Silenced: A Novel

by Kristina Ohlsson

  ‘Yes, that’s possible,’ Göran Ahlgren replied. ‘But why would anyone do that?’

  Because she had to disappear.

  Fredrika knew they had already lost far too much time.

  ‘I want a DNA test done on Karolina Ahlbin’s body. I want to be absolutely certain that she was the one who died here, ten days ago.’

  ‘I’ll see to that, of course,’ the doctor said swiftly. ‘But we need some DNA to compare it with.’

  ‘You can start by comparing her DNA with her parents’. That ought not to be too difficult: they’re all here under the same roof.’

  Alex Recht gloomily noted that the rotten weather was continuing as he looked out of the window on his way to Norrmalm Police Station. It had proved an easy matter to locate the officer from that district who figured in the investigation of Jakob and Marja Ahlbin’s deaths. A few quick calls to the individual’s superior and he knew the person he wanted was at the station, writing a report.

  ‘Keep him there,’ said Alex. ‘I’m on my way.’

  It was just a few steps from group HQ to the Norrmalm Police Station. They were in adjoining buildings and the glassed-in walkway linking them enabled him to move swiftly between the two worlds without taking a step outside.

  Lena rang to say she was on her way home from work and wasn’t feeling well. Alex was worried, but also a bit irritated. Why was she making a habit these days of telling him some things and saying nothing at all about others? And what in heaven’s name was up with him? Saying nothing, day after day.

  With an effort he put aside all thoughts of Lena. Now was now, and now meant work.

  He found Viggo Tuvesson in his office, bent over his computer keyboard. Alex cleared his throat loudly and knocked on the door frame. It took the man a second to turn round, but when he did, and saw Alex, his face lit up into a smile as if he had just spotted a close friend he had not seen for a long time.

  ‘Alex Recht,’ he said, so loudly that it made Alex jump, unused as he was to hearing his whole name trumpeted like that. ‘To what do I owe the honour?’

  Alex couldn’t help staring at the officer and wondering what crime his disfigurement was a punishment for. The scar ran through his top lip and up towards his nose, which was bent and buckled.

  Good God, thought Alex. Why didn’t someone make a better job of fixing that?

  Alex warily took a seat in Viggo Tuvesson’s visitor’s chair. With his legs crossed and his chin in his hand, the younger man definitely had ownership of the meeting. That much was clear from the outset, even though Alex was senior in rank.

  Alex coughed again, attempting a trial of strength with the joyless but energetic eyes observing him with such fascination. Like a monster’s.

  ‘You were there when they found Jakob and Marja Ahlbin last week,’ he said in an authoritative tone, keen for the discussion to be on his terms.

  ‘Yes,’ said Viggo Tuvesson, looking expectant.

  ‘Had you met either of them when they were alive?’

  The question seemed to take catch him off guard. The expectant look was replaced by one of surprise.

  ‘No, not that I recall.’

  ‘You hadn’t encountered either of them previously? In other contexts, I mean.’

  ‘Well, I’d read about the Reverend Ahlbin in the papers of course,’ he said slowly. ‘But as I say, I hadn’t met him personally.’

  ‘No, so you said,’ Alex said, equally slowly.

  Viggo Tuvesson shifted position in his seat and banged his knee into the desk. The pain made him grimace.

  ‘I heard it was your group that got the case as a whole,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Alex, ‘it did. And that’s why I’m here.’

  ‘I’m very happy to help,’ said Viggo, smiling his weird smile again.

  ‘We’re very grateful,’ Alex said with an unnecessary nonchalance in his voice, and went on: ‘Tony Svensson, then. Do you know him?’

  The policeman nodded.

  ‘If you mean the Tony Svensson who’s in Sons of the People, then yes, I know him.’

  ‘Can you tell me how?’

  ‘Because he’s done some of his business here on my patch. That was how our paths crossed.’

  ‘What sort of business?’

  Viggo Tuvesson gave a laugh.

  ‘We suspected him and his lads of selling alcohol to minors at Odenplan, but we could never prove anything.’

  Alex vaguely recalled having heard about the matter before.

  ‘Did you bring him in for questioning?’

