The Chosen

by Kristina Ohlsson

  Eden shifted impatiently in the back of the cab.

  It was through the victims that the perpetrators were found. If her basic theory was correct—if Simon and Abraham had been murdered in revenge for what had happened in that Palestinian village—then none of those involved were safe. Unless they were childless. Could Efraim have a family, and if so, where were they? Eden had no idea what kind of life he led. Perhaps he had already had a family back in the day, when he and she first met.

  Bastard.

  It wasn’t until the cab was driving through the city streets that it occurred to her what she had ignored. Consciously or unconsciously.

  Because of course Efraim Kiel had children.

  At least two of them.

  Eden’s daughters.

  It was vital to act quickly. First of all, Alex Recht drove over to Samson Security AB’s office on Torsgatan and rang the bell. He banged on the door and eventually tried the neighbors. No one knew where the woman who usually occupied the office might be, but one man said he had seen her only the previous evening.

  Alex called Mona Samson twice from the pavement outside, then drove back to Police HQ, contacted the prosecutor, and asked for a warrant to search the premises of Samson Security AB.

  “Why?” the prosecutor wanted to know.

  “Because I’m wondering if Mona Samson might have fallen victim to our killer, and I want to make sure she’s not lying there dead.”

  The thought had struck him as he stood there hammering on the door.

  So far he had assumed that the woman he was looking for was somehow involved in what had happened; the indentations in the snow on the roof indicated that a woman had played a part in the murders, and Mona Samson was the only woman who had emerged as a suspect. But what was to say that she couldn’t also be a victim? In this tangle of loose ends where nothing was what it appeared to be, wasn’t it possible that Mona Samson had somehow been drawn in and exploited?

  Standing in her office a little while later, he didn’t know what to think.

  The place was spartan bordering on desolate. Or perhaps the company hadn’t been there very long. Two desks, a bookcase, a computer, a few books and brochures. And a mattress on the floor. That was all. Cold and sparse. Alex stood in the middle of the room, the snow that had landed on his coat melting and dripping onto the floor.

  “Empty,” said a colleague who had come with him. A technician was there, too. In films, the cops always had a skeleton key in their back pocket; in reality, it was the police technician who opened doors.

  They had no mandate to remove anything, so they had to leave the computer where it was. As for the next step . . . Alex gazed around despondently.

  “Let’s put the building under surveillance,” he said. “See if she comes back. It looks as if she sleeps here sometimes.”

  His colleague glanced up.

  “But we don’t know what she looks like.”

  “In that case we’ll put someone on the door asking everyone who goes in to show their ID,” Alex said. “We have to find her.”

  • • •

  Fifteen minutes later he was back at Police HQ, sitting at his desk, reading the latest surveillance update on Saul Goldmann’s activities. He was traveling only between home and work. Sometimes Daphne was with him; sometimes he was alone. There was a photograph of the couple standing on the pavement outside their home; they had their arms around each other, and it looked as if Daphne was weeping on her husband’s shoulder.

  Alex swallowed hard and put down the picture.

  There was a certain kind of grief against which there was no defense. Daphne’s crumpled face expressed that particular sorrow, and it was painful to see.

  He forced himself to look again, knowing that he had seen something important.

  Saul’s face.

  Barren and closed.

  Not distorted with anguish like his wife’s. Alex knew he was on thin ice, that he couldn’t or shouldn’t draw conclusions from a single snapshot, a brief moment. But it actually looked as if Saul wasn’t grieving at all. He seemed annoyed, if anything.

  Alex went down to the technicians’ department and managed to get hold of Lasse, who had helped them with the Super Troopers forum.

  “Saul Goldmann’s cell phone,” he said. “Have we got a location for the occasions when we want to know where he was?”

  “In other words when the teacher was shot, when the boys disappeared, and on the morning when they died?”

  “Yes.”

  “No. We haven’t asked the phone company for that information.”

  “In that case I’ll fill in a request and sign it right now,” Alex said. “And I want a list of calls for the relevant days.”

  He was about to leave when Lasse said:

  “However, I’ve just got a GPS on Mona Samson’s phone. The guy who called her to confirm Goldmann’s alibi asked me to do it last night. He was probably worried in case you thought he hadn’t done a good enough job.”

  Damn right.

  “What did you find out?” he said, desperate to know.

  Lasse waved him over, wanting him to look at the computer screen.

  “At two o’clock on the afternoon when the boys went missing, she received a call. We can see that she was definitely in Kungsholmen then, but look where she was when the phone rang at three.”

  Alex peered at the screen.

  The cell phone had been up by the bridge, Djurgårdsbron. In Östermalm.

  “Damn it to hell,” he said.

  “The teacher was shot just after three, wasn’t she?”

  “She was.”

  “But at that time Mona Samson—or her phone, at least—was by Djurgårdsbron.”

  “She could have been separated from her phone,” Alex suggested. “It might have been in her car, for example. Do we know if she actually has a car?”

  “I checked, but I couldn’t find one. Of course, she could have hired one that day or borrowed one from a friend.”

