The Disappeared (38 page)

HH, UA, SL and TR.

TR?

Torbjörn Ross. It couldn’t be anyone else.

Fredrika scrabbled through her papers, searching for the lists of phone calls. Had anyone noticed that Rebecca had called the police? She couldn’t remember it being mentioned, but on the other hand it wouldn’t have seemed particularly noteworthy. People called the police all the time, for a wide variety of reasons.

The more she thought about it, the more convinced she became: Rebecca Trolle must have been in touch with Torbjörn Ross. In which case, why hadn’t Ross said anything, either when Rebecca originally went missing, or when she was found dead? Torbjörn Ross, who still visited Thea Aldrin on a regular basis, with the aim of getting her to confess to a murder no one even knew for sure had been committed. Torbjörn Ross, who believed Thea had written some of the most controversial literary works in the whole of the twentieth century. And who thought it was possible to link Thea Aldrin to a violent film his colleagues believed was a fake. What was he actually hiding?

When Alex woke up, he had no idea where he was at first. The long, thin white curtains were unfamiliar, as were the white sheets and the pale striped wallpaper. The memories came flooding back as he turned his head and saw Diana lying beside him, sleeping on her stomach and facing away from him.

Instinctively, he sat up, running a hand through his hair, peppered with grey. The sensation spreading through his body was both pleasant and frightening. He had made love with a woman other than Lena. Should he be apologising to someone?

The idea almost made him let out a high-pitched, nervous laugh. The children certainly wouldn’t be interested in an apology; they wanted nothing more than for him to move on. They might be surprised that things had happened so quickly, but on the other hand, they didn’t need to know right away.

He lay down again, taken aback by thoughts and feelings he didn’t recognise. Not everything that had happened during the night was a good idea. He had gone to bed with the mother of a murder victim whose death he was in charge of investigating. The police weren’t in the habit of turning a blind eye to that kind of behaviour. He could be in big trouble if anyone found out what he was up to.

But he hadn’t been able to stop himself.

That was his one recurring thought. And it was liberating.

It was also liberating, and calming, to wake up next to a person he knew he wanted to see again. Many of his friends and colleagues had found themselves alone following a bereavement or divorce, and had embarked on a constant search for a woman who didn’t exist – who
couldn’t
exist – making it impossible for them to sustain a new relationship.

Alex had promised himself he would never be one of them.

At the same time, the grief was overwhelming. He could never find what he had had with Lena with another woman. There would be no more children, no new family. Everything that lay ahead of him would forever be incomplete, damaged.

His mobile rang; Diana stirred as he answered.

‘Jimmy’s gone missing,’ Peder said.

‘Missing?’

‘They rang from the assisted living complex yesterday. Ylva and I have been out looking for him all night. It’s as if the ground has swallowed him up.’

Peder’s voice was thin and high, full of an anxiety that made Alex forget everything else.

‘I presume the police are involved?’

‘Of course. But they can’t find him either.’

‘Right, listen to me. If you’ve been out all night, you need to go home and get some sleep. I don’t bloody want you . . .’

‘I’m not going anywhere until we find him.’

There’s nothing quite as irrational as a person who has been deprived of sleep; Alex knew that only too well.

‘In that case, you will be jeopardising the inquiry,’ he said.

A little more brusque than necessary, perhaps, but he was hoping to make Peder see reason. At the same time he could see his team falling apart. Fredrika’s partner had been arrested; Peder’s brother was missing.

He would have to request additional resources, that was all there was to it.

Peder said something in a subdued voice.

‘Sorry?’

‘I said I don’t know what I’ll do if we don’t find him. I think I could fucking kill the person who takes Jimmy away from me.’

‘There’s nothing to suggest that he’s dead,’ Alex said. ‘Nothing at all.’

He was trying to reassure Peder, but he could tell that his colleague wasn’t listening.

‘He called me,’ Peder said.

‘Jimmy?’

‘He called to tell me that someone was standing outside looking in through a window. Someone who frightened him.’

Alex was confused.

‘Someone was looking in through Jimmy’s window?’