  ‘Oh yes, but he kept his trap firmly shut. Seemed to be having a laugh with us. Very clever, actually. Impressively well up on all the legal stuff. Knows exactly what he can get away with, so to speak.’

  Like he did with the emails, thought Alex. Knew exactly how to word them so it would be hard to call them actual threats.

  ‘When was this?’ he asked.

  Viggo Tuvesson shrugged.

  ‘Hard to remember exactly, but I can check if you like. About a year ago, I’d say.’

  Alex gave a thoughtful nod. That fitted with what he already knew.

  ‘And since then? Have you had any further contact with him, I mean?’

  Again they looked at each other, searching for hidden facts in each other’s eyes.

  ‘Yes,’ said Viggo. ‘He rang me a couple of times at work.’

  ‘And what did he want, if you don’t mind me asking?’

  ‘Wanted to grass on a former member of his network, some guy who wanted to go solo on a heist. Good old Tony evidently found that hard to accept.’

  Viggo Tuvesson kept his hands in his lap.

  ‘I gather Tony Svensson’s cropped up in the Ahlbin investigation as well.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Alex. ‘That was why I wanted to check if you had anything in particular on him.’

  It was a clumsy, transparent excuse. It was obvious to anyone that Alex had sought out Viggo Tuvesson to try to find out what contact there had been between them. But Viggo let it pass.

  ‘I promise to get back to you if anything turns up. Sorry to disappoint you, but that’s all I’ve got for now.’

  ‘That’s how it goes sometimes,’ said Alex, getting up. ‘Thanks for your time.’

  He shook hands with Viggo Tuvesson and headed for the lift that would take him back down to the walkway. It wasn’t just that he was disappointed with what Viggo had had to say. According to Ronny Berg when Peder talked to him, it was Jakob Ahlbin and not Tony Svensson who tipped off the police about his plans for a coup. There had been no mention of a Viggo in that context.

  Alex took out his mobile and rang Peder.

  ‘How are you two getting on? Have you let Tony Svensson go yet, or am I in time to ask him one more thing?’

  When Fredrika got back from the hospital. Alex decided the two of them ought to pay a visit to Muhammad Abdullah’s widow out at Skärholmen.

  ‘Do you think she’ll want to see us?’ Fredrika asked uneasily. ‘She might be blaming us for her husband’s death.’

  ‘But it still feels like the right thing to do,’ said Alex. ‘And I’d be glad to have you with me, since you were there last time.’

  For the second time in just a few days, they set off to Skärholmen. Alex felt under pressure.

  ‘Good idea to ask for that DNA sample,’ he said. ‘When do we get the preliminary result?’

  ‘We should know by this evening whether the dead woman was related to the Ahlbin couple, and that should really be all we need. If not, we’ll have to try to find some of Karolina’s DNA in her flat, so they’ve got something to match to their test sample. But I think we can be pretty sure the tests will prove it wasn’t Karolina who died.’

  ‘That’ll put the cat among the pigeons,’ Alex muttered.

  ‘I found the officers who went to the hospital at the time of Karolina’s death. They didn’t see any reason to mistrust her sister’s statement, so all they did was speak to the nurs
ing staff and the ambulance crew. Since the autopsy didn’t show up anything odd, they didn’t pursue the matter.’

  This was a highly questionable statement in many ways, as Alex and Fredrika both knew. It exasperated them that such a vital detail in the case had passed so many people by.

  ‘We need to issue their descriptions, both of them,’ said Fredrika, meaning Karolina and Johanna Ahlbin. ‘We know it was Johanna who came with the woman in the ambulance, and if she deliberately misidentified a stranger as her dead sister, then she’s got some explaining to do in this murder enquiry.’

  Alex smiled.

  ‘And what’s our justification for issuing Karolina’s description?’

  Fredrika laughed.

  ‘We’re worried about her?’

  Alex found that he was laughing, too. For as long as there was such friction between Peder and Joar and for as long as Fredrika seemed stable and not desperately short of sleep, he preferred her company to the men’s. Maybe he was imagining it, but her pregnancy seemed to have brought a degree of harmony with it. Or perhaps it was just that she had too many other things to think about to be quite as spiky in the office.

