The Disappeared (25 page)

Alex and Peder were in Alex’s office when she went past. They were talking quietly, their expressions tense. She stopped in the doorway, wondering what was going on. Alex saw her first.

‘We’ve heard from surveillance. About Håkan Nilsson.’

She waited. ‘Oh?’

Peder couldn’t look at her; he appeared to be reading the sheet of paper in his hand with immense concentration.

‘He’s disappeared. They rang the bell several times, and eventually they went in. The apartment was empty.’

‘He got away even though we had surveillance outside his door?’

‘So it seems. There’s a door at the back of the building; apparently we weren’t watching that one.’

Fredrika could see that Alex was annoyed and stressed. But there was something else. Peder still hadn’t looked up from his sheet of paper.

‘I’ll follow up that other point we discussed,’ he said, and left the room.

Fredrika watched him go.

‘What do we do now?’

‘We’ll put out a call for him. The prosecutor has given us permission to search his apartment; Peder’s going over there as soon as he’s dealt with another matter.’

Another matter. Fredrika felt as if she had been pushed aside for no good reason.

‘What are you working on?’ Alex asked.

‘I’m reading through Rebecca’s dissertation notes and trying to get an idea of what she found out that . . .’

‘Excellent,’ Alex interrupted her.

He went and sat behind his desk, turning his attention to the computer screen.

‘Was there anything else?’

The tone of voice was new. Not unpleasant, but not exactly inviting.

‘No, I don’t think so. Oh, yes.’

He looked at her.

‘Valter Lund, Rebecca’s mentor. I still haven’t heard back from Ellen.’

‘Did you look him up on the electoral register?’

She had completely forgotten about that.

‘No, but I’ll do it straight away.’

He gave a brief nod, focused on the screen once more. As she was leaving the room, she heard him say:

‘Would you mind closing the door behind you? I’ve got a few calls to make.’

The situation that had arisen was completely alien to Alex. Spencer Lagergren’s unexpected appearance in the investigation was delicate to say the least. And unwelcome. Alex had made an initial decision not to pass on the information to anyone at all.

‘Anything we find out stays between you and me,’ he had said to Peder. ‘If it’s obvious that Lagergren has nothing to do with the case, then I want to establish that as soon as possible. Don’t make any notes in the general log for the time being. I’ll take the responsibility for making sure the right people upstairs are informed if necessary.’

Peder hadn’t raised any objections, but Alex could see that he was less than comfortable with the arrangement.

The telephone rang. It was the officer in charge of excavating the site in Midsommarkransen.

‘We’ve found something.’

His voice was hoarse with tension, as if he’d known all along that there was something else waiting to be discovered in that accursed plot. Alex clutched the receiver tightly.

‘Male or female?’

‘Neither. Some objects. A gold watch. And an axe and a knife.’

‘Bloody hell.’

‘We think there’s an inscription on the back of the watch, but we can’t make out what it says.’

Alex swallowed.

‘Send it straight over to forensics. It might help us to identify the man we found last week.’

Last week.

After more days than Alex had the strength to count, they still had no idea who the dead man was, in spite of the fact that Alex had set himself the goal of identifying the body before the weekend was over.

‘We’ve already sent the watch. And the axe and the knife.’

Alex thanked his colleague for the information, wondering what the new discoveries might mean. He couldn’t explain why, but he was convinced that the watch was linked to the unidentified man rather than to Rebecca. It should take them a step closer to solving the case. And a step further away from the grave. It was almost a week since Rebecca had been found, and the police were still digging. If they didn’t find anything else, they would stop the following evening.

Journalists from all over the country were breathing down their necks. Why were they still digging? Alex had finally judged that the situation was untenable, and had accepted that the police needed to issue a statement. He didn’t want to hold a press conference until they had something to say, but a few lines were required to settle their curiosity. And to avoid encouraging the ghost stories that were growing in the shadow of the continued silence on the part of the police.

