Fabian wanted to comfort him and say it was all going to be all right. That time would heal all wounds. But he couldn’t get a word out. It was as though everything had short-circuited – his ability to speak, to think, everything.
‘They said that I was done for if I told anyone. Dad, I promise. I never wanted to be in on it, but I had to help them, I had no choice. She’d dropped the necklace with my name on it and probably my fingerprints, too.’
‘Who? Who had your necklace?’ His brain was finally snapping back in.
‘Alexandra. She was in on that crap, and when I realized that, I just wanted to get out of there. Leave and never come back. But Henrik, this mate of hers, refused. Said I was one of them whether I wanted to be or not.’
‘And Dunja? Where does she fit into this?’
‘No idea. She just knocked on Alexandra’s door one day. I’d just seen the video and didn’t know what to do.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘We hid until she gave up. We must have sat behind that sofa for at least an hour.’
In some ways, his son was so big now; in just another year or two, he would be taller than him. And yet he was also still a little boy hiding behind sofas.
‘And the gun?’
‘Henrik gave it to me when I was on lookout in Helsingør. That’s when she showed up again. I don’t know how she knew we were there.’
‘So it was Dunja you got in a fight with?’
Theodor nodded.
She must have been working on the investigation. That’s why she’d asked for his help finding the names of a number of residents in his own neighbourhood of Tågaborg.
‘But hey…’ Theodor met his eyes. ‘We don’t have to tell Mum about this, do we? We can keep this between us, right?’
‘Theodor, you have to know that’s not possible.’ Fabian made an effort to sound calmer than he felt. ‘Of course we have to tell her. And you also have to report to the Danish police as soon as possible.’
‘What do you mean, report? Why?’ Theodor was blanching.
‘To give a statement and tell them about your involvement and about—’
‘No, listen! I didn’t do anything! The only thing I did was stand there and—’
‘Exactly, Theodor. You were there. How you got there, whether anyone forced you or not, doesn’t matter right now. The only thing that matters is that you were there.’
Theodor stared at him, but it wasn’t anxiety or worry Fabian could see in his eyes, nor was it distress or nerves. No, his eyes shone with pure, unadulterated terror. Which was exactly what Fabian felt, too. At what lay ahead and what was going to happen to his son.
‘If you want to put this behind you, the only way is to give a statement telling the police exactly what happened.’
Theodor’s face turned even whiter.
‘I will go with you and make sure you have a good lawyer. But it’s going to be up to you to—’
The warning signs had been there. The fear in his eyes, his breathing and his deathly pale face. He should have known. Even so, Theodor’s vomit seemed to come out of nowhere.
31
Even though it was still early and the sun had only just peeked over the treetops, Lilja was sweating like she’d hit menopause. And that was after taking off both her windcheater and her fleece; apart from the jeans that clung to her legs, she now wore nothing but an old T-shirt, which was also sopping wet.
She turned off the trail and sat down on a tree stump about thirty feet into the woods, pulled one of her water bottles out of her backpack and downed it, despite the water being lukewarm and tasting faintly of plastic.
Looking at her phone, she noticed that the marked area on the map had changed again. Having been cheese-puff shaped just over an hour ago, it was now more evocative of a balloon someone had sat on.
Molander, who was running the triangulation from the station, had explained that the shape depended on the number and types of masts the phone in question was connected to at any given moment. And whether the antennas were omnidirectional or unidirectional; and if the latter, what angle they covered.
Either way, the area was much too large, covering about a square mile. Which didn’t sound overly large in itself, but the inaccessible terrain of Söderåsen, coupled with the fact that she and Klippan had only been able to commandeer two uniformed officers on account of the football games that weekend, made the task considerably harder than finding a needle in a haystack.
With ten men, they could have positioned themselves along the edge of the area and moved in towards the middle in a coordinated fashion. Now, they had no choice but to try to encircle him by covering one cardinal direction each, which left vast areas completely unmonitored, making it easy to slip through the net. In fact, that had already happened twice, and if nothing changed soon, they would have to abort the mission and wait until after the weekend, when they would have more manpower.
Once something did change, she assumed the app she was using to receive information from Molander was acting up or had frozen somehow, so she shut it down and restarted it. But it made no difference. The marked area on the map still looked wrong.
Round like a tennis ball and, compared to before, tiny.
So tiny it only covered about twenty thousand square feet.
And if that wasn’t enough, she was only a few hundred yards from the centre of the area. If the map was correct, that had to mean he had suddenly come into contact with several masts at once, which also meant he could disappear again at any moment.
Looks like you’re heading right for him, Klippan texted. We’ll be there as soon as we can.
She got up, took out her gun, shoved two extra magazines into her back pockets and hurried off. Back out in the sunshine, she crossed the path and continued across a small clearing with dried-up branches and roots that did their best to ensnare her feet and sprain her ankles. But she managed to avoid any disasters and was soon entering the woods on the other side.
