Fredrika swallowed hard, several times.
‘Check if she’s got any links with Umeå,’ she said in a weak voice.
‘I most certainly will,’ said Alex.
Fredrika could tell from the sounds at the other end that Alex had reached his car.
‘It all seems to be happening faster this time, if it’s the same man,’ she said slowly.
She heard Alex pause.
‘What do you mean?’ he asked.
‘Sara didn’t receive her parcel of hair until the day after her daughter went missing. But you’re telling me these clothes and hair were delivered to the parents almost as soon as the baby had gone.’
Alex said nothing for a moment.
‘Shit, you’re right,’ he whispered.
Fredrika shut her eyes, the phone clamped to her ear. Why was the perpetrator suddenly in such a hurry? And why take another child so soon after the first? And . . . if the clothes and hair had already been given back to the parents, did that mean the baby was already dead?
What’s driving him, Fredrika thought to herself. What on earth is driving him?
Peder Rydh was heading back to Stockholm at the speed of light. Alex had rung with news of the second child’s disappearance just as he got to Norrköping. They agreed that the interview with Sara Sebastiansson’s ex-boyfriend should still go ahead. There was a microscopic chance, in spite of everything, that he was behind Lilian’s abduction, and had now taken another child to make it look as though Lilian had fallen victim to a serial killer rather than her mother’s former boyfriend.
But the instant Peder saw Sara’s ex, his hopes were dashed. In short, there wasn’t a cat in hell’s chance that the man Peder had before him in Norrköping could have kidnapped, scalped and murdered a little child. He had a few offences to his name, to be sure, and he admitted he had felt bitter about Sara for a surprisingly long time after they broke up, but it was a huge step from there to the murder of Sara’s child fifteen years later.
Peder gave a weary sigh. This was another day that hadn’t turned out the way he’d envisaged. But he was very glad indeed that it was Fredrika and not him who had been sent to Umeå. For one thing he felt too shattered for the journey, and for another it was good to have Fredrika out of the way now things were hotting up with another missing child.
Peder was not at all happy about the way the case was developing. It seemed to be moving beyond the stretch of his imagination. As long as they were working on the hypothesis that it was Lilian’s own father who had first taken and then murdered her, Peder had known what he was doing. The guilty party in cases like this was nearly always someone close to the victim. Nearly always. This was an indisputable fact that should inform every normal policeman’s thinking. There had been no other circumstances to take into consideration. There were no other children missing; there was no one else Sara was in conflict with.
Fredrika had been more flexible in her thinking virtually from the word go. She had identified Sara, rather than Gabriel, as the parent who must be linked to the murderer, and had tried to get them to consider alternatives to Gabriel as Lilian’s kidnapper. The fact that nobody had listened to her had unfortunately cost the investigation valuable time. Peder knew this to be the case, but he also knew he would never admit it out loud. Least of all to Fredrika.
But Peder was still doubtful whether they had ever had any reasonable chance of saving Lilian from her death. He didn’t think so. Even Sara Sebastiansson had not thought there could be anyone in the world who hated her so much that they would murder her daughter to punish her. So how could the detectives possibly understand the course of events?
And now another child was missing. Peder felt his guts churn. A baby. What normal person could possibly bring himself to hurt a baby? Naturally there was a simple answer to Peder’s question: anyone who you could imagine killing a baby or a child was not normal.
It distressed Peder to have to think it, but it did not seem likely that the investigation team would be able to find or save this child, either.
Peder slammed his fist down on the steering wheel.
What the hell was he thinking? It went without saying that they would do their utmost to find the child. But he felt instantly deflated again. Unfortunately it also went painfully without saying that if the murderer intended to kill child number two within fewer than twenty-four hours, too, then the team was not going to find it in time.
We’ll find it when he wants us to, Peder thought dejectedly. We’ll find it where he puts it, when he wants to show it to us.
The police could be heroes, but they could also be helpless. Peder wondered what he’d actually achieved that day. He thought he had the identity of the woman who had helped the man with the Ecco shoes. But what did that connect her to, in fact? She had behaved oddly with a dog at Flemingsberg station. Maybe to delay Sara Sebastiansson. She had tried to get a driving licence. Maybe to drive Lilian’s body to Umeå. There were too many maybes for comfort.
Peder swallowed. If she was who they thought she was, and had played the role in all this that they suspected she had, then it was absolutely vital to the investigation to find her and talk to her.
Alex had decided straight away to release Monika Sander’s name and picture to the press and issue an appeal for her to get in touch. Or anybody who knew who she was. And where she was. They would also ask Sara if she recognized the name or picture; there was always a chance that she might be able to confirm it was the same woman. They would ask the parents of the missing baby, too.
But both Alex and Peder were convinced that Monika Sander could hardly have been behind the baby’s disappearance. If the picture her foster mother had painted of her was not misleading, the plan was too precise and sophisticated for Monika to have conceived it and made everything happen at the right time. Yet she was still clearly a key figure in the story.
Peder shook his head. There was something he should have thought of, something he ought to be remembering.