‘No, through another window. And Jimmy saw him and he was scared. That’s what he said when he rang me. “It’s a man. He’s looking in through the window. He’s got his back to me”.’

50

The ground gave way beneath Malena Bremberg’s feet as she ran. She could feel her pulse pounding in her body as she forced it on, kilometre after kilometre. Two years ago, she had been like any other student. She had finally decided what she wanted to do at university, and had managed to find student accommodation and a part time job at Mångården care home.

It had taken time for Malena to get her life on the right track; there had been many diversions. Her high school years were a fog of binge drinking, countless love affairs and poor marks. She hated thinking back to that time; she didn’t want to dwell on the life she had lived in those days. After leaving school, she had spent several years working abroad. As an au pair. As an undernourished model. As a holiday rep.

She came home feeling emptier than ever.

‘Your life belongs to you and you alone,’ her father had said. ‘You’re the one who chooses how you’re going to live. But if you choose not to live your life at all, that will make me very sad.’

She enrolled on adult education courses that same autumn. Started working in a clothes shop. Carefully built herself a new life, made new friends. Friends who were very different from the ones with whom she had surrounded herself in the past. She didn’t have a boyfriend; for the first time, she didn’t need one.

She celebrated the most important day of her life when she was finally accepted to study law at the University of Stockholm. Success gave her the taste for more. She knew what it had cost her to gain that place, and now she was determined to make progress, to forge ahead. If you were over thirty it was high time you knew what you wanted to be when you grew up.

At first, she had believed they had met by chance, at an opening event for a new, unusual restaurant on Stureplan. Suddenly he had appeared by her side, standing just a little too close. It had bothered her to begin with, but the feeling didn’t last long. She had allowed herself to be flattered by his compliments and his presence – all too easily.

And his voice. That deep, almost hypnotic voice had made her blush, and however much she wanted to, she just couldn’t stop listening. Helpless. That was how she had felt.

She remembered that her friends had seen them together and wondered what she was playing at. He was so much older than her. Admittedly he was a man with power and wealth, but above all he was older. She had dismissed their words as nothing more than envy.

Warning bells had rung at an early stage, when he had started asking questions about Thea Aldrin. She hadn’t made the connection immediately, hadn’t realised that he had known all along where she worked, and that was why she was interesting.

With hindsight, she felt nothing but embarrassment and revulsion. She had allowed herself to be seduced and led astray by a man with an agenda that could only be described as sick. Because it had seemed so exciting, because there was a part of her that would never be like everyone else, that would never be a good girl. The desire had come from nowhere, the desire to do what was dangerous, what was taboo. She had played with fire, and she had almost been consumed by it. While he documented the whole thing on film.

51

It was half-past eight by the time Fredrika got to work. Alex was surprised to see her.

‘I thought you’d be staying at home with your daughter today.’

‘My mum’s looking after her. I can’t just stay at home. I have to keep busy.’

Alex didn’t question Fredrika’s reasoning. However, he did make it clear that she couldn’t be involved in their dealings with Spencer.

‘I’ve sent another officer over to Uppsala to carry out a formal interrogation,’ he said. ‘I assume that will put an end to the matter from our point of view. But I’d like to hear what he has to say about the film club and its members; he might also be able to tell us something about Thea Aldrin.’

Fredrika nodded.

‘Why isn’t Peder interviewing him?’ she asked.

Alex went pale as he told her about Peder’s brother. Fredrika’s eyes filled with tears, and she sat down on one of the chairs in Alex’s office.

‘What the hell is wrong with you two?’ Alex said when he saw her reaction. ‘We’re bound to find him. He’s probably gone for a walk and got lost. I’m sure that kind of thing can happen with someone like Jimmy.’

Fredrika could see that Alex believed what he was saying, and she admired him for that. Personally, she was up to her eyes in crap, and couldn’t manage one single positive thought.

‘Is he coming in later?’ she asked.

‘Maybe. We’ll see.’

Fredrika opened her bag.

‘With regard to the film club,’ she said. ‘Something occurred to me this morning. Something that has nothing to do with Spencer.’

