The Chosen

by Kristina Ohlsson

  But nowadays children seemed to spend at least half their lives on the computer. Where were their parents during all those hours? Alex had no idea, but they certainly weren’t with their kids. It was hardly surprising that so many young people went astray and came into contact with the wrong people online. You might as well drive them to a sex club and chuck them out of the car with the words “You’re okay to get home on your own, aren’t you?”

  The previous day the police had taken the computers the two boys normally used from the Eisenberg and Goldmann households. Alex had spoken to the IT technicians but had been told that they needed more time: there was too much material to get through in an afternoon. As he and Fredrika left the Eisenbergs he had called the technicians again:

  “There’s a forum called Super Troopers, some sort of elitist crap for kids who want to be winners. Check it out, will you?”

  • • •

  The apartment lay a short distance from Karlaplan, and it was enormous. The Goldmann family business had been very successful, but otherwise their lives were in ruins. Daphne and Saul Goldmann had lost their only child. Alex just couldn’t imagine what that must do to a person.

  How many ways are there to offer condolences? Many, he decided. For the third time this week he was sitting with grieving parents, trying to tell them that he understood that what had happened to them was the most horrific thing imaginable and that he would do all he could to see that justice was done.

  “It was very strange,” Daphne said in the same icy tone Alex had heard the last time they met. “We saw a counselor at the hospital. Do you know what she said?”

  It was a rhetorical question. She didn’t seem to expect an answer.

  “No,” Alex said anyway.

  “She said we were still parents. Parents without a child.”

  She looked at her husband.

  “Parents without a child? What kind of parents are those? Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  Alex and Fredrika exchanged a glance. They were in deep waters here. They could say that the counselor was only doing her job, but it was probably best not to get involved.

  “I agree,” Alex said instead. “That was a very peculiar thing to say.”

  “Wasn’t it just?” Daphne said.

  Silence fell in the library where they were sitting. Between the tall bookcases they could see framed enlargements of black-and-white photographs. A young Saul and Daphne in uniform. With and without guns in their hands. Or on their backs. Alone or with others. Alex recognized Gideon Eisenberg in one of the pictures.

  “You know the Eisenbergs?” he said.

  Daphne and Saul nodded.

  “Is that how Simon and Abraham became friends?”

  The parents without a child looked as if they didn’t know how to answer.

  “Yes and no,” Saul said eventually. “Gideon and I knew each other well in Israel, and then we moved to Stockholm at the same time. Had children at the same time. But we grew apart, as they say.”

  Daphne joined in.

  “We got to know different people here, worked in different places. After a while we didn’t seem to have that much in common. But the boys ended up in the same class at the Solomon school and spent time together.”

  Alex could see that Fredrika had also noticed the picture of Gideon.

  She pointed: “Did you and Gideon do your military service together?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was that where you got to know one another?”

  He shook his head.

  “We grew up on the same kibbutz. We’re the same age and we were in the same class until we finished high school.”

  So they had known each other since they were born and had eventually decided to emigrate together, yet they were no longer close friends. There must have been some kind of disagreement, otherwise that wouldn’t have happened.

  “Did you stay in the army or did you have a civilian career in Israel?” Fredrika asked.

  Saul stiffened.

  “I went to university in Tel Aviv,” he said curtly. “I did another two years in the army, and that was it.”

  Alex looked at the picture again. Admittedly it was always difficult to gauge how old someone else was, but he thought both Gideon and Saul looked older than the usual age for military service.

  “And you were also in the army?” Fredrika asked Daphne.

  “Yes, but only for a few years, like Saul.”

  That didn’t match what Gideon and Carmen had said; they had implied that the Goldmanns’ military career had been longer.

  Alex looked away from the photographs.

  “Abraham must have been impressed by your background,” he said.

  He smiled as he spoke, hoping to convey warmth.

  “Absolutely—he was fascinated,” Daphne said.

  “Did he have any thoughts of going into the army?” Alex asked, thinking that Israelis in particular were likely to react more strongly than others to the fact that Sweden had abolished military service and had virtually no defense left to speak of.

  “He was too young for that kind of talk,” Saul said harshly.

  But he called himself the Warrior.

  “There’s an Internet forum called Super Troopers,” Fredrika said. “It’s for young people; are you aware of it?”

  “Of course,” Daphne replied. “Abraham was often on there, chatting to others his own age.”

  “It was a good site,” Saul said, sitting up even straighter. “It encouraged competitiveness; it helped build character and was good for morale.”

  “So you monitored Abraham’s online activities?”

  “What do you think? He was ten years old—of course we did,” Daphne said.

  And Alex believed her. These were no ordinary parents. They were coaches who had seen it as their duty to prepare their son for adult life, and to do so with a firm hand.

  “Why did he call himself the Warrior?” Fredrika asked.

  Daphne smiled for the first time. It was a brittle smile, painful to see.

  “Because that was his grandfather’s nickname, and Abraham really looked up to him.”