She gave her phone another glance as she passed a large boulder; the area on the map was still small and their paths would soon cross, unless he suddenly changed direction.
She stayed absolutely still, but couldn’t hear anything other than the flies buzzing around her sweaty neck. Maybe he’d already heard her and stopped, too.
At length, she left her hiding place behind the rock, looked around and pushed on deeper into the trees, whose foliage dappled the sunlight. At first, she jogged on light feet, jumping over the mossy rocks and fallen trees, but after a while, she slowed down to a walk, almost a crawl, checking her location on her phone from time to time.
After a while, the trees began to thin out and the forest opened up into a clearing where the sunlight was so strong it took her eyes a moment to get used to it. But as soon as they had, it became clear they were not out here chasing a shadow.
The charred rocks had been dispersed, true, but it didn’t take her long to find the spot where they had presumably ringed a fire as recently as the night before. Some little way off, the grass was flattened in a near perfect rectangle of about six by three feet.
Something glinted in the grass. She squatted down and realized on closer inspection that it was a shell casing, and just as she had pulled on a latex glove and was about to pick it up, she froze at the sound right behind her.
It was no branch snapping. And no twig. It wasn’t even leaves rustling in a way the wind could never make them do. What it was, she didn’t know. Maybe it was just her imagination. Even so, she put her hands in the air and turned around slowly to stare straight into his black eyes.
The stag was standing only a few feet away from her and seemed at least as surprised as she was. She was struck by how majestic he was with his big antlers and jet-black eyes, which stared at her as though he could read her mind.
The bang was loud, but the accompanying echo made it impossible to pinpoint its origin. It was the whooshing sound, cutting through the air right in front of her face, that
made her realize someone had shot at her. The bullet hit the grass a few feet to her left as she dived right. The stag was already gone, as though it had never existed.
She crawled through the grass, trying to collect herself. A normal rifle bullet travelled about eight hundred yards per second, more than twice the speed of sound. But the bang, the whooshing sound and the impact had happened more or less simultaneously, which meant the shooter couldn’t be more than about fifty yards away.
She’d been lucky. As that realization sunk in, shock took over. But there was no time for shock now. Now, she had to get away as quickly as possible. If only she could have spotted him through the tall grass. But she didn’t dare get to her feet, so she kept crawling at a perpendicular angle from the bullet’s trajectory.
She could only hope he could see neither her nor the grass around her move. If she could just get out of the open clearing and back into the forest, the trees would hide her and she could go around and come at him from behind.
Then one more shot rang out, and another.
She froze and was holding her breath while doing a mental inventory of her body to make sure she hadn’t been hit when she heard a dull thud. A sound that scared her a lot more than the gunfire.
Was that him, jumping down from his hiding place? If he’d been up a tree or in a hunter’s blind, he would definitely have seen her. Wasn’t that footsteps she could hear now? Yes, she could even hear a twig snapping.
Should she get up and try to run away? No, that would just make her an easier target. Better to keep her gun at the ready and… The sound made her stop thinking and start acting. The sound of something metal being pulled out of its sheath.
With her gun in both hands, she rolled around and saw his outline against the blinding sun, with a butcher’s knife in his hand and a rifle slung over his shoulder.
The seconds were dragged out as if to give her more time to aim at his leg and squeeze her right index finger harder and harder around the trigger. But something made her hold off.
Even though his eyes, nose and mouth looked the way she remembered from the police cordon in Bjuv, she felt increasingly sure something wasn’t right. The smile wasn’t there, for example, and when a cloud finally hid the sun and she could see his face more clearly, she instantly realized what the problem was.
It wasn’t him.
32
He took up position a few feet from the stone wall down at the Parapet Pier in Helsingborg’s Northern Harbour. It was just over three feet tall and curved almost exactly like Lennart Andersson’s meat counter at ICA Maxi in Hyllinge. There was no point going for a longer run-up now since he wouldn’t get one when it actually came to doing it for real.
His first attempt had gone so-so. He’d hesitated and not managed to gather enough momentum to get over the wall. His second attempt had gone better and on his third, he’d made it across the entire road, landing on one of the big rocks on the other side. On his fourth try, he hadn’t even needed his hands for support.
Like with so many things, it was about believing it would work. Like when he was a little boy and learned how to break a pencil with his index finger. He’d worked at it a whole weekend straight without succeeding; it had felt like his index finger was about to snap, not the pencil. It was only when he’d made his mind up to go all in without hesitation that he finally did it, and from then on, it hadn’t even been hard.
He did a fifth jump; now it felt like the easiest thing in the world. It was just like with the extra mission. When he first saw the X, he was anxious, and when he rolled his way to page 28 of the notebook, he’d been convinced this was most likely going to be his last mission. Now, on the other hand, he was convinced it was going to come off brilliantly.
He’d even almost forgotten he was wearing the mask. If not for the sweat trickling down the inside of it, he wouldn’t have given it a thought. That’s how well it fitted him.
