The Disappeared (42 page)

‘What did you take during the original investigation?’

‘A few notes, that’s all.’

Ross’s voice was quiet. He sat down again.

‘Notes which included your own name, I presume?’

Ross said nothing.

‘What else?’

Silently, Ross reached for a thin folder on the top shelf of his safe. He handed it to Alex.

A page torn from Rebecca’s file block, containing notes about the investigation into the murder of Thea’s ex. Dates, names. Including that of Torbjörn Ross.

‘Who are the other people mentioned here?’

‘Officers involved in the case. Most of them have retired by now. She contacted the police and asked to see the records from the preliminary inquiry; that was how she found me and the others.’

‘So she called you?’

Ross nodded.

‘We met only once, at Café Ugo on Scheelegatan. We went through the case together, and she asked some pretty banal questions. Then it was over.’

‘Hang on a minute. It must have been more than some banal questions. It was you who led her to the snuff movie, wasn’t it?’

Ross looked surprised.

‘She’d saved some of her notes on a floppy disk, and you missed it,’ Alex said, trying not to sound triumphant. ‘We couldn’t understand why the word “snuff” appeared, but now we think we know where she got it from.’

Ross’s eyes were darting all over the room.

‘I might have given her a helping hand; she was already heading in that direction.’

‘Like hell she was,’ Alex bellowed. ‘It was you and your bloody obsession that gave her ideas. And now she’s dead.’

‘Exactly!’

Ross raised his voice.

‘Now she’s dead, and what does that tell us, Alex? It was no coincidence that she died. She must have stumbled on something that you and your colleagues missed.’

‘I don’t think it’s a coincidence either; the question is whether we still have any chance of finding out what she came up with. Because unlike you, she believed Thea was innocent of the murder of which she had been convicted. Why do you think that was? Where did she get that idea from?’

Ross had no answer to that.

‘Did she mention it to you?’

‘No. When we met she didn’t say anything at all about the issue of Thea Aldrin’s guilt.’

Alex thought for a moment.

‘Do you know what she did after that? Did she speak to anyone else who had worked on the Aldrin case in the ’80s?’

Torbjörn Ross hesitated.

‘I think she might have pursued the snuff movie angle after I mentioned it to her. I heard she’d spoken to Janne Bergwall; he was there when the film was found, but Janne and I have never discussed it.’

Janne Bergwall. The toughest of them all. A corrupt bastard who had a hold over God the Father himself, which was the only reason he hadn’t lost his job. Now he was only a year or so away from retirement. Alex knew a lot of people who would be relieved when he finally went.

Dragging Bergwall into this investigation was the last thing he needed.

‘I want to see that bloody film myself before I speak to Bergwall,’ Alex said. ‘Where is it?’

‘In the archive. Would you like me to . . .?’

‘No thank you – you’ve already done more than enough.’

Alex raised a hand to indicate that Ross should keep his distance from now on.

His next job would be to watch this notorious film. He wondered what it would tell him.

Who was it who had so much to hide, Rebecca?

55

Time was running out for Malena. When they rang from Mångården to ask if she could work an extra shift that day, the call had felt like a blessing at first, but after she had spoken to the police, that no longer seemed possible.

Now, Malena could see more clearly how everything hung together, how she had become a pawn in a game she did not understand, a game she had never asked to be a part of. And she realised that she had good reason to keep out of the way.

Out of the way of a monster from hell.

Malena hated Thea Aldrin. For her silence, for her refusal to take responsibility. She was at the centre of the whole thing, and yet no one grabbed hold of her, forced her to tell them what must be told so that everyone could move on. So that everyone could get their lives back.

As lunchtime approached, Malena’s fear had turned to sheer terror. She hardly dared walk down the narrow corridors of the care home, and instead sought refuge in the residents’ rooms. She might not be aware of the full picture, but Malena sensed that she knew far too much for her own good.

Terror sliced through her belly like a knife.

What if she died? This wasn’t like the film she had made. Death was irrevocable.