The dryness in his throat persisted. He was thirsty but there was no time to stop to buy something to drink. Priority number one had to be to get back to Stockholm and get underway with the new investigation, to see if they could link it into the existing one.
There must be a connection. It couldn’t be a coincidence that the baby’s clothes and hair had been put in a box and left in the garden, or wherever it was. The details of Lilian’s abduction were still not known to the press; the team had not released them.
Peder had only one thought in his head as he neared Stockholm and saw the silhouette of the Globe Arena away to the east. If only they could find Monika Sander. And quickly.
The nurses in Ward Four of the Karolinska University Hospital in Solna, just outside Stockholm, had been instructed to be very gentle with the patient lying alone in Room Three. The young woman patient had been brought to A&E by ambulance during the night. Her neighbour had been woken by strange noises in the stairwell and had looked through the spyhole in his front door to see if it was burglars making the most of everyone being away for the summer. What he actually saw was the girl in the next-door flat lying on the landing floor, badly beaten up, with her feet still inside the flat and her body resting on the hard, marble floor.
He immediately rang for an ambulance and then sat on the landing to keep watch over the little slip of a girl, who was barely conscious as the ambulance crew lifted her onto the stretcher and carried her down the stairs.
The neighbour was asked what the girl was called.
‘Jelena, or something like that,’ he told them. ‘But the place isn’t hers. The actual owner hasn’t lived here for several years. The girl’s just the latest of all his sub-lets. There’s a man who stays here sometimes as well, but I don’t know his name.’
There was no name on the door of the flat. The injured woman mumbled something scarcely coherent when a paramedic gave her a gentle slap on the cheek and asked her what her name was. A nurse who had come with them thought sh
e could make out a name. It sounded as if she was saying Helena.
Then the battered woman slipped into unconsciousness.
When she was seen on arrival at A&E, her injuries were assessed as extremely serious. Examination revealed her to have four broken ribs, contusions to her cheekbones, a dislocated jaw and several broken fingers. She had bruising to her entire body, and when an X-ray of her skull showed that her brain was swollen as a result of all the blows to her head, she was put in intensive care.
The hospital staff were taken aback by the sheer number of bruises, cuts and broken bones the patient had. What shocked them most of all were her burns. There were more than twenty, inflicted with what they assumed to be lighted matches. The thought of how painful the burns must be made the nurses’ flesh creep as they took it in turns to keep watch at the bedside.
At about ten o’clock the woman, admitted under the name ‘Helena’, began to come round, but she was still groggy from all the morphine they had given her for pain relief. The intensive care consultant determined that she was now well enough to be moved to a general ward, and her bed was wheeled up to Ward Four.
She was initially in the care of nursing assistant Moa Nilsson. It wasn’t that there was a lot to do, but Moa found it quite traumatic watching over the slim figure, her face a patchwork of bruises. It was impossible to say what she normally looked like. They hadn’t found an ID card. But Moa thought she had some idea how the girl had lived, anyway. Her nails were bitten right down and she had small, amateurish tattoos on her arms. Her hair was red, but anyone could see it was dyed. Moa hazarded a guess that it had only just been done, too. The sad, dry hair spread across the pillow around the woman’s head. Her hair was so red that it looked as if her head was resting in a pool of blood.
Moa’s nursing colleagues kept popping along to see how things were going, but the situation was still unchanged by the time the dinner trolley clattered past the door. Then the patient slowly opened the one eye that was not swollen shut.
Moa put aside her magazine.
‘Helena, you’re in Karolinska University Hospital,’ she said gently, and sat down on the edge of the bed.
The girl said nothing. She seemed very, very frightened.
Moa cautiously stroked her arm.
The girl murmured something.
Moa bent closer, frowning.
‘Help me,’ the girl said faintly. ‘Help me.’
SATURDAY
Spencer Lagergren had many good points, but one thing Fredrika Bergman had always missed in their relationship was any element of spontaneity and surprise. To some extent, of course, this was because Spencer was married; scope for spontaneity was rather restricted. But she attributed the absence of surprises more to Spencer’s rather limited imagination in that area. Spencer could only surprise you with the help and guidance of fate.
But every rule has its exception.
Fredrika gave a little smile as she hurriedly tried to put her dark hair up. She had visualized herself spending the evening in Umeå alone with a glass of wine and her notebook. And that was indeed how the evening had started. But as she sat in the verandah of the Town Hotel drinking her over-priced wine, she suddenly heard a voice behind her.
‘Excuse me, is this seat free?’
Fredrika was so amazed to hear Spencer’s voice that her jaw literally dropped, and the sip of red wine she had just taken dribbled down her chin.
Spencer looked dismayed.
‘Are you all right?’ he said in some agitation, grabbing a serviette from the table and wiping her face.
Fredrika, struggling with her hair, blushed and laughed at the recollection.
Spencer’s bold move had impressed her. They had a very clear agreement, and it said in principle that their relationship did not bind either side to any particular obligations, or promises to support each other. In that respect, Spencer’s role in her life was unambiguous. Yet he had still come. Probably not just for her sake, but also for his own.
