The Disappeared (32 page)

Peder considered Alex’s summary, and added:

‘And in the middle of the spider’s web we have a silent writer who was convicted for the murder of her ex, and whose son is missing.’

A thought drifted through his mind; Alex only just managed to catch it.

‘Actually, it’s Thea Aldrin who links this whole mess together.’

He frowned.

‘According to her diary, Rebecca went to see Thea. You have to wonder why; her silence isn’t exactly a secret.’

‘We ought to go and see her as well,’ Peder suggested.

‘Later. We’re not going to try to interview a woman who has remained silent for several decades until we know exactly what we want to find out.’

‘Where does she live?’

‘I haven’t checked yet; a care home, I think.’

‘Isn’t she too young to be in a home?’

‘Yes, but she had a severe stroke during her last year in prison, and I don’t think she can look after herself.’

There was a knock on the door. Fredrika walked in, catching them red-handed. Alex caught himself hunching his shoulders as if he were ashamed.

Fredrika’s face, full of questions. Unease in her dark eyes. Far too intelligent to be easily deceived.

‘Hello, there!’

Alex’s voice grated as he spoke; he grinned nervously. And ‘hello there’ – what was that about?

‘Hi.’

Her expression was non-committal.

‘Am I disturbing you?’

‘No, no, come on in.’

She sat down at the table. She was carrying a sheaf of papers; it looked as if she wanted to discuss something important.

‘What did Diana say when you spoke to her?’

Alex didn’t know what to say. Diana? How did Fredrika . . .

‘You were going to ask her about Valter Lund and the trip to Copenhagen,’ Fredrika clarified.

The relief was so great that he almost burst out laughing.

‘As I understood it she had no knowledge of the trip, but she had actually found it strange that Lund came to listen to Rebecca sing in church.’

‘There are a number of strange things about Valter Lund,’ Fredrika said.

She told them what she had found out from their colleagues in Norway.

‘We ought to interview him,’ she said. ‘And Morgan Axberger. I want to find out more about this film club, and everything that happened around Thea during those years.’

Alex and Peder exchanged a glance, reaching silent agreement.

‘We’ll wait until we find the woman who bought the gold watch,’ Alex said slowly. ‘Let’s get together after lunch and see where we stand.’

Fredrika was suddenly alert.

‘Has something happened?’ she asked.

‘We’ll discuss it after lunch,’ Alex insisted.

There was another knock on the door, and Ellen came in.

Pale and shaken.

She said the words no one wanted to hear:

‘They’ve just called from the grave site. They’ve found another body.’

41

If the sun hadn’t been shining during the day, Håkan Nilsson wasn’t sure if he could have coped with staying on the boat. The night had been chilly, and the dampness on board had made his skin feel clammy. He hadn’t bothered to repair the cockpit in the past, and the cool night air soon found its way inside.

He had never thought about living on the boat. Not even as a joke. He had bought it a few summers ago with a friend. The plan had been to impress Rebecca; he knew that she loved the lake and the sea. But she hadn’t been all that interested, and after only one season his friend had changed his mind. Håkan bought him out and kept the boat. He chugged slowly through the Karlberg canal, seeing Stockholm from a completely fresh perspective. He enjoyed the fresh air, loved the sense of freedom.

He felt safe on the boat, and the club members valued him for his commitment. Håkan was always ready to volunteer; he painted the jetties and varnished the floor of the clubhouse veranda.

He had hoped that Rebecca would want to share the experience with him, but she stayed away, didn’t want to know when he was making his plans for a summer on the boat.

‘We don’t have that kind of relationship, Håkan,’ she had said.

That was the summer before everything happened, the summer before she went missing. Autumn came, then winter. And suddenly she was pregnant.

With his child.

He had found the ultrasound scan by accident when he was visiting her in the student hostel. He had wondered what it was, asked where it had come from. She had snatched the picture from him, said it was nothing to do with him.

It hurt to remember his fury. How he had completely lost it, yelling over and over again:

‘Is it mine? Is it? Answer me, for fuck’s sake!’

