The Disappeared (26 page)

‘Not exactly a luxury yacht,’ Peder said. ‘What the hell is a Ryds hajen?’

‘A real diamond,’ his colleague replied. ‘A seventies model, I should think. Hard top and a cockpit. Two berths.’

‘So you can sleep on board?’

‘Absolutely.’

But not at the moment, Peder thought. It was still below minus ten at night. You didn’t go and sleep on a little pleasure boat when it was that cold. Unless you were desperate, of course. Which they could assume that Håkan was.

‘Has the season already started?’

‘No. The clubs usually start putting their boats in the water from the first of May onwards.’

‘So we can assume that this boat is still ashore somewhere?’

His colleague shook his head.

‘We can’t assume anything. He might have put it in the water himself, even if it’s against the rules of his club. If he even belongs to a boat club, of course.’

Håkan’s desk was small, surrounded by tall bookshelves. Peder examined the spines of the books and discovered a row of files towards the bottom, neatly marked with the year: 1998, onwards. Peder pulled out the current file: 2009.

Håkan was well organised, and the contents were filed under different headings, separated by coloured dividers: ‘Telephone’, ‘Apartment’, ‘Internet’, ‘Guarantees’. And right at the back: ‘Boat’.

Peder quickly turned to the relevant section, and found all the information he could have wished for. The boat belonged to St Erik’s boat club, which was opposite Karlberg. As far as Peder could tell, Håkan had recently paid for another year’s membership.

Feeling stressed, he closed the file. Alex would have to ask someone else to follow up that particular lead; he needed to get to Uppsala.

Every fibre of Alex’s being wanted to walk down the corridor and knock on Fredrika’s door, sit down opposite her and explain what had happened, so that she was fully informed and up to speed with everything that he and Peder knew. From a purely emotional point of view, he felt it was the right thing to do. But reason was saying something else. There was a minute risk that Spencer Lagergren could be mixed up in the murder of Rebecca Trolle. And there was an even smaller risk that Fredrika knew about her partner’s involvement and had decided to keep quiet. This meant that Fredrika had to be kept out of the loop when it came to the lead Alex and Peder were currently following up, so that no one could come along afterwards and claim that the matter had not been handled correctly.

Alex had gone back to the material from the original investigation, looking for traces of Spencer. He had discovered that Rebecca had called the switchboard at Uppsala University on several occasions; the last time was the day before she disappeared. And according to her diary, she had a preliminary meeting booked in with Spencer two days later. Or at least the initials ‘SL’ appeared in the diary, with ‘unconfirmed’ after them. Alex was almost certain this was Spencer Lagergren.

The diary was a dubious source of information. There was always a danger that they were misinterpreting the brief notes. And who knew how many other meetings Rebecca might have had, without jotting them down in her diary? Or which meetings she might have cancelled without crossing them out?

Dubious or not, it was all they had.

Alex opened the investigation log and searched for the few short lines that had led him to start looking into the issue of Rebecca’s supervisor in the first place. One of her fellow students had hinted that Rebecca was so dissatisfied with Gustav Sjöö that she had turned to a new supervisor. At Uppsala.

He called her; he didn’t bother with the formalities. All he wanted was the answer to a few simple questions.

‘Frida.’

‘It’s Alex Recht from the police. Am I disturbing you?’

No, he wasn’t. He could tell from her voice that the call had made her nervous. He quickly explained that he knew she had spoken to one of his colleagues last week, and hoped she wouldn’t mind answering one or two more questions. She hesitated; she had already told the police everything she could remember.

‘This other supervisor that Rebecca contacted – you still don’t remember his name?’

‘No, unfortunately. I’m really sorry I can’t be of more help.’

‘That’s fine.’

But you could at least try. Everyone remembers something.

‘Do you remember whether Rebecca mentioned this person by name?’

He could hear Frida breathing at the other end of the line. He wondered why people breathed differently when they were thinking hard about something.

‘I think so. But I don’t know what his name was, just that it was a bit odd. Gilbert, something like that.’

