The Disappeared (37 page)

How had the person who killed her found out what she knew?

Peder read through Fredrika’s notes. Unlike all the other minor figures in the investigation, Håkan Nilsson had no connection with either Thea Aldrin or any members of the film club. His only connection was with Rebecca and the child she had been expecting. If Håkan was the killer, then the dissertation was totally irrelevant.

Peder looked at a picture of Håkan Nilsson and asked himself how they were going to get him to talk. How could they get through to him, make him understand that they had his best interests at heart? The fact that Rebecca had not been alone in her grave was actually all the proof they needed that Håkan was innocent, because Håkan couldn’t possibly have murdered Elias Hjort as well.

And there has to be a connection.

Torbjörn Ross claimed that the police had been looking for Elias Hjort because of a film that might have been based on books that might have been written by Thea Aldrin. Books for which Elias Hjort had received royalties. But the film was of little value unless it was genuine, unless it was a recording of an actual murder. A snuff movie. Peder didn’t know much about that kind of film, but as far as he knew, the genuine article had never been found. His colleagues with the National CID would probably know more about that kind of thing; he would check with them tomorrow.

The telephone rang and Ylva went indoors to answer it. She sounded agitated; she seemed to be walking towards him.

‘Peder,’ she said.

He turned to face her; he would never forget how she looked that evening. The telephone in her hand, her face pale, eyes wide open.

‘Apparently, Jimmy has gone missing.’

INTERVIEW WITH ALEX RECHT, 03-05-2009, 15.00 (tape recording)

Present: Urban S, Roger M (interrogators one and two). Alex Recht (witness).

Urban: So, another body.

Alex: Yes.

Roger: That must have been depressing.

Alex: No, actually. I felt as if that last discovery somehow made things easier.

Roger: Interesting. Could you explain that in a little more detail?

Alex: It was just a feeling I had.

Urban: Elias Hjort. The solicitor with the gold watch. What was your next move with regard to him?

Alex: Through Peder’s work, we were able to link him to the film club. At that stage, we began to sense how everything hung together, but . . .

(Silence.)

Alex: . . . we were a long way from the truth.

Roger: And Fredrika Bergman?

Alex: Yes?

Roger: What happened with her partner, Spencer Lagergren?

Alex: We decided we needed to question him, but by that time the Uppsala police had already picked him up.

Urban: And how did you deal with the fact that she had withheld important information from the rest of the team?

Alex: I discussed the matter with her and concluded that her actions had had no impact on the investigation.

Urban: No impact? How the hell do you work that out? She withheld crucial information!

Alex: That information was insignificant. We were able to eliminate Lagergren from our inquiries.

Roger: But you couldn’t possibly have known that from the beginning, could you? And what about Peder’s brother? Had he been reported missing at that stage?

Alex: It all happened at the same time. There was absolute bloody chaos. Jimmy had called Peder earlier and told him that he’d seen someone peering in through the window of the building opposite.

Roger: And how did Peder react to that?

Alex: He didn’t. Jimmy is . . . I mean, he was just the way he was. He had certain difficulties. When he said someone was standing in the flowerbed spying on one of the neighbours, Peder didn’t take it seriously.

Urban: Until you realised who the neighbour was.

(Silence.)

Roger: Was Peder still adopting a balanced approach at this stage?

Alex: He remained calm and professional throughout the entire investigation.

Urban: Except at the end. I mean, that’s why we’re sitting here now.

Alex: Like hell we are. We’re sitting here because you haven’t got enough to do, so you go after decent coppers.

WEDNESDAY

49

In the world of fairy tales, the bond between brothers was sacred. Peder Rydh’s mother had never let him forget that. His childhood was enveloped in warm memories of Peder and Jimmy sitting on her knee while she read them story after story about young boys battling everything from dragons to illness. Only when Peder was older did he realise that her words of wisdom were meant for him. It was Peder, not Jimmy, who would grow up and become the stronger one. The one who protected, took responsibility.