And she had replied that she didn’t know.

Håkan covered his ears with his hands, trying to shut out the sound of her voice which seemed to echo out across the lake.

I don’t know who the father is.

He sat down, resting one foot on the reserve tank of petrol in the stern. How long would he have to stay away? How long would it be before they realised he had a boat? If the police found out what he had said to Rebecca that night when he found the ultrasound image of the child, they would lock him up and throw away the key. He would never be able to convince them of his innocence.

But it wasn’t my fault.

Lake Mälaren was vast, with plenty of places to hide. At the same time he didn’t want to go too far away, to become so isolated that he might start to feel forgotten. He had anchored up in Alviken. At first he had thought of mooring off the island of Ekerö, but then he carried on past both Ekerö and Stenhamra. He wanted to put a reassuring distance between himself and all the terrible things that were going on.

Håkan heaved himself up from the floor and lay down on the short, cushioned seat. The boat was quite a good place to sleep, even if it wasn’t nearly as comfortable as home. He had brought plenty of food and drink; he should be able to stay away for a week at any rate.

A week.

That was quite a short amount of time, really. He had no idea what he would do after that.

A fresh wave of despair washed over him. Everything was irretrievably ruined. His father would never come back, and neither would Rebecca. The child she had been expecting was gone too.

Håkan curled up on his cushion. He had to make a decision. Because at the end of the day, did it really matter if he disappeared as well?

42

For the third time in a week, Alex Recht was driving from police HQ in Kungsholmen to the grave site in Midsommarkransen. It was warm and sunny to a degree that seemed incomprehensible for the time of year.

The news that yet another body had been found in the grave had upended all their plans. Fredrika was told to carry on looking for the woman who had bought the gold watch, while Peder accompanied Alex to Midsommarkransen.

‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this,’ Peder said in the car.

‘Me too, but I don’t see how I could have prioritised things any other way,’ Alex said.

Peder glanced at him.

‘It’s not about prioritising, it’s about this whole bloody case. For example, what do we do with Lagergren now?’

‘He can wait,’ Alex replied.

It was a real effort not to add: We’ve got all the time in the world.

Because that was how it felt. As if the new horrors that had been unearthed altered the landscape, creating a sense that everything had changed. Even though they didn’t understand how or why.

Eventually, Peder commented: ‘You seem to be taking this very calmly.’

Alex wasn’t sure whether he could find the words to describe his intuitive thoughts properly, but he made an attempt.

‘I’ve got a feeling that we shouldn’t regard this new victim as a setback. I think it might explain a great deal, fill in the gaps in the story.’

Peder’s expression was sceptical as his boss parked the car.

‘Fill in the gaps?’

‘Come on,’ Alex said, opening the door.

The ground was silent beneath their feet, while the trees towered above them as magnificently as before. They walked the four hundred metres from the car to the site. The same route the perpetrator must have taken. Not once, not twice, but three times. With a dead body in his arms. Or on his back. Or in two black bin bags.

They stopped at the edge of the crater, amazed at the extent of the area that had been excavated.

‘This is the end of the road,’ said the DI who was in charge of the dig. ‘We’d already made the decision before we found the body; we’re not going any further than the police tape over there.’ He pointed. ‘Beyond that, the ground is full of stones and roots; there’s no chance that anyone has been digging there.’

‘How are you coping with the press?’ Alex asked.

‘Not too well. The reporters are starting to lose both patience and respect; they’re pushing and pushing to find out what we’re doing. I’ve had to use several officers to guard the area, which is why the digging process has been so slow.’

Alex gazed out across the crater. Earth had been dug out, sifted through and piled up around the edge, creating high ramparts that provided a natural defence against curious onlookers.

‘We meet again.’

The voice of the forensic pathologist came from down in the crater. He nodded to Alex, then clambered up the ladder, brushing the dirt from his knees.

‘What can you tell us?’ Alex asked.

The pathologist squinted at Alex, then moved so that the sun wasn’t in his eyes.

