The Man Who Wasn't There

by Michael Hjorth

  On Sebastian’s sofa, watching Sebastian’s TV.

  With Sebastian.

  She had ended up there on Friday after work. Stayed the night. They hadn’t had sex; to her surprise the question hadn’t even come up. Without the slightest hint or innuendo, he had made up her bed in the guest room; the following day he had woken her when breakfast was ready. She went home on Saturday morning.

  She had toyed with the idea of actually going to Uppsala to surprise Bella; didn’t parents do that kind of thing? Little unannounced visits? A few pleasant hours together, lunch, then back home. It was a nice idea, but it didn’t happen. She just didn’t have the nerve. Instead she spent Saturday cleaning, shopping, doing the laundry: the chores a divorced woman had to tackle at the weekend.

  This morning she had gone back to Sebastian’s. He was pleased to see her; she had eaten a second breakfast with him, then they had gone for a long walk while a couple of workmen did a job for him. It cost more on a Sunday, of course, but on the other hand they came exactly when they had said. They were fitting a spyhole in the door. One thousand eight hundred and fifty kronor.

  They talked about everything under the sun as they walked. Ursula found it relaxing to be with someone she could be open with, someone who knew all about her and Mikael. She didn’t have to think before she spoke. They had touched on the investigation, but it was obvious that Sebastian wasn’t interested and had no intention of getting involved. Not at this stage, anyway. Skeletons, rucksacks and passenger lists didn’t appeal to him at all. The American woman – if she was American – who was somehow mixed up in the murders, now she was interesting. But she was also dead.

  He needed people, living people. Damaged, twisted, sick. People whose perception of reality and view of the world challenged his own. Psyches that were complex, hard to understand. People others classified as evil in order to make it easy for themselves. If someone like that turned up he would be happy to contribute, but until then . . .

  Eventually they had ended up at a pool hall in the Söder district, played some form of eight ball with made-up rules. Ursula won three out of four games. She offered to buy Sebastian a beer, but to her surprise he wanted a Coke. Back in the day when they had been together, he had drunk alcohol. Not alarmingly large quantities, but he was happy to have a drink when it was on offer. Once again she wondered what had happened to him.

  ‘What did you dream about,’ she said suddenly, ‘when we were up in Jämtland?’

  Sebastian was taken aback by the question. Her steady gaze revealed nothing of what was going on in her mind. He couldn’t help smiling. If he had been surprised when she turned up on Thursday evening, he had been astonished when she came back the following day and stayed the night. And now Ursula was harking back to their conversation in Storulvån in an ordinary, chatty tone. Her eyes might not give away what she was thinking, but the question did. She thought their brief encounter in the hotel restaurant was worth returning to.

  She was curious.

  About him.

  Put that together with the visits to his apartment: two evenings, no sex admittedly, but Sebastian still felt as if they were slowly, slowly finding their way back to something resembling what they had had all those years ago, before she found out he had been sleeping with her sister.

  It felt good, but he wondered why.

  Ursula had made it very clear that she would never forgive him, so what was she up to? The divorce must have messed with her head, but even so. Was she playing some kind of game? Was this part of a refined plan to get her revenge? Was she intending to hurt him? Whatever was going on, it was exciting, and the most interesting thing that had happened during this pointless investigation.

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘You said you’d tell me.’

  ‘Yes, but why do you want to know?’

  Ursula picked up her bottle of beer and took a swig. He studied her; he thought he knew what she was doing. Working out exactly what to say. If she simply said she was curious, she would get nowhere with him, and she knew it. She needed to be honest, challenge him, or come up with a theory he just had to disprove.

  ‘Because when you came into the restaurant, when you didn’t know I was watching you . . .’

  ‘Yes?’ Sebastian said almost expectantly when she paused. It seemed as if she had chosen the honesty option; he could see her choosing her words with care.

  ‘You looked like a person who had lost everything. A man who had nothing left.’