He’d ordered it from the US the moment he’d finished writing his 120 additional missions. Almost a thousand dollars it had cost him, and even though he’d splurged on express delivery, it had taken five weeks to get to him.
But it was a perfect fit, and as best he could tell, it seemed to work just fine out in public. This was his first time wearing it outside his flat.
Most people had passed him without reacting. As if they hadn’t noticed him at all. A few had looked twice, as though they couldn’t quite put their finger on what was off. Others had gone so far as to turn and look. Then he’d tempted fate by strolling down the pedestrianized stretch of Kullagatan on a late Saturday morning.
The mask was hot, though. He took it off, wiped the inside clean with a towel and put it in his backpack before jumping on his bike and pedalling off towards Hyllinge.
33
It was a completely electronics-free process. No ones and zeros. No driver routines, cables or memory cards. Just the pure chemistry of the hydroquinone spreading through the cassette and coming into contact with the film roll’s layer of gelatine, where it began to convert the silver halides that had been exposed to light to metallic silver. A process that rendered a darker negative the longer it was allowed to go on.
Developing analogue film required both skill and experience. The developer had to be able to perform steps such as pulling the film out of its cassette and loading it on to the reel blindfold, from muscle memory, since those things had to be done either inside a changing bag or in complete darkness.
He had found the rolls of film in a locked compartment in one of the lockers at the Celluloid photography club. Once upon a time, the locker had belonged to Einar Stenson; he had managed to open the compartment with one of the keys from Hugo Elvin’s drawer. It was the smallest of the three marked with green tape and a question mark.
Six rolls of film, each with twenty-four pictures that had to be developed. All black-and-white but of varying graininess and ISO values, which required different developing times and developer concentration.
Four of the photography club’s members had offered their services. They’d hung up the developed films to dry, then cut them into strips of four and placed them in a holder in the enlarger, where the negatives filtered the light of the incandescent bulb, projecting their images on to the emulsion side of the photopaper for a few short seconds.
It was only once the exposed photopaper was placed in a tray of developer that Fabian could finally see the pictures as they took shape, seemingly out of thin air.
Since Einar Stenson had been a professional sports photographer, there were a lot of sports pictures, showing everything from handball to curling, but there were also beautiful nature shots with mirror-like lakes, billowing fields of grain and trees emerging from morning mist. There was also a handful of truly gorgeous portraits of Einar’s wife, Flora Stenson, and a picture series of a couple of magpies building a nest. What Fabian wasn’t finding, however, was anything that might explain why Molander would have taken Einar’s life.
After the first few hundred pictures, everyone’s enthusiasm started to wane. Fabian was less affected than his four volunteers, who had naturally been hoping to discover something juicy to gossip about around the dinner table.
One had already bowed out and the remaining three were so despondent they didn’t react when Fabian lingered over the developing tray.
At first, the fields that were slowly darkening looked like hundreds of dots growing into larger patches. Little lakes of darkness that eventually came together in the shape of a car. A grey sedan with its driver’s door open and with someone… Or wait… Fabian watched the developing process for a few more seconds to get more details.
Yes, someone had just opened the driver’s door to climb in behind the wheel. Someone with glasses, dressed in what looked like a checked shirt under a sports jacket.
The man’s face was turned away from the camera, but Fabian recognized both the driveway and the house. He still remembered taking Sonja and the children there for the first time two years a
go for a team barbecue, thrown in the middle of a complex murder investigation.
Of course it was Ingvar Molander. He wasn’t even surprised.
By now, he could also see that the car was a grey Saab 9-3 with registration number HOT 378. In other words, the same model and colour as the one in the pictures Hugo Elvin had found. He felt justified in assuming this was the same car that an as-yet-unidentified woman had been climbing into in those pictures.
Einar Stenson had apparently been tailing Molander, and on this particular night he had followed him to his rendezvous with the unknown woman. Had Molander had an affair? Was that what all this was about? Had Einar discovered that Molander was cheating on his daughter Gertrud?
The picture was moved to the stop bath on its way to a tray of fixer before being hung up to dry, but Fabian was already staring intently at the next picture, whose dark fields were becoming more clearly delineated.
Once again, the same Saab, but this picture was taken from behind and in a completely different location, with trees and shrubs in the background. Molander was only a dark silhouette. The woman was more visible, wearing the same dress as in the pictures from Hugo Elvin’s drawer and walking towards the car with a big smile on her face.
But it was when Fabian saw the next picture, the last one before Einar must have run out of film, that he started getting a strong feeling. A feeling of recognition. He couldn’t say where he had seen her before, but the longer he studied her zoomed-in face, the more convinced he became that he had seen that woman not too long ago.
34
The man who had shot at Lilja out on Söderåsen was waiting for her in the interview room when she finally entered and slowly pulled the door shut behind her. She had left him to stew for a few extra hours on purpose, with nothing but a small plastic cup of water to keep him company. All to help him realize who was in charge.
Motive X Page 17
