by Viveca Sten
At the far end he found number nine, Peter Moore’s storage compartment. From a distance it looked the same as all the others, except that it was bigger. However, he soon realized that Moore had taken steps to make sure no one would be able to gain access. The doorframe had been reinforced at both the top and bottom with steel bars secured with heavy padlocks, and a sturdy piece of wood had been fixed behind the chicken wire so that no one could see what was inside.
The search warrant also covers a storage facility, he thought.
The light went out just as he rounded the corner, and he had to grope his way back to find the light switch. Then he continued down the second corridor, which was narrower than the first, with storage compartments along only one side.
He stopped and took a closer look at his surroundings.
There. In the middle of the floor, he spotted an irregular dark stain, about the size of his hand, with several smaller stains nearby, spread in all directions.
As if someone had sprayed the area with an aerosol can.
Thomas knelt down, took out his flashlight, and directed the beam at the stains, which took on a reddish tinge. He’d seen it before, he knew what dried blood looked like. There was no dust here; the marks must be fresh.
Aram, he thought.
The rage came hurtling back with full force.
CHAPTER 91
Margit’s voice echoed up the stairs: “Thomas, are you there?”
He got to his feet and went back to the door. The certainty left a bitter aftertaste. He’d been right about Peter Moore.
“We’ve found something,” Margit called.
Thomas hurried down to meet her.
“Check out the light,” she said.
Above the door of Moore’s apartment was an old-fashioned fixture that matched the style of the building, a kind of lantern on a wrought-iron bracket. Margit pointed.
“Look carefully.”
Thomas followed her finger and saw something glimmer. Was it a lens?
A hidden mini-camera, invisible to anyone who didn’t know what he was looking for. Modern technology, easy to buy online. For a person who wanted to be in control.
“So why do you think he has one of those?” Margit said with a glint in her eye.
“There should be security footage,” Thomas said, hoping it would show Aram standing outside the apartment. Evidence that would link him to Peter Moore at a specific time.
“Exactly. We need a team to go through the apartment.”
“We also need a forensic examination of the attic.” He explained what he’d found.
“You were right about Moore,” Margit conceded.
Her words didn’t make him feel any better. He looked at his watch: almost four thirty. It would take a while to get a crime-scene investigation team over here.
“I’d like to go to the children’s play area where Aram was found,” he said. “While we’re waiting. Can you stay here until forensics arrive?”
“Why?”
“I just want to check something, and it’s not far away.”
He couldn’t explain his need to see the place, but Margit could see he was upset.
“I’ll call you when they get here,” she said.
The Solvändan play area was just around the corner from Karlbergsvägen 62, no more than a hundred yards up a hill, in the heart of the development known as Röda bergen, a leafy suburb built in the 1920s.
Vikingagatan, which led to the play area, was lined with older buildings. The snow lay in deep drifts on both sides of the street; the snowplow had been through, but had cleared a track only wide enough for two cars to pass.
There wasn’t a soul in sight, except for a young girl in a padded jacket hurrying by. She gave Thomas a quick glance, and he could see that she was trying to assess the situation.
I’m not dangerous, he wanted to say to her, but he knew she wasn’t the only one who would react that way. Many young women felt a stab of fear when they encountered a strange man on a deserted street.
It shouldn’t be like that.
The play area was slightly elevated, with a path leading up to it. As soon as Thomas got there, he could see exactly where Aram had been found: beneath two low-growing conifers, their branches spreading over some ten square yards. According to the Old Man, Aram had been pushed under the bush closest to the path, so he must have been by the wooden fence.
The blue-and-white police tape showed him the way.
Thomas positioned himself on the street, immediately below the conifers. He couldn’t see the spot where Aram had been lying; the greenery obscured his view. There was no chance that anyone walking by would have noticed an injured man.
Moore had dumped Aram like a sack of potatoes, not caring what the consequences might be. The overnight temperature had dropped to at least minus fifteen. The cold would probably have killed Aram within hours, just as it had taken Jeanette Thiels’s life on the shore on Sandhamn.
Thomas heard an ambulance siren in the distance. It wasn’t far to Karolinska University Hospital, where he’d been taken by helicopter when he had a heart attack. Karlbergsvägen ended at the bridge leading to the hospital, the one that spanned both the freeway and the railroad track.
He felt a twinge of pain in his injured foot, in the toes that were no longer there. All he had wanted to do back then was to give up, to sink down into unconsciousness. He hadn’t been afraid, he remembered that very clearly.
He took a deep breath and stamped his foot a couple of times to shake off those phantom pains, then made his way up the narrow path. The shadows were long and deep, flowing into one another.
It was only thanks to a dog in need of a pee that Aram’s battered body had been discovered. Its insistent barking and whimpering had made its owner go over and take a look.
Thomas ducked under the police tape. Forensics had done their job; he wasn’t going to find anything they hadn’t already documented, but he wanted to see every detail with his own eyes.