Alex watched as she took out her papers. She glanced over at him; there was something unfamiliar about his face, as if it had acquired a patina of tranquillity that had not been there before.

She lost focus for a moment, and had to think about what she had been going to tell him. Then she remembered. Alex looked sceptical.

‘So you think that Torbjörn Ross, who has been a colleague of mine since the 1980s, was in touch with Rebecca Trolle before she died? And that he then withheld this information from the investigating team?’

Fredrika swallowed. The sleepless night had taken its toll.

‘I think it’s possible, yes.’

She pushed Rebecca’s notes across the desk. Pointed to the word at the bottom. Snuff.

‘It’s just a word,’ Alex said.

‘It’s
his
word,’ Fredrika replied. ‘He’s the one who thinks the books were filmed.’

Alex thought for a moment.

‘Ask Ellen to go through the list of calls,’ he said. ‘Check whether Rebecca called the police, either via the switchboard or to a direct line. We might have missed it, thinking she’d contacted the police for a completely different reason.’

Fredrika got to her feet.

‘I’ll do that right away.’

‘And if Peder doesn’t come in, I’d like you to sit in on the interview with Valter Lund. He’ll be here in an hour.’

‘And Thea Aldrin?’ Fredrika asked.

‘What about her?’

‘Aren’t we going to speak to her as well?’

‘Find out where she’s living these days, and we’ll go and see her later. Not that I think it’ll make much difference, if she never speaks anyway.’

Fredrika had one more question.

‘What’s our thinking on Morgan Axberger? Don’t we need to talk to him too?’

Alex suppressed a sigh.

‘We’ll hang fire on that. Let’s tackle one thing at a time.’

Fredrika hurried to her office, then went to see Ellen, who promised to check Rebecca’s phone records as soon as possible.

‘By the way, you’ve had several faxes from the Norwegian police about Valter Lund,’ Ellen said.

More paper, more work.

Fredrika went back to her office and read through what her Norwegian colleagues had to say. They had done quite a bit of digging. Among other things, they informed her that Valter Lund’s uncle had reported him missing at the beginning of the 1980s, when he signed on as a crew member on a car ferry, and was never heard of again. According to the police, this uncle still turned up at the local station in Gol on a regular basis, year after year, to ask if they’d found out anything about his nephew.

But why? Valter Lund was known all over northern Europe, and was frequently featured in the Scandinavian press. Didn’t the old man realise that the successful man who now lived in Stockholm was his missing nephew?

Fredrika frowned. Could there have been a mix-up? Was there more than one Valter Lund who had emigrated from Norway to Sweden in the same year?

Probably not.

She took out a picture of Valter Lund and stared at it. Why hadn’t he been in touch with his only remaining relative in Norway? And, even more to the point, why hadn’t his own uncle recognised him?

The night had been interminable. All the unfamiliar sounds, smells and impressions pierced Spencer Lagergren’s skin like needles, forcing him to stay awake. As the lonely hours passed, a new certainty formed in his mind. Even if they let him go, the life he had lived before was gone forever. He would only ever be remembered as the man who raped his female students. Who showed such contempt for women that he felt compelled to subject them to physical violence.

There was no margin for error when it came to sexual offences, Spencer knew that. Nobody wanted to be the one who had been wrong after the event, the one who had given the benefit of the doubt. So in the end it didn’t matter if Spencer was cleared of the crimes which Tova claimed he had committed; the verdict of his colleagues and the outside world would still be the heaviest burden to bear.

No smoke without fire. Not when it came to sexual offences.

And as if that wasn’t enough, his partner’s colleagues suspected him of being involved in a murder. With hindsight, he bitterly regretted not having told Fredrika what was going on from the start. To a certain extent, he blamed this obvious error of judgement on his problems with Tova. There hadn’t been room for two situations of such gravity; he could only deal with one at a time. In addition, he had only recently become aware that he was a suspect in a murder case – far too late for him to be able to work out how to behave. There had been just one thought in his head, and that had been born out of a state of sheer panic.