The evening when Peder heard that his brother was missing, everything came crashing down. Not during the first few hours, but later. As time passed, as darkness fell over the city, as it became clear that Jimmy hadn’t just gone off on one of his usual tours of the complex and happened to end up in the wrong block. When everyone realised that Jimmy was actually missing, the ground beneath Peder’s feet opened up and he plunged into an abyss he hadn’t even known existed.

He didn’t realise what had happened to him until later, when it was all over and nothing could be undone. Ylva saw it right from the start, and did everything in her power to save him. Without success. She had never been more powerless in her entire life.

After the initial call from the assisted-living complex, Ylva rang her mother and asked her to come and look after the boys. She and Peder went over to the complex and searched the area, along with the staff and Peder’s parents. They called Jimmy’s name over and over again. Peder felt as if their shouts were embedded in his brain, a recurring echo that just wouldn’t go away. Then he called the police and reported his brother missing.

Peder knew all too well how this worked. Police resources were not unlimited; it was always a question of priorities. When someone rang and said that his brother, an adult with learning difficulties, was missing from a gated complex on the outskirts of town, other cases would be regarded as more urgent. That was how he would have reacted, and that was how his colleagues reacted.

‘We’ll find him before the night is over,’ said the officer who was first on the scene.

How could he have known right from the start? Peder asked himself later. How come his heart had been screaming with fear all the time, even though Jimmy had gone missing before, and always turned up safe and sound?

‘Is he in the habit of going off on his own?’ his colleague asked.

Not often. It did happen, but it was rare. On one particularly harrowing occasion, Jimmy had managed to catch a bus into the city centre, and had been found on Sergels torg, where he was happily smoking a cigarette that a group of junkies had given him.

Peder had nearly blown it that time; the anxiety that had been building up during the hours while Jimmy was missing had culminated in a blind rage, and he had beaten up one of the junkies. He would never have survived an investigation by internal affairs if the guy had reported him. But he hadn’t, and after a few months the memory of the incident began to fade.

When morning came, Jimmy was still missing. The sunlight hurt Peder’s eyes. In the darkness, he had felt protected, but now there was nothing but pure fear.

‘We need to go home and sleep for a few hours,’ Ylva said as they drove back into the car park at the Mångården complex after driving around, up and down one street after another, searching for Jimmy. Their eyes had scanned the area like laser beams, desperate for Jimmy to appear.

She stroked Peder’s back, but he pulled away.

‘I’m not going anywhere.’

‘We’re no use right now,’ she said. ‘We’re both completely exhausted. It’s better to let the police keep looking.’

‘I am the police, in case you’ve forgotten.’

Ylva didn’t say anything.

‘We’ll find him, you know. It’s only a question of time before he turns up.’

But other images filled Peder’s head. Some people disappeared and never came back. Rebecca Trolle. Elias Hjort. The unknown woman who had lain in the ground for forty years. He felt as if his chest would explode with panic. The mere thought of life without Jimmy was unbearable.

Please God, give me a grave to visit.

Ylva shifted by his side.

‘I have to go home. Get some sleep. I’ll call work and tell them I won’t be in today.’

Peder looked out of the car window.

‘I think it would be best if you stayed at home,’ he said. ‘Jimmy might decide to go round to our place, and there has to be someone there that he knows.’

They both knew it was impossible for Jimmy to get to their apartment under his own steam. But hope is the last thing we give up, so Ylva raised no objections to Peder’s suggestion.

‘Will you be back later?’

‘I’ll call you.’

His tone was brusque, his gaze fixed on some distant point. She gently caressed his cheek. Peder hardly felt it. Nothing existed but the search for his brother.

The bed had never felt as big as it did now. Fredrika woke with the feeling that she hadn’t slept a wink. Her body felt heavy and weary. She rolled over, stroking the empty space where Spencer ought to be. The hot tears were unstoppable. She suddenly thought back to her encounter with Tova Eriksson, and pulled the covers up over her head. Had she irrevocably destroyed something by going to see the girl who was literally responsible for having Spencer locked up? She remembered Alex’s words and warnings; she knew she had been wrong to ignore them.