  Her face crumpled, and Alex thought he was going to see her cry for the first time. It didn’t happen.

  “Did you or Abraham have any enemies?” he said.

  “You asked the same question yesterday,” Daphne said.

  “And now I’m asking it again.”

  “No.”

  “No past disputes or injuries festering away?”

  “No.”

  So what had happened? Had the boys been picked up by someone who had taken them just because he was crazy? The fact that they had probably known the driver made that unlikely and suggested that the crime had some personal motive.

  Of course, it could be a combination of the two. The killer could be driven by both insanity and the desire for revenge.

  But if someone felt such hatred that it could lead to murder, the people involved usually had an idea of the reason behind it. Daphne and Saul Goldmann didn’t seem to have a clue.

  Alex felt as if the ground beneath his feet were giving way. His thoughts went back to the case he had investigated with Fredrika and Peder that summer when it wouldn’t stop raining. When Lilian Sebastiansson had disappeared. On that occasion they had been hunting a true psychopath, someone to whom rituals were of great importance. A killer hell-bent on avenging past wrongs so diffuse that the parents of the children who went missing had no idea what they were supposed to be guilty of.

  Were they back in that same place now? In the hands of a mentally ill person whose motives were unclear?

  He hoped to God that wasn’t the case and that this was something different.

  “I’m going to be honest with you,” he said. “I don’t think Abraham and Simon were taken at random. The perpetrator was after one or both of them. Probably both, as they were killed in the same way. I also think they were murdered by the person who picked them up on the way to the
ir tennis session. What I need from you and Simon’s parents are more leads. Who has done this to you?”

  His words settled over Saul and Daphne like a wet cloud. He hadn’t sounded angry, hadn’t accused them of anything. He had spoken clearly and to the point: he and Fredrika needed their help. That was all there was to it.

  “What about your business? Can you think of any disputes or arguments you’ve been involved in?”

  Daphne and Saul looked at one another.

  “No,” Daphne said, her voice weaker now. “No, nothing like that.”

  “Think carefully,” Fredrika said. “It could be something that didn’t seem all that serious at the time but had major consequences for someone else.”

  The Goldmanns thought hard, digging in their past for an explanation for what had happened.

  Alex didn’t think they were lying, but he was concerned that they might be withholding information for private reasons, making their own decisions as to what might or might not be relevant to the investigation. Few things were more dangerous.

  He directed the conversation back to the Eisenberg family.

  “So you all moved to Sweden at the same time.”

  “It was pure coincidence.”

  Saul’s comment came quickly. Too quickly. It was very clear that he realized he had made a mistake.

  “So the move wasn’t a joint project?”

  “No.”

  Once again a response that wasn’t a lie but wasn’t the whole truth either. There was something there; Alex could feel it. In the past. Hidden away, buried in Israel. The question was how they were going to get at it if nobody was prepared to talk.

  Fredrika moved on to what was intended to be the final key question.

  “Can you tell me who the Paper Boy is?”

  Daphne didn’t move a muscle.

  But Saul . . . He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. Every scrap of color drained from his face.

  Then he pulled himself together. The color returned and his breathing slowed down. But it was too late. Both Alex and Fredrika had seen his reaction.

  “Why do you ask?” he said.

  Alex leaned back in his chair.

  “Answer our question first, then I’ll answer yours.”

  Saul’s body language was defensive now.

  “He’s a fairy-tale character. An Israeli myth. He doesn’t exist.”

  His jaws were clamped together as he ground out the words.

  “Good,” Alex said.

  “Why do you ask?” Saul said again, louder this time.

  “Because that’s what Simon called himself on the Super Troopers forum,” Fredrika said. “That’s all.”

  Her answer calmed Saul but not Alex, because now he had two leads to follow. First of all, he wanted to know why the Eisenberg and Goldmann families had moved to Sweden, and secondly he wanted to know more about the so-called Paper Boy.

  Both questions led to Israel.

  Food from Thailand and lingonberry juice from Kivik. An extremely late lunch. It was two o’clock before they found time to eat, and Fredrika Bergman was practically screaming with hunger. She and Alex shut themselves in the Snakes’ Nest with takeout from one of the many Thai restaurants that had opened in the streets around Police HQ. She had no idea who Alex had stolen the juice from, nor did she care.

  The aroma of curry spread around the room as soon as they opened the plastic containers.

  “This isn’t exactly environmentally friendly,” Fredrika said as she put down the messy lid.

  “You’re right,” Alex agreed.

  Then they settled down to their lunch and forgot about the environment. They had two murders to solve; someone else could worry about the greenhouse effect, dead zones in the Baltic, and a whole load of other stuff that Fredrika vaguely felt she cared too little about.

  They now had food in their bellies and silence in the room. Silence but an absence of calm. They had too much to do, too many questions to answer.

  Two murders.

  Or three, if they included the teacher.