He knelt by the depression in the snow. Dark patches against the white. Was that Aram’s blood? It hadn’t snowed since last night. Aram must have been unconscious out here, or at least in a bad way. The bloodstains in the attic showed that the beating had started there.
How had Moore transported him here?
Thomas straightened up and gazed down at Karlbergsvägen. Moore’s apartment block was on the corner of Vikingagatan and Karlbergsvägen; it wasn’t far, but it was a considerable distance to convey a badly beaten, probably unconscious man.
He must have had help; that was the only possible explanation. Two people supporting the third person.
Anyone who saw them would assume the guy in the middle had had too much to drink. The risk of being caught had been minimal.
The dog owner’s call to emergency services had been logged at nineteen minutes past midnight. By then this area would have been deserted.
Thomas stared down at the snow; it had been trampled by paramedics and police officers, so there was no chance of finding any useful footprints. But it had definitely taken two men to dump their human burden.
He inhaled the cold air through his nostrils, seething with rage.
CHAPTER 92
Alice couldn’t stop reading.
Mom wrote about her time as a student at Uppsala University—before she met Dad, before she had Alice.
A different mom, one Alice was getting to know.
She felt as if she were in a dream, reading about Mom as a twenty-three-year-old with no husband and no child, living in a world that no longer existed. She had been heavily involved in the students’ union, written for the student newspaper, had fun at a whole lot of post-assignment parties.
But what really made Alice gasp was her love life. Jeanette described her relationship with another woman in great detail. For several years she’d had a secret romance with someone called Minna.
Alice couldn’t remember ever hearing Mom mention the name. Did Dad know about this?
> At the beginning of the eighties, being gay was pretty controversial. Mom tried to explain without making any apologies. Both of them were ambitious; Minna was aiming for an academic career. If it had gotten out that they were in a lesbian relationship, many doors would have closed.
Alice sat there with tears running down her face; she hadn’t known Mom at all. Was this why she hadn’t wanted Alice to open the file?
She knew she ought to stop, but instead she carried on reading, page after page. It was after five o’clock; she really needed to pee.
It had been awhile since she’d seen Sushi, but no doubt the cat had gone downstairs; she liked to lie among the cushions on the sofa. Or she might have gone out through the cat door, but that was less likely. Sushi wasn’t keen on the cold.
Alice pushed away her laptop and headed for the bathroom. She didn’t bother switching on the light; she could find her way.
The phone rang again while she was sitting on the toilet. She let it ring. Why couldn’t Petra just give up? If she wanted to get ahold of Dad, she should try his cell. Alice had no intention of speaking to her—why didn’t Petra get that?
She washed her hands with soap that smelled of lavender, which made her think of Mom again. Mom always had a bottle of lavender-scented shower gel in her bathroom.
Mom.
Suddenly it was all too much. Alice sank down on the floor, buried her head in her hands, and wept and wept.
“Mom,” she whispered. She would have done anything in that moment to be able to give her a hug. Just one more time. She curled up against the wall, sobbing until she was hoarse. A howl came from somewhere deep inside, hurting her throat and providing no relief.
She’s never coming back.
Eventually the weeping subsided into dry, convulsive sobs. Her eyes were burning, and she could taste the salt on her lips. She stayed where she was, resting her cheek against the cold porcelain of the bathtub. Her breathing sounded unnaturally loud in the darkness, rasping painfully. She had no tears left.
“I love you, Mom,” she said quietly.
After a long time, she grabbed the edge of the bathtub and pulled herself to her feet. Everything spun around, little dots of fire dancing in front of her eyes.
The doorbell rang.
Should she go down and answer it?
She didn’t want to speak to anyone right now; it was out of the question.
The doorbell rang again.
Alice ignored it and rinsed her face in cold water. She pressed a towel to her eyes to stem the flow of the fresh tears that were threatening.
After a moment she left the room, almost wishing she’d never started reading Mom’s book.
A noise from the hallway made her stop dead. It sounded as if someone was cautiously pushing down the front door handle. Very quietly, so that no one would hear whoever it was coming in.
Dad would never do that; he always flung open the door and shouted, “Alice!” as soon as he got home.
She hadn’t locked it when she came back from the store. And now it was too late.
There was a creak as the door slowly opened, then a heavy footstep followed by silence as the person stopped to listen.
Alice didn’t move. A rushing sound filled her ears.
“Dad,” she whispered, pressing her back against the bathroom door. Her legs were shaking so much she was afraid she might collapse. Her heart was pounding so loudly she thought the man downstairs must be able to hear it.
She pictured him creeping across the parquet flooring, his big boots leaving wet marks from the snow beneath his soles.
Who are you? What are you doing here?
She almost let out a sob, then bit her lip hard to stop herself from screaming. She drew blood, the taste of iron on her tongue. She leaned forward as far as she dared and peeked over the banister. She saw a shadow disappearing into the kitchen.
She thought she saw something flash in the darkness—was he carrying a knife?
Please, God, please help me.
CHAPTER 93
Thomas’s phone buzzed in his pocket: a short text message from Margit.
Come back—they’re here.
