlarged, Fredrika knew exactly where she had seen him before.

In Rebecca’s ex-girlfriend’s apartment. He was Daniella’s dead brother.

Fredrika looked at Rebecca. There wasn’t a trace of anxiety in her face. She had felt safe in that bed. Safe enough to sleep naked. She wasn’t to know that she would be secretly photographed, and that the pictures would be kept for future use.

Daniella must have been furious when Rebecca disappeared, believing that she had been abandoned. Fredrika thought about ringing Alex right away, but decided it could wait until the following day. After all, there was no reason to think that the case was keeping anyone else awake at night.

He was bound to be asleep.

‘I never loved him.’

Alex was surprised.

‘No?’

‘No,’ said Diana. ‘Not really. Not the way you talk about your wife.’

Alex shuffled.

‘But love isn’t the same for everyone. We’re all looking for different things, we have different needs.’

Diana smiled at him.

‘And what needs do you have?’

‘Is that a fair question?’

She shrugged.

‘Why not?’

Because it’s embarrassing the person you’re asking, he wanted to reply. Instead he said:

‘I have pretty simple needs, I think. I hate being alone, I like having someone to live with.’

Would he ever have that again? Would any other woman stand a chance with Alex, after all those good years he and Lena had shared?

His children had warned him about this, told him that he mustn’t let his marriage stand in the way of future relationships. They had insisted it was perfectly natural that he would meet someone else.

‘You’re not even sixty, Dad.’

The very idea terrified him. He felt a heavy weight on his chest, making it difficult to breathe. He had no idea of how to approach a woman; he hadn’t courted anyone for over thirty years.

Diana put her wine glass down on the coffee table. She was half-lying on the sofa, and had made herself comfortable with cushions. Tiredness covered her face like a veil, and grief lurked beneath her skin like an abomination. She had only wept once since he arrived, which had made him regret his decision for a few moments. What the hell had he been thinking of, visiting the victim of a crime on a Friday night?

Then came a sense of calm. Coming to see Diana had been a good decision. They had a lot to talk about, and an unexpected number of common denominators. Above all, they shared the experience of having lost someone close, someone they hadn’t thought they could live without.

‘And yet we’re still alive. Strange, isn’t it?’ she had said.

They were indeed still alive. Living hour by hour, day by day. She had been missing her daughter for more than two years, knowing that she was dead even though no one had been able to tell her for sure. Alex realised that at least he had had the privilege of being a part of it all when his wife passed away.

‘You were there,’ Diana said. ‘All the way through. You should regard that as a gift.’

If anyone else had said that, he would have lashed out. But when it was Diana who spoke those words, he couldn’t fight back; he had to admit that she was right. Another person’s grief couldn’t lessen his own, but at least he could see that there were degrees of torture.

It was almost half past one, several hours later than the time Alex had been expecting to leave.

‘I really ought to make a move.’

‘I think you ought to stay.’

He was taken aback; he felt her words rebound off his chest and disappear into nothingness.

‘It’s best if I go.’

But he didn’t get up; he couldn’t bring himself to leave the armchair.

‘I’ll be working for a while tomorrow. You know you can call me at any time if you think of something?’

She nodded.

‘As I keep saying, Alex – I don’t remember anything.’

‘That’s because you’re trying too hard.’

Her hand clenched into a fist and she pressed it against her forehead.

‘We had an argument a few days before she disappeared.’

‘I remember that. For a while, we thought she wanted to wreak some kind of revenge on you, and had simply gone off somewhere.’

Diana closed her eyes, squeezing them tightly until they were no more than narrow lines. As if the pain was making the muscles contract.

‘I couldn’t work out what was wrong. She just wasn’t herself. She kept yelling and screaming, slamming doors the way she used to do when she was fourteen and thought I was stupid.’

She opened her eyes.

‘She said she hated me. The next day, she rang and said she was sorry. But I never saw her again.’

The tears welled up, and she made no attempt to hold them back.

‘You couldn’t have known that was the last time you’d see her,’ Alex said.

‘I know. But that doesn’t change anything. It hurts so much.’

He wanted to get up, go over to her and put his arms around her. But he stayed where he was. An indefinable fear held him back. The fear of what would happen if he took her in his arms.

I would do what she wanted and stay all night.

‘How could she not have told me she was pregnant?’

‘Perhaps she was embarrassed?’

Diana sat up straight.

‘I can’t make any sense of it. Why didn’t she have an abortion if she didn’t want to keep the child?’

‘We have reason to believe that she was intending to have a termination.’

‘But when? She was four months gone.’

Alex realised he didn’t have an answer to that question.

‘We’ve spoken to her supervisor,’ he said.

Diana raised her eyebrows and dried her tears.

‘The man we talked about on the phone?’

‘Yes.’

‘She definitely wasn’t happy with him.’

‘We’re aware of that.’

‘Do you think he killed her?’

‘No. For one thing, he has a watertight alibi, and for another, we can’t come up with a motive.’

Diana settled down among her cushions again.

‘She was obsessed with her dissertation.’

‘Wasn’t that because she wanted to carry on and do some research work?’

‘It was the topic itself that absorbed her so completely. She wanted to clear Thea Aldrin’s name at any price.’

Alex tried to recall the story of Thea Aldrin.

