Peder rang off with a lingering sense of achievement. Sven Ljung’s car seemed to be implicated in robberies as well as murders. The net was closing and Peder smiled.
It was afternoon in Bangkok by the time Fredrika got hold of Andreas Blom. He sounded troubled, to say the least, and expressed great concern at the information on the desk in front of him.
‘The really distressing thing,’ he said in his lilting Norrland accent, ‘is that she sat here insisting that her name was Karolina Mona Ahlbin. And that she needed a new passport because she’d been robbed in the street. But when I rang the Swedish tax authorities it turned out to be impossible that she was who she claimed to be, because the woman with that name and that personal identity number was deceased.’
‘Didn’t it strike you as odd that she was able to come out with another person’s name and ID number, just like that?’
‘Good Lord, I did what I could. And it’s not that unusual for people in her situation to use double identities.’
Fredrika’s brain attempted to rearrange itself into accepting the idea of Karolina Ahlbin as a drug addict after all. In spite of the irregularities where her passport was concerned, the evidence was pretty overwhelming.
‘What exactly – exactly – did she say her problem was?’ she asked slowly.
‘That she’d had all her valuables stolen, like money, passport and plane tickets, and that she’d had a problem in the hotel where she’d been staying, and all her things had somehow vanished from her hotel room. Though she kept quiet about the hotel part to start with and didn’t bring it up until I confronted her with our other information.’
‘Did you ring the hotel she claimed she’d been staying at? I don’t mean the one where her luggage and the drugs were seized.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Andreas Blom. ‘But only after she’d left. And they weren’t prepared to back up her story at all. They said she was lying and had come stumbling into their foyer saying she had been mugged and was a hotel guest. But none of the staff recognised her and she wasn’t in their computer system.’
‘All right,’ Fredrika said in a measured tone. ‘All right, let’s just see if we can tease this out . . .’
She broke off, realising this was really a matter to discuss with a colleague rather than a diplomat in Thailand. She took a breath and carried on anyway.
‘Why call the police if she was only hours from being declared wanted by them for drug offences?’
‘Pardon?’ said Andreas Blom.
‘The raid on the hotel where she was supposedly staying happened only hours after she left it. The time of her report of the mugging, according to what you faxed over, was more or less the same. Why would she contact the police and draw all that unnecessary attention to herself at such a critical juncture?’
‘But if she really was robbed,’ began Andreas Blom, ‘then she needed a new passport to get home on . . .’
‘Exactly. And she needed a copy of an official police report of a stolen passport before the Swedish Embassy could help her get a new one. But why go to the police just then and not earlier?’
Andreas Blom went quiet.
‘Yes, one might well ask,’ he conceded.
When Fredrika did not respond he went on:
‘It isn’t the Embassy’s business to take a view on the question of guilt; all we can do is offer a person in Karolina Ahlbin’s position good advice.’
‘I do realise that,’ Fredrika said quickly, though she suspected that Karolina Ahlbin had not received the support she deserved.
She ended the conversation courteously and went back to her notes. She shuffled through the papers faxed over from Bangkok. A copy of the passport found in the hotel room that was said to be Karolina Ahlbin’s. Therese Björk’s. With Karolina’s photograph in it. But how . . . ?
Fredrika rang Andreas Blom a second time.
‘Sorry to bother you again. I just wanted to ask whether you’ve had a chance since then to take a closer look at the passport which you at the Embassy thought was Karolina’s, the one that was supposedly a Therese Björk’s?’
‘The Thai police have got it,’ replied Andreas Blom. ‘But we’ve been in contact with them since she disappeared and they’ve decided it’s a forgery.’
Fredrika thought about this. A young woman falsely declared dead in Stockholm who then turned up in Bangkok with a false passport, belonging to a person who had an officially registered ID in Sweden. Who would dare undertake such a plan?
Someone who knew Therese Björk was not going to notice or have any objections to her identity being used to muddy some drug dealing in Thailand.
A suspicion had been born and was growing stronger with every passing second. It took her less than two minutes to get Therese Björk’s personal details from the police address register. She learned that Therese was a year younger than Karolina Ahlbin and registered as living at her mother’s address.
Following a hunch, Fredrika tapped Therese’s personal identity number into the police database. She featured in a number of cases and had convictions for several minor crimes and misdemeanours. Fredrika moved on to the register of suspects. She came up there, too, suspected of assaulting a man she claimed was trying to rape her.
After a moment’s hesitation she lifted the receiver and rang the number. She would just have time before the morning meeting in the Den. Someone picked up after the fifth ring.
‘My name’s Fredrika Bergman,’ said Fredrika. ‘I wonder if I could ask a few questions about your daughter Therese?’
For the first time in decades, he felt he was acting decisively and proactively in the issue that had come to colour his entire adult life. Too many years had gone by already and his idea would probably turn out to have come far too late. But that was not the most important thing; Spencer Lagergren had made up his mind. And the journey he was now embarking on could only be made alone.
No one must know, he decided. At least, not until afterwards.