  Their efforts to track down the person who had killed the boys out on Lovön had produced sparse results. CSI thought they had an idea of what kind of vehicle had been parked in the spot where they were assuming the boys had been released: a van. A vehicle of that type had been reported stolen the day before the boys were abducted, but it appeared to have vanished into thin air; the number plate hadn’t been picked up at any of the tollbooths on the city’s roads. They had tried to find potential witnesses on Lovön, but no one had noticed a van around the time the boys went missing or when they were shot. It had taken a while to find the bodies in the snow and set up roadblocks on the island, so the killer had had plenty of time to get away.

  “Are we working on Josephine’s murder as well, now that we know the same weapon was used?” Fredrika asked.

  “That remains to be seen.”

  “It would be the logical move. If we’re not running both cases, then we could end up duplicating the work but missing information at the same time.”

  “We can’t cope with two investigations. There aren’t enough of us.”

  “But why are we talking about two investigations? It’s the same case. Three deaths, one killer.”

  Alex pushed away his empty container. Fredrika was always amazed at the speed with which he ate; it was as if he simply inhaled the food.

  “How do we know there’s only one killer? There could easily be two people working together,” Alex objected.

  “The footprints in the snow suggest one perpetrator.”

  “And how do you know that the person who hunted down the boys is the same person who lay on the roof and shot Josephine?”

  “You mean someone shot her, then gave the gun to someone else, who took care of the boys?”

  Alex shrugged.

  “We know nothing, Fredrika. Not a bloody thing.”

  She didn’t agree.

  “We don’t know anything for sure, but we have to come up with hypotheses, otherwise we’ll get nowhere.”

  She put down her fork. She would eat later.

  “Alex, I don’t believe the boys escaped from their abductor. I think he let them go, one at a time—hunted them down and shot them. I have no idea why. Nor do I know why he made them take off their shoes and socks or why he put paper bags over their heads.”

  “I agree. I don’t believe they escaped, either, but I’m not sure the fact that they were barefoot is so strange; the killer could have done that just to make sure they wouldn’t be able to run very far.”

  “Which makes the hunt itself even more interesting. Why was that so important to him?”

  Alex’s face was distorted with anger when he replied.

  “It’s more than interesting; it’s downright sadistic. The boys must have set off thinking they had a chance of escape. Which they never did. The murders are ritualistic, for fuck’s sake. Don’t ask me how; I just know that there was nothing random about what we saw out there. The hunt, the bare feet, the paper bags—they’re all connected.”

  Fredrika had to agree.

  Alex rested his elbows on the table and leaned forward.

  “So can we assume that the murder of the teacher was also ritualistic, even though we haven’t found any evidence to suggest that?”

  “That’s what I’m wondering,” Fredrika said. “The differences in the MO could be down to the fact that the perpetrator wanted it to look as if the murders were unconnected, but then surely he wouldn’t have been so careless as to use the same gun.”

  “Exactly. Which makes the whole thing so damn arrogant. He doesn’t care if we realize he’s involved in both crimes. He doesn’t even try to hide it.”

  “Perhaps that was the idea: the murders were carried out in such different ways so that we’d end up sitting here, scratching our heads and wondering who we’re looking for.”

  Alex stared at her for a long time.

  “You’re a wise wom
an,” he said eventually.

  Fredrika blushed.

  “I just meant—”

  “I know what you mean, and you’re right. Even if you’re wrong. We’re wasting time trying to find an explanation for two such different murders when in fact we only need to solve one in order to find the person responsible for both.”

  Fredrika nodded slowly.

  “So you think we should leave Josephine’s murder with the National Crime Unit after all?”

  “For the time being, we carry on working separately; we’ll probably meet in the middle at some point anyway.”

  That sounded logical.

  “Do you seriously believe the only reason behind Josephine’s murder was to confuse us?” Fredrika said.

  She could hear the doubt in her voice and did nothing to hide it.

  “No. But I do think that we shouldn’t ignore leads just because they don’t match both cases. Do you have a third hypothesis, or would you like to hear mine?”

  Fredrika thought for a moment. The smell of the food was less than pleasant, and she wished it wasn’t too cold to open a window to get some fresh air and a shot of energy.

  “I do have one more theory,” she said. “The victims weren’t taken by chance. He knew exactly who he was after.”

  “Good. I agree. I think our killer is driven by personal motives. The Solomon Community’s fear that we’re dealing with a crazy serial killer bent on murdering Jews is groundless. He doesn’t give a shit if they’re Jews or Arabs or Chinese. This is personal.”

  “In which case there must be a link between the boys and the teacher.”

  “Absolutely, but we’re not going to start there. We’re going to start with what we have.”

  “Which is?”

  “I have a feeling that the Goldmann and Eisenberg families are being a little circumspect about why they left Israel. It may be of no relevance to the inquiry, but I still want to know what they’re not telling us. And there’s something else.”

  Fredrika’s stomach contracted.

  “The Paper Boy,” she said.

  “Exactly. The boy who called himself the Paper Boy online is found dead with a paper bag over his head. Is that supposed to be a coincidence?”