  “True,” Alex said. “But, given the location of the phone, I think we can assume that she definitely wasn’t in Kungsholmen with Saul Goldmann. Where did she go after that? When did the next call come in?”

  “Hang on,” Lasse said. “Look at this. So she had a call at two o’clock, which she didn’t answer. I don’t know who that was from. But guess who called her at three o’clock?”

  “I don’t have time to play guessing games; just tell me.”

  “Saul Goldmann. But she didn’t answer then either.”

  Alex let out a whistle.

  “Damn it to hell,” he whispered.

  Lasse smiled with satisfaction.

  “The next sign of activity is half an hour later, at three thirty. She called Goldmann and they talked for just over two minutes.”

  Alex stared at the map where Mona Samson’s trail ended. At Djurgårdsbron. Which wasn’t far from the building on Nybrogatan, where someone had lain on their stomach on the roof and shot a teacher in the back. He thought about what the CSIs had said: that the person on the roof had been no more than five foot six.

  And then he thought about the theory that the boys had been picked up by someone they knew. Perhaps Efraim Kiel, if he was the one who had sought them out online. Even if they hadn’t met before, it wasn’t unreasonable to assume that the boys might have been curious and gone with him if he referred to their exchange of emails. But it could also be much simpler than that; it could have been Saul Goldmann who had picked them up.

  What a team they would have made, if that were the case. Saul and Mona. Providing one another with an alibi. Helping one another with the murders in order to fragment the investigation, make the police’s job so much more difficult.

  They’re not a team; they’re a couple.

  The realization made him go cold.

  That was why they had lied; why they had met in her apartment rather than her office.

  “They’re in a relationship,” he said, hardly conscious of th
e fact that he was thinking out loud.

  “Who?” Lasse said.

  “Samson and Goldmann.”

  “So they got rid of the kid so they could make a fresh start? Is that what you’re saying?”

  Was it that simple? Alex hesitated. “Something along those lines.”

  “But why take Simon Eisenberg as well? And what about Polly?”

  Alex had no answer to that, but his brain had gone into overdrive. If he could just gather together all the scraps of information and odd circumstances that had rained—or snowed—down on them over the past few days, a clear picture would emerge. Because the Eisenbergs and the Goldmanns had a history that they were keeping from the police. A reason why they no longer spent time together, in spite of the fact that the men had been in close proximity for decades.

  Alex had no idea how deep the conflict was, but he sincerely hoped that Fredrika had found out something about their background in Israel. Because by now Alex was certain they were close to a resolution of the case.

  Very close.

  If they could just work out why Simon and Polly Eisenberg had to die as well.

  ISRAEL

  The rain had stopped, but the cloud cover remained. They were walking through the kibbutz as Gali and David Eisenberg took Fredrika on a guided tour of Gideon and Saul’s youth.

  “Gideon was always so cautious,” his mother said. “Anxious and nervous. He was an easy target for Saul’s vivid imagination.”

  David Eisenberg shook his head.

  “If I’d realized Saul was the one filling his head with rubbish, I would have done something about it earlier.”

  “This is where the Goldmanns lived,” Gali said, pointing to a house only fifty yards from their own.

  The kibbutz was idyllic, with its lush greenery. A little community cut off from the rest of the world. Fredrika couldn’t work out how they supported themselves; fruit cultivation might have carried the economy in years gone by, but these days they must have another income stream.

  So this was where Saul and Gideon had spent their childhood, crawling among the plants and shrubs, running from one house to the other.

  “Does Saul have any brothers or sisters?” Fredrika asked.

  “No,” Gali said. “And that was a great source of sorrow, above all to his mother.”

  Fredrika could understand that. She was very glad she had two children, even though her son had been unplanned. But no less welcome for that.

  “The Paper Boy,” she said. “Where does the story come from?”

  She could see by the look on Gali’s and David’s faces that this was a sensitive subject. Gali slipped her hand into her husband’s.

  “It was Avital, Saul’s father, who told me the story first,” David explained. “When we were children. We didn’t live here then; we lived in a village in the south of Israel. The story grew and became a legend, and after a few years its origins were forgotten. And eventually Saul told Gideon the tale. When we heard about it, we thought it was a very practical idea, to be honest. You’re familiar with the history of Israel—full of conflicts and difficulties, in spite of the fact that the state has existed only since 1948.”

  “You mean it was useful if the boys stayed indoors after dark?” Fredrika said.

  “Not necessarily indoors, but we didn’t want them going off on night-time excursions outside the kibbutz with the older kids,” David said. “Teenagers can be incredibly irresponsible. Once two of them hitched from the kibbutz to Netanya. It could have ended very badly, because it turned out that the guy who picked them up was a wanted criminal.”

  “We were keen to make sure that our boys stuck to the rules when it came to late evenings and nights, so we didn’t dispute the story of the Paper Boy, who came and took children while they were sleeping,” Gali said. “It sounds stupid now, but as we said, at the time it was practical.”

  “The myth spread to the neighboring kibbutz,” David went on.

  That was where Daphne Goldmann had grown up. Unlike Carmen Eisenberg, she had heard about the Paper Boy when she was a child.

  “But then something dreadful happened,” Gali said, an anguished expression on her face.