  Sebastian didn’t answer immediately. She had done well. No real challenge, and certainly not something he could disprove. Honest, and unfortunately perfectly true.

  ‘I will tell you one day,’ he said quietly. ‘Not here and probably not tonight, but I will tell you. I promise.’

  Ursula nodded. She could tell from his voice and the look in his eyes that she couldn’t have been far from the truth. It was perfectly understandable that he didn’t want to sit on a bar stool with an old Eurythmics track in the background and tell his story, and she didn’t really want to hear it in a place like this.

  ‘Soon, I hope,’ she said.

  Neither of them had mentioned it again. When they got back the workmen had gone, and there was a spyhole in the middle of the door. They had rustled up an early dinner, then ended up on the sofa. Sebastian couldn’t remember when he had last sat side by side with someone mindlessly watching TV with his feet up on the coffee table. It must have been with Lily.

  ‘Can I stay over?’ Ursula asked as she reached for the remote to silence the adverts.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  She flicked through the channels and found some kind of survival programme on Discovery. Sebastian glanced at her out of the corner of his eye as he wondered once again: what was she up to? Was it a game? Revenge?

  He didn’t know. More importantly, he didn’t care.

  Lennart was on his way to the stadium, standing with Benke and Stig in a carriage packed with other Hammarby supporters when Anitha called. They were playing Brage tonight, and he could hardly hear her over the racket the fans were making. He had to move to the far end of the carriage and press the phone right against his ear to have any chance of making out what she was saying. She spoke fast, and seemed to have found something. It wasn’t much, but at least it was a start. A name. Adam Cederkvist. He was the Säpo officer who had taken over responsibility for the case of the two missing Afghan men in the autumn of 2003. That was all she knew. She spent the rest of the call telling him that she was going to send him a bill for lunch at the Lake Mälaren Pavilion, which she expected him to pay for, and that she also expected an additional payment. Lennart said he would see what he could do, and promised to call her back when things were quieter. That didn’t satisfy her; she said he was going to have to come up with a decent amount of money, because she had had to go to considerable lengths to help him. Lennart wondered if she had got into difficulties, but she merely repeated that the money was important, and cut him off. His friends looked enquiringly at him; he said it was work, unfortunately. They seemed disappointed, and it didn’t exactly improve matters when he said he was going to get off at Skanstull and go back home. They put all their efforts into changing his mind, particularly Benke, who had been in Spain for two weeks and had really been looking forward to hanging out and seeing the match together. Surely nothing was so important that it couldn’t wait? They’d been talking about this game for such a long time. Eventually Lennart gave in. It was Sunday, after all, and there wasn’t much he could do apart from an Internet search, and that could wait until he got home. He had missed the last two games, and the only time he saw his old friends these days was when the football was on. They had known each other since they were teenagers, but now they were all so preoccupied with their respective families, kids, girlfriends and work that they never had time to hook up. Lennart decided he would work for an hour or so after the match. It couldn’t possibly make any difference; th
e whole Shibeka Khan case was virtually dead in the water anyway. He had already told Sture Liljedahl that the family had pulled out. The question was whether Anitha’s information could bring the story back to life; if so he would have to dig up something more. One name wouldn’t go far.

  Their seats were right by the pitch. Benke had managed to get season tickets. He had been promising to do it for years, but this was the first time he’d actually managed it. The atmosphere was terrific and it was a good match, but Lennart couldn’t stop thinking about what Anitha had told him. He had a name, a concrete individual to follow up. Maybe it was worth a shot. He would do a quick search as soon as he got home.

  Sigurdsson scored a terrific goal with five minutes to go, and the whole stadium erupted. Hammarby won, and Lennart roared his approval along with everyone else. Stig persuaded him to come for a few beers. It was too late to work, he insisted, and Lennart agreed to a compromise: two beers, then he would have to go home.

