Silenced: A Novel

by Kristina Ohlsson

  ‘I’ll meet you where it all started. Come alone.’

  For the first time in his adult life, Alex did not want to go home. His chest tightened and he thought of his father, who had survived a heart attack a few years before.

  ‘It’s inherited, you know,’ he had warned his son. ‘Look after yourself, Alex, and listen to your body when it tries to tell you something.’

  But work had to take priority in his mind over worries about his health. There had been a quick call from Lena, wondering when he would be home.

  ‘Later,’ muttered Alex, hanging up with that nagging feeling of things being all wrong, but still putting off the moment of truth.

  The surveillance officers keeping watch on Viggo Tuvesson rang in straight afterwards. Tuvesson had left the flat and was on his way to Kungsholmen by car.

  ‘Maybe he’s coming into work,’ Alex said doubtfully, looking at the time, which was just after seven. ‘But don’t let him out of sight.’

  A few minutes later they rang again. Viggo Tuvesson seemed to have no plans to come to HQ; he was heading out of town on Drottningholmsvägen.

  Alex’s first thought was of Ragnar Vinterman.

  ‘He’s on his way to Bromma,’ he said excitedly. ‘Keep in touch with the team in Bromma and see if Vinterman’s on his way out, too.’

  But Vinterman was still safely ensconced in his vicarage and the surveillance team there had nothing new to report.

  It was worrying Alex that Johanna Ahlbin seemed to have disappeared off the police radar again. It might mean she had run into trouble herself, but Alex felt in his bones that something else lay behind it.

  He looked at the piles of reports strewn around his desk like a broken-up jigsaw puzzle. A vicar who wanted to do everything right, but who had got on the wrong side of virtually his whole family. Two more men of the cloth who had found themselves with such severe financial problems that nothing was holy to them any more. A policeman so deep in the shit that it was hard to understand how he had been able to stay within the system for so long. And two sisters who both appeared to have lost everything one midsummer’s eve, fifteen years ago.

  Alex found himself thinking back to his visit to the Ekerö house with Fredrika. The dated pictures, young Johanna choosing a different path, away from the family. Maybe along with her mother. Karolina, staying on in the happy family circle despite the violent attack she had suffered.

  Or could it have been the other way round, Alex wondered, with Johanna as the rape victim, turning her back on the family as a result. And Karolina becoming her father’s favourite.

  His pulse started to race. But who had carried out the actual murder? The crime scene investigation had given them not a single lead; all the prints and other traces led back to the couple themselves, to Elsie and Sven Ljung or to police officers and ambulance crew at the scene. And at the time of the murder, both Johanna and Karolina were verifiably out of the country.

  Alex glanced through the crime scene report again, his brain revving fast. Could it simply be the case, after all, that Sven Ljung had let himself into the flat and murdered Jakob and Marja? Alex knew that was wrong before he even finished thinking it. His brain locked instead onto the most obvious name. The man who could have got away with the whole thing if only he had not been so careless as to use his work telephone when he was drawing up the plans for the appalling crimes he was prepared to commit.

  The telephone on Alex’s desk rang so loudly that he almost cried out.

  ‘He’s not going to Bromma, either,’ surveillance reported.

  ‘Where is he heading, then?’

  ‘To Ekerö.’

  And that gave Alex the last clue he needed, and he realised with horror where the Ahlbin sisters must be.

  As if in a trance, he ended the call and rang the central command unit. He asked them to send all available radio cars to the Ahlbin family’s holiday home at Ekerö.

  Looking back, there was no clear dividing line that evening between the time when Fredrika felt secure in her existence and the time when her whole life began to disintegrate. It was an irony of fate that she actually postponed the moment herself by not taking the first call that came through from Spencer’s home number.

  I’ve been waiting all day, so now he can jolly well wait while I talk to Elsie Ljung, she decided angrily.