There’s still so much I want to do.

And that was the tipping point for Malena, because if there was one thing in her life that she had had more than enough of, it was being a victim. It had to stop. No more.

Without looking back, she left the care home just before midday and headed for her bicycle. The morning’s clouds had dispersed, and it looked as if it was going to be another lovely spring day.

Malena took a deep breath.

This was the day when she would find peace of mind.

INTERVIEW WITH PEDER RYDH, 04-05-2009, 14.00 (tape recording)

Present: Urban S, Roger M (interrogators one and two). Peder Rydh(suspect).

Urban: How are you, Peder?

(Silence.)

Roger: We realise things are difficult at the moment, but it’s in your best interests to co-operate with us.

Urban: You know how these things work. The people who come off worst are those who don’t co-operate during an internal inquiry.

(Silence.)

Roger: We think we have a relatively clear picture of what happened out on Storholmen, but we would very much like to hear your own version.

Peder: I don’t have my own version.

Roger: OK. What does that mean?

Peder: Exactly that. I don’t have something called ‘my own version’ of what happened. I’m the only one who was there. Therefore, the version I have given ought to stand.

Urban: We understand your thinking, but that’s not how it works, as you well know.

Roger: We carried out some additional investigations after we received your original statement, and it just doesn’t add up.

Peder: Doesn’t it?

Roger: No. It’s just not possible that you shot the suspect in self-defence. He was unarmed and defenceless, and you shot him right between the eyes.

Urban: You’re a good officer, and you are also tall and strong. You had plenty of opportunities to put the suspect out of action without killing him.

Peder: I assessed the situation differently.

(Silence.)

Urban: Are you sure about that, Peder?

Peder: Am I sure about what?

Roger: How many hours’ sleep did you get after Jimmy went missing?

Peder: None.

Roger: Almost forty-eight hours without sleep, and with an enormous amount of stress in your system. It’s understandable that a significant number of things went wrong.

Peder: Nothing went wrong.

Urban: Everything went wrong.

(Silence.)

Peder: So what is it you actually think?

(Silence.)

Urban: We think you shot the suspect in cold blood, that’s what we think. It’s called manslaughter. At best. The prosecutor might even decide to call it premeditated murder.

Roger: If you have anything to tell us, it would be best to speak up now, Peder. Otherwise you risk going down for life. Do you understand?

Peder: I have nothing more to add. Not one single word.

56

The film appeared to have been made in some kind of summerhouse, because in spite of the fact that all the walls were covered with white sheets, the sunlight found its way through the fabric. Alex was running the film in one of the rooms belonging to the photographic department.

‘It’s been a while since you lot wanted to borrow a projector,’ the technician who had helped him to set up the film had said.

Alex had asked to be left alone; his gut feeling told him that would be for the best. He switched off his mobile, disconnected his thoughts, which kept finding their way back to the night he had spent with Diana Trolle, and switched on the projector.

He realised straight away that the camera was not fixed on a tripod, but was being held by someone who remained anonymous throughout. The door of what Alex assumed was a summerhouse opened; a young woman hesitated, then came in.

She was beautiful. Youthful and unspoiled, the kind of girl Alex would have been happy to see with his son. Or the kind of girl he would have been interested in when he was a young man. Her sleeveless dress breathed summer and the 1960s. The film was in colour, and her skin was tanned. She smiled tentatively at the camera and said something that couldn’t be heard: there was no sound.

The room was completely empty of furniture or anything else. An open arena for what was to come. The door opened once again, and a man walked in. Tall, well-built, masked. Armed with an axe in one hand. His appearance was timeless; he looked exactly the way evil has always looked. Alex felt sick as the woman backed away and stumbled into one of the sheets. The window stopped her from falling. The man seized her by the arm, dragged her towards the middle of the room.

Then he raised the axe and swung it at her body in a frenzied attack. She fell to the floor, and even when she was motionless he continued to hack at her body with the axe, and with a knife which he suddenly produced from somewhere. The woman’s dress was covered in blood, and when the man finally straightened up, huge slashes in the fabric were clearly visible.