  After eight beers and several shots he was listening to the booze and his noisy friends instead of the call of duty. He joined them at a party somewhere near Zinken and managed to avoid smoking, against all the odds. Not that he could claim the credit; he was standing on a crowded balcony belonging to someone he barely knew with an unlit cigarette in his hand when Benke spotted him and wrestled him to the ground. It was a joke but they were both pissed, and Lennart cut his hand on a broken glass. Stig separated them and wrapped the hand in a wet handkerchief. Then they sat there for a while, weeping over how much they loved one another, even though they never said so when they were sober. At three somebody reported the party to the on-call noise and disturbance team, and everyone was thrown out. He got home at four thirty and fell into bed. The last thing he remembered was that there was something he had to do today.

  He just wasn’t sure what it was.

  When the team gathered on Monday morning, they quickly established that nothing much had happened.

  They had received preliminary results from the DNA samples taken from relatives of the missing families: the father of the mother from the Thorilsen family, who had disappeared up near Trondheim. The mother’s sister from the Hagberg family from Gävle, and a brother of the father from the Cederkvist family, who were presumed drowned in the Indian Ocean. None of them matched any of the bodies in the mountain grave. It wasn’t much of a surprise, and anything that could be ruled out freed up time for other lines of enquiry.

  Billy was sitting at his desk when his computer pinged. The National Forensics Lab had sent the photographs they had managed to retrieve from the memory card, ninety-three of them. He downloaded the file and started to go through them. They seemed to date from early spring up to the deaths of the Dutch couple. A birthday party for someone who was presumably the daughter of a friend, as she didn’t appear in any further pictures. Photos from cycling trips, more parties, outings to the beach, walks, football matches. Happy, smiling faces. The odd picture taken in what could only be the Bakkers’ home. Everyday life.

  The last thirty-seven were interesting. One had been taken at the airport in Trondheim: Framke with her rucksack outside the terminal building, smiling into the camera. Then they were up in the mountains; this time it was Jan’s turn to stand pointing at the mountain tops, as if to show where they were going. Picnics, overnight stays, stunning views. Billy selected and printed all the pictures from the mountains, and as the printer did its job he jumped to the last few.

  Framke taking down the tent.

  A swirling stream.

  Reindeer high up on a mountainside.

  The entrance to a valley with Jan in the foreground, drinking from a small waterfall. The final picture: he looked happy, smiling at the camera and his wife. Billy checked the date: 30 October. The day they died. The valley extending behind him, a little house on the right-hand side and beyond it a plateau, blue sky, more mountains forming a backdrop. Billy recognised the skyline; he had been there. The plateau was where they had found the bodies. It was difficult to judge distance, but he estimated that Jan and Framke Bakker had about an hour’s walking ahead of them before they reached the spot. An hour left to live, which of course the smiling man didn’t know when the picture was taken. It added a mournful gravity to the frozen image. Billy was about to move on to something else when he was struck by one particular detail.

  The house.

  The little house in the valley, at the foot of the mountain. The team had searched for the scene of the crime, but failed to find it. There was no house now, but obviously on 30 October 2003 there had been. Billy enlarged that section of the photograph on his screen: a log cabin with a chimney, steps leading up to the door. Not very big. A hunting lodge.

  He got up and went into the Room to study the map they had brought from the hotel. The grave was marked with a cross. They had all looked at the map, of course, but he wanted to double-check.

  No house was marked where a house should have been, according to the Bakkers’ photograph.

  Billy picked up the phone on the conference table and glanced at the wall, where Mats and Klara’s business card was pinned up. He dialled the number; Klara answered on the second ring.

  Lennart was woken by the rays of the sun on his face. The light hurt his eyes, and he rolled over to pull down the blind, but instead managed to bring the whole contraption down on his bandaged hand. That got him out of bed with a yell.

