‘I don’t get it,’ Alex said aloud to himself. ‘I just don’t get it at all.’
Then there was a knock on the door and one of the young DIs who had been transferred to the case stuck his head round the door.
‘We dropped in on Magdalena Gregersdotter and her husband, like you suggested,’ he said.
Alex had to give his head a shake to clear it before he could understand what his colleague was on about. The DI had come with Alex and Peder to break the news of Natalie’s death to her parents that morning. The parents had been in a state of utter shock and despair, so Alex had decided one of them ought to go back and see the couple later in the day. The DI and another member of the team had apparently now done so.
‘We showed them a picture of the house and told them where it was,’ he said, gabbling so fast that Alex had to concentrate hard to keep up. ‘And Magdalena, the mother, knew exactly where we meant.’
‘How?’ asked Alex.
‘She grew up in that house. She lived there until she left school and went away to college. Do you see, this ice-cool bastard dumped her dead kid in her parents’ old house, which they sold over fifteen years ago.’
Peder Rydh was sitting in his car, seething with rage. It was Saturday lunchtime and he was stuck in a traffic jam on his way back to Kungsholmen. It made no difference if it was a Saturday or a weekday: a major road accident quickly generated long tailbacks.
Looking back over the past week made him feel almost giddy. He had never for the life of him thought that the Lilian Sebastiansson case would grow into the monster it was now. Two dead children in under a week. Had he ever been on a case like it before?
Exhaust-belching vehicles passing far too close to the paintwork of Peder’s car stressed him out. So did the fact of having achieved so little over the past hour. The only good idea he had come up with all day was to declare Monika Sander wanted under the name she had before she was adopted. She had apparently been called Jelena Scortz.
After that, Peder had briefly interviewed baby Natalie’s parents and both sets of grandparents. None of them could think of anyone who might wish them ill.
‘Think hard,’ Peder told them. ‘Go right back in time. Try to think of even the slightest grudge that was never sorted out.’
But no, none of them could remember even the smallest thing.
And then his round of interviews had been interrupted by the discovery of Natalie lying dead in a bathroom in Bromma. Peder had to go back to Natalie’s parents first, and was then sent to supervise the first phase of the crime scene investigation in Bromma. This time, just like last time, they were without a murder scene.
But they did at least already know how their murderer killed his child victims, so they knew roughly what they were looking for. The duty pathologist at the scene ascertained almost at once that Natalie had a small mark on her head, probably from the lethal injection. The autopsy would confirm it later, but the group was working on the initial assumption that this child, too, had been murdered by an overdose of insulin, this time injected into the child’s head through the fontanelle. Was that what the murderer had tried to do to Lilian as well, but found he couldn’t get through her skull?
There were also other parallels with the way Lilian had been arranged when they found her. Natalie was also naked and had been washed with some kind of spirit. She had the same lettering on her forehead as Lilian, ‘Unwanted’. But she had been lying in a foetal position, not flat on her back like Lilian. Peder wondered if that was significant.
He also wondered about the word ‘Unwanted’. He and Alex had just been talking about it. Words like ‘Unwanted’ and ‘Rejected’ kept cropping up in this investigation, though neither of the children seemed to have been either.
The queue of cars inched its way forward, slowly dispersing. Peder felt lousy. The idea of trying to make contact with the American profiler had seemed so obvious. And his friend had offered the ideal way in. Or so it had seemed. In retrospect, Peder doubted it had been worth it. The time it had taken him to drive out to the university and back felt wasted. Peder’s friend had thought the psychologist would be prepared to have a word with him after the guest lecture, but he had in fact turned out to be extremely chilly and dismissive. Despite the potency and calibre of the current case, the psychologist intimated briskly that Peder had overstepped the mark by simply turning up and trying to pick his brains. He really had no wish to get involved with some strange Swedish case, when he was expected at Villa Källhagen for a lunch.
The psychologist unfortunately confirmed all Peder’s preconceptions about psychologists, and Americans. Dim and slow, with no social graces. Not the pleasantest of people. Peder virtually threw his card at the man and made his exit. Idiot.
The traffic jam finally cleared. Peder put his foot down and headed for HQ.
Then his mobile rang.
He was not a little surprised to find it was a call from the psychologist.
‘I’m so sorry I had to turn you down so publicly,’ he said apologetically. ‘You see, if I’d offered my services to you and your colleagues, every single psychology student there would have thought they were free to ask me to do the same. And to be honest, that’s not what I give my guest lectures for.’
Peder, unable to work out whether the psychologist was ringing to offer assistance or merely to apologize, said nothing and wondered frantically how best to respond.
The psychologist went on:
‘What I’m trying to say is that I’ll be glad to help you. Maybe I could come to see you and your colleagues sometime after this damn lunch I’m obliged to attend?’
Peder smiled.
Alex did not really know what to say at first, when Peder rang and told him that the psychological profiler had agreed to come and see them later that day. Then he decided it was quite a good idea, after all. They needed all the help they could get. And what was more, Fredrika would be back from Umeå in a couple of hours’ time.