When the film was over, Alex sat there in stunned silence. He watched it again. And again. Then he ripped it from the projector and raced up to Torbjörn Ross’s office.

‘What made you think the film wasn’t genuine?’

‘It was just too much of a spectacle to be real. We thought it had been made in the ’60s, obviously inspired by the spirit of the age. And we didn’t find a murder victim with injuries consistent with those sustained by the woman in the film.’

‘And that was it?’

Ross shrugged.

‘For a long time, I believed the film was genuine, but in the end I was convinced by the fact that we didn’t have a murder victim. I mean, she would have been missed by someone. As far as I was concerned, that didn’t really matter anyway. The film was sick, and the person who made it must have been equally sick.’

Alex thought about the mythology surrounding snuff movies, the contention that the victims were usually people who could easily disappear without being missed by anyone.

‘Thea Aldrin. You think Thea Aldrin made this film?’

He held out the reel in his hand.

‘She was definitely involved,’ Ross snapped. ‘The links to her disgusting, filthy books were too obvious. The scene where the woman dies in a summerhouse was in both books. There’s no other explanation.’

Alex finally lost his temper.

‘For fuck’s sake, we don’t even know if she actually wrote the bloody books! And you thought the film wasn’t real!’

‘We found Thea’s friend Elias Hjort, we found out the royalties were paid to him. And guess what, Alex? When we went to bring him in for questioning, we were told that he’d left the country. What’s that worth today, now we know he hadn’t left the country at all? He was dead.’

‘Your only link to Thea Aldrin was Elias Hjort,’ Alex said. ‘And that bloody film club.’

‘And the rumours. There’s no smoke without fire; you know that as well as I do.’

Alex shook his head.

‘The film is real,’ he said.

The colour drained from Ross’s face.

‘Real?’

‘I’ll show it to the forensic pathologist, but I’m absolutely certain. The young woman who dies in this film is the young woman who was sharing a grave with Rebecca Trolle.’

Spencer called when Fredrika was on her way back to HQ from the care home.

‘They’ve let me go.’

Emptiness in her soul, warmth in her breast.

How far apart have we drifted?

‘Have they dropped the case?’

‘No, but there wasn’t enough evidence to suggest that I was likely to abscond for them to arrest me. They’ve blocked my passport; I can’t apply for a new one until all this is over.’

Fredrika said nothing. The whole thing had gone beyond the point where words were even possible.

‘I wasn’t the only one who was keeping secrets. And your secrets were my secrets.’

She heard what he said, but was incapable of taking in the words.

She wanted to say that she hadn’t been keeping any secrets at all, but she knew it was a lie. Several days had passed since Spencer’s name first came up in the investigation; several days of silence.

Then again, no silence was worse than Spencer’s. He had changed their life in order to hide his problems. Said he wanted to take paternity leave, when in fact he was running away from a difficult situation at work, a situation that could well cost him both his job and his future.

‘I could have helped you,’ Fredrika said.

‘How?’

‘Given you some advice.’

That wasn’t true, and she knew it. There was nothing she could teach Spencer in that respect, nothing she could use to support him. All the same, she felt as if he had rejected not only her professional expertise, but her heart and her love. In his hour of need, she had not been permitted to be there for him.

And it hurt like hell.

‘See you at home.’

He ended the call. Fredrika drove into the underground car park, then hurried upstairs. Peder wasn’t there, of course – he had said he was going to carry on looking for Jimmy – and there was no sign of Alex either.

Ellen came to see her. Morgan Axberger had been in touch after Ellen had spoken to his secretary, at Alex’s request. He had promised to call in later that afternoon.

‘Since when do people decide when they’d like to be questioned?’ Fredrika wanted to know.

‘Since we started contacting leading figures within Swedish industry,’ Ellen replied.

One of the officers who had found Håkan Nilsson’s boat called; Håkan was still missing.