He glanced at the headlines in today’s papers:

POLICE FEAR MASS GRAVE

ENDLESS NIGHTMARE: DESPERATE POLICE CONTINUE TO DIG

One of the articles speculated that the area around the grave was cursed, and that people had gone out into the forest, never to return. There were no concrete examples, merely wild rumours and allegations.

Rubbish, to put it simply.

There was a knock on his door.

‘Come in.’

The door opened and Peder slid in. Closed the door behind him. This was something new for both of them. The only person who liked to work with her door closed was Fredrika, and at the moment it was wide open.

‘Have you spoken to the police in Uppsala yet?’

Alex shook his head.

‘I haven’t had time. Other things keep getting in the way.’

He told Peder about the new discoveries, and Peder listened with keen interest.

‘An axe and a knife. I wonder what they were used for?’

‘If it hadn’t been for the chainsaw, I might have had a suggestion.’ Alex said.

Peder let out a guffaw, but fell silent when he realised it wasn’t really appropriate to burst out laughing.

‘I called Spencer Lagergren’s head of department,’ he said. ‘I wanted to get the university’s point of view. He promised everything would remain confidential.’

‘Did you tell him why you were calling?’

‘I kept it vague to say the least; I didn’t want to tell him the real reason.’

‘Good. What did he say?’

‘What we already knew. That a student had reported Lagergren for sexual harassment, and that she had decided to go to the police.’

‘But why? I thought that kind of thing would be sorted out within the university.’

‘The girl who reported him had produced incriminating emails that Lagergren had allegedly sent her. They contained indirect threats, and it was these threats that made the university authorities react.’

Alex sighed, gazing towards the window. Another lovely day. Not that he would get much chance to appreciate it.

‘Did the head of department think Lagergren was guilty?’

‘He wished the emails hadn’t existed; they made it more difficult to explain things away. The university was accustomed to angry students, but this was something different. In his opinion.’

‘Could anyone else have sent the emails?’

Peder leafed through his notebook.

‘From a purely theoretical point of view, yes. But he didn’t think that was the case.’

Peder took a deep breath.

‘The fact that Spencer Lagergren is now living with one of his former students doesn’t exactly help.’

Alex was annoyed.

‘Bollocks. It’s ridiculous to regard his relationship with Fredrika as something frivolous.’

‘I totally agree,’ Peder said. ‘But to be honest, I had no idea they’d been together for such a long time. Over ten years, according to the head of department. Apparently, she used to attend conferences with Lagergren. He was married then, Alex. I’m not casting aspersions on Fredrika, but how do we know if she was the only one he was seeing?’

‘Would it matter if there were others?’

‘Not if they were all happy with the situation. But he might have exploited his position in order to seduce female students in the past. And taken it badly if they turned him down.’

Alex’s eyes were itching, as if listening to what Peder had to say had produced an allergic reaction.

‘Go and search Håkan Nilsson’s place, then I’d like you to drive over to Uppsala. Turn over a few stones, have a chat with the local police. Get a feel for the situation and report back to me before the end of the day. In the meantime I’ll try to find out if there’s any reason to think that Spencer Lagergren ever met Rebecca. Then we’ll decide how to proceed.’

‘OK.’

Peder would have to move fast in order to get everything done. As he was about to leave the room, Alex said:

‘I still want to keep this between the two of us, Peder. For Fredrika’s sake.’

31

This wasn’t going to end well. The certainty covered her skin like a painful sheen. Malena Bremberg had switched off her mobile, hoping that would keep her persecutor at bay. And yet the gesture seemed pointless. There was nothing she could do to make her life good once more.

She could hardly remember how it had all begun. It was as if all her problems appeared overnight, as if she had had no control over them right from the start. She had believed they had met by chance; it was only with hindsight that she realised that was not the case. Nothing that had happened between them was chance; everything had been planned.

He often came back to the assertion that they needed one another. For different reasons, admittedly, but the important thing was their mutual dependency. She had defied him only once. That was enough for her to learn the lesson that his rules took precedence. And that was when he had made the film.