Alex turned his little diagrams round, looking at them from all angles. At least they had a pattern, now. The murderer kidnapped and murdered children, and dumped them in places their mothers had some sort of link to. With savage speed.
Why had there been only a few days’ gap between the two abductions and murders, Alex wondered. The murderer was taking an enormous risk by committing two such serious crimes in swift succession. Three, if you counted the woman in Jönköping. There were some real psychos, of course, who never expected anything other than that they would be caught. Though ‘expected’ wasn’t the word: they wanted nothing better than to be caught. But was the murderer they were pursuing disturbed in that sort of way?
Alex went back to considering the locations in which the children had been found. It didn’t matter that they hadn’t found out exactly what Sara Sebastiansson had done or who she had met in Umeå. The main thing was that they were sure the place had some kind of significance for her, which explained why her child had been taken to that particular location and not left anywhere in Stockholm.
The truth was often much simpler than you first thought. Alex had learned that over the years. That was why it had seemed so obvious to focus on Gabriel Sebastiansson from the start. But this time, everything was different. This time, the truth seemed a vast distance away. It wasn’t a close relative who was to be held to account for what had happened, but something as uncommon as a serial killer.
How many serial killers have you actually met in all your years with the police, Alex? whispered the ghostly voice in his head.
Ellen interrupted his reverie with a hard knock on his open door.
‘Alex!’ she called, so loudly that it made him jump.
‘What is it now?’ he muttered.
‘We’ve had a call from Karolinska Hospital,’ said Ellen excitedly.
Alex looked quizzical.
‘They’ve got a woman there they think might be Jelena Scortz.’
Alex Recht briefly contemplated going straight out to Karo
linska University Hospital on his own to talk to the woman the staff thought might be Jelena Scortz, but he decided it wouldn’t be fair to Peder. It was thanks to Peder they had identified the woman, after all. So Alex decided they would go together. He was in buoyant mood. He had just heard that Sara Sebastiansson thought she recognized Jelena as the woman who had delayed her in Flemingsberg. She couldn’t be entirely sure, since the picture they had shown her was so old, but she thought it might well be the same girl.
Peder felt a surge of euphoria when he arrived back at HQ and was told to get straight out to Karolinska to conduct – if at all possible – an initial interview with Jelena Scortz, or Monika Sander as she appeared in the files of the National Registration Service. He raced to the car with Alex on his heels, and drove to Solna breaking several speed limits on the way.
Peder had never made any secret of what he liked best about his profession. He lived for those unique adrenalin rushes that can only result from a breakthrough in an investigation. He could see Alex felt the same, even though he had been in the job so much longer.
Peder couldn’t help being slightly irritated by the fact that Fredrika seemed immune to such pleasures. While everyone else was caught up in the excitement, she turned in on herself and became one big ‘Is this really the solution?’ and ‘Couldn’t it equally well be that?’ On this occasion it was in fact partly thanks to her that they had reached the breakthrough, so she could at least have allowed herself a hint of a smile when she heard the news. He liked smiley people around him at work.
Alex and Peder did not really know what to expect when they got to the hospital. They had been told, of course, that the woman presumed to be Monika Sander had been very badly knocked about and was still in some form of shock. But nothing they had been told in advance prepared them for what they saw when they went into the patient’s room.
Her whole face was a mess of lacerations and bruises. Long bruises disfigured her neck. Her left arm was in plaster to above elbow level, and her lower right arm was bandaged. Her forehead was covered in dressings, right up to her hairline.
‘Poor thing,’ were the words that flew through Peder’s head. ‘Poor, poor girl.’
A young nursing assistant was sitting by her bed. The nurse’s face was grave. Peder guessed he wasn’t the only person to be appalled by the extent of the woman’s injuries.
The discreet clearing of a throat made them turn round smartly.
A man in a white coat, with thick grey hair and a dark moustache, was silhouetted in the doorway. He introduced himself as Morgan Thulin, the doctor responsible for Monika’s care.
‘Peder Rydh,’ said Peder, squeezing the other man’s hand.
The handshake felt solid. Stable. He guessed Alex was making the same judgment.
‘I don’t know how much you’ve been told about her injuries,’ said the doctor.
‘Not a great deal,’ admitted Alex, stealing a glance at what was left of the woman in the bed.
‘Well in that case,’ Morgan Thulin said firmly but kindly, ‘I consider it my duty to inform you. She is still, as you see, in a very serious condition. She’s drifting uneasily in and out of consciousness, and finds it hard to speak when she tries to. The whole jaw area has been damaged, and until this morning her tongue was so swollen that it almost entirely filled the oral cavity.’
Peder swallowed, and the doctor went on.
‘Your police colleagues who are looking into the assault were here earlier to ask who did this to her, but she wasn’t able to tell them anything coherent or comprehensible. My guess is that she’s still in a state of shock, and then there’s the effect of the pain relief we’re giving her. Apart from the injuries you can see, she’s got several broken ribs. She doesn’t seem to have been subjected to any kind of sexual assault, but she has a number of severe burns.’
‘Burns?’ echoed Peder.
Morgan Thulin nodded.
‘Match burns, about twenty of them all over her body, including the inside of her thigh and the front of her neck.’
The room shrank, there was no air, and Peder wanted to go home. All his enthusiasm evaporated. He stared listlessly at the leaves of a plant on one of the window ledges.
‘The burns will leave her with permanent cosmetic scarring, but no functional impairment, clinically speaking. As for the mental scars, it’s too early to say, but I’m sure she’s going to have a long road to recovery. Very long indeed.’
Strange, the plant seemed to be moving. Was it the draught from the open window making it sway like that? Peder’s eyes followed the plant from side to side several times before he was brought back to reality by the fact that everything had gone quiet. Why wasn’t the doctor talking any more? Alex gave a little cough.
‘Sorry,’ said Peder in a low voice. ‘Sorry, it’s been a mad couple of days, that’s all . . .’
He could scarcely believe he was hearing his own voice. What was he saying?
Morgan Thulin patted him on the shoulder. Alex raised one eyebrow, but said nothing.
‘There’s more I should tell you, if you’re sure you can take it?’
This made Peder so embarrassed that he wished he could hide behind the goddamned pot plant.
‘Naturally I shall listen to everything you can tell us,’ he said, in an attempt to sound in command of the situation.
Morgan Thulin eyed him dubiously, but was charitable enough not to say anything. Alex followed his example.
‘There are signs of previous injuries, too,’ the doctor said. ‘So it seems this was not the first time she was beaten up.’
‘Not the first time?’
‘No, definitely not. The X-rays of her fingers show scarring on most of them indicative of fractures left to heal by themselves. Both arms have been broken, and there are signs of previous injuries to the ribs. She also has marks left by previous burns. We’ve counted about ten, so the assault this time seems to have been on a whole new scale.’
When Morgan Thulin had finished his account, they stood there nodding. Morgan Thulin nodded to show his story was at an end, and Peder to indicate he understood what he had just been told. Alex nodded mainly because the others were nodding too.
Then the woman in the bed made a sudden movement.
She whimpered quietly and tried to sit up. Immediately the nurse was there, gently restraining her. If she could just lie still, they would raise the head end of the bed so she was sitting up a bit.
Peder rushed over to help with the bed. Partly he wanted nothing more than to help, partly it gave him a chance to get nearer the woman. He saw she was barely able to open her eyes, but was still intently tracking his movements, first across the room and then as he helped to adjust the bed.
Morgan Thulin left them, saying, ‘I shall be in my office if there’s anything else you need to know.’
Peder wondered where to sit. It felt too intimate and intrusive to perch on the edge of the bed. But the easy chair on the other side of the room felt much too far away. He promptly pushed the chair closer to the bed, so he was about the right distance from the woman. Alex stayed over by the door.
Peder introduced himself and Alex by their forenames and surnames, and said they were from the police. He saw the woman’s gaze change and darken. She held up her hands as if to keep them at bay.
‘We only want to talk to you,’ he said cautiously. ‘If you aren’t up to answering, or don’t want to, that’s fine. We’ll just go away.’
He restrained himself from adding, ‘And come back another day.’
‘Can you nod if you understand what I’m saying?’
The woman regarded him in silence, and then nodded.
‘Can you tell us your name first?’
Peder waited, but the woman didn’t speak. The nurse helped her take a sip of water. Peder carried on waiting.
‘Jelena,’ came a whisper.
‘Jelena?’ repeated Peder.
The woman nodded.
‘And what’s your surn
ame?’
A further pause. Another sip of water.
‘Scortz.’
A light breeze from the slightly open window brushed across Peder’s cheek. He tried not to smile, not to show how pleased he was. It was really her. They’d finally found Monika Sander.
He felt suddenly unsure how to proceed. They didn’t even know for sure that this woman – Monika Sander – was the one who delayed Sara Sebastiansson at Flemingsberg. But they needed to know. Peder thought frantically. Mainly about why he hadn’t got this all worked out before they got to the hospital.
He decided to start from the other end.
‘Who did this to you?’ he asked quietly.
The woman in the bed rubbed her plaster cast on the sheet. Perhaps it had already started itching.
‘The Man,’ she whispered.
Peder leaned forward.
‘Sorry, I didn’t quite . . .’
The nurse at the bedside was clearly irritated, but made no comment.
‘The Man,’ said the woman again, and it was obvious she was making an effort to speak clearly. ‘That’s . . . what I . . . call him.’
Peder stared at her.
‘The Man?’ he repeated.
She nodded slowly.
‘Okay,’ said Peder carefully. ‘But do you know where he lives?’
‘Only . . . see him . . . my . . .’ slurred the woman.
‘You only see him at your place?’ Peder supplied.
She nodded.
‘So you don’t know where he lives?’
She shook her head.
‘Do you know where he works?’
She shook her head.
‘Psy-chol-o . . .’
‘Psychologist? He told you he was a psychologist?’
The woman seemed relieved that he understood what she was saying.
‘But you don’t know where he works?’
She shook her head, looking very miserable.
Peder racked his brains.
‘Do you know what sort of car he drives?’
The woman thought. She seemed to be trying to frown, but her face muscles refused to obey her. She must be in dreadful pain, thought Peder.
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