  Alex rang her on her mobile just as she was getting a glass of water for herself and the visitor she had escorted to an interview room. He updated her on the situation in a few brisk sentences, warning her that they could be in for a very nasty end to the evening. There was no need for him to say it; Fredrika could imagine all too well how a confrontation between the two sisters might end.

  ‘Are you going out there?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m in the garage with Joar and a couple of CID officers,’ Alex replied. ‘We’re going with the flying squad. You concentrate on teasing out of Elsie how Viggo fits into all this. And try to get a handle on which sister it is we need to be most wary of.’

  ‘They both seem equally disturbed,’ mumbled Fredrika, sounding more casual than she meant to.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Alex, his breathing sounding rather shallow. ‘I think Johanna was lying about which of them was raped that summer, and I think she may have hated her family ever since.’

  They were about to end the call when Alex added:

  ‘If I haven’t made it clear before now, I just want you to know I’m going to miss you in the team when you go off on maternity leave.’

  As if it was something he felt he needed to say before he got into the flying squad minibus and left HQ. For some reason it reduced Fredrika almost to tears, and she had to compose herself for a moment before going back to Elsie.

  The last thing she did before she opened the door of the interview room was to turn off her mobile phone.

  ‘So,’ she said to Elsie as she put the water down on the table. ‘What brings you to see us this evening?’

  Like many good storytellers, Elsie had a wonderful memory for detail to fall back on as she told her tale to Fredrika.

  ‘We went out to Ekerö to surprise them that midsummer’s eve,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Marja and Jakob had told us, you know, about the way it was usually just them, just the family, but our plans fell through that year and the boys got on so well with their girls, so we thought we were bound to be welcome if we just turned up.’

  They had been surprised all right. Elsie’s memories of that evening were vivid.

  ‘Driving back later that night, we knew things we could never have imagined about the way Jakob and Marja lived. We didn’t have a clue that he hid refugees like that, and we didn’t know about his medical condition, either. It was Marja’s decision not to ring a doctor or the police; she said as long as the girls got away from the holiday house, it would only be a matter of time before wounds healed and memories faded. It was complete madness.’

  Elsie looked furious and Fredrika felt a sense of exasperation coming over her, too. But she had learned not to judge people too hastily or too harshly. Who knew what experiences from her own past life had made Marja act as she did?

  ‘But surely it was only one of the girls who was . . . injured?’ Fredrika began, hearing Elsie talk about them in the plural.

  ‘That depends how you look at it,’ Elsie said tersely. ‘Karolina was a physical mess, of course, but Johanna was beside herself. It was as if her whole world had fallen to pieces when she realised her parents weren’t thinking of any more drastic measures than just getting the refugees out of the house as soon as possible and clearing off back into town.’

  Fredrika swallowed.

  ‘So it was Karolina who was raped, after all?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Elsie, ‘and later, when she was grown up and fell in love with our Måns, he and she had a lot of private chats about what happened that evening.’

  A look of great sadness came over her as she described the time when Karolina was coming and goi
ng as a daughter-in-law in their home.

  ‘Karolina was awfully good at expressing things in words,’ Elsie said, the tears coming into her eyes. ‘When she was a child, she clearly didn’t know what to make of the “guests in the basement”, as her parents called them. And in those first years after the rape she very naturally felt a burning hatred of every immigrant she saw. But then something happened which changed all that.’

  Elsie looked unsure of herself.

  ‘You must say if I’m telling you things you already know.’

  ‘I’m more than happy to listen,’ Fredrika said, working out in her head how many minutes away from Ekerö Alex must be by now.

  ‘Karolina was involved in a car accident just after she took her driving test,’ Elsie said. ‘She was visiting relations in Skåne and the car skidded on black ice when she was going across a bridge. The car went straight through the side of the bridge and fell into the river. She’d never have got out if it hadn’t been for a young man who saw it happen. He threw himself in after her and fought like a tiger to get the car door open and get her out.’

  ‘And this young man was an immigrant?’