With a final glance at the conifers, he left the play area and headed down the hill, back toward Karlbergsvägen. He didn’t bother with the sidewalk, but strode down the middle of the road instead. The snow was hard packed beneath his feet, crunching with every step. His head was filled with speculation about Peter Moore. It was all about forensics now, whether the technicians could find enough evidence to nail him.
His hands were freezing in spite of his gloves, and he pushed them deep in his pockets.
There was a man in a dark jacket coming toward him from the subway at Sankt Eriksplan. He crossed Vikingagatan when he was about ten yards away from Thomas and seemed to make a point of walking past the police car parked outside Moore’s apartment block. He casually turned his head, registering the presence of the two police officers outside the main door before continuing on his way.
Thomas climbed the short flight of steps leading from the street to the cleared sidewalk outside number sixty-two. Something made him glance over his shoulder at the man in the dark jacket, who was now moving fast. That posture looked familiar . . .
“Peter Moore!” he called out. “Stop, I want to talk to you!”
The man couldn’t help looking back and meeting Thomas’s gaze. Then he broke into a run, heading west in the direction of the hospital.
Thomas set off after him, yelling to his uniformed colleagues: “Come on!”
The streetlamps formed patterns of light and shadow as Moore’s dark figure sped through the deserted neighborhood. Thomas followed as fast as he could. The road sloped downward, and Thomas slipped on a patch of ice. He managed to regain his balance by slamming his hand against a parked car; he felt a stab of pain in his wrist, but ignored it and continued his pursuit.
Moore was now running down the middle of the road; if a car came along, it would have difficulty avoiding him.
Karlbergsvägen narrowed; there were only a hundred yards to go before the bridge leading to the hospital grounds. The railroad track and the on-ramp to the E4 ran beneath it, and farther along there was major road construction, aimed at linking Stockholm’s new city bypass system.
“Stop!” Thomas yelled again, even though he knew it was a waste of time.
There were traffic lights before the bridge; they were all red, with a Toyota waiting for them to turn green. Thomas could see a child in the passenger seat, little arms waving a toy rabbit around.
As Moore drew closer to the car, he suddenly changed direction, came up on the driver’s side, and stretched out his hand.
A thought flashed through Thomas’s mind: He’s going to drag the driver out. He’s going to steal the car.
CHAPTER 94
Alice heard the scrape of a chair in the kitchen, then footsteps again. Into the living room, past the Christmas tree, the coffee table, and Dad’s favorite armchair.
Dad, where are you?
Alice couldn’t breathe, but didn’t dare allow herself to cry. Her nose and throat felt thick as the tears threatened to spill over. She pushed her knuckles hard into her cheeks and inhaled through her mouth, taking short, panting breaths. She was determined not to make a sound.
Suddenly everything went quiet downstairs.
Alice closed her eyes, held her breath.
Then there were different noises; she tried to figure out what was going on. The dining room—he was pulling out drawers, one after the other.
She slid down the wall, rocking back and forth, arms wrapped around her legs. She had to think clearly. She knew what he was looking for, she just knew.
Mom’s book.
The next realization: He’s going to come up here in a minute to search the bedrooms.
I’ve got to hide.
She began to crawl toward her room. She pushed open the door, hoping her laptop would have switched to standby so that the light from
the screen wouldn’t give her away. She almost let out a sob of relief when she saw that the room was in darkness.
She groped for the computer on the bed, removed the USB stick, and slipped it in the pocket of her jeans.
More noise from the living room.
What was happening now?
A series of dull thuds, one after the other. Then she understood: he was pulling the books off the shelves. He sounded increasingly desperate.
CHAPTER 95
“Moore!” Thomas bellowed.
At that moment the light changed to green and the car began to move, a second before Moore could grab the door handle. It sped away just in time.
Moore stopped dead, turned, and saw Thomas running toward him. He raced across the street to the steel fence that separated the bridge from the traffic below. He looked over his shoulder again, as if he were trying to guess what Thomas was going to do, then he jumped over the fence and immediately disappeared from view.
Seconds later, Thomas was there. Without even thinking, he grabbed the steel rail and swung himself over. He landed in the snow on a ledge, as Moore must have done. He slipped on the icy surface and groped for something to hold onto; the on-ramp to the E4 was just below him. If he fell he would land right in the middle of the traffic lanes.
He spotted a sturdy wooden beam sticking out; he managed to grab it and steady himself.
He took a moment to catch his breath and check out his surroundings; where the hell had Moore gone?
A shadow moved on the rusty railroad track, the one heading north, running parallel with the freeway to the airport.
The slope where Thomas was standing ended in a thick gray concrete wall. By the glow of the car headlights, he could see that it must be at least fifteen feet down to the road. Too far to jump, which was why Moore had kept on running. He was searching for a place where he could safely clamber down to the road and get away.
In his peripheral vision, Thomas saw one of the uniformed officers leaning over the fence.
“Cut him off,” he shouted, then set off after Moore along the track. He hoped his colleague had heard him in spite of the traffic noise from below.