  “Children actually began to disappear,” she said in a voice that was no more than a whisper. “One from our community first of all, then one from the neighboring kibbutz.”

  Fredrika shuddered, pulling her jacket closer around her body.

  “Were they found?”

  “Yes,” David said. “Each of them was missing for only a few days, then they were found naked by the roadside, with severe lacerations. It looked as if someone had simply pulled up in a car, thrown them out, and driven off.”

  Children disappearing. One at a time. Found naked by the roadside.

  Fredrika ran her fingers through her hair; she was finding it difficult to breathe.

  “Do you know what had happened to them?”

  Gali couldn’t speak. She was weeping silently, her head resting on David’s shoulder.

  “It looked as if an animal had tried to rip them to pieces,” David said, his voice breaking. “I was there when the first child was found. Someone had attacked him with a knife—not deep stab wounds, but scratches and slashes. It almost had a ritualistic feel. But the actual cause of death was a bullet in the chest, fired from a distance. It was eventually established that the children had run for their lives before they died. The murderer first caught his prey, abused it, then let it go in order to hunt it down and kill it.”

  Fredrika’s head was spinning.

  The only thing she could think about was the children who had been shot on Lovön; who had been chased barefoot in the snow in freezing temperatures.

  “The police and the press called the killer the Hunter, but the children on the kibbutzim believed it was the Paper Boy who had taken them.”

  The Hunter and the Paper Boy. Fredrika blinked up at the sun, which had broken through the cloud cover for a little while. She chose her words with care.

  “When the children were found, were they marked in any way? Apart from their injuries, I mean.”

  Gali straightened up and wiped her eyes.

  “Both children had a paper bag over their head, with a face on it,” David said. “The police kept that detail to themselves at first, but the rumor spread in no time because so many of us had been involved in the search. Needless to say, that fueled the children’s fear of the Paper Boy.”

  The strain was clear in every line of his face.

  “Did they catch the killer?” Fredrika asked, thinking back to a case she had worked on a few years ago. The murderer had used a grave site in Midsommarkransen, returning to it over a period of many years. God forbid the same thing was happening again: a killer who had moved from Israel to Sweden. Please let it not be true.

  “They did,” David said.

  She let out a long breath. Thank goodness.

  “He made a mistake,” Gali said. “Another child went missing—a boy. He managed to get away and was able to tell the police what had happened to him and who had taken him.”

  “He came staggering in through the gate,” David said. “The guard took care of him and made sure the police were called right away.”

  “He was from this kibbutz?” Fredrika asked.

  A shadow passed across David’s face. His eyes filled with tears, and he could barely speak.

  “Yes. And he was never the same again. He said he was fine, but we could see the change. But at least they caught the person responsible, which was a blessing in the midst of all the sorrow.”

  He fell silent, watching a bird as it flitted from tree to tree.

  Gali didn’t say anything either; she waved to a neighbor passing by.

  They had more to tell; Fredrika could feel it. A lot more. She waited until the neighbor was out of earshot.

  “So what happened to the murderer? I assume he got a long prison sentence.”

  Gali looked as if she was about to start crying aga
in.

  “Life,” David said. “Which was only right after what he had done.”

  But?

  There was an unspoken but that they were avoiding, refusing to touch.

  “It was just so terrible for his family,” Gali whispered. “We did our best to support them, but it was difficult. Especially for us.”

  “His family? You knew them?”

  David nodded. Fredrika gazed at the idyllic surroundings, trying to work it out.

  “The murderer came from here? He was one of you?”

  Another nod, and Fredrika was beginning to understand.

  “He killed himself in prison,” David said. “His son was particularly badly affected by the whole thing. I’d say he was every bit as damaged as the boy who got away.”

  Gali wiped a tear from her cheek.

  “Avital was the Hunter and the Paper Boy,” she said. “Now do you see? Saul Goldmann’s father was the murderer.”

  Fredrika didn’t know what to say. Saul’s father had subjected other children to the same horror that had now claimed his own grandchild. The Paper Boy had traveled from the past to the present.

  Someone had brought him to life.

  “Although in those days the family was called Greenburg, not Goldmann,” David said.

  Fredrika stopped dead. For a second, time stood still.

  “Avital Greenburg. Was that his name?”

  “Yes, but when it was all over, Aida changed the family name. For Saul’s sake, so that fewer people would remember his background.”

  But someone still remembers.

  Whoever had called himself the Lion had known exactly what he was doing.

  The Lion was a chameleon who had taken the devil’s name without hesitation.

  “Did you ever get an explanation for what he’d done?” she asked. “Why he’d killed those children?”

  David sighed.

  “Not really. Back in those days, people weren’t so fond of psychological analysis as they are now, but he was obviously sick. It would be absurd to think anything else.”

  “We knew so little about his past,” Gali said. “Both his parents died in the Holocaust; only Avital survived. Very few children came out of the concentration camps alive, but he was one of them. He was four years old when the war ended, and he was placed with foster parents who left Europe and came to Israel. I have no idea what that kind of start in life does to a person, but it’s obvious that he, too, was badly damaged.”