  Wide awake thanks to the pain, he staggered to the bathroom and swallowed two strong painkillers. He sluiced his face with cold water, thinking that he should have taken them before he went to bed; that usually helped when he had a hangover, but he hadn’t been thinking straight last night. He hadn’t been capable of thinking at all, to be honest. He contemplated the bandage on his left hand. What a night it had turned out to be – a lot crazier than he had expected. The man in the mirror was definitely going to be working from home today.

  Work . . .

  It was all coming back to him now. Anitha had called yesterday . . . she had found out the name of the guy from Säpo back in 2003. Adam . . . Adam . . . he stiffened. Surely he hadn’t forgotten the fucking surname? He’d been thinking about it all evening – well, until the fifth or sixth beer anyway. Deep breaths. No point in getting stressed, otherwise the name on the tip of his tongue would be lost for ever. He definitely didn’t want to contact Anitha; he would look like a complete idiot who didn’t take his job seriously.

  A complete idiot was exactly what he felt like.

  Adam.

  Adam.

  ‘Adam C-something,’ he said out loud. Or was it D? No, C. He had been thinking about the name all along, so it had to be in there somewhere. It had just gone missing. Temporarily, he hoped. He decided to have a cold shower, break his train of thought.

  It worked.

  Adam Cedergren or Cederkvist, one or the other. At least he had something to go on, and he knew the guy worked for Säpo. He sat down in his study and started making a few calls.

  After an hour or so he knew there was no Adam Cedergren or Cederkvist working for either the security police or the regular police service. However, he did find an article in the news archive about an Adam Cederkvist who had gone missing with his wife and children off the coast of Africa during a sailing trip in 2004. They had never been found. Lennart called a friend at Dagens Nyheter, a researcher he had worked with many times, and asked for his help. He was putting together a story about long-distance sailors who disappeared, he said, and wondered if his colleague could take a look in the newspaper’s archive, which was much more extensive than anything Lennart had access to. Was there anything about the Cederkvist family? Twenty minutes later he received an e-mail.

  It wasn’t much, but it brought him a step closer. Adam Cederkvist had been on a sabbatical from the police when he disappeared. Unfortunately it wasn’t clear whether he had worked for Säpo. He had a brother, Charles Cederkvist, but no other relatives.

  Lennart thought for a while. He really didn’t
want to call the security police and start asking questions about Adam Cederkvist. Someone had put a lot of effort into concealing his identity. If Investigation Today started poking around, it could destroy everything. He had very little to go on, so he had to be careful.

  However, he liked what he did have. If Adam Cederkvist worked for Säpo, it was a good start to a conspiracy theory. Why would they need to hide the name of one of their own who had been dead since 2004? He didn’t want to hear their explanation until he knew the answer himself.

  He decided to contact the brother and see if he knew anything. There was a Charles Cederkvist in Oskarshamn; it must be him.

  The man answered right away, sounding fresh and alert – the exact opposite of the way Lennart was feeling.

  ‘Is that Charles Cederkvist?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My name is Lennart Stridh; I work for Swedish Television on the Investigation Today programme.’

  ‘Oh yes . . .’

  Charles suddenly sounded less sure of himself, but then almost everyone did when Lennart said where he was calling from. Investigation Today was supposed to make people nervous; that was the whole point of the programme.

  ‘I have a few questions about your brother Adam,’ he went on.

  ‘He’s dead. He died a long time ago.’ Charles sounded very surprised.

  ‘I know that; he went missing during a sailing trip, I believe.’

  ‘That’s right. Why are you asking about him?’

  Lennart thought the question was justified; he needed to allay Charles Cederkvist’s fears.

  ‘His name has come up in something I’m working on; I was wondering if we could meet up for a chat?’

  ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘If we can meet up I’ll explain everything,’ Lennart insisted. He had no desire to go through the whole thing on the phone; his headache had come back. How much had he actually drunk last night?

  ‘Not unless you tell me what this is about,’ Charles said; it was obvious that he meant it. Lennart had only one option.