He drove from Uppsala towards Stockholm and on to Jönköping. It looked as though the cloud might break and let a bit of sun through. A beautiful winter’s day in early March. With some irony he noted that he had chosen a very attractive backdrop for his project.
His thoughts went involuntarily back to those early days with Eva. The sense of solidarity they had shared, the life’s work they had decided to make a reality, these had no counterpart in his later life. There had been occasions when he had almost wondered if he ever loved her, but they were very few in number. Of course he had loved her, and it would be absurd to maintain anything different. The problem was that it was a love built on the unhealthiest of foundations. He had confused passion and attraction in a way that could be described as unsuccessful at best and disastrous at worst. As if you could build lifelong love on physical desire. As if you could retain physical desire when the party was over and the daily grind set in, when the body that had been a land of exploration and adventure became the most familiar domestic territory.
He found it impossible to remember which of them had relaxed their hold on the other first. There was so much of their past that he had chosen to lock into that basement room marked Forgotten.
How could we do this to ourselves?
Most of the guilt indisputably lay at his father-in-law’s door. Father-in-law knew Spencer’s darkest secret, the secret so shameful that he had never admitted it to his parents or friends. The fact that he had discovered just before he got engaged that he had fathered the child another woman was expecting. That he had chosen to buy a house in another university town in another part of the country and shift his career from Lund to Uppsala. That he had let down the other woman even though there was still time to do the right thing, in favour of something that seemed more desirable.
The baby had never been born. Because of Spencer’s weakness its mother, Josefine, decided to abort it, which was still considered a sin in those days. By some irony of fate, or was it as a punishment, Spencer and his wife never
had any children of their own. Three miscarriages were followed by years of fruitless trying. Until at last they had to face the fact that there would be no children. Perhaps it was even a kind of blessing, for by that stage they had long since stopped wanting any.
Then Fredrika came into his life. And he had actually let her down, too.
Spencer felt a lump come into his throat at the thought of her. That beautiful and intelligent woman who could have had who the hell she liked – if she had only believed in herself a bit more – but who had always come back to him.
Every time. Every time she came back to me.
Perhaps he should have said no. But then she should, too. And she could definitely have refrained from coming back.
We just couldn’t, he thought. We just couldn’t bring ourselves to say no to something that was so much better than what we already had. Loneliness.
‘It’s some years now since I stopped missing my daughter,’ Therese Björk’s mother said simply.
As if it was the most natural thing in the world. As if there was some dividing line where parenthood ends and something else takes its place. Estrangement and discord.
‘I do still love her,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘And I cry in the evenings because she isn’t with me any longer. But I don’t miss her. She’s made that impossible, you see.’
Fredrika would really have preferred to go round and see Ingrid Björk personally. On reflection it felt like the wrong choice to have yielded to her impulse and picked up the phone. But Ingrid Björk’s tone indicated that she did not mind. She could cope with a conversation about the most important person in her life over the phone.
I’m damn sure I couldn’t, Fredrika thought wearily. I don’t seem to be able to cope with anything much at the moment.
‘When did things start to go wrong?’
Ingrid Björk thought about it.
‘Oh, early on, when she was in lower secondary school,’ she said confidently.
‘That early?’
‘Yes, I think so. Therese was such a restless spirit; there were things that seemed to leave her no peace. Her dad and I did our best to support her. But I’m sure it wasn’t enough.’
She went on talking about her daughter. About the little girl who grew up into an irresponsible teenager, out of control, and the body invaded by a disturbed mind. About her first boyfriend who led her astray, and her first visit to the child psychiatrist. Years with a succession of psychologists and therapists, none of them ultimately able to save either the daughter, or her parents’ marriage. She tried to describe how she had struggled to save her daughter from going under irrevocably, but was finally forced to admit that the project was doomed and she would never get her daughter back.
‘That’s the way I see it,’ she said gravely. ‘As if she’s not mine any longer, because she belongs to her addiction.’
‘But she’s registered as living with you, isn’t she?’ Fredrika queried.
‘I’m sure she is, but it makes no difference. I haven’t seen her for ages. She stopped getting in touch when she realised she’d be getting no more money.’
The words tore at Fredrika. Words intimating that children could be lost to you even if they were still alive were something alien in the world she knew.
‘Why have you rung to ask me all these questions?’
Ingrid Björk’s question broke into her thoughts.
With agile fingers, Fredrika extracted the file from the bottom of the heap on her desk. The copy of the autopsy report on the person initially believed to be Karolina Ahlbin.
‘Because I’m afraid I know exactly where your daughter is at this moment,’ she said in a subdued tone.
There was a rather febrile atmosphere in the Den when Fredrika came in at the last minute and took a seat at the table.
‘Before this interview with Johanna Ahlbin I want us all to try to identify the gaps and question marks in what we know, the ones we think she can help to clarify,’ said Alex. ‘I also want us all, as a team, to establish if there’s anything we need to be aware of in the interview, any advantages we don’t want to fritter away.’
‘I’ve been able to identify the woman we initially took to be Karolina Ahlbin,’ Fredrika announced, afraid Alex was going to race ahead at the same pace at which he had started, leaving her no opening.