‘Next to nothing. I’ll have to get back to you when I’ve had the chance to take a closer look at the body in the lab.’

The air that found its way into Alex’s lungs as he breathed in was almost warm enough for summer. Birds flitted playfully among the trees.

‘Is it a man or a woman?’

‘I don’t think you understood what I said, Alex. Go down and have a look at the body for yourself before we take it away.’

Alex’s legs refused to move; he didn’t know if he wanted to see what had been revealed down in that hell hole.

‘I can have a look,’ Peder offered.

‘I’ll go first,’ Alex said.

He grabbed hold of the ladder and began to make his way down. He felt it sink slightly into the ground and wondered if it might tip over and dump him on top of the corpse.

‘The body is a few metres behind you,’ the pathologist said.

Alex reached the bottom and turned around. He saw a tarpaulin that was being used as a temporary cover for the body. He went over and crouched down. He could feel the eyes of his colleagues on his back as he lifted the plastic to see what it was hiding.

He couldn’t stop himself from recoiling.

He heard the pathologist’s voice behind him:

‘Now do you understand?’

Peder arrived and looked over his shoulder.

‘Bloody hell.’

Alex rearranged the tarpaulin and got to his feet. A skeleton, nothing more.

‘How long has he or she been here?’

‘Hard to say exactly. All I can tell you is that it’s a very old body. It’s been in the ground for decades. Even longer than the man we found last week.’

The pathologist used the word ‘we’ as if he were a part of the team investigating the case. And in a way he was. Alex liked his approach; he was in favour of including all the relevant parties in the investigation.

They clambered out of the crater.

‘So this is the last day of digging?’ Alex said to the DI in charge.

‘Everyone agrees that we won’t find anything in the rocky areas.’

‘That’s not what I asked.’

‘The answer is yes, this is the last day of digging.’

A breeze ruffled the tops of the trees, sending up a faint cloud of dust from the piles of earth. Alex felt as if evil were burning beneath his feet.

‘Fine,’ he said.

He nodded to Peder to indicate that it was time to head back to the car. He had no desire whatsoever to stay here.

Fredrika fingered the gold watch in her hands. The gold watch that had been found in the grave, and would hopefully give them the name of the unidentified man.

‘Carry me. Your Helena.’

A beautiful, ambiguous inscription.

Carry me.

Would Fredrika have said something like that to another person? She didn’t think so.

‘That’s lovely,’ Ellen said when she came into Fredrika’s office and saw the watch.

‘Classic,’ said Fredrika, stroking the watch, which had stopped long ago.

Ellen sat down.

‘I checked the address we got from the watchmaker against the property database, but it’s impossible to see who used to live there. And there’s no Helena at that address today.’

She handed Fredrika a Post-it note.

‘But this is the phone number of the chair of the residents’ association. He ought to be able to find her in their records. Do you want me to call, or would you prefer to do it?’

Fredrika shrugged; she was feeling unsettled after finding Alex and Peder closeted in the den.

Something had happened. And they weren’t telling her what it was.

‘I can do it.’

After a brief hesitation, she asked:

‘Ellen, do you know if anything in particular has happened over the last few days?’

She could see that Ellen didn’t understand the badly phrased question.

‘To do with the case, I mean.’

Ellen looked unsure of herself.

‘I don’t think so.’

Was she lying? Fredrika didn’t know for certain; she felt as if time was running through her fingers like sand, and she was fighting against become paranoid. There had been another body in the grave, carelessly tossed into a hole by strong arms that ruled over life and death with utter ruthlessness.

Who are you? Fredrika thought. Who are you, creeping through the forest time after time, decade after decade, with your silenced victims?

Spencer?

The thought could not be allowed to take shape; it was obliterated before it even existed.

What possible motivation could there be behind such deeds? Fredrika was afraid there might be more victims. She pictured a body under every tree in the forest. Reason told her that couldn’t possibly be the case, but at the same time reason was notable by its absence in the investigation she was working on.