She raised her head from the pillow and wiped away the tears. There was no room for a mental collapse right now. She had to keep going, for the sake of Saga and Spencer if nothing else.

It was six o’clock. The day lay before her like a deserted motorway. Should she go to work? Or – to put it more accurately – could she bear to stay at home? The answer to that question was no. She had to go back to work, keep an eye on the efforts that were being made to ascertain whether Spencer had a part to play in a murder investigation. And she had to do her best to get the Uppsala police to release him.

But why the hell had he applied for a new passport?

When Spencer was arrested, he had been unaware that Tova had raised the stakes and accused him of rape. So why did he need a passport?

He must have realised that he figured in the murder investigation Fredrika was working on. That was the only conclusion that made sense. What was less easy to understand was why he had decided not to confide in Fredrika. Why hadn’t he mentioned it to her? And why hadn’t she talked to him?

Or had she? Fredrika thought back to the times when she had confronted Spencer over the past week. About his problems at work, about how he knew Rebecca Trolle. He hadn’t said a word about any of it. She felt the tears threatening once more. Had they lost the most important ingredient in their relationship, the ability to talk about anything?

If we have, it’s all over.

Fredrika got out of bed and fetched her bag. She had brought some work home. She got back into bed and sat cross-legged. She re-read the short piece Rebecca Trolle had put together about the film club known as The Guardian Angels – the group that provided yet another link between Spencer and the investigation. Alex had told her that according to one of Rebecca’s fellow-students, Rebecca had approached Spencer for more than one reason. She wanted him to act as her supervisor, but his name had also come up in her research.

Because of the film club, Fredrika thought.

She read the last word on the page.

Snuff.

The word did not occur anywhere else, and no explanation was given. Just before Spencer’s phone call from Uppsala, Torbjörn Ross had mentioned just such a film. Or at least he had talked about the filming of the books Thea Aldrin had allegedly written.

Fredrika went into the library and found one of Spencer’s film lexicons. As far as she knew, the idea that there had ever been genuine snuff movies was a myth, as was the belief that there had ever been a demand for them. The expression ‘snuff movie’ was first used in the early 1970s, based on the English expression ‘to snuff it’, or die. According to legend, violent films were secretly produced, recording real murders and rapes; these films were then sold for vast sums of money. The victims were often homeless prostitutes, and the purchasers of the finished product were rich and influential individuals with perverted tendencies.

According to the lexicon, no police authority had ever reported the discovery of a genuine snuff movie – in every suspected case the film had turned out to be a clever fake, which meant that the victim had not died, but had survived. The closest approximation was murderers who filmed their own crimes so that they could watch them over and over again, but in those cases the murder itself was more important than the recording, and the films were not made with the intention of selling them.

Fredrika replaced the book on the shelf. Why did the word come up in Rebecca’s notes at all? Had she made the same link as Torbjörn Ross had done between Thea Aldrin and
Mercury
and
Asteroid
? Although how could that be? There had never been anything in the press about the film Ross had referred to.

Fredrika glanced through the piece on The Guardian Angels again. There was no indication as to why Rebecca thought the group might be associated with snuff movies. Admittedly several of the members fulfilled the criteria for the type of person who was allegedly interested in that kind of thing, but Fredrika found it difficult to see how Rebecca could have established such a connection.

Fragments of conversations and all the information she had acquired during the past week drifted through her weary mind. Rebecca’s supervisor had compared her dissertation to a police investigation. Her mother had said something similar, but Fredrika could see no evidence that Rebecca had been in touch with the police to discuss Thea Aldrin’s case. At least Rebecca hadn’t made a note of any such contact.

Or had she? Had they missed it? Fredrika dug out her copy of Rebecca’s diary and the list of unidentified initials: