‘No, we don’t think he can,’ Alex said urgently. ‘And this time he must have been in a real fucking hurry. The clothes were just chucked down in a heap and he hadn’t scalped the boy but just chopped off a few chunks of hair at random.’
‘He knows we’re on his tail,’ said Peder resolutely, fixing his service pistol to his belt.
Fredrika looked askance at the gun but said nothing.
‘What do we do now?’ she asked.
‘We carry out the operation as planned,’ Alex said firmly. ‘We need to get into the flat and see if we can pick up any leads to where he might have taken the boy. But he won’t get far, as I say. We’ve got roadblocks on all routes out of town and a nationwide alert’s gone out for him.’
Fredrika looked troubled.
‘I assume we’re interviewing the boy’s parents?’ she said. ‘About the background to the abduction, I mean.’
‘Of course,’ said Alex. ‘We’ve got a couple of detectives round there now. This time we know what we’re looking for. The mother will need to be asked where the final stage of her abortion took place, and then we’ll have to be there when he shows up with the child.’
Fredrika nodded, but her brow remained furrowed.
‘If it’s not already too late. If he’s in as much of a hurry as he seemed to be in the playground, the boy could already be dead. We can’t rule it out.’
Alex swallowed hard.
No,’ he said. ‘No, of course we can’t. But we can work as hard as hell to prevent it being that way.’
Peder was thinking.
‘But if we assume he knows we’re looking for him?’ he began tentatively.
‘Yes?’
‘Either he’s as off his head as we thought, in which case he’ll cut it short with the kid, even though the whole thing’s a lot less tidy than he planned it to be. Or parts of him are still rational in spite of everything, in which case he won’t dispose of the boy at the very start.’
‘But use him to bargain for his freedom,’ Alex added.
‘Exactly,’ said Peder.
The Den went very quiet.
‘Has anybody heard how Ellen got on, by the way?’ asked Fredrika.
Alex shook his head.
‘She was adamant she wanted to go home on her own, said she’d be fine, but I sent a patrol car round anyway. There was something about that story that didn’t feel right.’
Enthusiastic rays of sunlight were finding their way into the Den, spreading heat. Little balls of fluff went rolling across the floor. The air conditioning had spluttered into life.
Rapid steps were approaching. A young DC came rushing in.
‘The surveillance team at Steen’s place just rang,’ he blurted. ‘He’s back home again.’
‘Who’s back home again?’ asked Alex in irritation.
‘Aron Steen. He’s just got back to his flat.’
‘What about the kid?’ asked Peder.
‘He was carrying him naked in his arms. As if he knew we were watching but didn’t care.’
For a few short hours, Ellen had fully believed the reason she hadn’t heard from Carl was quite simply that he was the child murderer they were hunting. And that the reason her children weren’t answering the phone was that Carl had kidnapped them.
But it wasn’t true.
Ellen couldn’t fathom how she’d let her private and professional lives get entangled to that extent. When had she lost control of her own imagination? When had work become such a major part of her existence that she couldn’t distinguish it from other important parts any more?
I’ve really got to think this through, Ellen decided. I need to work out what’s truly important to me.
The children hadn’t answered the phone because they’d been round at a neighbour’s enjoying a nice brunch. And forgotten the home phone lines. It was no stranger than that.
But as for Carl.
Ellen peered sideways at him as she sat there on her living room floor. The children had immediately retreated to their rooms when she got home.
‘He was sitting on the front steps when we got back from brunch,’ her daughter had told her, nodding towards Carl who was sitting on the bottom step with his legs stretched straight out in front of him. ‘You’d better talk to him. He seems totally out of it.’
Ellen was initially dubious.
Should she let him into her home?
A patrol car went slowly past her house and pulled up.
Ellen invited Carl in, but left the front door open. The patrol car waited.
The first thing Carl did was to collapse onto Ellen’s old chesterfield sofa and burst into tears. Ellen decided to sit on the floor at a slight distance. And that’s the way they had been ever since.
Life was so peculiarly unpredictable. Who could possibly have foreseen that this somewhat rigid and self-controlled man, who always chose his words carefully and always seemed so strong, could break down in such an unconstrained way? Since Ellen had no words for occasions like this, she remained mute. She could hear her son talking on the phone through his closed bedroom door, and her daughter getting out her guitar.
‘I’m married.’
Ellen jumped as Carl broke the silence.
‘I’m married,’ he said again.
‘But . . . ,’ began Ellen.
‘I told you I was single, but I lied. I’ve been married to the same woman for over fifteen years, and we’ve got two children. We’ve a house in Borås.’
Ellen slowly shook her head.
A knock on the open front door interrupted them.
A uniformed police officer came into the living room.
‘Is everything all right?’ he asked.
Ellen nodded.
‘Because if it is, we’ll be moving on,’ the policeman said hesitantly.
‘Everything’s fine,’ she said in a monotone. ‘Everything’s absolutely fine.’
The policeman left, the front door closed behind him. Her daughter played the opening chords of ‘Layla’; her son gave a loud, shrill laugh into his phone.
How remarkable that everything just carried on as if nothing had happened.
‘That was why I didn’t want to meet your family, Ellen,’ Carl said in a softer voice.
He blew his nose on a handkerchief with his initials embroidered on it. Was it his wife who was so handy with the needle?
‘I was desperately unsure about this,’ he sighed. ‘About us. What it was. What we had. What it could turn into. And whether I was brave enough.’
Ellen’s chest rose and fell as she tried to breathe without the air getting stuck anywhere on the way.
‘Brave enough to do what?’ she asked in a low voice. ‘Brave enough to do what?’
‘To do what I’ve just done. Leave my family.’
Ellen remembered afterwards that she had never lost eye contact with him in the course of the conversation.
Carl began to speak faster.
‘I know I’ve done everything wrong; I know I’ve behaved badly. And I realize you must have wondered where I’d got to when I didn’t answer your calls. But I’ve still got to ask . . .’
Silence again. Silence beyond Eric Clapton on guitar and hoots of laughter into a telephone.
‘I’ve still got to ask, whether you think . . . Whether you think it could be the two of us.’
Ellen met his dark eyes. For a brief moment she saw him the way she had seen him when they first met. Life-affirming and whole.
But that had been then. What could become of what she saw ahead of her now?
‘I don’t know, Carl,’ she whispered. I just don’t know.’
The emergency response squad found the door of the flat ajar when they got to Aron Steen’s flat. Alex and Peder held back, firearms at the ready. They had made Fredrika stay at HQ. Alex had no intention of being responsible for unarmed, civilian personnel in a critical situation like this.
‘Aron Steen,’ Alex shouted in a commanding voice.
&n
bsp; No answer.
The officers kicked the door back on its hinges.
No one to the right, no one to the left.
The squad advanced into the flat.
A dark hall. Dark, undecorated walls.
Alex was aware of a pungent smell assaulting his nostrils.
Petrol. The flat stank of petrol.
They found him in the kitchen. He was sitting on a kitchen chair with the drugged and unconscious child in his arms, soaked in petrol, with a lighter in his hand.
Subdued voices among the officers. ‘Take it easy’ and ‘Hold it right there’ and ‘Keep back; there’s petrol all over the floor.’
They did not enter the kitchen.
Nor did Alex.
But he put away his gun and stood there, balancing on the threshold that marked the end of the hall and the start of the kitchen. Where Alex’s field of play ended and Aron Steen’s began.
They regarded each other. Aron Steen smiled a placid smile.
‘So we meet at last, Alexander,’ he said, breaking the tense silence.
‘Yes, we do,’ Alex said quietly.
Aron shifted the child slightly on his knee. The squad monitored his every movement. Aron smiled again.
‘I really think we ought to be able to sort this out without a lot of unnecessary violence,’ he said, his head on one side. ‘Can you ask your companions to wait in the hall, Alex? So we can talk in peace.’
It was the voice of a teacher. He was talking to Alex as if he were a child, a pupil. Alex felt a surge of anger. Aron Steen had nothing to teach him. That would have to be made very clear to him.
Peder was suddenly at Alex’s shoulder. He had his gun in his hand. Alex waved him away and signalled to the men behind him to fall back into the corridor and hall. They would still have a line of sight from there, but be less obtrusive.
Aron watched them. His mouth was smiling, but his eyes were ablaze.
‘There’s something special about fire, isn’t there?’ he whispered, fingering the lighter. ‘I learnt that at a very young age.’
Alex held off. Later, he would wonder why.
Aron looked at Alex and the men behind him.
‘I’ll exchange the boy for free passage out of the country.’
Alex gave a slow nod.
‘Okay.’
‘This is how it’s going to work,’ Aron Steen went on in a smooth voice. ‘The boy and I are going to leave the flat and get into a car and drive away. You are not going to follow us. Once I’ve gone far enough, I’ll ring and tell you where to find the boy.’
Sunbeams were dancing on the window ledge behind Aron and the boy. Alex let his eyes follow them and then looked back at Aron.
‘No,’ he said.
Aron looked startled.
‘No?’ he repeated.
‘No,’ said Alex. ‘The boy’s not leaving the flat.’
‘Then he’s going to die,’ Aron said calmly.
‘He’ll do that if he goes with you, too,’ countered Alex in the same calm tone as Alex. ‘That’s why we can’t let you take him with you.’
Aron seemed exasperated.
‘But why should I kill him? I told you, I want to exchange him for free passage.’
‘And I said okay,’ replied Alex. ‘But the exchange happens here. You give me the boy and then we leave the flat.’
Aron laughed out loud and then got up so abruptly from the kitchen chair that Alex took an involuntary step backwards. The squad members moved forward from the hall, then stopped and waited. An utterly absurd sense of security beamed through Alex’s body as he felt the kinetic energy behind him. As if their presence made any difference to the situation.
‘I’ve shown you how I work, haven’t I?’ asked Aron, raising his voice. ‘I’ve shown you the precision I apply to my mission?’
Alex heard the raised voice and felt very concerned. It was crucial for everyone’s safety that things did not escalate.
‘We’ve noted your way of working,’ he said softly. ‘And we’re very impressed, of course.’
‘Don’t try to flatter me,’ Aron hissed.
But it worked.
Aron sat down again. The child was limp and heavy, and the petrol had made him quite slippery. Alex could see a little trickle under the boy’s nose. Aron shifted to get a better grip.
Alex could feel the smell of the petrol making his own head heavy.
He opened his mouth to say something, but Aron got there first.
‘The child and I leave the flat together, otherwise there’s no deal,’ he said in a low voice.
‘We can negotiate,’ said Alex, squatting down on his heels. ‘We’re both completely clear what we want to achieve; I want the boy and you want your freedom.’
Alex threw his arms wide in a gesture of appeal.
‘We should be able to come to some agreement, shouldn’t we?’
‘We certainly should,’ Aron said placidly.
There was a moment’s silence. A cloud moved across the sun. The flat was cast into shadow.
‘But the boy can’t leave the flat?’ Aron said eventually.
Alex shook his head.
‘No, he can’t.’
He scanned the room. The only way out of it was through the door where Alex was standing. An urgent sense of anxiety found its way through the petrol fumes and gripped him. Why wasn’t Aron sitting in the living room with the boy? There was an unguarded balcony door in there to escape through. Why had he backed himself into a corner?
Aron provided the answer to Alex’s unspoken question.
‘Just as I thought,’ Aron said with a smile. ‘You never had any intention of letting me leave the flat.’
Before Alex could reply, the lighter flared, and in a second the whole kitchen was on fire.
PART III
Signs of Revival
THE END OF SEPTEMBER
Before summer had ever really arrived, autumn came creeping in. Only then did the rain stop. The sky was high and cloudless above the land, but the evenings grew ever cooler, and the nights were drawing in.
Alex Recht came back to work in the third week of September. He stopped in the doorway of his office and smiled. It was good to be back.
In the staff room, they all celebrated his return with coffee and cake. His boss made a short speech. Alex bowed and thanked him, accepted a bouquet and said thank you again.
Alone in his office a while later, he shed the odd tear. It really did feel great to be back.
His hands had healed better than anyone had expected, the doctors said, and they promised he would get full movement back in both of them.
For probably the thousandth time, Alex inspected the scar tissue decorating the backs and palms of his hands. Thin skin in a haphazard pattern of various shades of pink covered his hands and spread up over his wrists.
Alex was staggered not to be able to recall any pain when his hands were on fire. He remembered the whole course of events: Aron Steen’s kitchen turning into a blazing inferno; Aron just sitting there on the kitchen chair, engulfed in flames, the burning child in his arms. Alex saw himself in his mind’s eye, lunging forward into the fire and tearing the child from Aron’s grip. He could hear his own cries echoing in his head:
‘Out of the fucking way. The boy’s on fire!’
And the boy was indeed on fire. He was so much on fire that Alex didn’t have time to register that he was, too. He dragged the boy down onto the hall floor and rolled on him, over and over again, to put out the flames. Then Peder threw a large bath towel over Alex and tried to trap his thrashing arms. The fire crackled and spat, burned and cursed.
The emergency response squad advanced into the kitchen, armed with a hall rug, a bathmat and more towels to protect themselves against the fire. It proved impossible to reach the kitchen table, at which Aron Steen sat like a flaming brand. Not a sound escaped him as the fire took his life. And that, it later emerged, was what most of those involved in the operation saw in their
nightmares. The burning man sitting stock still at the kitchen table.
A neighbour who had heard all the disturbance came running up with a fire extinguisher. With that they were able to contain the fire until the fire engine and ambulance got there, but by then one person was dead and a little child was badly burned. The ambulance crew found Alex in the bathroom, trying to soothe his poor hands under cold running water.
Alex found it harder to remember what had happened after that. He knew they had kept him under sedation for several days. He knew it had hurt like hell when he came round. But once he had embarked on the rehabilitation programme, everything had gone better than he could have hoped.
In the time Alex was on sick leave, the papers did nothing but write about the events of the case. Countless newspaper reports detailed the murders of the children and of Nora in Jönköping. There were timelines, and maps with arrows, and red dots, telling the story over and over again.
Alex read them all. Mainly because he had nothing better to do with his time, or so he claimed.
The fates of Nora and Jelena were recounted in many different versions. The press found so-called relatives of the girls, relatives who had never actually had any contact with either of them, but were keen to see themselves in the papers. Former classmates told strange tales of their schooldays, and the articles had quotes from former teachers and even employers who had been located and interviewed.
The police investigation came under scrutiny. Could the police have acted earlier? Could the perpetrator have been identified sooner? A variety of experts were asked to give their opinion. Several of them thought the police had managed to make a mess of what was basically a ‘very simple investigation’, while others made the reasonable point that it had been right for the police to make Lilian Sebastiansson’s father their main suspect in the initial phase. It had been right, even though it had cost the investigation valuable time.
But the body of experts was unanimous in its criticism of the raid on Aron Steen’s flat in Midsommarkransen. Some thought the police should have pulled out as soon as they smelled the petrol and come back with fire blankets and extinguishers. Others thought they should not have engaged in any kind of dialogue with Aron Steen, but tried to put him out of action with a shot through the window, since he was sitting in full view.
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