  Alex’s mobile rang. It was Peder.

  ‘Tony Svensson got very worked up when I confronted him with that new information,’ he blurted out. ‘He said he hadn’t fucking well rung any copper to grass up Ronny Berg.’

  ‘And you believe him?’ asked Alex, on tenterhooks.

  ‘Oh yes,’ came Peder’s reply. ‘But that doesn’t rule out them being in contact for some other reason.’

  ‘They did have contact, that’s for sure,’ said Alex. ‘Did you give him Viggo Tuvesson’s name? Ask if he knew him?’

  ‘No,’ said Peder. ‘I didn’t see there was any need to give away the name at present, while we know somebody’s threatening Tony, and don’t know what this Viggo is up to. I just asked if he had any contacts in the city police and he said he didn’t. Not in the Norrmalm district or anywhere else.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Alex. ‘Excellent.’

  He ended the call and turned to Fredrika.

  ‘Bother. It looks as if that cop is mixed up in something shady after all.’

  Fredrika had been right: Muhammad Abdullah’s wife was not at all happy about their visit. This time there was no tea and biscuits, and the flat was full of people when they got there. It took Fredrika several minutes of diplomatic groundwork before the woman agreed to speak to them briefly in the kitchen, just the three of them.

  Her body language signalled nothing but mistrust and animosity as she sat down at the kitchen table. Fredrika could see she had been crying, but she remained composed throughout the interview.

  ‘I told him to be careful, and not to talk to you,’ she said, her voice trembling. ‘But he wouldn’t listen.’

  ‘What made you think he needed to be careful?’ Fredrika cautiously asked.

  ‘Yusuf never got here,’ she said, presumably referring to the man run over at the university. ‘We waited and waited but he never got in touch. Then I knew, I just knew there was something wrong with the so-called network that helped him get over here.’

  ‘Your husband had his own contacts for that sort of thing, didn’t he?’ Alex gently prompted.

  ‘Contacts, yes, but he was never part of the organisation himself,’ the widow said adamantly. ‘It would have been far too risky.’

  ‘Did he talk to any of his contacts about the new network?’ Fredrika asked.

  The widow shook her head.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Never. Yusuf had told us it all had to be very secret. So when he went missing, we were really worried.’

  ‘Did you or your husband ever receive threats of any kind?’ asked Alex.

  ‘No,’ the widow said quietly. ‘Not as far as I know, anyway.’

  Alex thought about this. Jakob Ahlbin was sent threats before he was murdered, and someone had perhaps even tried to bargain with him. But Muhammad Abdullah was shot practically on the open street, with no warning.

  ‘I’ve been through my husband’s emails and post,’ said the widow. ‘I didn’t find anything there.’

  ‘And his mobile?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘He had it with him when he went out and I haven’t seen it since.’

  This made Fredrika and Alex feel uneasy, because the police had not found a mobile on Muhammad Abdullah when they searched the body.

  ‘What made him go out last night?’ asked Fredrika.

  ‘Muhammad got a phone call,’ the widow said. ‘When we were watching TV. It only lasted about thirty seconds and then he said he had to go out and see to something.’

  ‘Did he tell you who had rung?’

  ‘No, but it wasn’t unusual. Sometimes one of his contacts would ring and he’d have to go and see them at short notice. I never asked about it. For the children’s sake it seemed better for only one of us to be involved.’

  Fredrika could sympathise with that. But it did not bode well that the mobile had vanished. They could always look at the pattern of calls to and from that number, of course, but without the phone itself there was no way of telling if he had received messages or threats by text.

  ‘And when did you realise something was wrong?’

  ‘After a couple of hours. He wasn’t usually gone that long when he went to see his contacts.’

  ‘And you rang the police?’

  ‘Yes, but he hadn’t been gone long enough for them to take any action, they said. So after ten I went out to see if he’d taken the car when he went out, or gone on foot . . .’

  Her voice fell away and she swallowed hard, several times.

  ‘But you didn’t find him?’ Fredrika said gently.

  The widow shook her head.

  ‘But I must have been out there just about the time he died.’