‘Spencer?’

‘Yes!’

Relief in her voice; at last she remembered and could help.

‘His name was Spencer, and his surname ended with “gren”.’

Alex looked at the picture of Spencer Lagergren that he had printed off from the university website. Strong, distinctive features. Thick, silver-grey hair. Eyes as sharp as an eagle’s. Was this what a murderer who dismembered his victim looked like?

‘Do you know if they met up?’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t. I know she wanted to see him because she needed help with her dissertation, but I’m not sure if they managed to arrange it. I do remember something else, although I’ve no idea if it’s relevant to your investigation.’

Alex felt his expectations increase.

‘Tell me.’

‘She’d come across the professor’s name in a different context while she was working on her dissertation.’

‘Oh?’

‘I’m not sure how, but she was hoping he’d be doubly useful.’

Alex thanked her for the information, cursing the fact that they didn’t seem able to establish whether Spencer and Rebecca had met without asking Spencer himself. He wanted to avoid a formal interview with him at all costs, because that would mean informing Fredrika.

She had to be told in any case. Not telling her that Spencer now figured in the investigation was untenable. And morally wrong. And illegal. If Spencer Lagergren emerged as a possible suspect, Fredrika would have to be removed from the case.

She would never accept that under any circumstances.

He felt a surge of sorrow and rage. The weekend’s fishing trip seemed light years away, and it had been tainted by Torbjörn’s account of his obsession with the Thea Aldrin case. He was still visiting a woman who was over seventy years old, waiting for her to confess to the murder of her son. That had to be against the rules.

He stood up and marched along to see Ellen Lind.

‘Have you got a list of Håkan Nilsson’s relatives?’

‘Here.’

She handed him a list that contained fewer names than the fingers on one hand.

‘Is this a joke?’

‘His father is dead, and so are both sets of grandparents. His only living relatives are his mother, a maternal aunt and two cousins.’

The list was too sad to comment on. How could a young man in his prime have so few close relatives?

‘By the way, I called the university to ask about Håkan Nilsson’s studies.’

‘Yes?’

‘That girl who came in with her mother, the one you interviewed about who started the rumours about Rebecca Trolle? She said he’d found the website when he was writing his dissertation on the new laws regarding prostitution.’

‘Correct,’ said Alex.

‘Well, she was lying. Or Håkan was lying.’

Alex looked at her.

‘Lying about what?’

‘It was probably him. He never wrote a dissertation; he dropped out when he still had a year to go.’

‘He never graduated?’

‘No.’

How was this possible? Alex wondered. How could someone who had been a central figure in the case from day one still manage to surprise them? Over and over again? Without being the guilty party?

With a sense that time was running out for her, Fredrika carried on ploughing through Rebecca’s notes. The fact that she didn’t have a copy of the dissertation to refer to made the work difficult; she hoped it was a temporary problem, and that the IT team would be able to provide her with the material she so badly needed by the end of the day.

Thea Aldrin’s life was never the same after the two scandalous books were published in 1976. There were constant rumours. In spite of the fact that no one knew for certain, the rumour became the truth as far as the general public were concerned: Thea had written those disgusting books, proving once and for all what a disturbed person she was. The books were the reason why she had chosen to live an isolated life, and why she didn’t want to meet her readers.

‘That’s why she can’t look children in the eye,’ one article stated in 1977, a year after publication.

Someone reported the matter to the police, but it led nowhere.

Obviously.

Fredrika dug out the picture of Thea and her son Johan at the film premiere. He had disappeared in 1980: He had never been found, and no one had heard from him. Where had he gone? If he hadn’t been so young at the time, Fredrika might have thought he was the one sharing a grave with Rebecca in Midsommarkransen.