The others looked up in surprise.
‘The woman who died of an overdose almost two weeks ago was called Therese Björk. I’ve just been talking to her mother on the phone.’
‘Therese Björk?’ echoed Joar. ‘The name Karolina Ahlbin was using in Thailand?’
‘Yes.’
Peder shook his head as if trying to make everything fall into place.
‘What the hell does this mean?’
‘Maybe that Karolina and Johanna staged the whole drama together,’ suggested Alex. ‘She’d hardly have given the Thai authorities that particular name otherwise.’
‘But she didn’t,’ Fredrika snapped.
‘Didn’t what?’
‘She didn’t give that name herself; it was the Embassy staff who confronted her with the details, which they got from the Thai authorities who’d seized the false passport.’
‘But why would she have a false passport with those details in it if she didn’t know who Therese Björk was?’ asked Peder, looking lost.
‘I don’t know,’ Fredrika said with a look of exasperation. ‘Karolina flatly denied to the Embassy people that she had ever stayed at the hotel the police raided.’
‘So you reckon she wasn’t part of the conspiracy against Jakob Ahlbin, but more of a victim?’ Joar said.
‘Something like that,’ Fredrika said. ‘We’d already considered the possibility, hadn’t we? That someone wanted to get her out of the way, I mean, but failed. That the intention all along was for her to die, but the murderer wasn’t able to do the job, for some reason.’
‘So you’re saying someone killed Therese Björk specifically in order to have Karolina Ahlbin declared dead in Sweden, while Karolina was put out of action where she was, in Thailand?’ said Alex, sounding unconvinced.
Fredrika drank some water and nodded slowly.
‘But why?’ thundered Alex. ‘Why?’
‘That’s just what I think you should ask Johanna,’ said Fredrika. ‘She’s the one who made the misidentification that set all this in motion, after all.’
Peder shook his head again.
‘What about Sven Ljung, then?’ he said. ‘How do he and his car fit into all this?’
‘Do they need to?’ Fredrika persisted. ‘Maybe it’s just as we first thought, and these are two entirely unrelated cases.’
‘No way,’ said Joar. ‘There are just too many connections.’
‘But are there, really?’ asked a sceptical Fredrika.
Her voice died away at the sound of Alex’s fingers drumming on the table.
‘There don’t need to be that many for us to find them hard to ignore,’ he said, his eyes on Fredrika. ‘We’re pretty sure Sven Ljung’s car was involved in the Yusuf murder up at the university, and in the security van robberies in Uppsala and Västerås. And we know Yusuf was a friend of the man Muhammad in Skärholmen, and he had been in touch with Jakob Ahlbin.’
‘Who was found dead in his own flat by none other than Sven Ljung,’ finished Fredrika with a sigh. ‘I know, I know. He must have something to do with all this, I just don’t get what.’
‘What have the national CID had to say about Sven Ljung?’ Joar asked Peder with a frown. ‘How long are they thinking of waiting before they apply for an arrest warrant?’
Peder’s face darkened as Joar addressed him.
Hmm, thought Fredrika. They still can’t stand each other.
‘They rang back just before the meeting,’ said Peder. ‘They reckon they’ll have everything ready by the end of the morning, then they’ll bring him in for a first interview this afternoon.’
‘From now on I want feedback on every m
ove the CID make on this,’ Alex said doggedly, adding: ‘Peder, I want you to ask to sit in on the interview.’
With the enthusiasm of a ragamuffin who has been tossed a large coin for opening a gate, Peder said he would ring them the minute the meeting was over.
‘As far as interviewing Johanna Ahlbin goes,’ Alex went on, ‘I’d like Fredrika to come with me and take the lead on that.’
Everything went quiet.
Just like it’s always been, thought Fredrika. Stony silence whenever I get given some especially juicy task.
She knew what Alex would have to add for equilibrium to be restored, and sure enough, it was only a matter of seconds before he went on.
‘The primary reason for that, of course, is that it seems important to have a female colleague present when interviewing a young woman like Johanna.’
Fredrika kept her eyes on Peder and Joar, awaiting their reaction. None came. It was only when Alex started speaking again that she thought she saw Peder’s face twitch.
‘But on top of that, Fredrika is as competent an interviewer as anyone else in this room. Just in case there’s anybody here who misunderstood what I said to begin with.’
Fredrika turned to Alex in astonishment, and he gave her a crooked grin.
Things are looking up, she thought, and the prospect made her feel quite dizzy.
Automatically, as in any other situation that made her feel happy or sad, she put her hand to her stomach. Only to realise that it was a long time since she had last felt the baby move.
Everything’s fine, she thought quickly to stem the surging tide of worry she had just unleashed. It’s just asleep.
So she forced herself to smile at Alex, despite her rising sense of apprehension and her continuing concern about why Spencer had gone off at such short notice.
The phone in her pocket vibrated silently, forcing her to pull herself together. She went briskly out of the room to take the call. It was the librarian in Farsta, ringing back.
Silenced: A Novel Page 27