The film.

Waves of terror washed over her, made her want to climb the walls of her apartment. He had hinted that he watched it occasionally. That he enjoyed it. She hated him for that. Hated and feared him, two concepts that lay very close to one another, as she had learned.

Malena didn’t know how she was going to pass the time. She had already worked several extra shifts, and her supervisor at the care home had explained, very kindly, that she didn’t want her working more than necessary.

‘I mean, you’ve got to find time for your studies as well.’

How could she explain? She hadn’t been to a single lecture since Rebecca Trolle was found. And she wasn’t going to sit the exam on Friday. What did it matter if she did it next term instead? She already had far more serious problems.

She remembered the moment when she first realised things weren’t right. She was staying over at his place; they had just turned off the lights and were settling down to go to sleep.

‘Thea Aldrin – she’s a patient in the care home where you work, isn’t she?’

She wasn’t really allowed to give out that kind of information, but it sounded as if he already knew that the notorious writer was a resident at the home, so she saw no reason to deny it.

‘Yes, she’s been there for a few years now.’

‘Is she nice?’

‘I don’t know. Nobody knows whether she’s nice or not.’

‘So she’s still not speaking?’

At that point, she had hesitated. Should she be talking about Thea’s silence?

‘Yes, she hasn’t said a word in ages.’

He had turned to face her, gazing at her in the darkness.

‘Does she get many visitors?’

That was the line she couldn’t cross. She didn’t say anything.

‘Well?’

‘I can’t tell you that. I’m not allowed to discuss the affairs of individual residents with outsiders.’

She had heard the sound of his heavy breathing. Felt him stiffen, then relax.

‘Think twice before you defy me, Malena. Just so you know.’

Then he had fallen silent and turned his back on her in bed. She hadn’t slept a wink that night. And she had never stayed the night with him again. It was as if she suddenly sobered up and saw him for what he was from then on. He wasn’t an exciting fling, just a considerably older man who helped himself to parts of her life that she would rather give to someone else.

But by then it was already too late.

What annoyed her was the fact that she still didn’t get it. Why was a man like him interested in Thea Aldrin’s visitors?

32

There was no real indication that Håkan Nilsson was intending to be away for long. He had left food in the fridge, and hadn’t taken out the rubbish. The bed was made, the blinds open. An unwashed coffee cup stood on the kitchen table.

Peder and his colleagues went through the whole apartment systematically. They opened drawers and cupboards, spread newspaper on the floor and tipped out the rubbish. Any information about where he might have gone would have been welcome. There was nothing to suggest that he had been forced to leave.

‘Do we have any idea what time he took off?’ Peder asked.

‘No, unfortunately.’

Nobody actually said it, but they all felt embarrassed that Håkan Nilsson had simply managed to walk out of his apartment when there was a surveillance team sitting in a car outside. When they had known that there was a back door, but hadn’t put an officer there.

‘He hasn’t exactly emptied his wardrobe,’ a colleague called out from the bedroom.

‘No?’

‘It doesn’t look that way.’

Peder passed a notice board in the hallway, which also seemed to function as a work station. There were letters from his bank and his insurance company, and a number of bills. Håkan had dated the bills in ink, presumably to indicate when they had been paid. He was an orderly person. Peder leafed through the papers, unsure what he was looking for. One of the bills was for a newspaper subscription, another for books he had ordered. A third was for insurance on a boat.

Peder frowned. Interesting – Håkan Nilsson had access to a boat.

‘How do you find out if someone owns a boat, and if so where it’s moored?’ he asked a colleague who happened to have a boat himself.

‘The insurance company should be able to confirm ownership, but they probably won’t know where it’s kept. You’d have to ring around various boat clubs and ask.’

He glanced at the bill in Peder’s hand.

‘That tells you what type it is.’

He pointed. Ryds hajen. Five metres long. Evinrude outboard motor, fifty horsepower.