Rebecca had also gathered articles relating to the search for Johan, which had covered the length and breadth of the country. To begin with, everyone was behind their favourite writer, but when a fresh rumour began to circulate, they took a step back. Thea had killed the boy. Still more press coverage followed in the wake of this vicious rumour. Once again, there was speculation as to why Thea Aldrin had chosen to live alone. What secret was she hiding that meant she wouldn’t let any man get near her? Something must be weighing so heavily on her conscience that it had driven her to insanity.

Fredrika was getting more and more annoyed. Where did all this gossip come from? First of all about
Mercury
and
Asteroid
, then about the disappearance of her son. The relentless hate campaign seemed to have pushed Thea over the edge, because a year later she stabbed her ex-boyfriend to death – he was the man she claimed was the father of her child. The newspapers inaccurately referred to him as her ex-husband, even though they hadn’t been married.

There was nothing to explain why he had suddenly turned up on Thea’s doorstep. No one and nothing spoke up in her defence. She chose not to appeal against her life sentence, and allowed herself to be taken to prison in handcuffs as the TV cameras rolled.

It wasn’t difficult to see why Rebecca had become interested in Thea’s life. But a large piece of the puzzle was missing, the piece that would explain how interest had turned into obsession. How Rebecca had come to the conclusion that Thea was innocent of the murder of her ex.

What did you find out, that I can’t see, Rebecca?

A call from IT informed her that the printouts from the floppy disks were ready. Fredrika almost ran to collect them.

She was surprised and disappointed when she was given a pile of paper that was significantly smaller than she had expected.

‘That’s all there was,’ the girl explained.

Fredrika flicked through the sheets.

‘Which pages came from which disk?’

‘The top three came from the one labelled “The Guardian Angels”, and the rest from the one labelled “Dissertation”.’

It looked like a half-finished outline. Better than nothing, Fredrika told herself.

On the way back, Alex called her into his office.

‘We need to speak to Håkan Nilsson’s relatives about where he might have gone. There aren’t many of them, unfortunately; could you possibly ring his mother and one of his cousins? I’ve asked Cecilia Torsson to call the other two.’

He handed Fredrika a note with the details on it. His thoughts were elsewhere, and he didn’t even look at her as she left.

Fredrika sat down at her desk and decided to satisfy her immediate curiosity by looking at the printouts from ‘The Guardian Angels’ disk. The three pages consisted of a description of the composition of the group, and why it had once been the subject of considerable interest. The number of members had always been limited, as if to intensify the air of mystery that already surrounded the little group.

Thea Aldrin was the only woman.

Morgan Axberger.

A man Fredrika had never heard of.

And – later, when one of the others left the group – Spencer Lagergren.

It couldn’t be true. It mustn’t be true.

Fredrika felt the colour drain from her face. In 1972, a new member joined the film club known as The Guardian Angels: Spencer Lagergren, a young PhD student and specialist in the history of literature.

Spencer. Again.

Fuck.

She forced herself to think clearly, trying to see a logical explanation for the fact that he had once again been mentioned in Rebecca’s notes. The police had obviously missed something when Rebecca disappeared. She hadn’t seen Spencer’s name anywhere until she picked up the material from the garage.

Fredrika was about to push the document to one side when she noticed a word that Rebecca had jotted down right at the bottom of the last page, followed by a question mark. She read the word over and over again, feeling her blood pressure drop.

Just one word, but it was enough to make her heart stop.

S n u f f ?

33

The one thing with which Diana Trolle was unable to come to terms was her daughter’s pregnancy. She thought she would be able to live with the rest of it in time, to reconcile herself.

But she couldn’t deal with the thought that she had misjudged the level of trust Rebecca had had in her. Diana had been under the illusion that she and her daughter had shared everything. Things had always been different with her son; he chose to confide in his father. Diana had never questioned this; she had simply accepted it as the natural order.

She and the children’s father had realised at an early stage that they were not meant for one another. While other couples gradually grew apart, Diana and her ex-husband discovered that they had never really been close enough. The split was far from dramatic: one day her ex-husband moved out and took their son with him. He rented a place not far away and lived there until the children started high school, then he moved to Gothenburg. They saw each other less and less often.