  As she went on, her words inflicted almost physical pain on them:

  ‘I was there when they found him this morning. He was lying face down in the snow. The first thought that came into my head was that he’d catch cold if he stayed there like that.’

  The woman’s dark eyes were glittering with tears but she did not cry. Grief had so many faces and expressed itself in so many different ways. Sometimes it even made people beautiful.

  Peder Rydh went over and over his notes from his latest interview with Tony Svensson. Thoughts came and went like stray guests in his head.

  It seemed incontrovertible that Tony Svensson and Sons of the People had had a major clash with Jakob Ahlbin. It seemed equally clear that that conflict had been resolved, and that the person in dispute with Jakob Ahlbin when he died was Ronny Berg, now in Kronoberg Prison. But Ronny Berg had an alibi for the time of the double murder, which meant that, if he was behind it, he must have hired someone to carry it out. And that did not sound very plausible.

  In parallel he had to consider the anomalies surrounding Karolina Ahlbin’s death, the alleged trigger for an act of desperation on the part of her father. What the hell would their next step be if it turned out not to be Karolina who had died?

  Peder racked his brains. The group had made certain basic assumptions. For example, the fact that the threats sent to Jakob Ahlbin from the Sons of the People email account from computers other than Tony Svensson’s had a direct link to his subsequent murder.

  But need that be the case? wondered Peder. Maybe it was a red herring.

  The third one in a row, if so. It wasn’t suicide and it wasn’t Tony Svensson and the SP. And maybe it wasn’t the mystery emailer, either.

  But that couldn’t be right. It must all hang together, even if for the time being it was impossible to see how.

  Fredrika had drawn her colleagues’ attention to the fact that the mystery emailer seemed to know his Bible, and well enough to use it to make allusions that would provoke the recipient.

  So could there be a link to the Church?

  Peder had a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach. And what about t
he man run over outside the university who was now, via the murdered Muhammad Abdullah, tenuously linked to the Ahlbin murder case as well? How did he fit into the picture?

  Alex had given Peder and Joar a quick account of Fredrika’s latest idea. Her theory that the victims were being silenced so they would not reveal a highly sensitive secret. A classic motive, but Peder could not for the life of him see what secret could be so big that it was worth murdering several people for.

  He decided to backtrack a little. He could hear Joar out in the corridor, talking in a warm voice to someone he was clearly on very close terms with. Peder pressed his fingers to his temples, trying to keep his thoughts in check. If he let himself think about Pia Nordh now, all would be lost. He stared intently at his notes from the last Tony Svensson interview.

  One phrase leapt out at him.

  ‘It’s not somebody like me you’re looking for, you fucking numbskulls.’

  The words had been Tony’s response to Peder and Joar’s suggestion that he look at some police pictures to pick out the person who had forced him into the conspiracy against Jakob Ahlbin. What was he getting at? Peder’s pulse started to race. Tony was intimating that the police would not have a picture of that person on file because he was not a known criminal, unlike Tony himself. The words ‘not somebody like me’ took on a different significance if you let your imagination range more freely. Not somebody like me . . . but somebody like you. Was that what he was hinting at? So a police officer did figure in this investigation after all.

  And various clergymen.

  It was hard to think of categories of people who had less in common with Tony Svensson than those two.

  Peder brought up the telephone lists on his computer screen. Tony Svensson had indeed rung Viggo Tuvesson, on three occasions, but had never been rung by him. Not on that phone, anyway. What was more, all three calls were made after Tony Svensson stopped emailing Jakob Ahlbin and someone else took over. Peder brought up more lists, this time Tony Svensson’s overall call log. Had he been rung from some other number in the crucial period that they could link to Viggo Tuvesson?

  The group’s administrator had done sterling work and identified the most frequently occurring numbers. But there were also lots of calls from mobiles with unregistered pay-as-you-go accounts, and it was impossible to say who owned or was using them. Tony Svensson had been contacted from fifteen such numbers in the past month. Maybe one of them belonged to the man – or woman – who had approached him and forced him into the role of double dealer? Maybe a policeman, or maybe a vicar. Someone who was not like Tony Svensson.