‘You have to seize chances when they come your way,’ Spencer said as they raised their glasses to each other, not long after his unexpected arrival. ‘It’s not every day one gets the opportunity to go to Umeå and live in style at its top hotel.’
Fredrika, completely knocked sideways, tried to thank him and explain to him simultaneously. It was wonderful to see him again so soon, but did he realize she had to work the next day and then fly back home? Yes, he did. But he had found himself missing her too much. And on the phone she had sounded really down, really frayed.
Fredrika thought that Eva, Spencer’s wife, must know about his relationship with her. That would explain how he could so easily get away from home one night a week. And Eva had had affairs of her own over the years.
Spencer had once brought up the subject of why he didn’t intend to get divorced. There were various sensitive relationships on the fringes of his marriage – the one between him and his father-in-law, for example – that made a divorce unthinkable. And the fact was, Spencer added, that in some strange way he and his wife felt quite strong ties binding them together, in spite of everything. Ties that could be stretched even more than they had been, but still they would never break entirely.
And that wasn’t really a problem, thought Fredrika, because she wasn’t sure she would appreciate sharing her day-to-day life with Spencer full time.
They had a quiet but memorable evening. Wine on the verandah, then a meal at a nearby restaurant where a young pianist crowned the warm evening with live music. At one point, when Fredrika – light-headed from the wine and the temporary peace of mind – was sitting staring at the pianist a little too intently, Spencer reached out across the table and gently stroked the scar on her arm. Wondering. Fredrika carried on observing the man at the piano and avoided Spencer’s gaze. But she did not pull away.
A serious expression came into Fredrika’s face as she slipped her hairbrush into her handbag and pulled her jacket straight. The only source of anxiety triggered by Spencer’s visit was the fact that she still hadn’t brought herself to tell him about the call from the adoption centre.
I’ve got to tell him, she thought. Regardless of the state of our relationship, I’ve got to tell him. And soon.
It was nine o’clock before Fredrika left the hotel and set off to the home of the tutor from the writing course Sara Sebastiansson had attended all those years ago. Parting from Spencer was quite a complicated ritual. They never knew for certain when they would next see each other, but that didn’t matter; the main thing was that they knew they wanted to. They would just have to see when it turned out to be.
Fredrika had a quick word with Alex on the phone before she got out of the car to ring at the tutor’s front door. The media were going mad, he said, a fact that had not escaped Fredrika when she caught sight of all the newspaper headlines that morning. No dead baby had been found, for which everyone involved was truly grateful, even though they knew they probably had very little time.
‘Report back as soon as you get anything,’ Alex said at the end of the call. ‘We followed up a few leads last night, but to be honest . . .’
Fredrika could visualize him shaking his head.
‘To be quite honest we’ve drawn a blank on all fronts,’ he sighed.
Fredrika left the car and walked swiftly to the front door of the little house. It reminded her of the witch’s house in Hansel and Gretel. Pretty, with sweet little decorative details that looked almost painted on. It seemed a quiet, rather elegant neighbourhood. No children or young people. The words ‘retirement homes’ flew through Fredrika’s mind before the door opened, and she found herself eye to eye with a man with thick, ginger hair.
Fredrika blinked in surprise.
‘Magnus Söder?’
‘That’s me,’ replied the man, holding out his hand.
Fredrika was relieved to find she recognized the voice from their earlier phone calls, and took his hand. She gave a tight little smile and looked into his hard ey
es. Was there something faintly aggressive about him?
Magnus Söder, recently retired, with coffee stains on his hand-knitted waistcoat, was so far removed from anything Fredrika had imagined he would be that she almost blushed. For some strange reason, she had expected him to be younger, darker and more attractive. And not as tall. It always made Fredrika nervous when she felt small in the company of someone she did not know.
Magnus went ahead, right through the house and out to the back, where he had a lovely terrace. He did not offer her anything to eat or drink, but simply sat down opposite her and looked straight at her.
‘As I said on the phone, I don’t remember much of those years,’ he said curtly.
And before Fredrika could comment, he added:
‘I’m a recovered alcoholic, and the time you’re asking about was a bad patch for me.’
Fredrika gave a slow nod.
‘As I tried to explain,’ she said, ‘my questions aren’t particularly detailed.’
Magnus put up his hands as if acknowledging defeat.
‘I found some paperwork from that summer,’ he sighed. ‘I’ve always been terrible at throwing out old papers.’
He put a green file on the table between the two of them. The sound of the file banging down on the tabletop made her jump.
‘Who is it you want to know about?’ Magnus said gruffly.
‘Someone called Sara Lagerås,’ replied Fredrika quickly, congratulating herself on remembering Sara’s maiden name.
Magnus stared at a document in the file.
‘Yep,’ he said at length.
Fredrika’s brows knitted.
‘Yep,’ he said again. ‘I’ve got her here. She was from Gothenburg, wasn’t she?’
‘That’s right,’ said Fredrika.
‘And now she’s lost her kid? The one that was on the news?’
‘Yes.’
Magnus uttered an indeterminate sound.
Unwanted Page 25