‘She was convicted of the murder of her ex-husband, wasn’t she?’

Diana nodded, gazing sorrowfully at the empty wine bottle.

‘It sounds a bit ambitious for a university dissertation, attempting to clear up a murder that was committed thirty years ago where the perpetrator has already been convicted, served her sentence and been released.’

He was smiling as he spoke; he didn’t want to appear condescending.

Diana gave a wan smile.

‘That’s what I thought. But Rebecca just said I was like all the rest of them, that I didn’t realise Thea Aldrin was the real victim, who had lost her husband, her reputation and her career. And her son.’

‘Sounds fairly typical of the way young people think; they want to see the best in everyone.’

Diana took a deep breath.

‘That was how the quarrel started.’

‘You argued about Thea Aldrin?’

‘About the fact that I said exactly the same as you: young people always want to pardon every sinner. She went mad. Told me that Thea Aldrin had been the subject of one of the worst examples of character assassination in modern Swedish history, and that it would never have happened if she hadn’t been a single woman.’

Alex leaned back in the armchair. He ought to go home. Right now.

‘What’s that got to do with anything? The fact that she was a single woman? As far as I understand it, the evidence was overwhelming.’

Diana spread her hands wide. Neat, feminine hands that would feel warm in his own, Alex thought.

‘Rebecca was talking about everything that had happened previously: the story of Thea Aldrin’s involvement in the publication of two books,
Mercury
and
Asteroid
. Well, I say books; they were more like crazed descriptions of disgusting murders in the form of short novels.’

She pulled a face. Alex glanced at his watch again, aware that he wasn’t really up to speed on the story of Thea Aldrin. But he remembered hearing that Rebecca had spent a huge amount of time on her dissertation.

‘I’m afraid I haven’t read
Pluto
or
Venus
, and I really do have to go home now.’

Diana laughed quietly.

‘
Mercury
and
Asteroid.
And the fact that you haven’t read them is a point in your favour.

Her eyes sought his.

‘Are you sure you have to go?’

‘Yes.’

Her expression was serious now.

‘Perhaps you’ll stay some other time?’

He swallowed.

‘Perhaps.’

She walked with him to the door.

‘You have to find him, Alex.’

Her proximity made him want to pull back, run away.

‘Of course. You won’t have to wait many days before you find out who did this.’

His body felt heavy as he got into the car. The promise he had made to Diana weighed down on his shoulders like a yoke. He turned the key and reversed out into the street.

It was almost two o’clock; it would soon be morning.

Thank God.

25

The care assistant refused to be quiet. In spite of the fact that it was morning, she was making more noise than a normal teenager. Her voice was so loud that Thea was afraid the wallpaper would come away from the walls and roll up into fat sausages just below the ceiling. She closed her eyes and tried to distance herself from the racket.

‘Goodness me, you’re tired!’ she heard the assistant say. ‘And I’m nattering on and on!’

Without being asked she started to plump up Thea’s pillow.

‘There now, is that better?’

She looked at Thea.

‘I think it’s really sad that you don’t want to talk. You’ve lived such an exciting life; there must be such a lot you could share with the other residents.’

Thea doubted that very much. The parts of her life that had been interesting were completely overshadowed by the fact that she had been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of her ex-husband, and that her son had been missing for almost thirty years. She knew what the rumours said: that she had murdered him too and buried his body somewhere.

One of the detectives who had been involved in the search for her son still came to see her. He wanted to get a confession out of her. Sometimes he would sit in silence, gazing at her. Sometimes he would sit very close, talking to her in his calm, steady voice. Asking her to confide in him. Surely, she wanted to be at peace with herself before she died? There was still a chance to put everything right.

Thea had never asked him to come and see her. If he had done his job properly, things would have been very different. Thea would have been free. Alive. She would have been able to carry on being a mother. And her reputation as an author would have been restored.

There was no point in brooding about it all. At the same time, she had nothing better to do. Malena Bremberg’s visit had frightened her more than she wanted to admit. How could a girl like her have been drawn into the drama that had raged around Thea for decades?

She had seen the fear in Malena’s eyes, heard the tension in her voice. Malena had been asking questions about the girl they had found in Midsommarkransen, Rebecca Trolle. She had somehow discovered that Rebecca had visited Thea in the home, and now that Rebecca had been found dead, Malena wanted to know what she had asked Thea about.

Thea closed her eyes tightly and wished everyone would leave her alone. Wasn’t her long silence a clear enough signal that she didn’t want to discuss what had happened? She remembered making the decision, right in the middle of an interview with the police shortly after she had been sent to prison.

‘Your son,’ the officer had said. ‘We think you killed him. Just as you killed his father. Where is he?’

Her heart had burst, disintegrated into a collection of atoms in her chest. They thought she had killed her own son. Had they completely lost their minds?

Sometimes she had forced herself to see things from their point of view. She was a convicted killer who was supposed to have stabbed a man to death in her own garage. According to persistent rumours, she was also the author behind
Mercury
and
Asteroid
, two books that caused a furore in both the cultural sections of the newspapers and in a number of other circles when they were published. They had evoked hatred and condemnation, they had been burned and spat upon. It was hard to think of any other publication in recent times that had caused so much fuss.