  Elsie smiled through her tears.

  ‘From Palestine. After that, Karolina couldn’t let herself carry on feeling the way she had done. She accepted what had happened that summer and came over to her father’s side. Maybe because she’d done everything she could for several years to show how much she hated him and blamed him. And believe me, Jakob paid a high price.’

  ‘It made him ill?’

  ‘Extremely. It was the first time he was so bad that he had to be admitted for treatment. Marja was the only one who went to visit him.’

  A suspicion began to take shape in Fredrika’s mind.

  ‘And Johanna?’

  Elsie took a slow, deep breath.

  ‘Well her story’s really far more tragic than Karolina’s. You see, she was Daddy’s girl all the time she was growing up. And when Jakob let Karolina down so grotesquely after the rape – because however we choose to look at it, it was a sort of betrayal – Johanna fought her sister’s corner. Year after year. Until Karolina’s car accident and conversion. That left Johanna with nowhere to go. Her relationship with Jakob was in tatters, and suddenly her sister was Daddy’s favourite. I think Johanna felt cruelly let down.’

  The photos in the Ekerö house came into Fredrika’s mind.

  ‘So she turned her back on the family,’ she murmured.

  ‘Yes, or at least, she only saw them sporadically. And it was when Jakob started talking about hiding refugees at the holiday house again that she decided to cross the line and become her family’s worst enemy.’

  Fredrika frowned.

  ‘Like I told you last time we met, she went through the roof and said she never wanted to hear such a tasteless proposal again. And Marja agreed with her.’

  Marja. The woman who sneaked into the library and sent threats to her own husband.

  ‘Jakob’s idea caused a huge amount of friction in the family,’ sighed Elsie. Jakob and Marja made a last desperate attempt to put things right by giving the girls the Ekerö house as a present. But it was already too late by then.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ asked Fredrika, unconsciously holding her breath.

  Elsie looked at her hands and gave a little twist to her wedding ring.

  ‘He’d already lost Marja by then,’ she whispered. ‘She’d changed sides and started working with Ragnar Vinterman when he set up the new operation. But Jakob didn’t find that out until much later. And by then he was already staring into the abyss that Johanna and Viggo had spent so long getting ready for him.’

  The clock seemed to stop. And Fredrika waited.

  ‘Viggo?’ she echoed out loud.

  ‘Johanna and our Viggo found each other on the quiet at about the same time as Jakob came up with the idea of restarting his old project. And that’s why I’m here,’ said Elsie. ‘Because Sven would never be capable of giving Viggo away to you lot, in spite of all he’s done to us and his brother.’

  But there were other reasons, too, and Fredrika knew it.

  ‘And I came for Lina’s sake,’ Elsie confirmed in a husky voice. ‘Because I think something dreadful’s about to happen to that girl. You see, Viggo didn’t get interested in Johanna until later. It was Karolina he really wanted. And he couldn’t take it when she turned him down.’

  ‘She chose Måns in preference to Viggo?’

  ‘Yes, and they both paid for it. Viggo did all he could to push Måns even further into addiction and break up the relationship. And he won, in the end. Viggo told tales to Måns’ employer and he lost his job and had nothing to do but hang around at home all day. Viggo spread rumours about Måns too, presenting him to his friends in a bad light. Måns went downhill fast. Johanna had a hand in that, as well. Though her motive was really to get at Karolina rather than Måns.’

  ‘And then Viggo got together with Johanna, instead?’

  ‘Yes, once it was all over between Karolina and Måns. But they kept the relationship very discreet. They presumably thought it best to, considering all they were planning together. Even Marja didn’t know, although she was working with them on the refugee operation. They’d been together for several years before I realised they were a couple. And I didn’t say a word to anyone except Sven. We decided their relationship wasn’t really any of our business, and we’d just have to wait and see. I regret that now.’

  Fredrika hesitated over what had to come next.

  ‘How would you describe the state of Johanna’s mental health?’

  ‘She’s sick,’ said Elsie. ‘Utterly sick. Definitely not the sort of woman I’d want as a daughter-in-law.’

  ‘Have you had any contact with Karolina over the past few days?’

  It was Elsie’s turn to hesitate.

  ‘She came to find me,’ she said. ‘Today. She was worried about Måns and wanted to make sure he was all right. I tried to get her to see reason and hand herself over to the police, but she said she had something important to do first. She said she had to face the person who had destroyed her before she could move on. I think I know where they might be.’

  ‘So do we,’ said Fredrika, and thought to herself: they deceived Jakob and Marja and lots of other people. The murder of Jakob and Marja was never a matter of dangerous secrets and people needing to be silenced. It was just a clever front for the real motive: personal vengeance.

  The house lay dark and deserted as Karolina parked the hired car in the driveway. Without the slightest hesitation, she opened the car door and got out into the snow. She tramped as quickly as she could round the house and in through the basement door. A few moments later she was back out again and unlocked the front door on the other side of the house. A wave of memories overpowered her as she stepped inside and closed the door behind her, still in the dark.

  This was where the story had started, and this was where it would reach its conclusion.

  First they had destroyed everything for her and Måns. Weakened him to a point where he could no longer be counted on, so any relationship with him became impossible. After that they had carried on working through their plan, so methodically and purposefully that it had scared her witless.

  She moved towards the living room. She stretched out an arm and ran her fingertips along all those dear photographs as she passed them. She was the one who had once helped her mother put them up.

  Everything had started falling apart right back when she was a child, she realised that now.

  But there were other things she could not make head nor tail of, and she would demand answers from her sister about those, as soon as she turned up. Karolina crouched down by one of the big windows and scanned the darkness in front of the house. With all the lights off, she would be invisible to anybody trying to look in, but have a better view of the garden herself.

  She kept a tight hold on the shotgun she had loaded in the basement, which was now resting in her
lap. She was ready to meet her sister, any second now.

  The flying squad minibus was having trouble gripping the slippery road surface, but the driver accelerated even so. Fredrika’s call came through to Alex when they were about ten minutes from the house.

  ‘Elsie’s confirmed almost everything we thought, and told me more besides,’ she reported. ‘Hiding the migrants was a joint project of Viggo and Sven’s from the word go, but unlike Sven, Viggo carried on in Ragnar Vinterman’s expanded operation. It was Viggo who took the Ljungs’ car and reported it stolen so they’d be in the clear if there were suspicions it had been used to commit a crime.’

  ‘Well I’ll be . . .’ began Alex.

  ‘There’s more,’ Fredrika broke in. ‘Elsie’s sure that Viggo killed Jakob and Marja and that he and Johanna staged the whole thing. They’ve been together for several years, but they didn’t let on to anybody. Oh, and it turns out it was Karolina who was raped at the holiday house, not Johanna.’

  Fredrika paused for breath as Alex tried to slot all this new information into the tragic framework. Two brothers, two sisters. Two disintegrating families, and strong individuals who broke loose and demanded redress.

  ‘Could she tell you anything about Viggo’s reasons for murdering his girlfriend’s parents?’ he asked briskly.

  ‘Revenge,’ Fredrika said. ‘Viggo and Måns were with their parents on a surprise visit to Ekerö the evening Karolina was raped and heard all about it from Johanna. What nobody realised was that both boys were in love with the same girl, Karolina. To start with it wasn’t a problem because she didn’t want either of them. But later on, when she’d left home to study, she got interested in Måns. In a crazy attempt to outdo the competition, Viggo located the man who raped Karolina, who turned out still to be in the country.’

  A gust of wind caught the minibus and tried to knock it off the road. Alex had to concentrate hard to hear what Fredrika was saying.

  ‘His confrontation with the rapist ended very violently: Viggo was knifed in the face and fled. He’s apparently had a terrible scar ever since.’